December 8, 2007
It ain’t half cold mum! Global warming in a long-run perspective
Let’s agree that global warming is happening: the earth’s atmosphere and oceans have been warming up since the beginning of the last century and continue to do so. Let’s also agree that human activity, especially the emission of greenhouse gases, makes a significant contribution to this process of global warming. On the basis of my admittedly amateurish reading of some of the relevant literature, including the Stern Report, I conclude that while there may be some local benefits from global warming, the overall global impact is negative. That still leaves unanswered the following question: what is the optimal global temperature (or perhaps: is there an optimal global temperature)? For the moment, define optimal as optimal for humanity.
The answer to this question matters, because with the many proposals and plans for mitigation and adaptation we are approaching a situation where the first stage of ‘terraforming’, the collective management and regulation of the average temperature of the globe, could become an option. Strangely enough, none of the literature I have seen addresses this question. Indeed most of the literature either assumes or attempts to demonstrate that any and all change in average level of the global temperature is bad. What the current level is does not seem to matter much, it’s the change that is costly.
Up to point, a rule for guiding global temperature policy that can be summarised as "whatever the current temperature is, don’t plan or expect it to change", (or, more pedantically, the optimum average temperature follows a Martingale) makes sense. With the speed of adaptation of biological species other than humans to climate change measured, if not quite in aeons, then certainly not in years either, but rather in centuries, millennia or even longer time-spans, more rapid climate change is likely to be more costly than less rapid climate change. But would it really be best simply to stabilise the average global temperature at its current level? Is it obvious we should not instead let is rise a few degrees, say 5 or 10, over some period of time, and then stabilise it at this higher level? Or should we aim to lower it a few degrees, again, say 5 or 10 degrees over a period of years, decades or centuries, and then stabilise it?
The historical record either shows that the present is unusually warm (if you have limited recall) or that it is unusually cold (if you take the long view).
Wikipedia (yes, I know) informs me that "The last 3 million years have been characterised by cycles of glacials and interglacials within a gradually deepening ice age". Instrumental measurement-based records only exist for the last 150 years or so, and show the now well-documented increase in temperature since about 1910, shown in Chart 1, taken from Wikipedia, below:
Chart 1
This picture of recent global warming to unprecedented levels is broadly confirmed if we take the 1000-year view of Chart 2, below (also from Wikipedia).
Chart 2
However, taking the longer view, as is done in Charts 3, 4 and 5 (all from Wikipedia) for ever-lengthening horizons, it is clear that we are in a spectacularly cold period from a long-run perspective.
Chart 3
Chart 4
Chart 5
When you consider the near-infinite variety of species that must have been wiped out the onset of our current cold spell (nothing like it has been seen for 450 million years), it may seem only fair that temperatures appear to be rising from what is obviously a very low level. Perhaps we should give evolution a chance to come up with life forms that are better suited to a warmer climate. A longer perspective like the one in Chart 5 can make one question the human-centric approach to climate change that virtually everyone in the climate change debate seems to adopt. At most a concern is expressed for a few ‘higher’ life forms, or for ‘biodiversity’ as a resource that may be useful for longer-term human survival and well-being. Let’s hear it for the cockroach instead, and for the one-celled organisms that can survive extreme temperatures! Or even, let’s hear it for the inorganic forms of creation, for whom all manifestations of life must be essentially parasitic.
From the usual crass anthropocentric perspective, it is obvious that, if we value the continued existence of humanity at all, a climate policy summarised as "never mind what level average global temperature is at, just keep it at its current level" cannot make sense for all temperature levels. At an average global temperature of 100 degrees Celsius many currently existing life forms, including humanity, would perish, and the same would hold for a sufficiently low average temperature.
Perhaps things are so dire for humanity, that the question as to what the optimum average global temperature is, need not be asked for the next 200 years. Perhaps the current rate of increase in the average global temperature threatens to outstrip our ability to adapt and cope by such a wide margin, that the need to slow down this rate of increase, and preferably to halt the increase in temperature altogether, should be our dominant or even our only concern. Still, I would like to know an answer to that question. Until I get a better sense of the long-run desired level of the average global temperature, I will not be fully convinced convinced that the argument for stopping it from rising further is well thought out.
Here are my own amateurish speculations on the subject:
Within bounds, there is not an optimal temperature, but an optimal temperature change (inflation target) which, however, is probably very low. The absolute temperature (again, within bounds) is less important than allowing for species, including human societies, to adapt.
That said, higher temperatures are more conducive to biological change (evolution). This is why Africa is the cradle of so many species, including homo sapiens. Higher temperatures mean more random walk, therefore greater scope for positive change.
On the other hand, there seems to be a temperate band in Europe at least, north of which is less successful than the centre (the north of England vis-a-vis London) and south of which is less successful than the centre (Sicily and south Italy versus Rome and Lombardy).
