By investing in technologies to reduce the impact of climate change in the distant future,
we redistribute wealth from the poor current generations to the wealthy future ones.
Nevertheless, it is a fact that we do not presently implement policies (fighting malaria, improving
access to clean drinking water,…) today that would be highly cost-effective and would benefit
people in the poorest nations. Following the Stern-Bernoulli’s assumption on preferences, if
individuals in the poorest nations have wealth that is less than one-hundredth the per capita GDP
of developed nations, then the developed nations should be ready to pay as much as 100 euros if
only one euro could be served as a benefit to one of these very poor people. In other words, the
priority should be put on helping people currently living below the poverty line rather than on
fighting global warming. Worse, by actually focusing on climate change, we are going to force
developing countries to divert some of the benefits of their growth, which is so useful to fight
poverty, towards cutting carbon dioxide emissions, which is primarily a concern of the wealthy.