Let’s find some balance in managing climate change

Careful analysis shows that climate change is a problem. But it is not the end of the world. Picture: iStock

The latest global climate summit in Poland has generated familiar predictions of doom and disaster from environmental activists. Climate change seems to freeze our capacity for critical thinking: we are too eager to believe the problem is far worse than science shows and — conversely — that our solutions are far easier than reality dictates.

Consider weather events: it is second nature now to link these to climate change. Whenever a flood hits, the media blames global warming and warns that floods are increasing. But the most authoritative conclusion by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that it is not even clear whether floods have increased or decreased globally during the past century.

Both European forest fires and US hurricanes are blamed on global warming. But, despite getting more news attention than normal, forest fires in Europe this year have affected less than half the average area burned; in Europe’s southern countries, which contain 90 per cent of the affected forest, the burned area has halved across 35 years. On hurricanes, IPCC scientists say there have been “no significant observed trends” globally during the past century. The frequency of all US land-falling hurricanes has actually been declining since 1900, as has that of major US hurricanes.

The truth about climate change is nuanced: it is real, and in the long term it will be a problem, but its impact is less than we may believe. According to the IPCC’s last major report, unrestrained climate change would result in an average reduction in income of about 0.2-2 per cent by the 2070s. That is equivalent to the impact of a single economic recession across the next half-century.

Yet, in a race to the bottom with climate-change deniers, green activists have become hyperbolic. Influential campaigner George Monbiot says “climate change” isn’t alarming enough, so should be replaced with “climate breakdown”. Climate is not breaking down. In fact, it used to break us down. A century ago, climate disasters killed an average of 500,000 people worldwide every year. Today, despite many more people living in harm’s way, the toll has dropped more than 95 per cent.

Just as activists and the media engender fear by associating every fire, flood and hurricane with climate change, they generate a false belief that there are simple solutions to the problem, if only politicians and the public would embrace them.

Take the new argument that becoming vegetarian could fix climate change. The reality is that a Westerner abandoning all meat will cut their greenhouse gas emissions by only a few percentage points.

Or consider the strange suggestion by UN chief Antonio Guterres that climate policies will bring “at least $US26 trillion ($36 trillion) in economic benefits”. His claims are based on a glossy report, while the actual (presumably heroic) calculations have never been released. The claim contradicts established climate economics. Replacing fossil fuels with inefficient alternatives slows growth. That’s why the 2015 Paris climate agreement, if fully implemented, will cost the planet $1 trillion to $2 trillion annually. Another common refrain is that solar and wind are ready to out-compete fossil fuels. But alternative energy remains reliant on $US160 billion in subsidies annually. When these are withdrawn, investments in solar and wind typically plummet. While there are cases where alternative energies are cheaper than fossil fuels, the reverse is more often true — and solar and wind are infinitely more expensive when the weather is unsuitable.

Globally, solar and wind satisfy less than 1 per cent of our energy needs. The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2040, even if the Paris Agreement holds, this will increase to just above 4 per cent.

If we are to address climate change successfully, we need to listen to William Nordhaus, the first climate economist to win the Nobel prize, who shows that tackling global warming is a question of finding the right balance. With a model refined across decades, Nordhaus demonstrates that a globally co-ordinated, moderate and rising carbon tax could reduce temperatures modestly. It would cost about $US20 trillion to avoid some climate damages, ensuring a net benefit of $US30 trillion across coming centuries.

But without global co-ordination, the policy costs would escalate. And aiming to reduce temperatures more drastically, to within 2.5C of pre-industrial levels, would drive the cost beyond $US130 trillion, leaving us $US50 trillion worse off. Contrast Nordhaus’s careful work showing that a 2.5C cap is near impossible with the excitement being whipped up about keeping the rise in global temperature below the much harder 1.5C threshold. At current emissions levels, this would require us to end fossil fuel use in 10 years — an idea that flies in the face of historical evidence. The world has increased emissions constantly across a century, lifting billions out of poverty in the process. We are even told that within a few decades we need to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on an unprecedented scale, with totally untested technology. That’s just wishful thinking. The IEA expects that fossil fuels will still meet three-quarters of global energy demand by 2040.

The technology deficit can be solved only by drastically increasing our spending on research and development of alternative energy. Careful analysis shows that climate change is a problem. But it is not the end of the world. To solve it, we need a smart focus on green-tech innovation, not scare stories and hyperbole.

Bjorn Lomborg is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School.

Copyright Project Syndicate 2018