When politicians and campaigners talk about extremely drastic climate policies, they don’t acknowledge, and perhaps don’t even realize, that those policies have a cost to society vastly greater than the costs of the damage they are trying to avoid. We want to avoid climate change damage. But implementing a climate change policy also has costs, and the more ambitious the policy, the higher the costs. The policy that will leave the world best off is the one where we avoid the worst climate change damages and avoid the worst climate policy costs.
