#5 How Much Damage Are We Doing? Emissions, Carbon, and the Costs of Climate Change

A plain-English tour of how economists put a price on climate harm—the Social Cost of Carbon—and a quick way to estimate damages with just a few numbers. 

We start from 2023 anchors (≈4.7 tCO₂ per person; ≈38 GtCO₂ worldwide), explain SCC and how U.S. administrations have used very different values, and compare with recent EU carbon-permit prices. 

Using a €100/ton example, we translate emissions into ~€500 per person per year and ~3.8% of global GDP, then show how the result scales if you think the SCC is higher or lower. 

We also touch on non-CO₂ gases (raising the average to ~6.7 t CO₂-e per person), big regional differences (China, U.S., India, EU, Africa, South America), and the long view (~1.8 trillion tons emitted to date).

Sources:

* Emission statistics obtained from https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions . See the graphs on Annual CO2 emissions,  share of global CO2 emissions and cumulative emissions.

* Population statistics from https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/

* World GDP of a 100 trillion https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/wld/world/gdp-gross-domestic-product with a conversion of around 1 dollar to 1 euro in 2023

* SCC: Obama administration’s value used from the reinstatement by Biden adjusted for inflation: https://www.rff.org/publications/explainers/social-cost-carbon-101/

For questions, comments or suggestions, you can contact me at arvid.viaene.ce@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro: Why Quantify Climate Damage
• 1:20 Two Anchors: Per-Capita & Global Emissions
• 2:10 The Social Cost of Carbon
• 3:05 Range of Estimates of the SCC
• 5:05 Calculations of Climate Damages
• 7:37 Additional Considerations (Unequal Impacts, other GHG's and Air Pollution)
• 9:16 Regional Emission Differences
• 11:29 Thought Experiment: India at China’s Per-Capita Level