Martin Weitzman on Climate Change

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2015

⏱️ 68 minutes

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Summary

Is climate change the ultimate Black Swan? Martin Weitzman of Harvard University and co-author of Climate Shock talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the risks of climate change. Weitzman argues that climate change is a fat-tailed phenomenon--there is a non-trivial risk of a catastrophe. Though Weitzman concedes that our knowledge of the climate is quite incomplete, he suggests that it is prudent to take serious measures, including possibly geo-engineering, to reduce the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:06.4	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:11.0	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find links
0:16.3	and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.0	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:23.2	back to 2006.
0:25.4	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:27.8	We'd love to hear from you.
0:32.0	Today is May 15, 2015, and my guest is Martin Weitzmann, Professor of Economics at Harvard University,
0:39.6	and the co-author with Gernot Wagner of Climate Shock, the economic consequences of a hotter
0:45.2	planet, which is the subject of today's conversation.
0:48.4	Martin, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:50.4	Nice to be here.
0:52.4	Do you argue that prudence requires doing something about the growing concentration of carbon
0:57.4	dioxide in the atmosphere?
1:00.0	Give us an overview of what you see as the big picture version of the problem, why action
1:05.8	is a good idea, and in particular, what's the idea of what we ought to do about it?
1:11.8	Well, in the book and in other contexts, I, we have argued that the most important
1:21.3	way to view single-way to view the economics of climate change is primarily as a problem
1:28.8	of risk management.
1:31.6	You can't, we don't know what's going to happen.
1:35.3	It's highly uncertain what the outcome is going to be on temperatures, on weather patterns
	...

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