Tipping, the optimal carbon price and weighing cows, geoengineering and coal

Crawford School of Public Policy | Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis

Event details

Seminar

Date & time

Wednesday 29 January 2020
10.00am–11.00am

Venue

Seminar Room 2, Level 1, JG Crawford Building 132, Lennox Crossing, ANU

Speaker

Anthony Wiskich, PhD Student, CAMA

Contacts

Rossana Pinto
61 2 6125 8108

In this seminar, Anthony Wiskich will describe an integrated assessment model with an unknown temperature threshold where severe and irreversible climate impacts, called a tipping point, occurs.

The possibility of tipping leads to the following linked outcomes: a prolonged period of peak temperature; a rebound in emissions prior to and during peak temperature; and a fall in the optimal carbon tax as a ratio of output prior to and during peak temperature. Although tipping can occur in any period where temperature rises to a new maximum, the optimal carbon price can be calculated from future temperature outcomes conditional on no tipping. Learning that tipping has not occurred lowers the tax. Optimal prices for short-lived mitigation actions such as methane abatement and geoengineering are compared with long-lived carbon mitigation. The use of geoengineering can lower the initial carbon tax and extend the life of the tax.

Anthony Wiskich is a PhD scholar at ANU and doctoral student associate for the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis. He worked as an economist in the public and private sectors for a decade. His research interests include optimal carbon prices under uncertainty of climate tipping, optimal climate policy with endogenous technical change, decreasing substitutability between clean and dirty inputs, productivity spillovers from the rise of China, and the consequences of diminishing comparative advantage between countries.

The CAMA Macroeconomics Brown Bag Seminars offer CAMA speakers, in particular PhD students, an opportunity to present their work in progress in front of their peers, and reputable visitors to showcase their work.

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