Human beings are so keen put things off (as the Coalition wants to with our 2030 emissions target), that economists have come up with a name for it — hyperbolic discounting.
The Coalition wants to dump our 2030 emissions target, yet somehow hit 2050’s. Behavioural economics has a name for thatIf you are anything like me, the nearer you get to a deadline, the more desperately you want to postpone it, no matter how much harder that makes things down the track.” to the more challenging target of net zero by 2050, but it wants to postpone some of the work needed to achieve it until later, nearer 2050.
It’s an incredibly useful concept, and one of the reasons we want to be paid interest when we lend money or deposit money in a fixed-term account. Except that many of us don’t behave like that at all. We appear to have a discount rate, but it changes — dramatically — the closer we get to a deadline.Remember when I asked about finishing an unpleasant task this month or a year later? You might well have given an answer that implied a discount rate near 5 per cent.
The Coalition says it won’t cost more to meet the final deadline of net zero by 2050 because by then we will have nuclear power.On a chart, it wouldn’t look like a straight line – 5 per cent or so per year – it would look like a, a line that had suddenly climbed enormously high. That has also been used to describe the concept of hyperbolic discounting.
It’s a familiar argument to those of us who want to put things off. Something will come along that will make them easier to do later. If it doesn’t, maybe we will behave like a hyperbolic discounter again. Not that we expect to.How weakening climate targets would push Australia into uncharted territory.
It’s tempting to put things off. If the Coalition persuades us, it’s because we are highly persuadable. Most of us don’t like hard choices now. We like them later.
Net Zero Paris Agreement Emissions 2030 Target Net Zero 2050 Climate Change Global Warming Peter Dutton Behavioural Economics
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