ABSTRACT
I strongly agree with Thomas Schelling's central tenet: in decisions about policies concerning global warming, an abatement program initiated by members of the present generation will involve their paying the costs of the program but receiving none or nearly none of the benefits during their lifetime. The benefits for what they do will go to the members of future generations. Evaluating such a program in the present, therefore, requires comparing costs to one generation with benefits to other generations. So, the standard paradigm of intertemporal resource allocation does not apply, where resource uses are shifted across the lifetime of a single generation to maximize the present discounted value of that generation's lifetime consumption.
