GLOBAL WARMING, IRREVERSIBILITY AND LEARNING

A number of economists have argued that the literature on the irrevers ibility effect implies that current abatement of greenhouse gas emissi ons should be greater when there is the possibility of obtaining bette r information in the future about the potential damages from global wa rming than when there is no possibility of obtaining better informatio n. In this paper we show that even the simplest model of global warmin g does not satisfy either of Epstein's (1980) sufficient conditions, s o it is not possible to use Epstein's analysis to tell whether the irr eversibility effect applies to models of global warming. We derive an alternative sufficient condition for the irreversibility effect to hol d.