There are many who scoff at the notion that climate change is really happening; they are one type of ideologue -- the perpetual skeptic impervious to reason and scientific inquiry.
But there is another type.
This ideologue believes that massive (as much as 70%) and immediate reductions in CO2 represent the only possible option for dealing with climate change; otherwise, we are all doomed. Whereas most environmentalists focus considerable ire on the former type, this piece is dedicated to the latter.
Climate change is probably the most challenging environmental problem humanity has ever faced, due to the potential scale, the source of the problem (energy use), and the coordination needed to address it. The hole in the ozone layer was actually as serious an ecological risk (since UV rays are toxic to virtually all living creatures), but the number of pollutants that contributed to it were relatively small and confined to a few industries, and discontinuing their use wasn't extremely costly.
On the other hand, every human activity uses energy, and with both growing populations and economic growth, decreasing CO2 emissions is much more difficult and potentially costly.
In addition, whereas we were able to directly observe the hole in the ozone layer and attribute it with certainty to the use of certain chemicals, climate change is harder to measure, given cyclical climatic trends. Most importantly, it's harder to know how much human activity contributes to climate change and, hence, how much lower emissions will actually decrease the planet's warming.
Anyone who approaches the issue of climate change rationally must acknowledge that it is theoretically possible there are scenarios where it is not best to head down the path of radical emissions reductions.
Why is this?
Because there are certain circumstances under which the cost of reducing emissions does not measure up well against the benefits. At its heart, climate change policy must have some element of a cost-benefit weighting. If the costs far outweigh the potential benefits, strategies besides emissions reductions may be preferable, like adaptation. This is not to say that this is the case, but that it might be.
Of course, there are also equity concerns, because climate change is happening primarily due to the actions of the developed world, but are likely to disproportionately harm the countries of the developing world. But here again, it is not automatically evident that an emissions-reductions strategy is the best course. Perhaps helping poorer countries to develop, fight disease, improve their technological infrastructure, allow greater immigration to rich nations, or any combination of policies would be a better use of the world's time, energy, and resources than massive emissions reductions. Maybe not.
It may very well turn out, based on both science and economics, that a massive emissions-reductions regime is the best policy. But those who jump to this conclusion without examining all of the facts are ideologues just like those who deny the existence of climate change in the first place.
Comments
View as Flat
Laurence Aurbach Posted 2:35 pm
28 Oct 2006
I began studying global warming externalities fifteen years ago. Since then the evidence has mounted, the rate of observed change has accelerated, and the scientific consensus has solidified. Now every week brings a new supporting evidence: reports from the field, more refined projections, etc. The chorus of scientists, businesspeople and policy analysts calling for change grows stronger and more unified every day.
It is not ideologues who are calling for large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions:
Sir Nicholas is expected to say that it will be cheaper for developed nations to tackle the problem with significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, than to deal with the consequences. Global warming could deliver an economic blow of between 5% and 20% of GDP to world economies because of natural disasters and the creation of hundreds of millions of climate refugees displaced by sea-level rise. Dealing with the problem, by comparison, will cost just 1% of GDP, he is expected to argue.
... Scientists say that by 2050 global emissions of greenhouse gases need to be reduced to about 40% of what they were in 1990 if the world is to avoid a 2C rise in average temperature deemed the threshold for dangerous climate change, which would see widespread flooding, extreme weather events, and drought.
-- "Spend, spend, spend plan to tackle warming," The Guardian
Naturally, Bjorn Lomborg disagrees:
Bjorn Lomborg, author of the Sceptical Environmentalist, said: "No economic model would say we should do nothing at all about climate change, but they all say that doing a lot is not a good idea. If the Stern review comes out and says we should do a little, then I think that's entirely in line with other economists. If it says we should do a lot now, then that would be surprising and, I would argue, wrong."
The slide in Al Gore's show illustrated that perspective perfectly. On one side of the scale, a pile of gold bars. On the other side, the Earth.
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JMG Posted 3:54 pm
28 Oct 2006
"Anyone who approaches the issue of climate change rationally must acknowledge that it is theoretically possible there are scenarios where it is not best to head down the path of radical emissions reductions."
TRUE--naturally there are theoretical scenarios that can be concocted in which an aggressive response turns out, in retrospect, to have been the wrong one.
But, there is good reason to question whether deciding how to respond to global heating should be approached rationally, since rationality has brought us here and shows no sign of bringing us away from the abyss.
In terms of decision theory, probably a non-rational mini-max-regret criterion is the only appropriate course simply because we have unleashed an uncontrolled experiment in climate destabilization.
