Science has become an essential part of decision making by governments and businesses, but uncertainty can foil decision-making frameworks such as cost-benefit analysis. People often end up doing nothing or taking steps that worsen the long-term outlook. -- The authors have developed an alternative framework focused on flexibility--finding, testing and implementing policies that work well no matter what happens. -- Policies can have built-in mechanisms to change with the circumstances. For climate change, one such mechanism is a safety valve to ensure that emissions reductions occur but do not get too expensive.

Research conducted by

This report is part of the RAND Corporation External publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.