Events

29 March 2017

Inequality and Climate Change

Lecture series : Inequality and… ?

LISER together with many partners in Luxembourg co-organizes the following lecture.

Equity issues are central to policy debates about climate change. But what is the role of inequality between and within nations on carbon emissions? The first part of the talk reviews recent findings on this issue. The second part of the talk examines barriers to first-best climate policy. Economics has offered clear and convincing first-best solutions to the problem of climate change, but they do not play a central role in the setting of climate policy. Drawing on insights from the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, the talk argues that, for political economy reasons, there is little chance of enacting the economists’ first-best solution. The talk then discusses what this means for global and European climate policy, including the Paris Agreement.

Speaker

Prof. Stephan Klasen, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen