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Foreign Action, Domestic Windfall: The U.S. Economy Stands to Gain Trillions from Foreign Climate Action

Foreign Action, Domestic Windfall: The U.S. Economy Stands to Gain Trillions from Foreign Climate Action

Full Title: Foreign Action, Domestic Windfall: The U.S. Economy Stands to Gain Trillions from Foreign Climate Action
Author(s): Peter Howard and Jason Schwartz
Publisher(s): Institute for Policy Integrity
Publication Date: November 1, 2015
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):

The United States has already likely avoided billions of dollars of direct damage to its economy, public health, environment, and national security, thanks to actions undertaken by foreign jurisdictions, like the European Union, in the fight against climate change. Trillions of dollars more for the United States are at stake in securing commitments for future emissions reductions from foreign countries, like China and India.

The Earth’s climate is a shared global resource, and greenhouse gases emitted by any individual country can affect the climate in ways that will damage all countries. Every ton of carbon pollution mitigated by a foreign country therefore benefits the United States both by helping to preserve domestic climate conditions and by protecting the United States from “spillover” effects from other geographic regions interconnected with the United States through markets, ecosystems, security threats, and migration. Additionally, the United States receives ancillary benefits as other harmful co-pollutants are incidentally controlled along with the intended carbon reductions.

The benefits to the world and to the United States of each ton of avoided carbon emissions can be monetized using a metric called “the social cost of carbon.” Though the social cost of carbon framework reflects much of the latest peer-reviewed literature on the science and economics of climate change, and the framework has the backing of the U.S. government, it is widely acknowledged that this metric likely underestimates the full benefits to the United Statesand to the world of carbon mitigation. Nevertheless, it can be used to calculate preliminary, conservative estimates of how the United States directly benefits from foreign actions on climate change.

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