Paul Krugman’s excellent article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend contrasts a slow, incremental approach to greenhouse gas mitigation (such as William Nordhaus’ “climate-policy ramp”) to more rapid measures better fitting the urgency suggested by the climate science literature. Krugman dubs the latter the “climate-policy big bang.”

Krugman has done a nice job of describing some of the major points of disagreement within the field of climate economics. Here’s his view:

[T]he policy-ramp prescriptions seem far too much like conducting a very risky experiment with the whole planet. Nordhaus’s preferred policy, for example, would stabilize the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at a level about twice its preindustrial average. In his model, this would have only modest effects on global welfare; but how confident can we be of that? How sure are we that this kind of change in the environment would not lead to catastrophe? Not sure enough, I’d say, particularly because, as noted above, climate modelers have sharply raised their estimates of future warming in just the last couple of years.

Krugman concludes that the “nonnegligible probability of utter disaster” should guide our climate policy, and that this “argues for aggressive moves to curb emissions, soon.”

Anyone who has been reading this blog will know already that I feel that the evidence of both the climate science and climate economics literatures overwhelmingly supports a big-bang climate-policy approach. It’s nice to know that Paul Krugman is a supporter of these views, and it’s even nicer to have his clear and influential thoughts on this reach such a wide audience.

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