Posted by: Ron Cohen-Seban | December 8th, 2007 at 9:44 pm | Report this commentBuiter, u r 1 sharp cookie. A decade or more ago when the global warming crowd was starting to heat up, my contrarian thought process was along the lines of “I like warm weather, I live in NY; global warming will be great”
A recheck of a Joseph Campbell book which had long term global temperature charts convinced me quite quickly that we are definitely in a cold cycle. With or without human intervention, long term trends to the mean should bring the earth to much higher global temps in the future.
With current technology increasing at a near exponential rate, now is not the time 2 deal with this issue. If the SINGULARITY is truly near as many futurists predict within 2-4 decades “optimum” earth temperature and temperature modification technology will be available.
Do you believe “The Singularity” is near?
Posted by: groucho | December 8th, 2007 at 10:44 pm | Report this commentSir,
your points concerning the relatively low level of temperature if seen over a long horizon are well taken. However, isn’t the ultimate main concern the extremely high level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? That may change the rules of the climate game completely?
An important question in that respect would be: Was there ever a level of CO2 in the atmosphere as high as today? A positive answer would give some relief as it would indicate that extremely high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere do not have to unbalance the world climate completely. A negative answer should make us worry even if temperature is still very low in a long horizon context.
Posted by: Jeju Cornell | December 9th, 2007 at 7:41 pm | Report this commentThere may well be an ‘ideal’ temperature for the globe as whole. Setting aside the obvious point that we don’t have any technical or political ability to choose the goldilocks temeprature, a ‘good’ climate is entirely subjective depending on where you happen to live. Are the drought stricken countries such as Mali and the Sudan going to agree with Canada and Russia that an extra 2 or 4 degrees would be vey nice thank you?
Our entire human civilisation is adapted to the current weather conditions in our locale. Apart from the economic costs of issues such as adapting UK housing for a mediterranean climate, sewers for flash flooding, air conditioning tower blocks which would otherwise become death traps what about the wars and forced migrations?
Given that much of the land around the tropics is desert and around the Poles icecap, I’d say what we have in the middle is too important to experiment with.
Posted by: Tim Keenan | December 10th, 2007 at 11:50 pm | Report this commentSir,
The only issue that really matters in terms of adaptation in the broadest sense is the rate of change. As you acknowledge, we and other species can adapt more or less successfully over a long period of time relative to the average human lifespan. What the biosphere is not so good at dealing with is rapid change.
Apart from giving the biosphere a shock, rapid climate change would rock human civilisation economically and therefore politically as resources like food and water become increasingly less predictable. I do not believe technological fixes could keep up.
I suspect it will be a very long time (if ever) until we can fathom what the most desirable temperature level is or how to achieve it. For now, our concern can only be to ensure that global climates do not change too rapidly as this would subject the biosphere (including humankind) to terrible instability.
Posted by: Thomas Jelley | December 11th, 2007 at 9:24 am | Report this commentMartin Wolf: The answer to Mr Cornell is a definite yes. Look at: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide_png. Life created our oxygen-rich atmosphere as a byproduct of the process (photosynthesis) that turns carbon into plants. The latter, once buried, turned into the coal and oil we are now burning and, in the process, we are putting the carbon back where it started.
I am pretty sure today’s climate is not “optimal” in any definable sense, but it is the one we (and the rest of life on the planet) are adapted to. The costs of adapting to a new climate will be high and, for many species (perhaps even us), prohibitive.
Does this matter? The answer to this question depends on what one thinks determines what matters? In other words, it is a philosophical question about the value of life.
Posted by: Martin Wolf | December 11th, 2007 at 9:51 am | Report this commentAlthough you’re asking a legitimate question in this post, the underlying assumption is that we can - assuming political will, effective policy instruments and so on - ‘choose’ our optimal temperature.
In fact, that’s not necessarily the case.
What we can most easily choose is a level of global emissions - perhaps framing this in the context of a ‘global emissions budget’ that declines over time.
We can also choose, albeit with slightly more uncertainty, the level of concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as 450 parts per million. (Many, including me, would argue that a global emissions budget *only* makes sense if framed in the context of such a quantified ’stabilisation target’ for concentrations - this, after all, is the only way of achieving the objective of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is to stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change). The additional uncertainty involved in looking at a concentration target as opposed to an emissions target derives from variables such as how much CO2 is absorbed by sinks - like the oceans or in forestry - and how much remains in the air (recent data shows, worryingly, that less is being absorbed by sinks than used to be the case). Nonetheless, it is straightforward maths to translate a weight of carbon in emissions to a weight of carbon in the atmosphere: apples are still being compared with apples.
But the *real* uncertainty comes into the picture when you attempt to pin down what a specific concentration level equates to in terms of temperature rise; for here, we move from apples to oranges.
