ABSTRACT
My interest is the special case of discounting benefits of greenhouse gas abatement. Discounting costs poses no new problem; costs for most of the first fifty years will be borne by governments or publics in the already developed countries. Most of the benefits will accrue in the second fifty years from now, and will accrue to the descendants of people in the now-developing countries. We can expect most of those beneficiaries to be much better off than their current ancestors, but probably not yet as well off as the people in the currently developed countries are now. Any abatement program is essentially a foreign aid program.
