Sort-of. This is definitely true if you assume that time discounting is fundamental. It's also definitely untrue if you treat time discounting as a kludge to accommodate uncertainty and also see estimates of climate costs as already containing that uncertainty. https://twitter.com/PTetlock/status/1170789498109747201 …
time discounting represents two things -- the fact that we care less about the future because we might all be dead then, *and separately* the fact that we care less about the future because we don't identify with our distant descendants or our future selves.
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iirc the climate economists who assume a near-zero discount rate already take account of catastrophic risks and it doesn't raise discount rates much, as you said. The real argument for having discount rates is that it's truer to human psychology than not.
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The fact that you might be dead in the future does not justify time preference, that discount will be accounted for in your expected utility. It may be why we evolved a time preference but, as Michael puts it, it's a kludge.
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