Economic models used to inform decision-makers about such policies as the Paris Agreement on climate change are fundamentally flawed, writes Dr. Carey King, an assistant director in UT Austin’s Energy Institute in a new article in Earth magazine. The problem is not the specific economic assumptions relating to a "low-carbon" transition, King asserts, but rather structural flaws in the economic models themselves. In his article, King points to a viable way out of the predicament: focusing on creating macroeconomic models that can plausibly replicate historical trends of the most important energy and economic variables in times of high-energy investment, recession and growth, so that we have confidence in asking relevant questions about how low-carbon investments impact economic growth. King condensed his argument in a less technical version, as published in this op-ed in Psychology Today.
