ABSTRACT
Economists have made many attempts to compare the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions with the expected benefits of limiting damage from climate change in the long run. The question of discounting and evaluating future damage in monetary terms still preoccupies economists and philosophers writing about climate change. Stern and most other writers on climate change also follow the traditional economic assumption that happiness will always increase with individual consumption and national GDP growth. Economists often also claim that more conventional investment yields greater benefits from gross domestic product (GDP) growth to future generations than the really major mitigation efforts long demanded by environmentalists and scientists. Leading scientists and environmentalists have long warned that increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under business as usual will lead to devastating climate change unless emissions are rapidly reduced and most of the currently available fossil fuel reserves are left in the ground.
