to by economists as the "value of statistical life") was viewed by some governments (such as India) as suggesting that people living in poor countries are worth less than people living in rich countries. David Pearce, who was a lead author of the relevant chapter of the SAR, officially dissented on the SPM. According to Pearce: The relevant chapter [of the Report] values of statistical life based on actual studies in different countries ... What the authors of Chapter 6 did not accept, and still do not accept, was the call from a few [government] delegates for a common valuation based on the highest number for willingness to pay. In other words, a few government delegates wanted "statistical lives" in poor countries to be valued at the same level as "statistical lives" in rich countries. IPCC author Michael Grubb later commented: Many of us think that the governments were basically right. The metric [used by Pearce] makes sense for determining how a given government might make tradeoffs between its own internal projects. But the same logic fails when the issue is one of damage inflicted by some countries on others: why should the deaths inflicted by the big emitters—principally the industrialised countries—be valued differently according to the wealth of the victims' countries? See also Scientific opinion on climate change References Sources The Second Assessment Report consists of the following reports from each of the three Working Groups, and a Synthesis Report. The WG2 report has on-line text; all are available in PDF format at the IPCC's documents web page. (pb: ) pdf. (pb: ) pdf. (pb: ) pdf . pdf. External links Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change website Environmental reports Report, 02 1995 in the environment