Estimates of economic implications of climate policy are important inputs into policy-making. Despite care to contextualize quantitative assessments of mitigation costs, one strong view outside academic climate economics is that achieving Paris Agreement goals implies sizable macroeconomic losses. Here, we argue that this notion results from unwarranted simplification or omission of the complexities of quantifying mitigation costs, which generates ambiguity in communication and interpretation. We synthesize key factors influencing mitigation cost estimates to guide interpretation of estimates, for example from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and suggest ways to improve the underlying models. We propose alternatives for the scenario design framework, the framing of mitigation costs and the methods used to derive them, to better inform public debate and policy.

对气候政策的经济影响的估计是决策的重要投入。尽管关注缓解成本的定量评估，但学术气候经济学之外的一种强烈观点是，实现《巴黎协定》目标意味着巨大的宏观经济损失。在这里，我们认为这一概念是由于对量化缓解成本的复杂性进行了不必要的简化或遗漏，这在沟通和解释中产生了歧义。我们综合影响减缓成本估算的关键因素来指导估算的解释，例如来自政府间气候变化专门委员会的估算，并提出改进基础模型的方法。我们为情景设计框架、缓解成本的框架以及用于推导它们的方法提出了替代方案，