There was an important article on this in Science at the end of October - see http://tinyurl.com/32ul7e for a summary of it on Global Dashboard. What the authors say, essentially, is that it’s just not possible to put specific numbers on x amount of CO2 in the air = y amount of carbon; we just don’t understand the feedbacks in the climate system well enough. (I should note that the authors of the paper emphasise that they see this as a rationale for a precautionary approach, not for a Business As Usual approach, which I agree with.)
One of the problems with the climate debate today is that policymakers, prodded by NGOs, are increasingly using reference points like “limiting warming to 2 degrees C” as political totem poles - when in fact it’s extremely difficult to translate this rhetorical position into policy with any accuracy. It would be more sensible for global debate about stabilising the climate to proceed on the basis of parts per million ceilings of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, rather than temperature.
Posted by: Alex Evans | December 11th, 2007 at 10:28 am | Report this commentProfessor Buiter’s idea that humanity somehow has a choice of optimal global temperature levels as if we are choosing between brands of beans on a supermarket shelf suggests to me that he needs to do some more reading before he rushes into print.
In my view his only worthwhile comment is this one:
“Perhaps the current rate of increase in the average global temperature threatens to outstrip our ability to adapt and cope by such a wide margin, that the need to slow down this rate of increase, and preferably to halt the increase in temperature altogether, should be our dominant or even our only concern.”
I would say halt, Professor Buiter.
What terrifies climate scientists is that as global temperatures rise we are advancing ever deeper into a danger zone in which global temperatures will runaway in an avalanche of positive feed back effects where we would be quite unable to stop the temperature rising to levels that we certainly would not want - for example warming oceans release methane hydrates and warming tundra releases methane so that more greenhouse gases warm the globe yet further. Or again rising temperatures produce drought in the Amazon which, after two years, leads to trees dying and then catastrophic fires which release more CO2 in the atmosphere.
The much cited target of staying under a 2 degree temperature rise above pre industrial levels is already widely regarded as involving the melting of Greenlands ice sheet. Until recently scientists thought that this would take 1,000 years to melt which was reassuring as it would raise sea levels by 7 meters. Now they are not so sure. The eminent climate scientist James E Hansen wrote in the New Scientist in July of this year
“The primary issue is whether global warming will reach a level such that ice sheets begin to disintegrate in a rapid, non-linear fashion on West Antarctica, Greenland or both. Once well under way, such a collapse might be impossible to stop, because there are multiple positive feedbacks. In that event, a sea level rise of several metres at least would be expected. As an example, let us say that ice sheet melting adds 1 centimetre to sea level for the decade 2005 to 2015, and that this doubles each decade until the West Antarctic ice sheet is largely depleted. This would yield a rise in sea level of more than 5 metres by 2095.”
Perhaps you would like to look at the global coastline with a 5 meter sea level rise Professor Buiter. New York, London, Sydney, Vancouver, Mumbai and Tokyo would largely be under water and surrounding areas vulnerable to storm surges. In Florida, Louisiana, the Netherlands, Bangladesh and elsewhere, whole regions and cities may vanish. Shanghai, has an average elevation of just 4 metres.
Despite this Stern recommends a mitigation target that has a very high chance of more than than 2 degrees increase.
I wonder if Professor Buiter and others would be happy to get in a plane that had a one per cent chance of crashing. I bet not. Yet governments and economists like Stern are quite prepared to contemplate mitigation targets that have a far higher chance of overshooting 2 degrees, huge sea level rises and runaway climate change.
Posted by: Brian Davey | December 11th, 2007 at 10:37 am | Report this commentThanks to Martin Wolf for the good source on prehistoric carbon dioxide levels.
There is one estimate on prehistoric carbondioxide levels in this graph which is quite low (the one by Rothman). So a cautious approach to carbon dioxide emissions could be based on trying to stay below that level. (Although an expert may be able to ascertain which of the graphs is more likely to describe what happened.)
The Rothman graph has carbon dioxide levels between 500 and 1000 ppmv most of the time. Extrapolating todays trend, we will be at 500 ppmv around 2050. At least from a prehistoric perspective that leaves some time to figure out more about the climate.
Posted by: Jeju Cornell | December 11th, 2007 at 12:05 pm | Report this commentWas this supposed to be a ‘reducto ad absurdam’ critique of climate change sceptics? Well done.
Of course the change and the rate matters more than the temperature (within limits). We’ve built a complex and precarious civilisation that is dependent on agriculture and trade based on the current temperature.
Concern about this is not called ‘anthrocentric’ it’s called ‘humanist’.
The final temperature does matter, however. Before glibly referring to 5 or 10 degree changes, take a look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_Gun_Hypothesis
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian_extinction
(I know)
Posted by: Dave | December 11th, 2007 at 2:52 pm | Report this commentIt is “reductio ad absurdum”. One does not have to use Latin. But, if one does, one might as well get it right. And, while I am being a pedant, it is “anthropocentric”, since the same applies to the use of Greek.
