Prices and quantities in setting priorities
BCEPS invites you to join our inaugural seminar series on Climate Change and Priority Setting in Health. We aim to examine to what extent climate change can, and should, be integrated into priority setting in health.
Main content
Lecturer:
Professor John Broome is Emeritus White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He has worked extensively on the ethics of climate change. He was Lead Author of Working Group III of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Abstract:
Economics recognises two broad approaches to externalities such as greenhouse gas: the price-based approach and the quantity-based approach. Each has an epistemic side and a practical side. We can use either approach to work out what we ought to aim at in tackling climate change. And we can adopt either price-based or quantity-based instruments in concrete policy directed at whatever aim we choose. At present a quantity-based epistemology dominates: our aims are set on the basis of a carbon budget and the need to attain net zero emissions. It would be possible to use a price-based approach to achieving these aims, primarily by setting a price on carbon emissions. But quantity-based policy instruments are widely favoured instead. This leaves us without any satisfactory basis for setting priorities between health care and reducing carbon emissions.
All Professor Broome’s writing on climate change is freely available on his website, he shall particularly refer to the paper:
