The Economics of Global Warming
The British government recently released a new report by Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist for the World Bank, which affirmed the urgent need to address global climate change. The report is of particular interest as “the first major contribution to the global warming debate by an economist, rather than an environmental scientist.â€
In the press conference today, Tony Blair talked about global climate change as an economic disaster. I think this is a very appropriate perspective to take. Global climate change wouldn’t really be a planetary disaster. Earth has experienced global climate change innumerable times in the past. It has always adapted. No matter what we do, the planet will recover. Millennia will pass, species will adapt and evolve, and life will go on. Global Climate Change isn’t going to cause the extinction of humanity. The species is more resilient than that.
But our foolishness could cause economic and social catastrophe around the globe. Depressions that may surpass the global depressions of the 1930s, fuel and energy shortages to make the 1970s look like a cakewalk, even famines and mass displacement of populations would all be well within the realm of possibility. Such combustible conditions could conceivably wreak havoc with governments and even lead to widespread violence on an unprecedented level is certainly.
In discussing government environmental action (I believe he was talking specifically about the Kyoto Protocol and the administration’s refusal to accept the protocol’s terms), Dick Cheney has asserted that the American lifestyle is non-negotiable. In a sense he was right. When a lifestyle is quite simply unsupportable, no amount of negotiation can maintain that lifestyle. We have two choices: We can either deliberately choose now to adjust that lifestyle in an organized manner through careful planning, or we can blithely wait until the consequences of our recklessness cause our lifestyle to collapse around us in a catastrophe that could rival anything seen in hundreds of years.
Which shall we choose?
October 31st, 2006 at 8:21 am
Derek,
I think most Americans will be hesitant to give up their comfortable lifestyle in order to prevent catastrophe that we don’t even know for certain will happen. Scientists can say for certain that global warming is occuring but the results of that global warming are far from clear. Global climate change may well bring economic disaster on its own but for us to bring it on ourselves in the form of Kyoto style energy restrictions which promise little chance of affecting our climate for the better strikes me as very foolish.
October 31st, 2006 at 8:49 am
We will not adjust, the global elites have determined that 4.5 billion of us have to go to allow the Earth to exist as a wild evolving entity with humans on it. To this end global warming works wonders, and those on the margins are slated for extinction.
Just because you are American doesn’t mean you, if you are as “they”(global elite) term it, a “useless eater”, are not in the plan either. In fact getting rid of as many “modern” humans will be the quickest way to stop environmental degradation, ala the calculus created by David Suzuki(one American with a car does as much environmental damage as 100 3rd worlders).
Not kidding people. To those that steer us as a species(it surely isn’t us) the issue is population. You can waste as many resources as you want if there is only a billion people.
Expect war, engineered disease,infrastructure collapse, and famine.
Look at the reality of worldwide food stocks, it is damn alarming, so maybe the Mormons are onto something.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/AMMF-6UEJBS?OpenDocument
October 31st, 2006 at 9:25 am
The models that predict global warming and the consequences of global warming are notoriously sensitive to inputs. While the science ought to be taken seriously, I think it’s important to note that the predictions fall within a broad range. In Al Gore’s movie, he tells you that sea level will rise 20 feet. But the scientific consensus is three feet or less due to global warming in the next hundred years.
Thirty years ago in 1975, Newsweek told us about the threat of global cooling. Scientists based that prediction on the ice age cycle, which hasn’t gone away.
November 1st, 2006 at 8:43 am
Good point Richard, in a world where climate and geologic change takes millenia(or millions of years) to see change, it would be good to note that within my own lifetime I have been presented with the two diametrically contradictory conclusions, and have been actively taught them.
This is not to say that change can’t occur in the concept of geologic time incredibly fast, so fast even humans notice it. It is a good thing it is not cooling, as this would certainly make it more difficult for human survival. Wait, less humans is good,or is it? This is the ludicrous merry go round of “political science”.
One thing is certain, without warming humans would not have thrived as they so have, in the last 15,000 years. Or is the world 6000 years old? More intelligent design political science.