If people cannot get this sort of thing right, one begins to wonder about their other arguments.
Posted by: Martin Wolf | December 11th, 2007 at 3:01 pm | Report this commentMy understanding is that the earth has had a very stable climate since the end of the last ice age (viz 10,000 years ago), consistent with the growth and development of homo sapiens. This is the background for preferring the status quo.
There is also little doubt that current global warming theories are speculative e.g. tipping points have no history but are the outcome of models; temperature rise levels cannot be accurately calibrated to catastrophe.
It seems to me the quality of policy debate ignores many other fundamantals, apart from analysing an optimal temperature - which does not seem to me fundamental. As examples a) in what way is population level and growth a driving force in warming - does policy dare examine this? b) Is a rational free market the best resource in combating warming, given the feeble track record of supra national attempts? c) Are global warming theories likely to gain greater intellectual certainty in advance of (potentially catastrophic) evidence d) is “global supra national action” something that has credibility given zero track record and the allied need for costly moral heroism?
These points pull in different directions and are not a complete list anyway. I have no geater sense than that the current debate is too undifferentiated and crude. It needs to put fundamantals under scrutiny to come up with rather more grown up responses than are visible right now.
Posted by: Richard Moon | December 11th, 2007 at 4:35 pm | Report this commentWas Martin Wolf’s comment on Dave’s Latin supposed to be a reply to the point he made? If so it failed to convince me. It was posturing rather than really dealing with the issue that he, and I, raised. That issue is that positive feedbacks could have the temperature running away. As it says in the reference Dave gave “The release of…. trapped methane is a potential major outcome of a rise in temperature; it is thought that this might increase the global temperature by an additional 5°C in itself…”
Thus we don’t have a choice of temperatures - we are advancing into a danger zone which is likely to have an absolute limit beyond which the temperature runs away to an extinction. It is that stark an issue.
It is like walking the plank blindfold, we don’t know when we fall off but we know we will eventually as long as we keep moving forward.
In those circumstances the only safe way to go is backwards - which means not only a reducing cap on emissions to stop net emissions as soon as possible but, in addition, measures to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. A safe process for this actually does exist - it’s called bio-char sequestration. Biomass should can be pyrolised, the exhausts used for fuels, energy and chemicals and the char residue put in the soil. As it happens char is very stable in soil. It does not return to the atmosphere as CO2 and it is a very good soil improver, reducing the need for nitrogenous fertilisers..but it will take a long time.
I repeat my point because no one responded to it. The Stern Review drew on eleven studies for assessing the chances of staying under particular temperature increases when atmospheric CO2 was stabilised at particular levels. They show huge variability - for example ranging between a pessimistic view of a 50% chance of staying under a 3 degrees C increase with 400ppm CO2 and an optimistic view of 96% for the same 400ppm CO2.
Let’s take the 96%. Which of the participants in this discussion would get on a plane with a 4% chance of crashing? Shouldn’t the earth’s climate system and the future of all other inhabitants of the planet be treated equally seriously? The question is in deadly earnest. Yet you don’t get most economists or politicians ever asking what it would mean for the economy to organise things on a a low risk path - on the precautionary principle. Stern fudged that issue by claiming to represent the 2 degree target while recommending mitigation targets that stand next to no chance of staying under 2 degrees C. The reason was that Stern dares not question the primacy of economic growth. Without economic growth the entire financial system would collapse so we are trapped in a choice between the collapse of the global ecological system or a collapse of the global financial system. But then maybe the financial system will collapse anyway….
If it does the necessary reforms to pick up the pieces should make sure that the monetary system and the earth’s energy and ecological system stay in balance in the future…
Posted by: Brian Davey | December 11th, 2007 at 7:05 pm | Report this commentMartin Wolf writes: “I am pretty sure today’s climate is not “optimal” in any definable sense, but it is the one we (and the rest of life on the planet) are adapted to.”
Does not that to which we’ve adapted define that which is optimal?
Posted by: Ron Cohen-Seban | December 11th, 2007 at 7:21 pm | Report this commentThe key policy component for the next 5-10 years is not to better understand where we are going to be, given various assumptions; but to design and implement the social technology of converting contemporary economies to zero (or minimal) carbon outputs. Without such technologies, we are left with no choices.
