Comments on: Copenhagen Consensus

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 14:33:38 +0000

Such a big fuss is made about climate change because it’s so damn serious. Judging from geological, ice core and fossil records, if the carbon concentration goes above around 600ppm, then you get locked into a very fast tempearature escalation that has resulted in two mass extinctions destroying the vast majority of life on earth. Even if we humans can protect ourselves in ecospheres or whatever, most of the earth’s lifeforms will disappear for thousands of years until the system corrects itself. This is clearly something worth spending inordinate amounts of money to avoid. Now this scenario is not likely to happen for 100 years, even if carbon emissions increase slightly or stay stable (which given the inevitable disappearance of oil is fairly likely in the long run), but eventually it will happen until we drastically cut carbon emissions. It could happen even sooner if we have a “methane burp” from the ocean floor, or a CO2 dump from the rainforests. Given that this is the most extreme possible scenario of global warming, and it is apparently inevitable on current trends, I’d say we were right to give climate change a high priority. Lomborg’s problem is that he fails to realise (or at least deemphasises) the fact that the human costs of global warming are going to be borne by the people least able to bear the financial costs – countries like Bangladesh and India, the Pacific islands, East African nations like Mozambique, and Central Asian countries. The west needs to make an enormous commitment to combat climate change. If they are unwilling to do it in a way that will allegedly harm their economies (although I disagree with Lomborg on this as well), they should do it through Marshall plan scale investment in clean energy and industry in developing countries, so that the latter don’t become part of the problem while they are emerging into the modern world.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 14:56:00 +0000

Asked, if developing countries should not set different priorities than reducing their CO2 emissions (a thing that would be necessary to really stabilize climate later in this century) and rather invest their limited resources in education, healthcare or sanitation, Philippe Roch, director of the Swiss environmetal agency and member of the Council of the Global Environment Facility said: «Environmental protection should have top priority in developing nations in particular. First of all, the environment doesn’t cost anything, it’s a gift of creation. It’s destruction that costs something, or rather the measures that are taken to ensure the environment is not totally destroyed. Secondly, this gift is especially important for developing nations: most people in these countries are directly dependent on natural products – either from the forests or from a type of agriculture that is very close to nature. And if this environment is destroyed by climate change or by the elimination of vegetative cover, then these people will simply have nothing to eat. Nature is the only capital they have.» Cost-benefit analysis is a very difficult task in this context because: – it’s not quite clear what exactly is the capital – is it the money you’re willing or not willing to spend or is it nature itself? – you have to consider, how you gonna distribute the benefits that are going to compensate those who incur the costs of environmental destruction. Certainly this list could easily be continued.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 23:38:51 +0000

jeremiah, as I mention in the post, loss of biodiversity is an inevitable result of climate change. Changes in climate that are exceptionally rapid by evolutionary standards will, like other human disturbances, lead to the extinction of species with localised adaptions and favor the expansion of a small number of highly adaptable species. As the IPCC analysis indicates, this is one of the safest predictions that can be made on this topic More generally, we’re talking about a tiny proportion of our income, and a similar proportion of our attention, which makes talk about obsession seems strange to me. I’ve probably written as much about Kyoto as anyone in the blogosphere [there are a handful of specialised environmental and anti-environmental blogs that might have more], but if you look at my list of posts, I doubt it would account for even 10 per cent of them.

By: Daniel Lam

Daniel Lam — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 22:07:02 +0000

‘These sickening “cost-effective?” arguments remind me of a paper I found once, arguing that making planes less noisy wasn’t really worth it, because the increase in property prices would not offset the research costs to the industry. Nowhere was it mentioned what a living hell it is to be next to an airport.’ Why would the living hell of being next to an airport not be fully reflected in property prices, given that hellishness detracts from the stream of housing services yield by a property?

By: Jeremiah J.

Jeremiah J. — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 20:59:58 +0000

I am also a progressive who has never quite got the public policy craze about climate change. Forget about the very serious problems of disease control, malnutrition, and clean water (problems which have very measurable—and terrible—costs and clear, relatively easy solutions): even among environmental problems, there are other things which are less manageable and more easily preventable. The loss of biodiversity is one big example. A species lost is lost for good—and yet we know where these endangered species are, and it is relatively easy to see how much it would cost to protect them. The scientific consensus is that climate change is happening. But there is an enormous noise of confusion about what effects it will have, what it would take to stop it, how likely these measures are to succeed, and whether its effects can be mitgated in less costly ways.

By: MattB

MattB — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 19:54:08 +0000

I just can’t understand this obsession with climate change. Or this horrible aversion to cost/benefit analyses. There is a ton of suffering in the world, and we have limited resources. Like trying to have a “conversation” with a Nader voter.

By: john s

john s — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 18:44:28 +0000

ok mat, you’ve skewered the downside of cost effectiveness studies. What about this alternative? Three different policies are formulated: A, B and C. A should knock a degree off global temperature in 50 years and cost €10 billion; B, two degrees and cost €50 billion; C, three degrees and cost €400 billion. Do you think C is best? Wouldn’t you rather spend €50 billion on curbing global warming and €350 billion on tackling other problems?

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:29:05 +0000

Ahhh, bollocks, it appears that we did have such a treaty but the bloody Australians reneged on it with the Federation Fellowship program.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:19:10 +0000

In general, Prof Q ought to be published a lot more in the Northern Hemisphere. Isn’t there some sort of Clive James/Germaine Greer treaty under which the UK has the right to appropriate any public intellectuals it wants from the colonies? How do we get the gunboats moving on this one?

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 11:33:10 +0000

Not to disparage blogs, but John Q really should be publishing his critiques of Lomborg in print, in the UK and US as well as Australia. Email an article on spec to the FT or the Guardian- they need to give space to the kind of detailed, policy-based critique of Lomborg you are presenting.

By: Mat

Mat — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 09:29:15 +0000

For Sebastian, I’ll repost this concise response from Monbiot. These sickening “cost-effective?” arguments remind me of a paper I found once, arguing that making planes less noisy wasn’t really worth it, because the increase in property prices would not offset the research costs to the industry. Nowhere was it mentioned what a living hell it is to be next to an airport. Luckily these hacks were ignored and planes are getting much quieter.

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 08:40:09 +0000

Wouldn’t it be more fun to argue about whether expenditures on global warming really are likely to be cost effective?

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 01:20:33 +0000

Shorter John Q: As expected, the panel was stacked in a way that made it highly unliked that climate change would be ranked highly. Shorter giles: Yes, but that’s only because the objective was to achive consensus, so the panel was stacked with likeminded people to make sure consensus was achieved.

By: Giles

Giles — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 23:01:01 +0000

Its called the “Copenhagen Consensus” because the intention was to produce a consensus ranking. With this in mind the panel selection makes sense since a group of likeminded people are more likely to come to a meaningful consensus. Adding a load of Stiglitzs(?!??) and Sen’s may have made the discussions more lively but would just have made a consensus harder to reach. A more sensible repost would be for the likeminded people on the other side to take the list and come up with a Collangata Consensus ranking. That would have the advantage of at least evaluating where there are agreements before moving on to where the disagreement’s lie.