Estimates of the marginal damage costs of carbon dioxide emissions require the aggregation of monetised impacts of climate change over people with different incomes and in different jurisdictions. Implicitly or explicitly, such estimates assume a social welfare function and hence a particular...

We estimate the growth rate of the social cost of carbon. This is an indication of the optimal rate of acceleration of greenhouse gas emission reduction policy over time. We find that the social cost of carbon increases by 1.3% to 3.9% per year, with a central estimate of 2.2%. Previous studies...