THE DAMAGE COSTS OF CLIMATE-CHANGE TOWARDS A DYNAMIC REPRESENTATION

Economic assessments of climate change impacts are commonly presented as the effect of a climate change associated with a doubling of the at mospheric concentration of carbon dioxide on the current economy. This paper is an attempt to express impact as a function of both climate c hange and socio-economic change. With regard to climate change, issues discussed are level versus rate of change, speed of adaptation, speed of restoration and value adjustment, and symmetry. With regard to soc io-economic change, agriculture, migration and the valuation of intang ible losses are addressed. Uncertainty and higher order impacts are tr eated briefly. It is qualitatively argued and quantitatively illustrat ed that these issues matter a great deal for the damage profile over t he next century. A damage model, based on my best guesses, is presente d in the Appendix.