Can technology save us from the worst effects of climate change? Probably not, reports a new study, “Does Directed Innovation Mitigate Climate Damage? Evidence from US Agriculture,” published last month in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
The study showed that “we cannot simply innovate our way out of danger,” said co-author Jacob Moscona, a Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at Harvard.
New technology development has mitigated about 20 percent of the potential economic damage from climate change since 1960, the researchers estimate. Whether that is seen as considerable or negligible varies. As the paper’s co-author, Karthik Sastry, also a Prize Fellow, noted, both sides have validity: “Twenty percent is far from 0 percent,” he said.
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However, Moscona also pointed out that this research studied agriculture in the U.S. “It’s a best-case scenario,” he said. “In other parts of the world, particularly low-income countries, there aren’t necessarily going to be the same incentives to develop technologies that help people adapt because the ability to pay for them is going to be substantially lower, and there isn’t always a large local public sector that’s really able to see and respond to the demands.”
