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Bjorn Lomborg. (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Restricted) |
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Everyone has their favorite barometer of Canadian
left-wing received wisdom. Stephane Dion, the Toronto Star editorial board,
Naomi Klein and Linda McQuaig are all worthy contenders. But lately, I've been
tracking a more obscure pundit with equally impressive dogma-spouting ability:
UBC political science professor Michael Byers, author of the recently published
manifesto Intent for a Nation: What is Canada For? Anti-Americanism,
greener-than-thou environmentalism, starry-eyed multilateral-ism, strident
cultural and economic nationalism-- Byers is the whole package.
In yesterday's Star, Byers issued forth on Stephen Harper's opposition to
Kyoto. And he did not disappoint. Our Prime Minister is "playing games while the
planet burns," he concludes. Harper's "nasty." He's a "small man" who's damaging
the "long-term interests of humanity" in the furtherance of a narrow political
agenda.
And what are those "long-term interests"? This is where Byers' column got
interesting. Alongside the sloganeering against Harper, he also delivered a good
synopsis of the stock humanitarian argument put forward on Kyoto's behalf by
environmentalists: "The droughts, floods, storms and sea-level rise caused by
human-induced climate change are impeding efforts to alleviate poverty worldwide
… Canada's wealth has been developed through decades of heavy consumption of
fossil fuels, with the atmosphere being treated as a free trash bin for the
resulting emissions. Yet perversely, it's the developing countries - with their
dependence on subsistence agriculture, acute exposure to droughts, floods and
sea-level rise, post-colonial political tensions and still inadequate
infrastructures - that are most exposed."
In a cold, guilty country like Canada, where most of us would actually prefer
a warmer climate, this is one of the few arguments that gets traction. We're so
very lucky, and so very rich. How immoral would it be for us to keep consuming
hydrocarbons while the rest of the world starves, fries up and drowns? Note the
masterful way Byers pushes all the right buttons -- right down to the
"post-colonial" touch, just in case we forgot what colour the victims are.
What you're reading on this page is not a Terence Corcoran-style attack on
the science of global warming. Like just about every scientist who doesn't have
a regular opinion-writing gig at The Wall Street Journal or Financial Post, I
believe anthropogenic global warming is real. My problem with the Kyoto camp
isn't that it's peddling "junk science." It's that, like Byers, they go straight
from the science to the politics without stopping to count the money. What if
global warming is real, but Kyoto is still a rip-off -- even according to the
big-hearted humanitarian logic at the core of the pro-Kyoto camp?
On that note, here's something that pops out at you when you read Byers'
op-ed: a total absence of numbers. The same is true of most pro-Kyoto articles,
and sometimes even whole books. Too often, the argument for fighting climate
change is based on vague appeals to cuddly polar bears, our moral debt to mother
nature, the "will of the international community" -- as well as the usual litany
of worst-case (and, often, worse-than-worst-case) disaster scenarios. You rarely
see anyone actually crunch the numbers and prove Kyoto's worth on a cost-benefit
basis.
That's because, as world-renowned Danish thinker Bjorn Lomborg demonstrates
in a new book, you can't.
In Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Lomborg
acknowledges that global warming is a serious problem. He also acknowledges that
people will die, and human society at-large will suffer, as a result. What he
disputes is that we can do much about it without breaking the bank. Consider:
The global all-in compliance costs of Kyoto amount to about $180-billion per
year. Yet all these billions -- even paid in perpetuity -- would delay the
globe's expected rate of heating over the next century by just 5%. Assuming
Kyoto is allowed to expire in 2012, its total effect will have been to delay the
pace of global warming by one week. In terms of Canada's contribution to Kyoto,
the effect would be measured in hours. Think about that the next time Dion or
David Suzuki lectures you about Canada's lost opportunity to save the world.
