Abstract

At first glance, it may seem that climate policy based on estimates of the social cost of carbon (SCC) presupposes a set of controversial assumptions, especially about what detailed knowledge regulators have about the impacts of climate change, and what the proper role of government and policy is in responding to those impacts. However, I explain why the SCC-based approach need not actually have these problematic presuppositions as well as why SCC estimates may provide the best guide to climate policy when implemented in a way that incorporates a healthy dose of humility. The SCC-based approach can be used in a way that is ecumenical between the wide range of reasonable but incompatible views about the proper goals of government and policy, ranging from views that aim only at market-efficiency, to utilitarian views, to rights-based and other deontological views, to libertarian views, to virtue ethics views, and others. Beyond this, I suggest that the SCC-based approach can help us find an overlapping consensus on a particular climate policy given the range of reasonable but incompatible normative views endorsed in diverse societies. Finally, I consider a number of specific objections to the SCC-based approach that are especially prominent in contemporary discourse and policy debates. I suggest that even if we agree that all of these objections to existing SCC-based analyses have an important kernel of truth, nonetheless the correct response to climate change still involves substantial emissions reductions to be achieved via policy, and the best methods for deciding the magnitude of those reductions still depend essentially on the SCC-based approach.