The world is going to do what it does, and the release of methane from melting permafrost(been melting for 15K years, just faster now) will make it happen no matter what.
Methane is the greenhouse gas which is very difficult to remove from the atmosphere by any process. We focus on carbon too much.
The # 1 input of methane production by humans? Rice production, yes the root of the rice plant produces methane as it runs through its life cycle. Most people on earth are eating and growing this as a staple.
I guarantee that people living in Edmonton wouldn’t mind some warming, while those in Utah are gonna fry. There will benefits and down sides to climate change, as there always have been.
The question is, do you believe humans to be a force of nature? If so, like many other forces, we cannot control what wastes we produce,.. at least on a personal level there is plenty of methane emitting from the bloviating masses daily, and that isn’t going to change. So the increasing warming and our part in it, can well be, once again, the focus of the unflagging human ego…never mind that warming has been the trend for 15+ millenia, (and what any rational human would hope for while freezing)we worry now, while leaving the light on for you.
If for example the ice age was upon us, and we were running out of oil, our civilizations doom would be sure. As sea levels fell, cities would no longer be on the coasts, and crops wouldn’t grow where they used to. Last ice age sea level fell 300 ft. and where you all live was under 600 ft. of water, depending.
Go figure, there will always be someone to worry about something. What about the benefit of global warming? The possibility that human sustainability will wane, we will maybe die off, and then the world would be saved from us. Isn’t that what the eco freaks want?
THE EARTH DOESN’T CARE, has its own program you see…we will adapt, or not.
November 1st, 2006 at 9:20 am
I agree with Derek that the climate crisis by itself probably won’t extinct humans — but resource wars caused by climate crisis might. As drinkable water and farmable land becomes more scarce we’ll see an upsurge in conflict and violence. We have some pretty deadly weapons these days, and some, like those with depleted uranium, can kill slowly (via cancer) for hundreds if not thousands of years after being used.
Even if the human race doesn’t become extinct from those causes, there is bound to be tremendous human suffering for those of us that are alive as the planet undergoes these changes and people start to fight for what they need to survive. It may not be us, but probably our children and grandchildren will have to live through this nightmare.
November 2nd, 2006 at 9:37 pm
Jeremy, the results of smoking are likewise “far from clear.†A few smokers live long, relatively healthy lives. My Grandfather scoffed at any suggestion that he should quit smoking because he wasn’t interested in preventing a catastrophe he didn’t even know for certain would happen. After all, Phillip-Morris affiliated doctors and scientists insisted that the data linking smoking and lung disease were unproven.
He died of a long, lingering lung disease.
So you will forgive me for not being very sympathetic toward the idea that serious environmental action isn’t important because results of global warming are clear or certain.
No, scientists cannot tell you the day or the year disaster caused by global climate change will happen. They cannot prophesy exactly what form that disaster will take. But the scientific consensus is that human activity IS causing global climate change, and that it WILL have catastrophic consequences. Even if we don’t have an exact prediction, is it not better to err on the side of caution?
Deliberately curbing our economy’s gluttonous consumption to more moderate, _conservative_ levels in a planned manner would hardly be catastrophic. It would entail serious sacrifices, but if done in a planned, prepared manner, it would be uncomfortable, but not catastrophic. And as Doctor Stern noted in his report, developing an ecologically sensible economy will provide many opportunities for new markets, technologies, and jobs. It may necessitate giving up dreams of opulence and extravagance–but there is little of virtue to be found in opulence and extravagance.
I will sadly agree that Americans aren’t likely to give up their lifestyle to prevent the impending catastrophe. Unfortunately, our nation is too strung-out on conspicuous consumption, too hooked on materialism and self-gratification, to bother upholding our stewardship of the planet.
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:09 am
Too many peeps, too few fish, the soup is spoiled, Kay cera, cera. I guess this sorta takes the stress off a faultering Democracy, Yes? Still, I can’t figure out why the bushies are going about this the way they are. The love of money? Super power corrupting superbly? They can handle it. Just the gravity’s bringing me down.