In mini-max regret we do everything possible to minimize the maximum regret we will feel if our course turns out to have been unwise. If we respond overly aggressively to global heating, then we will find that we unnecessary reduced economic activity for a time, a completely reversible problem. But if our response to global heating turns out to be UNDER aggressive, then we get to take whatever comes: plausibly all four horsement of the apocalypse.
I think the label of ideologue best fits those who would rather risk the habitability of the entire globe and the destruction of a great percentage of its species than risk impeding economic growth.
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STATEMENT:
"Because there are certain circumstances under which the cost of reducing emissions does not measure up well against the benefits. At its heart, climate change policy must have some element of a cost-benefit weighting. If the costs far outweigh the potential benefits, strategies besides emissions reductions may be preferable, like adaptation. This is not to say that this is the case, but that it might be."
NOT SHOWN--notice how the argument has gone from the obvious statement that there are theoretical scenarios where aggressive response to global heating is suboptimal to the subtle insinuation that there ARE cases where strong response is suboptimal.
Moreover, turns out all this is simply window dressing in order to argue for cost-benefit analysis (CBA), the same system of thought that led Lawrence Summers to propose that the lesser-developed countries are underpolluted and that is used worldwide by the powerful to justify imposing costs (on others) because they are outweighed by the benefits (to the powerful).
Notice also that the only concept of equity discussed is present-day; the writer ignores entirely the concept of intergenerational equity (because it leads away from his preferred do-nothing stance).
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STATEMENT:
It may very well turn out, based on both science and economics, that a massive emissions-reductions regime is the best policy.
IRRELEVANT--the acid test is and will be when the aggressive response what we must do to have any hope for environment, despite it being bad for the economy (as economists conceive of it). I fully expect we will continue to hear more of this economist/tobacco scientist logic throughout the next decades.
Sadly, this sort of "don't be hasty, the science isn't clear" has been quite effective. Worse, by helping impede a constructive response to global heating, the economists have helped ensure that the needed steps ARE becoming more and more daunting---to the point where large numbers of people are starting to think that there is no alternative to simply writing off the coral reefs, all the fauna unable to migrate, etc.
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STATEMENT:
But those who jump to this conclusion without examining all of the facts are ideologues just like those who deny the existence of climate change in the first place.
NONSENSE: More tobacco science straw-men making, suggesting that anyone who doesn't buy into CBA is an ideologue without "all the facts"---as if the economist author here has some magisterial objectivity and DOES possess "all the facts."
One important fact that we do know is that the physical sciences have done and are doing an amazing job in trying to get an understanding of what we're doing to the world, even as we have to live in it, meaning we lack a "control earth" that we could use for comparisons. What that science is telling us is that, even though there are large unknowns, what we do know suggests that any reasonable sense of precaution would motivate a very, very aggressive response NOW.
And another important fact to remember is that economics is not a science or even a reliable set of heuristics. The thought that we should rely on economists to tell us whether it's ok to to respond aggressively to global heating would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.
Grist readers who want the best approximation that we have to "all the facts" should consult the IPCC reports and, between updates, visit realclimate.org to find out what climate scientists say and what issues are in dispute.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 5:31 pm
28 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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Zarkov Posted 8:37 pm
28 Oct 2006
The chickens with heads have no idea why there are headless chickens running around. They have no idea why they are running around the headless chickens.
The headless chickens have no idea why they are running around, nor why the chickens with heads are running around.
To fix a problem you first must know the cause.
The axe has fallen, and you can't run, because your shoe laces are undone.
What was the problem again ???
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bhurley Posted 1:39 am
29 Oct 2006
But aside from that I think this boils down to an issue of pragmatism. We all know that the world is not going to achieve immediate 70 percent reductions in ghg emissions, nor is a 70 percent reduction likely to happen anytime within the next 20 years or more. It's just not politically feasible. We can argue that this is what should be done, but it's a futile argument because it WON'T be done. The answer is not to give up, but to accept that some climate change is inevitable and to work hard to avoid as much future climate change as we can while at the same time trying to figure out how to minimize the damage from what's coming down the pike. But arguing for immediate 70 percent reductions is a waste of time...it's like arguing for immediate world peace or an immediate end to poverty. It's a worthy goal but unrealistic.
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Gar Lipow Posted 2:30 am
29 Oct 2006
The question of an immediate 70% reduction is - well not quite a straw man, cause people are saying it. But it is not an argument that is made seriously. What needs to be done immediately, or at least within a very few years is for emissions to peak. We need reduce world emission by 70% (or I think 80%) not over the course of a few years but over 20 years, and probably make up for the late start by reducing them 90% or more over the course of 30 years.
