Global Warming's Missed Opportunities

Arguments over global warming/climate change/whateveryouwanttocallit have taken on the tenor of religious discussions. Logic is abandoned for frantic imperatives to action: Don't think, just do something! Tax water vapor! Buy carbon offsets!

Crabby skeptics like me resent being labeled stupid, environmentally insensitive, unscientific, or *horror or horrors* uncaring. I love the environment; that's where the tasty animals come from. It also comes in pretty handy when I want to fish, camp or ski.

The angry shoutfest that has sprung from the climate change debate is is a shame, because there are real, uncontroversial global environmental issues that require international cooperation.

Climate fetishism wastes the finite resources needed to resolve these issues. This is what economists call an opportunity cost. The cost of trying to cool down the planet with expensive, dubious schemes is that the resources used cannot be used in solving more tangible and immediate problems. There are only so many dollars, people, and other resources in the world. If you spend a dollar here, you can't also spend it there.

Scientists and other climate experts like CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers are pushing back against the climate change movement's intellectual incontinence:

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

Prominent intellectual and University of Copenhagen professor Bjorn Lomborg would disagree with Myers' first sentence but agree with the second. Lomborg is not an environmental scientist (he has a PhD in Political Science), but he has conducted some rigorous academic study on the subject of climate change. Lomborg accepts the premise that man is affecting the earth's climate. Where the professor parts company with the climate change crowd is in the solution. He writes in a recent WaPo article that resources should be dedicated to R&D efforts in pursuit of practical solutions such as more efficient solar panels and a new generation of biofuels.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a co-sponsor of the bill, has called it "the world's most far-reaching program to fight global warming." It is indeed policy on a grand scale. It would slow American economic growth by trillions of dollars over the next half-century. But in terms of temperature, the result will be negligible if China and India don't also commit to reducing their emissions, and it will be only slightly more significant if they do. By itself, Lieberman-Warner would postpone the temperature increase projected for 2050 by about two years.

Many people believe that everyone has a moral obligation to ask how we can best combat climate change. Attempts to curb carbon emissions along the lines of the bill now pending are a poor answer compared with other options.

Consider that today, solar panels are one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Only the very wealthy can afford them. Many "green" approaches do little more than make rich people feel they are helping the planet. We can't avoid climate change by forcing a few more inefficient solar panels onto rooftops.

The answer is to dramatically increase research and development so that solar panels become cheaper than fossil fuels sooner rather than later. Imagine if solar panels became cheaper than fossil fuels by 2050: We would have solved the problem of global warming, because switching to the environmentally friendly option wouldn't be the preserve of rich Westerners.

This message was recently backed up by the findings of the Copenhagen Consensus project, which gathered eight of the world's top economists -- including five Nobel laureates -- to examine research on the best ways to tackle 10 global challenges: air pollution, conflict, disease, global warming, hunger and malnutrition, lack of education, gender inequity, lack of water and sanitation, terrorism, and trade barriers.

These experts looked at the costs and benefits of different responses to each challenge. Their goal was to create a prioritized list showing how money could best be spent combating these problems. The panel concluded that the least effective use of resources in slowing global warming would come from simply cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

Air pollution and water pollution contribute to death and disease worldwide; lack of fresh water and biomass cause hunger, conflict and death. Most everyone can agree that these are pressing issues. Carbon emission restrictions via onerous taxation schemes will keep the developing world mired in poverty, while robbing the rich nations of their wealth. This in turn will destroy the economic engine needed to fund tangible environmental solutions.

I am a fan of Professor Lomborg because he gathers up the incoherent, disjointed shards of the chaotic climate change debate and constructs logical, practical solutions that satisfy all but the extreme fringes. The middle is where these solutions will be implemented. It is naive to imagine any country will economically castrate itself in sacrifice to Mother Earth.

Even at the personal level, people will not deny themselves what is readily available: Environmentally aware Hollywood celebutards jet around the world, drive gas hogs and live in palatial mansions, but scold me for using my gas powered chainsaw, leaving my computer running, and using too much toilet paper.

Professor Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus provides practical solutions that can preserve the environment while tangibly improving the lot of the poor. The brilliance of these solutions is that one can support them regardless of belief or disbelief in man-made climate change.

LINKS
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/25/AR2008062501946.html

http://www.lomborg.com/