Economics, ethics and climate change

There may never have been an instance of environmental pollution to challenge our powers of analysis and evaluation quite like climate change. Global in its causes and consequences, spanning many generations, and poorly understood but with the potential to transform the natural environment, climate change has highlighted challenging questions of the economics of risk, of distribution amongst individuals over space and time, and of different aspects of well-being. Any economic analysis of climate change policy must examine the conflicting interests of different people and, indeed, consider the meaning and relevance of ‘interest’.