What Matters: Why Kyoto won’t work

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Why Kyoto won’t work

23 February 2009

When the science of climate change is separated from the clouds of politics and hype, the path that lies before us becomes clear. Science unequivocally shows that climate change is real and is caused by humans. To deny that would be a mistake. But it would be equally mistaken to overstate the facts and to claim that, as a result, Armageddon looms. Basing political decisions on the misguided claims of today’s merchants of doom would be an enormous miscalculation.

The most reliable source of information, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), comprising thousands of scientists, predicts that sea levels will rise as a result of climate change, although the image of a 20-foot wall of water sweeping away coastal homes is exaggeration. According to IPCC estimates, oceans will rise anywhere from 6 inches to 2 feet in the coming century, with the most reasonable estimate being a foot, a rise similar to the one the world experienced over the past 150 years.

Although not catastrophic, rising sea levels will pose problems, particularly for small island nations. Environmental groups have advocated hefty cuts in carbon emissions, which would reduce the rise in sea levels by 10 inches. But is cutting carbon emissions an efficient and effective response to the problem? Land is valuable, yet it is relatively inexpensive to protect it from rising tides; cutting emissions, on the other hand, is extremely costly, a cost that would weigh heavily upon nations by the year 2100. Since it would leave less money to protect land from the sea, cutting carbon emissions would mean more land would be lost, particularly in places such as Micronesia, Tuvalu, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and the Maldives.

If you rely on the science rather than doomsday scenarios, it becomes clear that drastic carbon cuts are not the most rational response to climate change. Consider the predicted hike in temperatures. While it is true that heat waves will result in more heat-related deaths, rising temperatures will reduce the number of cold spells and thus the number of those dying of exposure. By 2050, global warming will cause some 400,000 heat-related deaths a year; at the same time, 1.8 million fewer people will die of cold. Viewed from this perspective, global warming will save lives. Drastic cuts in carbon emissions would ward off heat waves, saving 15,000 lives each year, but this “solution” would result in 88,000 cold-related fatalities every winter. A more economical approach to rising temperatures would be to increase the number of trees, add water features, and reduce the amount of black tarmac in those cities most vulnerable to rising sea levels.

Global warming, to be sure, poses other health dangers, including an increased risk of contracting malaria. But implementing the Kyoto Protocol (the international environmental treaty established by the United Nations, in 1992, to help stabilize greenhouse gas emissions) would reduce that risk by only 0.2 percent in a century. By spending $3 billion annually on mosquito nets and medication, we could cut the incidence of malaria by roughly 50 percent in a decade. For the money spent saving 1 person via indirect climate policies, we could save 36,000 people by direct intervention. Of course, it’s not only human beings that we care about. Environmentalists point out that species such as the polar bear could be wiped out as their natural habitat disappears. Still, it’s curious that we focus on one option—cutting carbon emissions—and are blind to more pragmatic solutions. Implementing the Kyoto Protocol would save 1 bear a year. Yet 300 to 500 polar bears are killed by hunters yearly. Stopping their slaughter would be cheaper, easier, and more effective than a worldwide pact on carbon emissions.

Whether you look at sea levels, heat-related deaths, malaria, or polar bears, the inescapable conclusion is the same: reducing carbon emissions is not the best way to help the world.

In 1992, the wealthy, developed nations promised to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. Instead, emissions grew by 12 percent. In 1997, they promised to cut emissions some 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. It now appears emissions will have increased by 20 percent. Politicians insist the next protocol to be negotiated in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 will be even tougher.

But even if these earlier promises had been fulfilled, they would have done little good and been extremely costly. If Australia and the United States had committed to the Kyoto Protocol, it would have set the planet back by $180 billion each year, to little effect. Even if we were to stick to the Kyoto Protocol for the rest of this century, we would postpone the effects of global warming by just five years.

The problem is that the costs of cutting carbon come to $20 per ton, yet the benefits add up to only $2 a ton. Cutting emissions has a feel-good factor—the wealthy put up solar panels to burnish their image—but does little to solve global warming.

A more rational approach is to make cuts less expensive. Protecting the environment would then no longer be the preserve of the rich but be open to poor people in developed nations, as well as to the biggest emitters of the 21st century: China and India.

The rational answer is to dramatically increase spending on research and development of low-carbon energy. Every nation should commit 0.05 percent GDP spending toward exploring non-carbon-emitting energy technologies. This would cost $25 billion per year—one-seventh the cost of the Kyoto Protocol. All nations would be involved, yet the richer ones would pay the larger share. Most important, this approach would create a global research momentum that could recapture the vision of delivering both a low-carbon and a high-income world.