Posted by: Grant Ledgerwood | December 12th, 2007 at 2:16 pm | Report this commentThe optimal temperature is based on a measure of the balance of the earths climate patterns. Said differently, instability in temperatures create volatile climate patterns such as hurricanes from increased water temperatures, droughts or fires. Strong momentum or rate of change in either direction (warming up or cooling down) is what we are really trying to avoid as many previous bloggers have pointed out, because such momentum is irreversible or would create an “avalanche” effect. We can all appreciate such unhealthy momentum by looking no further than the Japan real estate market in the late 1980’s or the current U.S. housing market. They were going up and up and up, until they started to go down and down and down; and we all know that the snowball picks up a lot more momentum on the way down than on the way up. There is NO policy or “target” temperature that will create more stability (i.e. it is kind of like a “target” interest rate; when inflation kicks in, you chase higher and higher “natural” interest rates (or temperatures in this case) as the economy loses value or cycles. Such a “target” is interfering with natural economic competition and is a waste of time as a direct result. Only natural economic competition (like say if solar panels were more competitive to produce and use than coal, or if public transportation was more competitive than cars - which they both are) will “change” the temperatures of the earth or make them more stable or naturally balanced as a result. I think we can all agree that such equilibrium in our economy, climate, geology, etc is our true target.
Posted by: Doug Wolkon - Author of The New Game | December 12th, 2007 at 5:36 pm | Report this commentIn response to Brian Davey, my reaction to Dave’s Latin was a response to his Latin. I happen to think that accuracy matters. But I also think his main point was a perfectly good one. The risk of extreme outcomes is, as I argued in my most recent column on climate change, the core of the argument for taking decisive action now. But it won’t be enough to obtain such action, unless there are credible alternative technologies. People will not accept impoverishment now to ward off future dangers. That seems to me to be the simple reality.
Posted by: Martin Wolf | December 12th, 2007 at 6:47 pm | Report this commentIn response to Martin Wolf we certainly do need to promote new technologies - including those which make better use of waste. A major effort needs to be put into bio-char production and sequestration. Biomass takes CO2 out of the atmosphere and if it is then pyrolised (burned without oxygen) this gives off usable gases and chemicals and leaves a carbon char residue. The char is stable in soil for hundreds of years - and has a lattice like structure so that 10 grammes may have the internal surface area of a football field. That can then store a huge amount of water and nutrients, is an ideal habitat for soil microbes and is thus a highly effective soil improver. It increases soil productivity a great deal and reduces the need for nitrogenous fertilisers. A major effort should therefore be put into this. I have heard guesstimates that perhaps 2 gigatonnes of C could be sequestered every year globally if there was a real effort put into it - an effort appropriate to the scale of the emergency…
But your climate article was sceptical that people would make the necessary sacrifices given the illusory promise of a high energy high consumption lifestyle.
To that I would respond - in an emergency people are prepared to make sacrifices. For example here are UK military outlays as per cent of national income from 1939 onwards: 1939 15; 1940 44; 1941 53; 1942 52; 1943 55; 1944 53
Your climate article suggests a possible story where feedbacks would make the world 20 degrees warmer. Is that not equivalent to a war emergency?
This is a responsibility for the global elite to do the motivation. All of history shows that populations can be mobilised to make sacrifices - if the cause is perceived as one they believe in. Because he wanted to follow the USA Tony Blair was prepared to face down majority opinion on the invasion of Iraq. In the USA the Bush administration prepared a media campaign to justify that invasion. It is the job of the elite to face down the population and call upon it to make sacrifices if the future of the world is at stake. With power comes responsibility. But let’s speak the truth - the global elite is trapped in the system dynamic of a growth economy. Too much of it is based in the hydrocarbons and the banking sector and is wedded to growth.
After 200 years of growth - and especially since the 1950s - models, policies and ideas are lacking for how to manage an economy on an energy descent path. Since the application of ever greater amounts of energy brings industrial strength and economic might it appears that energy descent is to cut one’s own throat economically and undermine competitiveness. It appears like a recipe for disaster for the financial system too. After all - if the economy does not grow any financial system based on positive interest rates transfers resources to lenders of money. That cannot happen for long in a no growth or a contracting economy. That’s why usury was banned in the pre-industrial era. All our institutions require growth.
However output growth is ultimately dependent on the available energy and the efficiency of its transformation into production and services. But everywhere you look we are running up against fossil fuel limits. That part of the basic physics underpinning economics. You can partly recycle materials but you can’t recycle energy and you can’t avoid the exhaust greenhouses gases. If carbon capture and storage works it is in any case 20 years away from generalisation - by which time wind power would be cheaper. Meanwhile a booming world economy is coming up against limited oil and gas supplies. You can believe the peak oil people that this is geological - or you can believe the IEA that this is geopolitical -the effect is the same. There’s not enough of the stuff.
Since the problem are structural to the growth system the only way out is to use the period of economic crisis that we are now entering, whether we like it or not, to make the fundamental structural changes. For example, as you say in your latest article - the financial system is now highly fragile. With ever tighter constraint on global energy supplies predicted by the IEA it will be in severe difficulties in a few years - so that the safest place to put money is in physical assets which either save or generate energy - non fossil energy.
We need to roll the clock backwards on debt based money - and look at additional local currencies to encourage local exchange for a world where transport costs are constrained. We also need a reform of the international money system - ideally with some global currency - based not on gold but on carbon from an equitable global carbon control system like cap and share.
