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EAST ASIA PREM UNIT
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| | The Tail of Catastrophic Climate |
| | Change |
| | |
| Thursday, March 13, | Climate Change: Mitigation & |
| 2008 | Adaptation; Policies & Protocols |
| 3:00 - 5:00 pm | --You thought you had heard it all |
| | but you would be wrong. Because you |
| Auditorium JB1-080 | have not heard Harvard Professor |
| World Bank J | Martin Weitzman?s exposition of the |
| Building | economics of catastrophic climate |
| 701 18th Street NW | change. Discussions on climate change |
| | economics and policy have so far |
| A reception will | neglected the possibility of |
| follow the | catastrophic climate change. Climate |
| presentation | scientists agree that though the |
| | probability is very low, climate |
| For non Bank staff, | change of cataclysmic proportions |
| please RSVP to | could occur, which could destroy life |
| infoshopevents@world | as we know it. What do economists - |
| bank.org | who always have something to say |
| | about anything - have to say about |
| | that? Well, not much, until Professor |
| | Weitzman. |
| | |
| | |
| | Professor Weitzman?s economic |
| | analysis - and, warning, it is quite |
| | technical - of the "fat tail" of |
| | climate change probability |
| | distribution tackles this vexing |
| | problem head-on. And in doing so, he |
| | challenges conventional economic |
| | orthodoxy. In his analysis, the |
| | standard economist toolkit breaks |
| | down because standard economics would |
| | have us believe that society should |
| | be willing to tradeoff an infinite |
| | amount in order to avoid even an |
| | infinitesimal chance of disastrous |
| | climate change. |
| | |
| | |
| | So will climate change be economics? |
| | Waterloo? Or has Professor Weitzman |
| | simply gotten it wrong? What does |
| | this mean for public policy? Can we |
| | say anything meaningful about how |
| | society should formulate and |
| | implement policy related to extremely |
| | low-probability but genuinely |
| | cataclysmic climate change? Good |
| | questions you ask, but what are the |
| | solutions? Are there solutions? |
| | |
| | |
| | Come find out what promises to be one |
| | of the most fascinating discussions |
| | on climate change between a brilliant |
| | economist and three outstanding |
| | panelists - a founder of the law and |
| | economics movement; a private sector |
| | millionaire; and a Nobel-prize |
| | winner. |
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PRESENTED BY
Martin Weitzman
Professor of Economics, Harvard University
Mr. Weitzman is Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He has
been elected as a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mr. Weitzman's current research is
focused on environmental economics, including climate change, the
economics of catastrophes, cost-benefit analysis, long-run
discounting, green accounting, and comparison of alternative
instruments for controlling pollution. The famous "Weitzman Theorem"
- that established when, under uncertainty, we should choose between
tradable permits and taxes in order to reach efficient levels of
pollution - is coined after him.
DISCUSSED BY
Richard Posner
Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago
Mr. Posner is one of the most influential public intellectuals of
our times and a major voice in the law and economics movement. He is
a federal circuit judge and also a writer of books and articles in a
variety of fields. In his highly successful book "Catastrophes: Risk
and Response", he has focused his efforts on evaluating the public
policy response to catastrophic events such as species-destroying
climate change; planet-obliterating asteroids, and nuclear attacks.
Along with Professor Gary Becker, Mr. Posner maintains one of the
most popular blogs in the field www.becker-posner-blog.com that
explores current issues on economics, law, and policy in a dialogic
format.
Mr. Posner will inform the discussion from a public policy
perspective.
John Seo
Co-Founder and Managing Principal, Fermat Capital Management, LLC.
Based in Westport, CT, Fermat Capital manages over $2 billion in
catastrophe bond investments, making it one of the leading
catastrophe bond investors in the world. Prior to forming Fermat
Capital, Mr. Seo was Senior Trader in the Insurance Products Group
at Lehman Brothers, an officer of Lehman Re, and a state-appointed
advisor to the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund. He is one of the
pioneers in establishing the catastrophic risk industry in the
United States. He was recently covered in the widely-read New York
Times article ?In Nature?s Casino".
Mr. Seo will inform the discussion from a private sector
perspective.
Thomas Schelling
2005 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics
Mr. Schelling joined the University of Maryland School of Public
Affairs after twenty years at Harvard. He has been involved in the
global warming debate since chairing a commission for President
Carter in 1980. Mr. Schelling believes climate change poses a
serious threat to developing nations, and drawing on his experience
with the post-war Marshall Plan, argues that addressing global
warming is a bargaining problem: if the world is able to reduce
emissions, poor countries will receive most of the benefits but rich
countries will bear most of the costs.
Mr. Schelling will inform the discussion from the development policy
perspective
MODERATED BY
Apurva Sanghi
Senior Economist, Finance Economics and Urban Department, World Bank
Prior to joining the Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction in
the World Bank, Mr. Sanghi worked on development topics ranging from
infrastructure and climate change to microfinance and agricultural
economics. He has also worked in private sector consulting, for the
Thailand Development Research Institute, a nonprofit think tank, and
has held teaching and research positions at the University of
Chicago, Thammasat University in Bangkok, and Yale University. His
research has focused on the economic impact of global warming in
developing countries.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
About the InfoShop
The InfoShop is the public information center of the World Bank and
serves as a forum for substantial debate on international
development. Our extensive events program consists of more than 250
events over the past two years and has hosted many internationally
recognized speakers including Queen Noor, Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey
Sachs, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Friedman, and Carly
Fiorina. The InfoShop functions as the only publicly accessible
space at headquarters and provides internal and external audiences
with over 15,000 titles published by the World Bank, international
organizations, and other publishers on development issues.
For more information, visit: www.worldbank.org/infoshop
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