I don’t remember writing that!
I think the “broken window” analogy, applied to the Kyoto treaty, can be phrased thusly:
Are the opportunity costs of protecting the world from global warming worth it, given that we don’t know if the world will go to hell in a handbasket (and even if it will, would we really be able to do anything about it)?
OK, I’ve read the thread now, but not the linked articles. It seems to me that the basic business question of “do the benefits outweigh the costs?” is pretty much irrelevant. The real question is “Is global warming a real threat, or is it BS environmentalist scare propaganda?” I have always tended to lean towards the latter, but I’m willing to consider that I could be wrong. But for this type of situation, doing a Cost-Benefit-Analysis seems kind of pointless. This isn’t a business question; it’s a science question.
The threat is real, or it ain’t. That is the question. (That’s Shakespeare, paraphrased.)
Except even author Lomborg, who is arguing against the Kyoto Protocol, is taking global warming as fact. In which case, the benfits/cost analysis is vitally important. The penalties for getting it wrong could be extremely harsh.
OK, I’m not getting this. If global warming is a real threat – why is Lomborg arguing against Kyoto? Is his position that we can avoid global warming through other measures, less economically costly than the protocal requires? Or that we can’t stop it no matter what we do, so we might as well go full speed ahead with economic expansion until the world ends? Or that GW will happen, but its effects won’t be as disastrous as environmentalists think? Or what?
Most scientists who study climate seem to lean towards the former, encouraging us to move on and start dealing with the cost/benefit question.
I think that his argument is that the costs (however he calculates them) in implementing Kyoto are not worth investing since all they will achieve is the retardation of GW effects by six years.
He thinks that money saved by not implementing Kyoto should be instead spent on today’s poor – which, if it were an either or proposition, I may agree with. However, I don’t see multinationals breathing a huge sigh of relief at not having to clean up for Kyoto only to turn round and give all the savings to poor Bangladeshis.
Well, I have not read Lomberg’s book and never will. I have, however, seen an interview on TV, where a scientist (a climatoglogist), whose data has been cited by Lomberg in his book, did tell, that his data had been cited severely wrong. In fact he said, that Lomberg, does not only not understand how the global climate works, but he also does manipulate scientific data to his needs.
Personally, I think, the main point, that Lomberg does not address, is this: The Kyoto protocol does introduce additional costs on burning fossil engery sources. Thinking of a static economy, this sure is something that decreases growth. But ecomony is far from static. It adapts, and it does so more quickly the greater the costs are. So what will happen in countries that follow Kyoto protocol?
Their economy will invent processes, that are a) either independant from fossil energy sources or b) make better use from less oil and coal.
So in case b) it is obvious, that although that economy must pay for Kyoto, it still might grow even faster, than a non-Kyoto economy, because it can accomplish more with less, which essentially is “growing by more efficiency”. (The non-Kyoto economy cannot grow that much for much longer, because fossil oil is a limited source, and all the oil pumps around the world are already running near peak performance. *)
In case a) it is not that obvious, but it is still quite the same as in b). Some industrial branches, that today use for example fossil oil, will, thanks to Kyoto, switch to for example renewing biological sources. Using these new sources they can grow, and other branches, that remain running on oil, have more of the (limited) oil, left for them. So overall, this also means growth.
So IMO, Kyoto DOES decrease economic growth, but it does so only for a short period of time. It forces the economy to explore new technologies, which will lead to even more growth in the end, as did the invention of the steam engine, the electrification, the otto and diesel engines, and last but not least the Internet.
The main difference between these older, already happened, revolutions of economy and the new one, that Kyoto catalyzes, is, that they happened accidentally, while the next revolution of global energy technologies will be an intentional one.
cu
*) When the peak is actually reached, the non-Kyoto economy, will be in much the same condition as the Kyoto economy is today, but the Kyoto states will have a head start. So my dear U.S. citizens, don’t be surprised, if in 10 or 20 years your new energy efficient car, will be a German car.
I don’t think Lomborg sees global warming as a threat. He probably sees it as an event. He seems to believe that the evidence indicates that things are warming up but no one can tell how fast or how much by the data. Pretty much all the models for the future global tempreature are swags (scientific wild assed guesses).