Lomborg's book -- excerpted in a three-part series that appeared on these
pages a month ago -- is built around the (surprisingly) rich body of
peer-reviewed studies that measure the aggregate social cost of climate change
on human societies -- including its impacts on agriculture, fisheries, fresh
water supplies, hurricanes and land loss. The bottom line Lomborg presents is
that the world has about $15-trillion worth of damage coming to it if global
warming proceeds unabated. Kyoto -- even if it were fully implemented by all its
signatories -- would knock off a little less than $2-trillion of that, but at a
cost of more than $5-trillion. For every dollar we spend on Kyoto, we get back
34¢.
And even this analysis is optimistic -- because it assumes the most efficient
carbon-abatement policies available. In practice, many nations have opted
instead for inefficient, but optically attractive, solutions such as windmills.
Schemes that are even more ambitious than Kyoto result in even greater
economic inefficiencies. That's because of the law of diminishing marginal
returns. Our first carbon cuts are always going to be the easy ones -- dropping
the house thermostat when we go away for the weekend, screwing in a few CFL
light bulbs, buying a slightly smaller SUV, etc. But the deeper you cut carbon
emissions, the more painful and difficult the cuts become. A European Union
proposal that would freeze the world's temperature increase at 1.5 C, for
instance, would cost $84-trillion -- without even generating the complete
$15-trillion benefit that would accrue if warming were eliminated completely.
If I have Byers pegged right, I'm guessing that he'd say that none of this
matters:Whatever the numbers tell you, Kyoto is still advisable because it
allows developed nations to pay back some of the moral debt they owe the
developing world.
But here's where Lomborg's analysis is especially trenchant. While his
methods are ruthlessly utilitarian, he shares the same humanitarian goals
ostensibly championed by climate change activists. Indeed, there's nothing he'd
like more for the $180-billion a year demanded by Kyoto to be shovelled into
other programs that address human misery more directly. If we did so, he shows,
we'd save millions more lives.
Lomborg's foray into global warming is only his latest project. Before that,
he became famous as the organizer of the "Copenhagen Consensus," an elite global
think-tank that has created a sort of master list of problems facing humanity,
ranked according to how cost-effectively we can fight them. At or near the top
of his wish list are HIV/AIDS prevention, micro-nutrient provision, trade
liberalization, malaria control, water purification and basic local health
services. In all of these cases, lives of people in the developing world can be
saved for thousands, or tens of thousands, of dollars each. Kyoto is at the
bottom of the list: To save a single life through carbon-abatement costs
millions.
The details here are striking--and should be digested by anyone who claims to
champion Kyoto on a humanitarian basis. In the case of AIDS prevention, for
instance, Lomborg cites statistics that show a single dollar invested in simple
measures such as condom distribution and antiviral drugs can bring about $40
worth of social good -- more than 100 times Kyoto's 34¢ rate of return.
Malaria is a particularly good example, since its spread if often cited among
the parade of horribles that global warming is set to unleash. Through
Kyoto-style carbon abatement, we could save something like 140,000 malaria
deaths over the next century. Or, we could spend one-60th of Kyoto's cost on
direct anti-malarial policies like mosquito netting and drugs, and save 85
million people.
The debate about climate change has become increasingly surreal in recent
years. We live in an intensely monetized world where even five-and six-figure
capital projects typically are subject to the most exacting cost-benefit
analysis before being embarked upon. Yet when it comes to Kyoto-style policies
-- which would require the investment of a 13-digit sum over coming generations
-- many of our most impassioned pundits urge our decision-making to be guided by
nothing more than guilt and green emotionalism.
Reading Byers, I shudder to imagine that this is the level of analysis that
informs our nation. One hopes that the people who actually make decisions about
climate change in this country -- Harper and his Environment Minister, John
Baird, spring to mind -- are also finding the time to read authors like Lomborg,
who actually care enough about what they're writing about to crunch the numbers.
They are the real humanitarians.
jkay@nationalpost.com
Illustration:
• Black & White Photo: / Bjorn
Lomborg.
Idnumber: 200712040158
Edition: National
Story
Type: Business; Column
Length: 1439 words
Keywords: POLITICIANS;
POLITICAL PARTIES; GOVERNMENT; CANADA
Illustration Type: P
PRODUCTION FIELDS
NDATE: 20071204
NUPDATE: 20071204
DOB: 20071204
POSITION: 1
