The impact of human health co-benefits on evaluations of global climate policy

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Noah Scovronick, Emory University; Mark Budolfson, University of Vermont; Francis Dennig, Yale-NUS College; Frank Errickson, University of California Berkeley; Marc Fleurbaey, Princeton University; Wei Peng, Pennsylvania State University; Robert H. Socolow, Princeton University; Dean Spears, University of Texas Austin; Fabian Wagner, Princeton University
• Language: English
• Date: 2019-05-07
• Publisher: Nature Research (part of Springer Nature): Fully open access journals
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2019, The Author(s).
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09499-x
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Nature Communications
• ISSN: 2041-1723
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 1
• Start Page: 2095
• End Page: 2095
• Grant/Funding Information: M.B. was also supported by a Catalyst Award from the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont.
• Keywords: MODEL; MORTALITY; AMBIENT AIR-POLLUTION; Science & Technology - Other Topics; EMISSIONS; BURDEN; Science & Technology; QUALITY; Multidisciplinary Sciences
• Research Categories: Engineering, Civil; Engineering, Environmental; Economics, General

Abstract

The health co-benefits of CO 2 mitigation can provide a strong incentive for climate policy through reductions in air pollutant emissions that occur when targeting shared sources. However, reducing air pollutant emissions may also have an important co-harm, as the aerosols they form produce net cooling overall. Nevertheless, aerosol impacts have not been fully incorporated into cost-benefit modeling that estimates how much the world should optimally mitigate. Here we find that when both co-benefits and co-harms are taken fully into account, optimal climate policy results in immediate net benefits globally, overturning previous findings from cost-benefit models that omit these effects. The global health benefits from climate policy could reach trillions of dollars annually, but will importantly depend on the air quality policies that nations adopt independently of climate change. Depending on how society values better health, economically optimal levels of mitigation may be consistent with a target of 2 °C or lower.