https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180615154429.htm

"We find that the concept of optimization of economic welfare might in some cases be neither sustainable nor safe for governing modern environmental change," says Wolfram Barfuss from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK, member of Leibniz Association) and Humboldt University Berlin, lead-author of the study published in Nature Communications. "Economic optimization can be quite effective in reducing current greenhouse-gas emissions, it certainly has its strengths. Yet under human-made global warming, we face a world full of complex non-linearities, namely the tipping elements in the Earth system. The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica might collapse at some point if greenhouse-gas emissions do not get reduced, or the great circulation systems in ocean and atmosphere could fundamentally change. In such a setting, optimization can lead to dangerous side effects. Even for relatively high risks, and even if profit-maximizing agents in our calculations are far-sighted, they tend to accept the possibility of detrimental environmental and societal impacts."

Mathematical experiments, climate policy and Sustainable Development Goals