ABSTRACT
Climate policy is an equity problem. Rich countries have emitted more greenhouse gases. Poor countries are generally believed to be more vulnerable to climate change than rich countries. Indeed, most people would argue that the relationship is causal. Poor economies are more exposed to weather and climate, for example because agriculture is more important, and poor societies have a lower adaptive capacity, for example because they lack in human capital. Poor countries also tend be in hotter places. At the same time, the global income distribution has changed dramatically over the last century, and will continue to change. Any assessment of the distributional implications of climate change will have to address how differential growth rates will affect relative vulnerabilities. This paper does exactly that.
