Duncan Foley (New School for Social Research; SFI External Professor)
Abstract. The presentation will center on three discussions. First, what is the economic logic of the climate change problem? What is the role of possible Pareto-improving changes across generations and intergenerational transfers in theory? Second, can we get a rough handle on the quantitative aspects of the climate change problem? How big a reallocation of world investment might be required to avoid a climate change catastrophe? How big a difference would an effect greenhouse-gas mitigation effort make to long run levels of human standards of living? Third, what are limits to long-run economic growth? Is it possible, as some widely accepted specifications of economic growth models involving Cobb-Douglas production functions and exponential increases in labor productivity, to have unbounded material production with bounded energy and other material inputs? If not, can we understand those limits quantitatively? Does a qualitative transformation of economic "production" to service industries, possible services such as information processing or finance that have substantial economies of scale, a realistic escape route from limits to growth based in resource, climate, and energy constraints?