Cambio climatico y autoridad (enlacing)
Navegando por la telaragna uno puede encontrar algo que es exactamente ese articulo que queria escribir pero que no habia encontrado tiempo para componer. A mi me acaba de pasar.
Se trata de un articulo de Thomas Schelling (Premio Nobel en 2005) sobre el cambio climatico. El articulo en cuestion es una bomba de gestion racional de recursos. Os copio mi parrafo favorito:
”For some, particularly the Bush administration, uncertainty regarding global warming appears to be a legitimate basis for postponing action, which is usually identified as “costly.” But this idea is almost unique to climate change. In other areas of public policy, such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, inflation, or vaccination, an “insurance” principle seems to prevail: if there is a sufficient likelihood of significant damage, we take some measured anticipatory action”
Ya que enlazo para que no quede tristem quiero recomendar otro articulo tambien en project syndicate sobre el tema estaba escrito por John Kenneth Arrow (Premio Nobel de economia, genio mundialmente reconocido, persona mas proxima a dios que el resto de nosotros, etc…). Tambien totalmente genial.
“Thus, global climate change is a public good (bad) par excellence . Cost-benefit analysis is a principal tool for deciding whether altering it through mitigation policy is warranted. Two aspects of that calculation are critical. First, it has to be assumed that individuals prefer to avoid risk. That is, an uncertain outcome is worth less than the average of the outcomes. Because the possible outcomes of global warming in the absence of mitigation are very uncertain, though surely bad, the uncertain losses should be evaluated as being equivalent to a single loss greater than the expected loss.
The second critical aspect is how one treats future outcomes relative to current ones – an issue that has aroused much attention among philosophers as well as economists. At what rate should future impacts – particularly losses of future consumption – be discounted to the present? ”
Admito que soy bastante agnostico respecto al cambio climatico (agnostico es un eufemismo para decir horrorosamente ignorante) de modo que tiendo a guiarme mucho por la autoridad. Asi que si dos tipos tan listos dicen cosas tan parecidas, sera que hay algo de verdad en el fondo. Creo que es una posicion prudente, no?
POr cierto, ambos articulos estan tambien traducidos a varios idiomas entre ellos el castellano, para los que se les de mal Shakespeare
Nota: teclado yanki, disculpen el terrorismo ortografico.
