Professor Martin Weitzman - An Economist Tries to Grapple with Catastrophic Climate Change
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment public lecture
Catastrophic climate-change damages are characterised by deep structural uncertainties in the science, combined with severe constraints on the ability to evaluate meaningfully the welfare losses. The critical question is: ‘How fast does the probability of a catastrophe decline relative to the welfare impact of the catastrophe?’ In this lecture, Professor Martin Weitzman attempted to distil the problem down to a simplistic numerical exercise and accompanying discussion that highlighted the most basic issues.
Speaker: Professor Martin Weitzman, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences