It's about the Children

from Master Resource

Will Global Warming Make Future Generations Worse Off? (No, according to realistic analysis)

Some people argue that we are morally obliged to reduce greenhouse gases aggressively because otherwise the world’s current development path would be unsustainable, and our descendants will be worse off than we are.

But will a warmer world be unsustainable, and leave our descendants worse off?

I have examined these claims out to the year 2200, using the IPCC’s own assumptions regarding future economic development and results generated by the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. Note that both the IPCC and Stern are viewed quite favorably by proponents of drastic GHG reductions (see, e.g., here).

The first figure (see below) shows for both developing and industrialized countries, the GDP per capita — an approximate measure of welfare per capita — used in the IPCC’s emissions scenarios in the absence of any climate change in 1990 (the base year used to develop the IPCC’s emission scenarios) and 2100.....

'''''''Conclusion

In fact, the above raises the question whether it is moral to require today’s poorer generations to spend their scarce resource on anthropogenic GHG-induced global warming — a problem that may or may not be faced by future, far wealthier, and technologically better endowed generations — instead of the more urgent, real problems that plague current generations and will continue to plague future generations as well.