Fig. 1: Illustration of universality of the cost-benefit climate analysis.

Cumulative mitigation costs (green curve) and climate damages (black curve) as a function of Earthʼs warming level give the total climate costs (red curve). Mitigation costs diverge for present-day warming and converge to zero for unmitigated warming. The damages are zero for zero warming and increase with temperature. The characteristic steepness of the mitigation curve implies that beyond a certain damage level the economically optimal temperature (which minimizes the total costs) becomes insensitive to a further increase in damages. For example, increasing (black dashed) or decreasing (black dotted) the damage level by half of the initial damage level does not change the economically optimal warming level significantly (grey area).