Final answer:
Gardiner suggests that cost-benefit analysis falls short for climate change because it can't accurately value environmental costs and long-term impacts, and fails to consider ethical and distributional issues.
Step-by-step explanation:
Gardiner argues that cost-benefit analysis is not appropriate for climate change because it does not capture the unique and complex nature of climate-related problems. One issue is the difficulty of placing a value on the environment and the future impacts of climate change, which are hard to quantify and predict. Additionally, cost-benefit analysis may not account for the ethical considerations, such as the responsibility we have to future generations and the distribution of effects and costs across different populations and geographies.
Properly valuing the damage caused to the environment is challenging because it involves intangible factors that defy easy quantification, like biodiversity loss or the cultural value of a landscape. Plus, the benefits of a climate action may often be long-term and spread globally, while the costs are immediate and often local, leading to underrepresentation of future benefits in the analysis. In addition, climate change encompasses global risks and uncertainties that are profoundly complex, making traditional economic evaluations inadequate. This complexity includes the potential for irreversible and catastrophic damages that are not easily measurable or comparable to costs in a straightforward economic model.