APPENDIX 3: CALL FOR EVIDENCE
The Economic Affairs Committee has decided to conduct
an inquiry into 'Aspects of the Economics of Climate Change'.
Evidence is invited by 31 March 2005. The
Committee will welcome written submissions on any or all of the
issues set out below.
Following the recent ratification of the Kyoto Protocol,
the Committee has decided to inquire first into the ways in which
the problem of climate change has been assessed.
- How are the current estimates
of the scale of climate change damage derived?
- How far do the estimates of damage depend on
assumptions about future global economic growth, and how valid
are those growth assumptions?
- How does uncertainty about the scale of the problem
and its impact affect the economics of climate change?
The Committee will also inquire into the key role
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in compiling
and assessing technical information on climate change.
- What has been the approach within
the IPCC to the economic aspects of climate change, and how satisfactory
has it been?
- Is there sufficient collaboration between scientific
and economic research?
- Could IPCC member governments, and the UK in
particular, do more in future to contribute to the robustness
of the economic analysis?
The Committee then plans to go on to consider the
question of who bears the brunt of climate change and of the costs
of controlling it.
- In monetary terms, the impact
of change and the costs of control may be greater in rich countries
than poor ones. But is this an adequate measure?
- What would be the relative costs and benefits
of using resources, otherwise expected to be allocated to climate
change control, instead to expand international development assistance?
- When are damages likely to occur and how satisfactory
is the economic approach to dealing with costs and benefits that
are distant in time?
- What other associated benefits might there be
from reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
At this stage the Committee does not intend to investigate
the comparative merits of different policies for the control of
climate change.
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