#NeoclassicalEconomics is partly to blame for the serious global urban problem of air pollution. Incredibly, the CBA (cost-benefit-analysis) when applied to climate mitigation, excludes air pollution. Their reasoning is that air pollution needs its own instruments to solve it.
https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1608062450590715907
This is absurd because the CO2 and the air pollutants are joint products of combustion. Lead additives were also in the mix, when the oil refining industry knew perfectly well that lead poisoning seriously damages child development.
In fact the benefits of reducing non-CO2 are very substantial and compared to those from reducing CO2 emissions, immediate. In many localities reducing non-CO2 air pollution should be the primary priority for mitigation.
However in the #CBA (Cost Benefit Analysis) of climate change theoretically each pollutant should be reduced using an appropriate policy instrument. In the second #IPCC reports, 1996, the economics were dominated by neoclassical economists and the CBA approach.
And air pollution was called a secondary benefit, clearly a loaded term, and therefore was consequently seen by governments as a lesser problem. This way of thought persists with macroeconomic policymakers even when air pollution becomes an obvious concern.
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