What’s The Cost of Climate Change? SCEPA’s Willi Semmler Investigates
Willi Semmler, a professor of economics at The New School for Social Research and a faculty fellow of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), has received a second grant from the Alex C. Walker Foundation to support his research into the economics of climate change.
The foundation, which is dedicated to finding market approaches for addressing economic imbalances and protecting the environment, became a New School funder for the first time when it supported SCEPA’s 2010 conference on The Economics of Climate Change, led by Professor Semmler. That event established an international platform for post-Copenhagen discussion about the urgency of climate change and the need to overcome the standoff in international negotiations, read SCEPA’s online report to the Walker Foundation.
The foundation considered the conference such a success that they have partnered with Semmler and SCEPA to prepare a second workshop scheduled for September 23’24, 2011. This event will bring together government officials, policy analysts, business leaders, and scholars from many different countries and institutions to address how economies can make the transition from high carbon-intensive to low carbon-intensive technology. The discussion will be organized around four topics: ongoing research on alternative energy policies, the cost of alternative energy supplies in the transitional stage, desirable sources of low carbon dioxide energy supply in the final stage, and the impact of the diverse energy policies on employment.
Professor Semmler also recently secured support from Oxford University Press to edit an Oxford Handbook of the Macroeconomics of Global Warming. This volume will include papers presented at the two conferences and additional contributions from well-known experts in the field.