If the global elite does not make these change it will find that the initiative passes to movements that are trying to take responsibility - for example the Transition Town initiatives which have arisen to prepare communities for peak oil and climate change by reskilling around ecological design and cultivation techniques and energy light lifestyles. Better to support and collaborate with these initiatives…otherwise the political elite will seem increasingly irrelevant or out of control as the crisis deepens.
Posted by: Brian Davey | December 13th, 2007 at 12:56 am | Report this commentThank you, Martin, for the corrections - you are right, accuracy does matter, even in a rushed response to a blog. Apologies.
In my defense, I can only point out that my inaccurate use of classical languages did not obscure my point (with which you agree, I am very happy to note), whereas scientific illiteracy has obscured much of the political debate about climate change until recently.
I think I reacted somewhat angrily to the premise of the blog - that we have the luxury of settling on an ‘optimal’ temperature to aim for. Even if we could decide on criteria (what temperature range for what region, do we want to optimise agriculture or urban living, do we want solar or wind power to predominate) it would take decades of research to find means of manipulating the climate in such a way.
It’s really just a variation of the ‘geoengineering’ school that says let’s see what the climate does and then if it’s bad enough we’ll just solve everything with a few mega-engineering projects using the technology we’ve developed in the meantime. It’s a world view that flourished in the optimistic science fiction that prevailed between Wells and Orwell, but not even sci-fi writers believe it now.
We live in a complex and interdependent society that is dependent on and part of a global dynamic climate system. Our understanding of how this system works (in addition to the visible trends) indicates that we’re on an accelerating path towards damagingly large and fast changes in this system. The priority has to be to reduce the ‘delta’ and we know just about enough to be able to do that.
The Earth will not end. Life will survive even catastrophic changes, but the potential for disruption to human life ranges from increased burden, displacement and ill-health for the poorest of the world, through economic disaster, to the collapse of our interdependent and therefore fragile civilisation. (What price reduced supply chains and warehousing when we’ve had a few bad harvests or transport is disrupted? How will our tenuous grasp on peace and security be affected by economic disruption, displacement/migration and social change? How will democratic institutions adapt/survive?)
Whether we think this matters is indeed a philosphical question - but it is one I would have hoped we’d settled by now. Perhaps this would make a good blog discussion?
Posted by: Dave | December 13th, 2007 at 6:37 pm | Report this commentDoes anyone think that the “financial” economy will cycle in lock step to the “natural” economy? As “pollution” rises so does “inflation”? As the financial economy “heats up”, so does our climate? As inflation kicks in, our climate “cools” off? Will the financial economy bail us out of global warming through a “natural” business cycle or will it be the other way around? If a business cycle is inevitable our global warming problems should solve themselves, right? I do not look forward to such an economic cycle, but based on our current strategy of consuming more and more out of less and less, such a cycle is inevitable. In the long-term, the target temperature and target interest rates are collectively up to Mother Nature and economic competition.
Posted by: Doug Wolkon - Author of The New Game | December 14th, 2007 at 4:55 pm | Report this commentConsider solar thermal electric generation. It is scalable. It has no fuel cycle. It is so abundant and harmless that you can waste it. The energy can be stored as potential gravitational energy, for nighttime regeneration. It doesn’t need a police state or a militarist foreign policy. This continuous mental stumbling-block that proposes that we must submit to massive economic sacrifices or else uncontrolled climate change is tediously silly.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold | December 15th, 2007 at 4:10 am | Report this commentIn the broader public debate, there has been much talk about the relative size the global footprint of rich and poor nations… and little or none about the relative size of the global footprint of rich and poor within nations. If nations which pollute more must make bigger cuts, the same principle must apply to citizens within nations as well.
Posted by: John Smith | December 15th, 2007 at 11:33 am | Report this commentWhat is this principle of which I speak? It is the principle of sharing, of rationing to achieve convergence between the carbon emissions generated by nations and individuals. This principle is antithetical to capitalism - its alternative is to allow the marketplace to allocate carboniferous resources, i.e. that working people must take cold showers and switch off their lights so that the wealthy minority can continue to fly around in their private jets and heat their swimming pools.
I say this in order to highlight the central problem confronting humanity: capitalism rewards selfishness and is congenitally incapable of dealing with long-term risks or of planning for the future; while capitalists are far more afraid of being exterminated through competition than they are of their grandchildren being exterminated because of their own reckless irresponsibility.
The only country on earth which has managed to sustainably deliver high human development is Cuba, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s ‘Living Planet 2006’ report (http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report.pdf, p19). Cuba is also the only country in the Americas to have more trees now than it did 40 years ago, and the first country in the world to have changed all incandescent light bulbs for the energy-saving kind.
The ineluctable conclusion to be drawn from this is one which will appal most of your readers even more threat of catastrophic climate change: if humanity has a future, it is communist.
