the rising of sea level

本文讨论不同意见的人权衡是否应该应对的问题 - 海平面的兴起 - 气候变化对未来收益造成现在。This article discusses different opinions weighing whether people should cope with the problem--the rising of sea level--caused by climate change for future benefits right now.

Summary of the Article

This article discusses different opinions weighing whether people should cope with the problem--the rising of sea level--caused by climate change for future benefits right now. 

The melting of glacier and the rising of the sea level are faster than we anticipate, which imply that problems have been out of our control. However, as recent reports pointed out, it would be a process lasts for about a century, which might relax us a little bit. Climate change itself and what it brings about, at present, don’t influence humanity so severely, but they will have a long-lasting 

impact on the coming generations. Economists find it difficult to come up with a proper solution.

Represented by Martin Weitzman, some economists insist that we should take action right now, in case of the damages brought by climate change. To reduce the risk as well as extra costs, and insure the substantial development of civilization, we are bound to cut down the emission from now on. It sounds like a gorgeous idea. Nevertheless, other economists don’t buy it, since in any case we can’t cope with these problems without great costs, whether they post great threats to our existence or not. The point is that, we have to balance the benefit both at present and in the future, taking the discount rate into consideration. That is, thinking about how much we will be rewarded for the efforts we make. But the first thing to worry about is that, taking action now might slow down the economic growth, while we hardly benefit from what we do currently. What’s more, we can hardly figure out how much it would benefit our children in the future. 
More than often, statics show us that, in order to save our planet, we only need to do a little bit. But Doctor Nicholas Stern uses a lower discount rate to value this issue, which shows that we should spare no efforts to save our planet. Unfortunately, the problem is still there. It is how to calculate how much we can benefit from taking measures right now. That’s why we are so hesitate to react to these issues and where the dissents lie. 
And then an interesting pheromone of British real estate is mentioned to figure out the balancing between benefit now and future. The Britons choose either to purchase the land as well as the house or rent them for a period when buying a house. By comparing these two ways of purchasing, they find out how to pay the premium, so as to estimate the benefits. Interestingly, the Britons choose a lower discount rate of 2.6%. It means that they should pay more premium than directly buy the house and the land together. In fact, what the Britons do is like sacrificing the current benefit in exchange for the future benefits, which may puzzle most people. 

In the end, this article comes to the conclusion that to stop the problems brought out by climate change, it requires us to pay more attention to the benefits of future. Otherwise, we can hardly make any progress when dealing with these issues.

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