It could be that the earth will warm up to a point that is better for us - longer growing seasons etc.
So, given that we don’t know how much the earth is warming, how much effect humans are having on this warming or even if this will be a bad thing it is a mistake to slow down growth to affect it. Especially when the slow down may affect nothing.
What eagle said is reasonable but the increase in prices of oil should be incentive to develop other sources of energy. It’s better to do this when we have money to research this and not when we go into a global recession and have to count on government to do it. Governments rarely, if ever do this kind of thing well.
We need more data before we take drastic action.
Lomborg has been reviled by a lot of environmentalist types. They’re trying to discredit him. I would recommend looking into the inclinations of his critics just to be sure that they don’t have a dog in this fight.
Then you’re arguing from ignorance.
Funnily enough, Lomborg is of a similar opinion. He also adds that we are likely to find more and backs that up with data on discoveries.
Go read Lomborg and his critics.
Bingo! Note that the folks who trot out all the poor people as an alternative option for spending the money that we would otherwise spend on Kyoto don’t seem as keen to consider such alternative options for the money when the subject on the table is, say, the Bush tax cuts or the Iraq war. (Another difference being, by the way, that the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq war are costing us much more than predicted while Kyoto will almost surely cost us significantly less than Lomberg et al. estimate.)
It could also be that the Earth will warm up to the point where human civilization’s breadbaskets are desertified and estuarine fish nurseries are eliminated, starving half a billion people.
What I have never, ever seen is an explanation for why those of us in the world who use the most fossil fuels have the right to make this sort of decision for the people in the rest of the world.
I don’t get the fundamental paradigm behind this. Why is economic growth a goal in and of itself? Economic growth should only be a goal insofar as it actually improves the life of people. I would agree that in general, it does, but there are cases where short-term economic growth sacrifices long-term quality of life - - if the fisherpeople on the Grand Banks had known in 1982 that virtually all the cod would be gone by 1992, would they have fished it all out? Look at Newfoundland now: unemployment and poverty abound as a consequence of shortsighted economic goals. I don’t want the whole world to turn out that way.
This is a good point and I have a better example.
Venezuela during the 70’s had so much oil money that everybody had money. People stopped growing things and developing industry because they couldn’t see the end of the oil teat. The country is now a basket case because now they have incredible debt and have to import everything. Short term growth - long term disaster.
But this was not really growth. This was “get yours while you can”.
Economic growth to me means real growth. Infrastructure, new industries, new inventions. Right now we have that in the developed world and to some extent in poorer countries. We can continue as we are expecting economic pressures to push development of new sources of energy or we can cut back on energy use which will cause stagnation affecting everybody and will possibly have only a marginal effect on global warming.
I’m thinking this may not answer your question but I feel I’m rambling so maybe I’ll try again later afetr I have some coffee.
Can somebody explain to me how to do the quote thing. I seem to have put my responses to wevets in the quote box.
Except that you guys are looking at spending on the poor as if the only option were some sort of giveaway. What he is talking about (I assume) is that economic development is good for developing countries. This goes directly to your “Note”. People are not as willing to trot out your alternatives to tax cuts or the Iraq war. Many of us have very heart felt ideas about other ways to spend that money. It just does not involve large government programs.
Care to suggest that multinationals will not spend money saved from Kyoto avoidance on growing their businesses? I thought not. 
Well, imagine this scenario: You are in running train, that will soon cross a bridge over a river. However, from the news you know, there had been a terrible flood of this river, so the bridge might be damaged.
Would you try to stop the train before it reaches the bridge? It might be able to sustain the weight of the train, or it might break down. You do not know, yet it is still the best to at least slow down the train, to have more time to gather reliable information about that bridge.
I think this is very similar to the situation we are facing regarding global warming.
My personal opinion is, that the theories of evironmentalist scientists are well founded, but there still may be errors (though I think it will more likely come worse, than they predict). But even if their theories will be proven wrong at some time in the future, I think it is the best strategy for now, to reduce greenhouse gases.
cu
It might be, but you need to add some parameter to represent the fact that the train is not simply moving along a track carrying tourists. Stopping the train (the world economy) will surely kill people on a very large scale. Slowing it down would also.
