Beyond costs and benefits of climate change: A workshop overview

Global climate change poses a major challenge for analysts and policy advisors alike. The complexities, uncertainties, and high stakes involved in the problem renders economic analysis particularly controversial. Many analysts maintain that analytical techniques developed over the past few decades and successfully adopted for managing a broad range of environmental issues can also be applied in the case of climate change, after making the changes necessary to accommodate special features of the climate problem. Others paint apocalyptic pictures of possible impacts of climate change on nature and society, and question the applicability of economic approaches altogether.