Peter Gallagher

“Here are the net val­ues of the var­i­ous poli­cies as cal­cu­lated by the DICE model. The val­ues are cal­cu­lated as dif­fer­ences from the business-as-usual model, with­out any emis­sion con­trols. A plus value means that the pol­icy is bet­ter than business-as-usual, with the reduc­tion of dam­age due to cli­mate change exceed­ing the cost of con­trols. A minus value means that the pol­icy is worse than business-as-usual, with costs exceed­ing the reduc­tion of dam­age. The unit of value is $1 tril­lion, and the val­ues are spec­i­fied to the near­est tril­lion. The net value of the opti­mal pro­gram, a global car­bon tax increas­ing grad­u­ally with time, is plus three—that is, a ben­e­fit of some $3 tril­lion. The Kyoto Pro­to­col has a value of plus one with US par­tic­i­pa­tion, zero with­out US par­tic­i­pa­tion. The ‘Stern’ pol­icy has a value of minus fif­teen, the ‘Gore’ pol­icy minus twenty-one, and ‘low-cost back­stop’ plus sev­en­teen”  extract from: The Ques­tion of Global Warm­ing—empha­sis added.