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Max Roser Profile picture
@MaxCRoser
Sep 22, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
Economists are not known for agreeing much with one another.

Regarding the challenge of how to achieve the required reduction of greenhouse gas emissions a majority of the most widely respected economists agrees however: carbon taxes.

igmchicago.org/?s=carbon+tax ImageImage
This here is a survey of 365 economists who have published papers related to climate change “in a highly ranked, peer-reviewed economics or environmental economics journal” and the result is the same.

[link policyintegrity.org/files/publicat…] Image
This survey also finds that compared with the general public (pie chart at the bottom) a much larger share of economists believes that climate change is a serious problem and that it is time to act now.

(Very much contrary to the caricature of economists in some media outlets.) Image
And even some of the most conservative economists (who usually favor a small state with minimal taxes) advocate for a carbon tax.

Greg Mankiw here web.archive.org/web/2001090208…
and Milton Friedman here forbes.com/sites/jeffmcma…
Greg Mankiw also wrote this short paper in which argues why a carbon tax is such a good idea.
scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/f…

Perhaps because this paper is based on a speech it is very readable. No maths, little jargon. Image

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More from @MaxCRoser

Max Roser Profile picture
Apr 3
Until 50 years ago, CO₂ emissions developed in lockstep with economic growth in France.

Since the early 1970s, the opposite has been true: emissions declined as people in France got richer. Image
To produce consumption-based CO₂ emissions, statisticians need access to detailed global trade statistics. This data is, therefore, not available over the very long run. But it is available for the last three decades and are shown in this chart. Image
This is one big reason why France succeeded in this way — the large reduction of fossil fuel electricity. Image
Read 4 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
May 25, 2023
Some statistics are worth knowing by heart:

The average – mean – income in the world per person is $18 per day.

This is adjusted for differences in price levels.

It means that if incomes could get perfectly equally distributed in the world all of us would live on $18 per day.
For reference, poverty lines in high-income countries are typically around $30 per day, or a bit less than $1000 per month.

(This is also taking differences price levels into account.)
This data source is the new Poverty and Inequality Platform platform, and you can explore this data here: ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-…
Read 6 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
May 21, 2023
Average incomes in Sweden have doubled while CO2 emissions have halved. Image
Some are commenting that economic growth is not a valuable achievement.

It depends on your values how you view growth.

I think economic growth is important, because it makes it possible for society to leave poverty behind.

👇 This shows the data for Sweden in these 5 decades. Image
The share living in poverty not only depends on growth, but also the inequality.

But growth is crucial. Without large growth it would have not been possible for the majority to live on more than $30 per day.

Five decades ago the average income in Sweden was $18 per day. Image
Read 4 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
Apr 27, 2023
Why does powerful Artificial Intelligence pose a risk that could make all of our lives much, much worse in the coming years?

There are many good texts on question, but they are often long.

🧵I'm trying to summarize the fundamental problem in a brief Twitter thread.
The fundamental reason is that there is nothing more dangerous than intelligence used for destructive purposes.
Some technologies are incredibly destructive. Nuclear bombs for example.

If used, they would kill billions of us.
ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapon…

But in the bigger picture nuclear weapons are a downstream consequence of intelligence.
No intelligence, no nuclear weapons
Read 21 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
Jun 1, 2022
Research suggests that many children – especially in the world’s poorest countries – learn only very little in school.
What can we do to improve this?

My new post is out ourworldindata.org/better-learning

👇 I'll write a short thread below.
For many children schools do not live up to their promise.

This is a problem in rich countries.
But it tends to be a much larger problem in poorer countries, as this data from @jpazvd and colleagues shows.
Until recently this did not receive the attention it deserves. Also because the data was not there.

The data focused on the quantity of education – how long children are in school – but not the quality of education.
Read 16 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
Mar 15, 2022
My new post is out: ourworldindata.org/longtermism
It is about humanity's past and future.

I don't know how to summarize this post in a thread. But I can share the two visuals I made for it. 👇
• Demographers estimate that 117 billion humans have been born.
• Almost 8 billion are alive now.

To bring these large numbers into perspective I made this visualization.

A giant hourglass. But instead of measuring the passage of time, it measures the passage of people. /2 Image
How does our past and present compare with the future?
We don't know. But what I learned from writing this post is that our future is potentially very, very big.

I try to convey this here. But even this visualization shows only a small fraction of humanity's potential future.
/3 Image
Read 4 tweets

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