Cutting carbon emissions is said to be our generational mission. But do we want to be remembered by future generations for doing a little good at a high cost with Kyoto-style policies, or for tackling the most pressing problems through smarter strategies? Combating the real climate challenges facing the planet—a rise in cases of malaria, an increase in heat-related deaths, a decline in polar bears—requires simpler, less glamorous policies, such as supplying mosquito nets to those in need, planting more trees in cities, and stopping the hunting of polar bears.

The 21st century holds many other major challenges, for which we have low-cost, durable solutions. Consider the problems of communicable diseases, malnutrition, lack of clean drinking water, and first-world market access to third-world agriculture. For less than a fifth of the price tag of Kyoto we could tackle all these issues.

When Nobel Laureates gathered this year for the Copenhagen Consensus, which prioritizes solutions to the world’s biggest problems, they agreed that improving malnutrition and child health in the third world should be given much higher priority than carbon cuts to battle climate change.

Global warming requires a long-term, comprehensive solution—not a drastic quick fix that won’t meet the real challenges. Solving this problem will take the better part of a century, and it will need a political will spanning parties, continents, and generations. If we adopt a rational, scientific approach and invest in research and development, we’ll be doing some real good for the long run rather than just making ourselves feel good today.

Comment [19]

Agree? Disagree? Let us know what you think. Please include your full name with your comment. Comments may be edited.

The current interglacial period, called the Holocene period, has had an approximate 1-2 F cycle on an 8000-year downtrend. The current warming period has not exceeded the upper limit of the channel formed by those cycles. (Stock traders, think Bollinger Bands).
(graph)
<http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455&tid=441&cid=19073&ct=61&article=9986>

I’m much more concerned about the 30 F drop that followed the last several interglacial periods which have been occurring with a good deal of regularity every 100,000 years or so for the last half million years.
graph. Note that sometimes CO2 changes follow temperature, not lead it.
<http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_11/fig1.pdf>

Posted 12 March 2010, 18:29 by tobyw
I have 2 points of contention here:

1. While for some reasons mentioned above implementing Kyoto to the last letter may not be cost effective, but I’m sure that doing away with it altogether is an extreme.

2. My second point is the labeling of India and China as the largest emitters of the 21st century. India got its independence only 60 yrs ago and liberalisation is not but 30 yrs old in this country. I think the author cannot statistically prove that these 2 countries have outdone the entire developed world in emissions in a span of less than 30 yrs. If it were so, I’d think that the industrial growth rates of these 2 countries published so far are grossly miscalculated.

Posted 19 January 2010, 09:27 by Shashank
There is a discrepancy in the aggregated numbers for cold and heat related deaths. Eventhough I suspect the figures but the point I disagree with is that while heat related will occur in all parts of world but they will wreak more havoc in hotter regions of world like Africa and Asia. They will just tip climate from now ‘hot’ to ‘Unbearable’ temperature zone.And that shift of zone will require a hefty adaptation that poorer countries of hotter regions of world can’t afford. This is an enormous cost that climate change entails besides a lot of other costs that author did not mention. Water and agriculture crisis at forefront of them.

Posted 15 August 2009, 03:04 by Yash Saxena
Carbonicus – agreed absolutely.

And another reason not to trust the IPCC: if anthropogenic global warming is a myth, they are out of a job. Not a good basis for even-handedness.

And another reason not to trust politicians – anthropogenic global warming promises tax revenue AND moral high ground in one lovely package. Not a good basis for even-handedness.

Posted 27 March 2009, 01:38 by John Hardy
Funny how liberal neo-environmentalists outnumber conservative old-style environmentalists (i.e., those focused on pollutants and demonstrable risks, not computer model politics masquerading as science) on this site dramatically.

For all of you who point out the fact the Lomborg isn’t a scientist, he’s been accused of dishonesty, he’s only published two peer reviewed works, etc., etc., etc., what you are at a loss to do is to refute his work with fact. All his ad hominem attackers like you have gone down in flames trying to do so. The Skeptical Environmentalist came out in 2001, and scientists and liberal neo-environmentalists have been attacking it, him, and his findings ever since. And yet, because Lomborg simply uses accepted statistical methods to analyze the data coming from other scientists(e.g. UN IPCC) and organizations (e.g. World Health Organization, UN Env. Program, World Bank and others) he has done nothing more than report on the statistical analyses of others work. So, when you attack Lomborg, you neo-greens are attacking the very scientists you hold in high esteem, in many instances.

Sling more bright green ad hominem mud all you want. But not a one of you has provided any factual rebuttal to a thing he’s said, in this article, in the Skeptical Environmentalist, in Cool It, or any of his other work.

Carbonicus’ namesake Copernicus got the same treatment, as did Galileo after taking Copernicus’ work and using scientific method to prove it. The latter was jailed for heresy for proving that the earth revolves around the sun (the heliocentric model)and having the gall to openly write about it, when the Catholic church had been saying for hundreds of years that the sun revolves around the earth.

