Climate

Economic evaluation of climate policy traditionally treats uncertainty by appealing to expected utility theory. Yet our knowledge of the impacts of climate policy may not be of sufficient quality to justify probabilistic beliefs. In such circumstances, it has been argued that the axioms of expected utility theory may not be the correct standard of rationality. By contrast, several axiomatic frameworks have recently been proposed that account for ambiguous beliefs. In this paper, we apply static and dynamic versions of a smooth ambiguity model to climate mitigation policy.

Global climate change poses one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in this century. This article, which introduces the American Psychologist special issue on global climate change, follows from the report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change.

This article considers scientific and public understandings of climate change and addresses the following question: Why is it that while scientific evidence has accumulated to document global climate change and scientific opinion has solidified about its existence and causes, U.S. public opinion has not and has instead become more polarized? Our review supports a constructivist account of human judgment.

Engaging the public with climate change has proved difficult, in part because they see the problem as remote. New evidence suggests that direct experience of one anticipated impact — flooding — increases people's concern and willingness to save energy.

This article considers scientific and public understandings of climate change and addresses the following question: Why is it that while scientific evidence has accumulated to document global climate change and scientific opinion has solidified about its existence and causes, U.S. public opinion has not and has instead become more polarized? Our review supports a constructivist account of human judgment.

More and more firms are engaging in greenwashing, misleading consumers about their environmental performance or the environmental benefits of a product or service. The skyrocketing incidence of greenwashing can have profound negative effects on consumer and investor confidence in green products. Mitigating greenwashing is particularly challenging in a context of limited and uncertain regulation.

This paper argues that an important institutional tool to accelerate the transition of the global economy towards greater reliance on renewable energy is the establishment of an International Green Fund (IGF). Such a fund would provide and coordinate financing of green investments and research and development on renewable energy around the world. With the support of such a fund, long-term investors who are already pursuing green investment projects on an ad-hoc basis would be able to scale up these investments and reap larger returns from learning-by-doing and scale economies.