Anthony Smith, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Economics and Chair of the Economics Department at Yale, spoke about his work at the intersection of macroeconomics and climate science, where he pioneered high-resolution integrated assessment models. By merging Earth system models with economic frameworks, Smith's research evaluates regional climate change impacts and policy outcomes, fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and leveraging computational power to inform crucial policy decisions.
The more we can get people together, like in rooms like this and get interaction going, the more we can build more plausible and interesting models.
We need micro and macroeconomists, climate scientists, ecologists, geographers – all those papers today can inform the macro model that I'm building.
– Anthony Smith
Tejal Karnitkar of the National Institute of Advanced Studies delved into the dominant role of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) in shaping climate policy decisions, shedding light on their limitations in addressing equity and justice. Highlighting persistent inequalities across regions and the disproportionate burden on low and middle-income countries in mitigation efforts, Karnitkar underscored the urgent need for revised modeling frameworks to ensure fairness and resilience-building opportunities for vulnerable regions.
[Integrated Assessment Models] are at the heart of the projections made, even in the IPCC 6. Some of the first IAMs came out of the Department of Economics at Yale.
Global Model Scenarios from IAMs disproportionately dominate the summary for policymakers, which then get even more disproportionately picked up by the media, and then even more distilled and used, without the accompanying context in COP decisions.
Most of the macroeconomic models that pursue pareto optimality, and frameworks that are used, frees income inequalities at current levels, not allowing any more conversions that is considered reasonable based on historical trends.
Current solutions are geared towards finding optimality where it is both spatially and temporally cheaper. So if it is cheaper to reduce emissions through agricultural and forestry in developing countries, versus pollution due to oil, gas and coal use in developed countries, that’s what will be the solution. So, you have extreme levels of energy inequality persisting across model scenarios, and thus there are higher mitigation burdens by these models on developing countries in the short and long run.
– Tejal Karnitkar
Regina Rodrigues of the Federal University of Santa Catarina underscored the disparity between climate science production and practical application, particularly in regions facing heightened climate hazards. She highlighted that the prevailing top-down approach in climate science often prioritizes data and models over addressing real-world decision-making needs, leading to a scarcity of usable climate information for vulnerable regions due to insufficient data, inadequate model representation, and a failure to integrate valuable local knowledge. Rodrigues also noted that the current framework of climate change science often focuses on singular, definitive questions, overlooking diverse uncertainties and multiple hypotheses that could provide more nuanced insights into addressing climate-related challenges.
The case is that there has been a call for usable, actionable climate information. Yet, in spite of our awareness and global efforts, it is widely recognized that there is a significant gap between the production and the use of climate information. I argue that this is due to us, climate scientists, focusing on better data/models rather than better decision-making.
Top-down approach is inevitably driven by the climate scientists themselves and, as such, violates the core principles of co-production. Traditional ways of producing aggregated climate information can leave climate scientists empty-handed for many regions of the world, especially in the Global South.
– Regina Rodrigues
Climate scientist Piers Forster of the University of Leeds, highlighted advancements in climate modeling techniques, emphasizing the importance of collaborative conversations between scientists and economists for more accurate surface temperature projections. He underscored the need for inclusive dialogue, expressing concerns about decisions made without understanding the underlying assumptions, and urged for collective action within the community to effectively influence policy changes for addressing climate challenges.
Climate modeling has been included by economists in their macroeconomic work and models, like the United States government used to calculate their Social Cost of Carbon with, and I absolutely appreciate the citations – but I would appreciate far more than that the conversations. It was done without talking to us. So, it’s people like us who are the only ones who understand the assumptions that go into the climate modeling.
I think what I would appreciate even more than the conversations, are changes. Projection of course, depends on factors that you economists know better, like GDP and the population changes, and it would be good to work out a way to interact by the conversations we have.
When we act together as a community, we can do things. The IRA was a good opportune example where there are these consistencies.
– Piers Forster
Jessica Seddon of Yale University moderated a panel discussion with Smith, Karnitkar, Rodrigues, and Forster that delved into the complex interplay between climate science and policy formulation. The dialogue underscored the urgent need to bridge scientific research with actionable policy steps, citing concrete examples of how data-driven strategies can bolster climate resilience. Moreover, the conversation emphasized the significance of fostering multi-stakeholder collaborations, citing successful case studies where diverse partnerships propelled the implementation of impactful and equitable climate policies, urging a concerted effort to address the escalating climate crisis.
Don't start with the objective function of minimizing cost, but perhaps start with the objective function of maximizing resilience.
– Tejal Karnitkar
But I think we should be looking at extreme weather events as well, putting in weather as well as climb[ing] into the models and recognizing that weather can impact locally. Maybe not, it doesn't, you know, we don't get a hurricane across the whole US. We get that hurricane locally, so we need to model those somewhat more local impacts and then study how we can share those risks across governments or countries.
– Anthony Smith
But when I think about the bottom-up approach in terms of climate science with communities, then I think we would change because in this conversation it can change even how they vote. And that's what I think is going to make much more impact than trying to talk to the politicians and change their mind.
– Regina Rodrigues
We come with ideas, things that need to be studied and be understood. But when we go to the communities, that is not exactly what they need. Thus, we now have a new activity that we go to the communities and talk to them and then create the information, and not try to adjust the information that we already have. It’s a bottom-up approach that we are trying to do, from the beginning.
– Regina Rodrigues