Before any Catholics reading this get pissed off, this is not a slight against the church. It is just a comparison.

Fast forward to today. Neo-environmentalism is ideology, not science, today 400 years after the Galileo incident. And the church of neo-environmentalism says CO2 is Armageddon gas and fossil fuels and capitalism and humans are a plague upon the planet. Their computer models tell them so, even though the empirical evidence and science based on hard data say otherwise.

Never let facts get in the way. You can apologize later.

Guess what, neo-environmentalists. The earth isn’t flat. The earth rotates around the sun. And CO2 is not death upon us or the planet.

Slam Lomborg all you want, but ad hominem attacks do not themselves refute fact, no matter how loud or charismatically you yell them.

The number of actual scientists authoring the Summary for Policymakers in the FAR from IPCC was approximately 52. The IPCC is a UN body. The UN is a political organization, not a scientific one. 31,000 scientists, (9,000 with PhD’s) and counting have signed the Oregon Petition. Thousands more signed the Leipzig Declaration. Almost 1,000 more have signed a new “denier” petition.

Meanwhile, why don’t all you neo hyprocrites turn off all your lights, ride a bike everywhere you go, and do nothing that uses coal-fired, natural gas fired, or nuclear powerplant energy if you’re so adamant that CO2 is death to humans and future generations. Don’t be a hypocrite, walk the walk. And once you “go green” in this regard, let me know how that’s working out for you.

Carbonicus will be here to remind you when all this finally comes crashing down on you neo’s under the weight of politics masquerading as science.

Meanwhile, me and Dr. Lomborg are waiting for a factual rebuttal to any of the above claims.

Posted 21 March 2009, 22:54 by Carbonicus
We need debate about these issues, but I am concerned about who is chosen to lead these debates. For instance, Björn Lomborg, widely referred to as “professor” and “scientist”, is neither (he is “adjunct professor”, which is not an academic title; his publications in peer-reviewed journals are two, dating back to 1996 and 2007, according to www.lomborg.com), and and yet he is allowed to comment alongside the most important names in science. Can we please more clearly distinguish WHO is arguing?

Posted 19 March 2009, 02:03 by Stefan Gössling
For a non-scientist to use the term “rational” repeatedly when ignoring the findings and recommendations of the majority of scientists on this highly technical subject would be a joke were it not for the damaging nature of the arguments in this article. The author’s views are not simply contrarian, they are almost ludicrously shallow. It trivializes the prospect of our children and their children seeing our the climate move well outside the bounds within which our species has ever experienced, and a rate of transition that will surely place unprecedented stress on the foundations of society: food supply, health, and shelter. If this article represents an attempt by this site to do “balanced” reporting, it is a serious editorial mistake.

Posted 18 March 2009, 19:56 by Charlie Hill
It now appears that the polar bear issue is also a red herring.

Studies of the complete picture, (rather than a focused, localised study) indicate that the polar bear population is in fact growing, except in the areas where there is a significant hunt program in place.

This finding is in line with the statements that the Inuit have been saying all along.

Posted 18 March 2009, 11:26 by Larry Scott
Great article. Yes Lomborg is not a Phycist or a Chemist, but he is a professional statistician and we could do with more input from such folk.

And yes he has been repeatedly accused of dishonesty – by those who find his views inconvenient. He was the subject of a quite disgraceful witch hunt (reported in the UK by Private Eye), and was eventually exonerated by the Danish Academy of Sciences

In a world where a billion people have no access to clean water and thousands of children die every day as a result, I think it is a moral outrage that huge numbers of Westerners go junketing off to Bali, Kyoto and myriads of smaller conferences on the pretence of solving an important problem for them. If anthropgenic climate change is a fact, protocols won’t fix it, and if it isn’t then we are barking up the wrong tree altogether.

Posted 18 March 2009, 03:40 by John Hardy
What this doesn’t address is that

> The impact of carbon is not only limited to bears and us. When we talk humans and bears, we talk only symptoms and that too only fraction of the real impact. The climate change might have indirect impact on storms, change in rain and climate patterns leading to mass migration of human kind, whose cost is going to be much higher than the 180 bn that Bjorn talks about.

> The other problem is that most of the impact is not understood. However, that shouldn’t stop us from moving ahead and address the root cause (carbon emissions). If we wait to understand everything before we act, it might be too late. Case in point being the economic crisis. Govts waited too long to act even though they understood large part of economy (Relative to our understanding of environment). Result is that all actions are late and reactionary

Hope we don;t do that with our climate and future generations

Posted 17 March 2009, 22:56 by Ashu

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