A very conservative and no-ideological analysis of the cost of global warming put it at 20 trillion. Do you honestly believe we could could not reduce or even virtually eliminate human generated emissions over the course of 20 or 30 years of less than that?
I think you have to be very careful about saying "this position is truth. Anyone who disagrees with me is an idealogue". If you are just dealing with the tendency to panic, which translates Hansens statement that emissions need to peak by 2010 to a statement that they need to drop by 70% by 2010 - I would say that probably is ideology, or at least acting ahead of the available evidence.
But I don't think Hansen's argument that emissions need to peak by around 2010, is wrong. Nor do I think the argument that we need drop emissions very substantially (3% to 5%) every year after 2010. In fact I think you will find that most economists who look at the issue seriously (and who understand that emissions drops don't have be bought at the current price of solar cells) will agree.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:09 am
29 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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Tom Philpott Posted 3:20 am
29 Oct 2006
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:44 am
29 Oct 2006
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:49 am
29 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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Coby Beck Posted 5:00 am
29 Oct 2006
So I will nod my head to what he has written but await with interest where he will go next. I especilly look forward to some education in economics!
That said, there are a couple of issues that I am wary about, specifically, having agreed that cost-benefit analysis is important, will the next steps assume it is the only important consideration, or even the most important? Like Jason, I ask that intentionally not tipping my hand as to what I think, just insisting that those questions be on the table. I am also insistent that peak oil concerns are not left out of the equation. This factors in very critically with the concept of "no regrets" action as most (not all) emissions reduction policy means less fossil fuel combustion.
I also want to be on the record saying that I value input from economic experts and appreciate all thoughtful and intelligent perspectives.
Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever!
-- Anonymous
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ffletcher Posted 5:15 am
29 Oct 2006
Bush and the GOP might hold the high offices now, but the day will come when others beside us in California will be determining the new GHG regulations. There is wisdom in being rational and using some economics in the process of rule making.
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JMG Posted 6:16 am
29 Oct 2006
What Hansen et al. are saying is that we need to be at about that level of reduction by around 2050. That only requires a 3.25% cut per year, which is very doable, albeit not easy.
But every year we wait, lulled into inaction by the counsel of the corporatists and their paid priesthood of economists, the situation worsens and it becomes more and more difficult. The brightest minds on the problem suggest that we have less than ten years to act before our options are foreclosed.
How did an environmental blog like Grist get its own Bjorn Lomborg?
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JMG Posted 6:24 am
29 Oct 2006
You can chant that economics is central to responding to global heating all you want but the fact is that, like many pre-scientific belief systems, economics is simply a made-up system of dogma and doctrines used to bolster the power of the shamen who interpret the goat entrails.
There are smart economists and there are stupid economists, but the most dangerous are the ones who confuse the economic map with the terrain of the real world that it purports to represent.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 7:02 am
29 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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TokyoTom Posted 5:56 pm
29 Oct 2006
No one here has insisted on immediate steep GHG emission reductions, regardless of cost or political feasibility, so I see no basis for you to assert they have demonstrated that there are ideologues on both sides of the debate. Surely there are, but they haven't commented here yet. Rather, the comments made here actually show how well-informed Gristmill commenters are.
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Bart Anderson Posted 7:05 pm
29 Oct 2006
The problem is that it is a combination of science and ideology. Like all social sciences, it makes value-laden assumptions which tend to favor certain groups within society and not others.
The best economic thinkers make their assumptions explicit, and have a sense of humility about their claims.
Actually it doesn't make any sense to be against "economics." There are different schools of economists (Keynsian, Pareto, neo-classical, Marxist, ecological economics). If you look long enough, you are bound to find one that appeals to you. Many Gristmill readers would probably find ecological economics congenial.
Also, there are concepts and tools in economics that are very useful no matter what your opinion is about Alan Greenspan. For example, cost-benefit analysis and market behavior. For environmentaliss, a very important concept is the Jevons Paradox ("as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource may increase, rather than decrease").
I don't think most of us have any beef with that part of economics. Rather we object to a set of [conservative] beliefs and assumptions masquerading as science. The church of neo-classicism.
Our Jason, fortunately, does not seem to be a strict adherent - in fact, his concern with the environment and the real world may make him a heretic (hooray for him!). Perhaps that is why I find myself agreeing with him so often when he gets down to specific proposals (e.g. eliminating subsidies).
Jason was asking if anyone could find a serious environmentalist who did not see the importance of economics in dealing with climate change.
His point is well taken... one can't get away from economics. However we can debate which economists we want to listen to.
