|
During the month of November, climate negotiators are gathering in Nairobi, Kenya for their 12th conference since 1992. The conference includes economists, environmentalists and UN officials. As usual, ultimately the topic will be global warming. But this year, the topic of conversation will be the new Stern Report, produced by Nicholas Stern and the United Kingdom government. It is a 700-page report on the Economies of Climate Change.
Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician, contends that this report is “selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off.” Lomborg recently led an economic analysis of global environment and development issues called the Copenhagen Consensus. He believes the global warming is a serious problem, but that Kyoto-style emission limits would have little impact and would divert resources better spent on alleviating poverty. Lomborg believes that what is missing from most climate discussions is the need for a more vigorous effort to improve climate-friendly energy technologies like solar power and carbon capture, in which greenhouse emissions are trapped and pumped underground before they can escape into the atmosphere.
Lomborg has responded powerfully and convincingly to the Stern report. Several summary comments:
1. Stern contends that we can expect more hurricanes due to global warming. Assuming this is true, Lomborg suggests convincingly that the damage and costs from hurricanes are due more to demographics than anything else. People locate along coasts, build expensive homes and then a hurricane comes and they are wiped out. This cost has more to do with human choice than the hurricane itself. In other words, the financial costs that Stern itemizes have more to do with human choice than the severity of a hurricane.
2. Much of Stern’s argument is based on the financial cost of neglecting to do anything about the carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Stern contends that to not do anything about climate change “costs 20% of GDP now, and doing something only costs 1% of GDP.” Lomborg shows that “Given reasonable inputs, most cost-benefit models show that dramatic and early carbon reductions cost more than the good they do. Mr. Stern’s attempt to challenge that understanding is based on a chain of unlikely assumptions.”
3. Lomborg also argues that “It seems naïve to believe that the world’s 192 nations can flawlessly implement Mr. Stern’s multitrillion–dollar, century-long policy proposal. Will nobody try to avoid obligations? Why would China and India even participate? And even if China got on board, would it be able to implement the policies?”
4. Lomborg asked 24 UN ambassadors—from nations including China, India and the US—to prioritize the best solutions for the world’s greatest challenges. They looked at what spending money to combat climate change and other major problems could achieve. They found that the world should prioritize the need for better health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education, long before we turn our attention to costly mitigation of global warming. He concludes that “we all want a better world. But we must not let ourselves be swept up in making a bad investment, simply because we have been scared by sensationalist headlines.”
See Bjorn Lomborg, Wall Street Journal (2 November 2006) and Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times (5 November 2006). |
Listen