Abstract
At first glance, it may seem that climate policy based on estimates of the social cost of carbon (SCC) presupposes a set of controversial assumptions, especially about what detailed knowledge regulators have about the impacts of climate change, and what the proper role of government and policy is in responding to those impacts. However, I explain why the SCC-based approach need not actually have these problematic presuppositions as well as why SCC estimates may provide the best guide to climate policy when implemented in a way that incorporates a healthy dose of humility. The SCC-based approach can be used in a way that is ecumenical between the wide range of reasonable but incompatible views about the proper goals of government and policy, ranging from views that aim only at market-efficiency, to utilitarian views, to rights-based and other deontological views, to libertarian views, to virtue ethics views, and others.
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Acknowledgement
Thanks to Jonathan Adler, Karen Bradshaw, Frank Errickson, Alison Grant, Mark Pennington, Danny Shahar, John Thrasher, Greg Wolcott, Cayla Xue, and participants in the Institute for Humane Studies seminar on liberty, property, and pollution; special thanks to Jonathan Adler and Greg Wolcott for their feedback and leadership.
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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
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Budolfson, M. (2023). The Social Cost of Carbon, Humility, and Overlap** Consensus on Climate Policy. In: Adler, J.H. (eds) Climate Liberalism. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21108-9_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21108-9_14
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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