Estimating the social cost of carbon: Robert Pindyck’s critique

Estimating the social cost of carbon: Robert Pindyck’s critique / Joel Darmstadter and Alan J. Krupnick, Common Resources, 5/09/2013

http://common-resources.org/2013/estimating-the-social-cost-of-carbon-robert-pindycks-critique/

The U.S. government’s new consensus estimate of the social cost of carbon (SCC)—around $43 per ton CO2 from a 2020 baseline—has met with some approval in academic and other circles (as we discussed yesterday).  But some of the harshest criticisms, at least insofar as the blogosphere would interpret them, have come from MIT economist Robert Pindyck (short article and working paper). Pindyck’s critiques are important, though we do not agree with all the conclusions he draws from them—conclusions that have been misinterpreted by those opposed to climate policy based on the SCC…