I was able to find one scientist (the consulting editor for Nature) who is skeptical about the neo-classical school. He just wrote a provocative article in the business-oriented Financial Times ("Baroque fantasies of a most peculiar science"):
It is easy to mock economic theory. Any fool can see that the world of neoclassical economics, which dominates the academic field today, is a gross caricature in which every trader or company acts in the same self-interested way - rational, cool, omniscient. The theory has not foreseen a single stock market crash and has evidently failed to make the world any fairer or more pleasant.
That is disturbing because these things matter. Neoclassical idiocies persuaded many economists that market forces would create a robust post-Soviet economy in Russia (corrupt gangster economies do not exist in neoclassical theory). Neoclassical ideas favouring unfettered market forces may determine whether Britain adopts the euro, how we run our schools, hospitals and welfare system. If mainstream economic theory is fundamentally flawed, we are no better than doctors diagnosing with astrology.
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JMG Posted 11:34 pm
29 Oct 2006
"I didn't even say 70% reductions tomorrow"
but Scorse began with:
"This ideologue believes that massive (as much as 70%) and immediate reductions in CO2 represent the only possible option for dealing with climate change; otherwise, we are all doomed."
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atreyger Posted 12:22 am
30 Oct 2006
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sunflower Posted 1:21 am
30 Oct 2006
There seems to be a gulf between zero-cost carbon mitigation and the profits of carbon marketing.
Carpools, clothes lines, reduced discretionary travel are all zero cost. Swirl light bulbs, window shutters, and solar showers are cost effective (zero cost energy savings after amortization).
Mining tar sands in Alberta has a 100% profit margin, carbon mitigation is marginalized.
The key, as I see it, is to make carbon mitigation 100% profitable, not just zero cost, and therefore competitive with fossil carbon mining. That means 200% ROI on a solar collector. (The best I can model is about 100% ROI per year.)
100% consumer profits during a recession would be very popular, as would flat dividends from flat revenue neutral fossil carbon taxes.
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David Roberts Posted 3:22 am
30 Oct 2006
The ideologues who favor their short-term political power and economic position over long-term efforts to combat global warming run all three branches of government and most of industry.
Then there is another large group of people who don't think about global warming at all.
Then there's another large group that advances mealy-mouthed "change your lightbulbs" nostrums about global warming that are totally inadequate to the scale of the problem.
Then there's a relatively tiny group that advances solutions that scale to the problem.
Then there's a tiny, tiny group that wants to do too much, too fast. You have not identified a single member of this group, and I suspect we'd all be hard-pressed to name more than a couple.
Given this state of affairs, exactly what is gained by positioning yourself as a Reasonable Man Trapped Between Ideologues on Both Sides? Is the point just to pat yourself on the back? Why not spend your time trying to move the global-warming-action needle from Nothing to Something? We can worry about Too Much later, in the unlikely event we ever get there.
www.grist.org
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jjwfmme Posted 4:09 am
30 Oct 2006
But (and I was going to say this before David said it) we're a long way from having a problem with intemperate people on the Left. They really don't have the numbers or resources to even make much of a noise at this point. The Right, on the other hand, has both branches of government, a sizable chunk of the media, and a large network of media-influencing think tanks that can distribute talking points at the drop of a hat (just look at David's recent experience with his book review).
So as David said, we can deal with the intemperate people on the Left when and if they become a problem. But at this point, I'd say that problem is a very long way away.
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Bart Anderson Posted 4:36 am
30 Oct 2006
The report is described as "The most comprehensive review ever carried out on the economics of climate change was published today. " and is getting big play in the media.
This may be a turning point.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 5:19 am
30 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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Biodiversivist Posted 8:16 am
30 Oct 2006
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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Bart Anderson Posted 3:21 am
31 Oct 2006
Excerpt:Where microeconomics meets macroeconomics in all this is simple: from the great Cambridge economist A C Pigou onwards, generations of economics students have been taught about "externalities" - the way, for instance, that smoke from factories pollutes the atmosphere, but the damage (or cost) is not part of the costs of the firm, which, unless the government introduces legislation, has no incentive to behave better.
In due course such externalities became known in the economics trade as "market failure" - in other words the microeconomics have become a macroeconomic issue. Since economists in the classical and free market tradition just love markets (they often pronounce the very word in a quasi religious tone) market failure is a terrible blow to them, because it usually means that hated governments have to intervene to make up for the deficiencies of the market.
What Sir Nicholas Stern is essentially saying is that global warming, and all those carbon emissions, represent the biggest market failure imaginable, with dire consequences if serious action is not taken soon. I think it will be hard to label such respected Establishment figures as "ideologues."
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ffletcher Posted 10:34 am
31 Oct 2006
It is a little crazy in the rule making space.
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