John,
Posted by: Doug Wolkon - Author of The New Game | December 15th, 2007 at 9:27 pm | Report this commentThere is an economic system called Pluralism, it is a system that draws its natural resource value from air, water and light (infinite resources), as opposed to land only (finite or scarce resource). Pluralism is based on diversity of business size (and thus ideas) as opposed to Capitalism which rewards larger and larger size. Pluralism is consistent with Capitalism in its assumption of freedom of choice. Communism, as F.A. Hayek explains in his “individualist position”, does not recognize “the individual as the ultimate judge of his ends”. Such recognition is required for ultimate economic competition.
Cuba is a dictatorship. So, please, be open about what you are recommending, Mr Smith.
In response to Mr Wolkon, neither air, nor water nor light is an infinite resource to us here on earth. They are merely very large.
Posted by: Martin Wolf | December 17th, 2007 at 1:14 pm | Report this commentMr. Wolf,
Posted by: Doug Wolkon - Author of The New Game | December 17th, 2007 at 4:00 pm | Report this commentAir, Water and Light are infinite in their potential to produce economic value, as opposed to land, which possesses scarcity in value.
“I would not be understood to insinuate, that land should be no more the object of property, than the rays of the sun, or blast of the wind. There is an essential difference between these sources of production; the power of the latter is inexaustible; the benefit derived from them by one man does not hinder another from deriving equal advantage. The sea and the wind can at the same time convey my neighbor’s vessel and my own. With land it is otherwise” - Jean-Baptiste Say, A Treatise on the Political Economy, p. 360
Mr Wolkon is wrong. These are not infinite sources of anything. They are, as I said, just very large. What he means, I think, is that they are non-excludable: I cannot prevent someone else from using the atmosphere. In this respect, land is different. But the global warming debate rests on the proposition that the absorptive capacity of the atmosphere is indeed finite. The proposed solution is to generate property rights and so make it excludable.
Posted by: Martin Wolf | December 18th, 2007 at 1:54 pm | Report this commentDear Mr Wolf,
Posted by: John Smith | December 18th, 2007 at 3:18 pm | Report this commentI’ll gladly respond to your challenge (’please be open about what you are recommending’) and ask, in return, that you answer my substantial point: if carbon emissions must be reduced, what do we do about the fact that the wealthiest 5% of Western societies burn more carbon than the poorest 50%?
You seem to suggest that we should do, and can do, nothing. As you stated in your article (‘Why the climate change wolf is so hard to kill off’ FT, December 4th, 2007), “the rich are unlikely to make… huge reductions in emissions the report demands…. The answer is that we must appeal at least as much to [their] self-interest as to their morality.” This is an irresponsible counsel of defeat and despair. There is in fact only one possible answer to this question: the rich must be compelled to reduce their gargantuan carbon footprints, and that this requires a revolutionary transformation, the construction of an economy and society that is based on solidarity, not greed and self-interest. As I said, if humanity has a future, it is communist.
This is why Cuba’s unique success in providing sustainable human development is so relevant. Praise where praise is due! You state that Cuba is a dictatorship. I agree - it is a dictatorship of working people. It is also a vibrant participatory democracy -without taking this into account we cannot explain its seemingly miraculous success in achieving lower infant mortality and a superior education system than its wealthy northern neighbour, despite decades of terrorism and economic warfare orchestrated by the so-called ‘leaders of the free world’.
We can perhaps agree that democracy is the polar opposite of dictatorship, but that’s as far as the agreement goes. To those trapped in formal logic, the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. A dialectical approach sees matters differently. Dictatorship is both the antithesis of democracy and also its prerequisite. Cuba’s participatory democracy is founded on the dictatorship of working people, while democracy à la Westminster is founded on the dictatorship of capital. Neither democratic form is conceivable outside of the foundation of dictatorship on which it rests.
Mr. Wolf,
As far as your argument that “the global warming debate rests on the proposition that the absorptive capacity of the atmosphere is indeed finite”, you are assuming that the atmosphere was indeed meant to absorb chemical pollution or land-based extracts in the first place. I am arguing that the utility value of air, water and light is infinite, not that we can pollute it infinitely.
Also, please do not think in terms of “large” or small with regards to economic resources. Such natural resources of 1.) land and 2.) air, water & light should only be measured by economic utility value, not size. In this regard, there are certainly infinite potential sources and uses of utility value. Think of a solar panel, in terms of its value-in-exchange, it is indeed a finite resource. However, in terms of its value-in-use, its resource potential is certainly infinite or limitless. Such “Earned” Energy costs less and less energy every time we produce and consume it. In other words, “Earned” Energy, assuming human innovation, will in turn produce more and more of the same; thus the use of the word “infinite”. In comparison, “Borrowed” Energy or Fossil Fuels costs more and more land and labor every time we consume it. However, most important to economic progress is weather we are growing this utility value or “polluting” it.
