Brave New Europe

> Wikipedia quotes studies that put the estimated aggregate impact at losing about 0% to 20% of world GDP. That's comparable eg to moving from NYC to a place with average US GDP per capita.

That's basically Nordhaus' idiotic argument. Agriculture is only about 3% of GDP, so it looks like we can take that hit, no problem. Except - if we have no food, there is no civilization. See https://braveneweurope.com/steven-keen-4c-of-global-warming-is-optimal-even-nobel-prize-winners-are-getting-things-catastrophically-wrong

Measuring climate change impacts on the economy only by total GDP is a really bad idea. You really can't neglect the dependencies in the economic production, especially on agriculture.

Your comment makes me think of this essay by Branko Milanovic

Particularly this line: Xi sees the break-up of the Soviet Union and the end of the CPSU as the result of “ideological nihilism”: the ruling strata have ceased to believe in the advantages and the value of the system, but lacked any other ideological coordinates within which to situate their thinking.

https://braveneweurope.com/branko-milanovic-the-rule-of-nihilists

My personal term to describe the players in Britain's politics is functional incompetence. Which is while they are adept at gaining and holding on to office, they are hapless at performing the actual duties of those offices.

Private debt dwarfed public debt until very recently, and it's still significany higher: https://braveneweurope.com/steve-keen-what-is-the-role-of-public-debt-and-private-debt-in-the-next-great-financial-crisis

Also GDP is a terrible proxy for economic prosperity. A broken window adds to GDP, but subtracts from prosperity. If we had a better proxy for prosperity, it would be easier to see if government debt was actually net negative or net positive effect. As is, all arguments one way or the other are speculation and ideology.