I’ve put forward a bit of skepticism recently about global warming, but I should probably explain a bit further. I am perfectly willing to accept science that says the earth is warming, and that there is a good chance that some of it is man-made. No problem, so long as the argument is about the science.
My skepticism — call it fear — is about the motives of those who are using it as a political agenda, or even a theology. For some, the end-is-nigh appeal of global warming is manifold.
First, a certain liberal guilt is twinged by a logic that says “we are bad and we deserve this”. After all, we in the West are prosperous (read: gluttonous) and for the last hundred years we have reduced suffering on a grand level. Call it the vengeful god motive.
Second, but closely related, is anti-capitalist opportunism. A typically lefty/statist response to a problem is to immediately look at things we can take away from people: their cars, their electricity, their money.
Let’s accept that the earth is warming and that we have some grasp of what’s happening. Now what? There are very hard choices to be made about our standard of living and that of the rest of the world. Who is laying out these choices in a serious way?
A test was recently put to UN staffers by an environmentalist named Bjorn Lomborg: given an additional $50 billion, how would you spend it to best benefit humanity? They were given such issues as disease, poverty, free trade and yes, climate change.
They found, consistently, that climate change came last in their priorities. This is the heart of the question:
The ambassadors thought it wiser to spend money on things they knew would work. Promoting breast-feeding, for example, costs very little and is proven to save lives. It also helps infants grow up stronger and more intelligent, which means they will earn more as adults. Vitamin A supplements cost as little as $1, save lives and stop people from going blind. And so on.
For climate change, the trouble is that though few dispute that it is occurring, no one knows how severe it will be or what damage it will cause. And the proposed solutions are staggeringly expensive. Mr Lomborg reckons that the benefits of implementing the Kyoto protocol would probably outweigh the costs, but not until 2100.
Kimberly Strassel at OpinionJournal explores Mr. Lomborg’s findings further:
Two hundred years ago, he explains, sitting forward in his chair in this newspaper's Manhattan offices, the left was an "incredibly rational movement." It believed in "encyclopedias," in hard facts, and in the idea that mastery of these basics would help "make a better society." Since then, the world's do-gooders have succumbed to "romanticism; they've become more dreamy." This is a problem in his view, and so this "self-avowed slight lefty" is determined to nudge the whole world back toward "rationalism." [...]
While the economists were from varying political stripes, they largely agreed. The numbers were just so compelling: $1 spent preventing HIV/AIDS would result in about $40 of social benefits, so the economists put it at the top of the list (followed by malnutrition, free trade and malaria). In contrast, $1 spent to abate global warming would result in only about two cents to 25 cents worth of good; so that project dropped to the bottom.
Of course, this is not to minimize the dangers we might face with this thing we call global warming. It has more to do with moving beyond moral obviousness and toward solutions which honestly evaluate pros and cons.
I will have a post soon about the importance of incentives over punishments in this area. When faced with a problem 100 years in the making, we need a plan that that sustains over the next 100, beyond simply assuaging our guilt.
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Bob Samuelson lays out these questions and asks much harder ones over at the Washington Post.