I understand the objection that we could do something about Global Warming without causing economic disaster. But your analogy does not seem to address this. What if, for instance there is a third option of taking a spur which gets us to the same destinatiion just through a more circuitous route. Perhaps there is another track which goes back and forth up through the moutains and around the gorge instead of straight over it.
Good point, but not slowing down, has the potential of killing all. Now if slowing down surely kills some but lets the others survive, while not slowing down by chance kills all or none, I would still think it is a good moral choice to slow down.
Traffic accidents kill people. To stop people from getting killed by accidents you could ban cars and trucks. But this could (by chance) kill even more people, because farming (and all other industrial production) will be thrown back a hundred years. Yet we still accept a certain amount of deaths due to traffic.
Well even taking a spur is taking action. So you agree, that you would not let the train run into possible desaster. BTW, to change tracks you have to slow down, you cannot change tracks on full speed, or your train might fell from the tracks.
I still think the train metapher is a very good one.
cu
I don’t think the train analogy is very accurate in that the environment isn’t going to suddenly go bad. It will be a slow thing. Granted, we may be sure it’s happening when it’s too late to do anything about it.
But the thing is:
We’re not sure it’s happening.
We don’t know how much warming is happening.
We don’t know how much affect humans are having.
We don’t know how much we can affect the chang if we do do something.
If we reduce energy use now people will suffer.
I took my daughter to the hospital once because a clinic Dr. said it might be appendicitis. The Dr. at the hospital said to go on home and keep an eye on it. If it got worse I was to bring her back in. He said the only way to find out at that point if it was appendicitis was to operate. The solution was obviously very drastic for a problem that may not be serious. And if the Dr. wasn’t sure that surgery would fix it it would be even less logical to operate.
So for global warming we should keep an eye on it and if it continues to get worse see the doctor.
wnorthr: A better analogy would be for a small cancerous growth. You could cut it out now, which would entail some minor surgery and perhaps some follow-up surgery or other course of action, or you could wait a while and see if the cancer then spread throughout the body and then consider drastic measures like major surgery or chemotherapy.
The point is that starting to take some reasonable actions today will prevent having to take much more drastic and costly actions in the future. We may not yet know exactly what price should be put on the emissions of each ton of CO2, but we can be pretty sure that $0 is too low a value. In fact, there was, for example, a recent study in Science that used an economics / climate change model to study what the best course of action would be under the assumption that we don’t currently know what amount of temperature rise would lead to very expensive and unacceptable consequences (nor how sensitive the global temperature is to CO2 concentration increases) but that we would have a better handle on these two factors 30 years down the road. Over a fairly large range of assumptions about the actual climate sensitivity and the actual temperature rise that would lead to bad consequences, the model suggested a moderate cost be put on CO2 emissions in order to minimize the total costs and provide some reasonable assurance that we could even prevent the worst consequences. (I believe the proce was something like $10 per ton of carbon.)
Besides which, a lot of the changes that we need to make, we will need to make regardless of climate change…I.e., we will need to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels eventually. So, why not start to take the steps to encourage the technologies that will allow us to do this sooner rather than later. And, a lot of the steps will have ancillary benefits like lower pollution and reducing our dependence on foreign oil and so forth.
Finally, while there are indeed still a lot of uncertainties regarding the magnitude of the anthropogenic climate change problem, we know more than you imply. In fact, we know very well what is happening to greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and why. And, we understand the basic physics of how increased concentrations of these gases lead to warming. The main remaining question concerns the magnitude of these effects once all of the various feedbacks in the climate system (and connected systems like the oceans) are taken into account. Here, we also have estimates, based both on the climate models (which are, admittedly, simplifications of a very complex system) and based on estimates of the forcings that caused the previous warmings from ice ages to interglacials and the temperature rise that resulted. And, these estimates are in good agreement, albeit still with significant error bars, in estimating that a doubling of CO2 will result in a temperature rise of somewhere between about 1.5 to 4.5 C.
[The other questions, for which answers are known to various degrees of certainty, are then: What sort of effects this warming will have on the climate (in terms of extreme events, for example, like floods and droughts)? What sort of effects will the changes have on various ecosystems? How much warming can occur before we get truly drastic changes, such as dramatic melting of land ice on Greenland and Antarctica and resulting sea level rises?]