Cost-Benefit Analyses of Climate Change

This book focuses on different items in integrated cost-benefit models of climate change in three major areas: modeling regional climate sensitivity, impacts, and adaptation; emissions reduction targets, associated costs, and possible instruments for implementation; and finally, the broader national and international policy contexts for using these models and their results. Topics cover a broad range from the implications of including sulphate aerosols in target-based scenarios of climate change to impacts of global warming on the insurance industry. On the policy side, the contributions refer to costs and expected results of various greenhouse-gas stabilization strategies, as well as to the dynamics of policy instruments, and to the role of advanced energy technologies in those stabilization targets and strategies. In all these areas, possible research directions are discussed that might help to alleviate current shortcomings in global cost-benefit analyses and, more broadly, in integrated climate-economy assessment models. The book is intended for researchers in various areas of global environmental change as well as for a broader but informed general audience interested in the scientific complexity and the policy dilemma associated with the climate change problem.