Posted by: Doug Wolkon - Author of The New Game | December 18th, 2007 at 7:08 pm | Report this commentMr. Wolf,
As far as your argument that “the global warming debate rests on the proposition that the absorptive capacity of the atmosphere is indeed finite”, you are assuming that the atmosphere was indeed meant to absorb chemical pollution or land-based extracts in the first place. I am arguing that the utility value of air, water and light is infinite, not that we can pollute it infinitely.
Also, please do not think in terms of “large” or small with regards to economic resources. Such natural resources of 1.) land and 2.) air, water & light should only be measured by economic utility value, not size. In this regard, there are certainly infinite potential sources and uses of utility value. Think of a solar panel, in terms of its value-in-exchange, it is indeed a finite resource. However, in terms of its value-in-use, its resource potential is certainly infinite or limitless. Such “Earned” Energy costs less and less energy every time we produce and consume it. In other words, “Earned” Energy, assuming human innovation, will in turn produce more and more of the same; thus the use of the word “infinite”. In comparison, “Borrowed” Energy or Fossil Fuels costs more and more land and labor every time we consume it. However, most important to economic progress is weather we are growing this utility value or “polluting” it.
Posted by: Doug Wolkon - Author of The New Game | December 18th, 2007 at 7:08 pm | Report this commentI think the question of what is the optimal level of temperature is an interesting one. But surely questions about what is the optimal level cannot be divorced from what is an optimal approach path? Questions about such a path are, to some extent at least, questions about rate of change of temperature.
We know little or nothing about optimal levels of temperature, and probably could never “know” such a thing in a world of independent sovereign communities where conventional justifications for divorcing efficiency arguments from distributional concerns do not apply.
What we do seem to know is that change at rapid pace involves huge costs, and costs that are irreversible. Therefore, keeping options open is valuable to us (in a state of ignorance).
One of my colleagues (Anthony Clunies Ross) is currently writing that the possible forced population migrations due to water innundation in delta areas of the world (where a large share of population in developing countries, in particular, live) is a cost that dominates any other medium to long term impact (in the economists meaning of those words) and is simply inconceivable. I am rather persuaded by this reasoning, and this alone would seem to imply a path of reduced rate of change for the next 100 years or so, whatever the long term optimal temperature might be.
Having said all that, I am also persuaded by the notion that the human-centric view is nothing more than that, and is therefore somewhat crass. It puzles me why ecologists (who sometimes do not accord humans any special place in the scheme of things)are often so much more wedded to maintaining current environmental/ecological conditions than are economists (who typically reason solely from the premise that it is welfare of humans alone that matters).
Posted by: Roger Perman | December 19th, 2007 at 12:46 am | Report this commentI don’t think these debates can be taken much further. In response to Mr Smith, I would say that Cuba is the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. I agree that this is not the same as the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong or Pol Pot. But it comes from the same family. If you like that sort of thing (as you evidently do), then this is the sort of thing that you like.
In response to Mr Wolkon, I have no idea what you are trying to say. That may make me very stupid. But, on the assumption you are indeed saying something, it ought to worry you a bit.
Posted by: Martin Wolf | December 19th, 2007 at 5:48 pm | Report this commentMr Wolf: OK, no more debate about Cuba. But you forgot to answer my question: what do we do about the fact that the wealthiest 5% of Western societies burn more carbon than the poorest 50%?
Posted by: John Smith | December 19th, 2007 at 8:48 pm | Report this commentWe pay them for the right to do so at a sufficiently high price to force conservation and innovation in rich countries and across the globe. That’s the most we will do and even this, alas, is unlikely.
I think you think that the world is about to become a place ordered according to the principles of socialist justice. Maybe it should be. But it is not going to be. Power always trumps this kind of distributional morality. In this case, however, poor countries have power: paying them a great deal for not burning fossil fuels is the only way to discourage them from doing so.
Posted by: Martin Wolf | December 20th, 2007 at 1:35 pm | Report this commentSo, rich nations and rich elites within nations must pay, and the poor must be compensated. Rich nations/elites will not (’unlikely’ puts it too mildly) voluntarily accept such an arrangement. I applaud your honesty on this, such a contrast to the hypocrisy of e.g. European political leaders you’ve exposed in your articles.
Posted by: John Smith | December 21st, 2007 at 11:34 am | Report this commentIf salvation cannot come from the rich elites, it must come from the subaltern classes - the world’s 3 billion working poor, including those in the rich nations.
I don’t believe that an ethical, moral (i.e. socialist) world is imminent, just that it is necessary. Power can only be trumped only by a greater power, however, as Fidel Castro has said, “ideas are more powerful than weapons”.
Best wishes, and I look forward to reading your articles on the (related) financial and climactic catastrophes in 2008.