The Grand Challenge
It’s amazing to me that someone can lay out the complexity of the climate problem so well and then follow that with a simplistic, facile call to action. Here’s the set-up by David Roberts at Grist in a post that otherwise compares the differing vantage points of climate scientists and economists:
Humanity has never had to grapple with a problem that measures itself in centuries, threatens our very existence, and requires global cooperation to overcome. We are fairly beset by gaping uncertainties. We know it could get really bad, but we don’t know exactly how bad it will get, or how fast, or where. We don’t know how much it will cost to re-engineer the world along sustainable lines, or how quickly we can do it, or even whether we can do it at all.
We are stumbling around in the dark, in an area where scientists tell us some very, very nasty beasties dwell.
So how do we extricate ourselves from this devilish bind? It’s obvious, concludes Roberts:
In that situation, it seems to me the overwhelming bias should be toward action — getting lean, mean, and nimble enough to handle ourselves no matter what slouches our way.
Ah, it’s so simple and self-evident, especially if you live a comfortable life, where perhaps your greatest immediate concern is which school will best nurture your child’s intellectual growth.
Speaking of growth, let’s go to Thomas Homer-Dixon for the rest of the complex equation to the climate problem (beyond those projections of impacts) that Roberts leaves unaddressed:
Humankind is in a box. For the 2.7 billion people now living on less than $2 a day, economic growth is essential to satisfying the most basic requirements of human dignity. And in much wealthier societies, people need growth to pay off their debts, support liberty, and maintain civil peace. To produce and sustain this growth, they must expend vast amounts of energy. Yet our best energy source — fossil fuel — is the main thing contributing to climate change, and climate change, if unchecked, will halt growth.
Homer-Dixon goes on to frame the larger challenge to humanity in equally paradoxical terms:
We can’t live with growth, and we can’t live without it. This contradiction is humankind’s biggest challenge this century, but as long as conventional wisdom holds that growth can continue forever, it’s a challenge we can’t possibly address.
Whether you agree with that last part or not, at least Homer-Dixon acknowledges the reality (billions of people seeking a better life through economic growth) that remains one of the main obstacles to global action on climate change. And until the imperative of a better life for billions of poor is squared with the imperative for climate action, well, to paraphrase Homer-Dixon, that’s an we’re left with an equation we can’t possibly solve.
I do believe that growth will be decoupled from energy usage in the developed world and that this decoupling will transmit itself to the developing world very quickly.
This shows up clearly in per capita consumption of fuel. I don’t know why people are not looking at it a bit more closely.
Ah, well. Back to the Steig / O’Donnell mudfight, I guess…
I just had a series of very interesting conversations on exactly these topics with a good friend who has been working for decades in international development in central Africa. While I have been trying to separate out the issues of growth in the west versus growth in the poor countries, I think the upshot of the conversation for me is that the separation is even starker.
He suggests that nobody in the international development community thinks it is feasible to bring the world up to American “standards of living”; that emergence from dire poverty is the goal.
I had been assuming that there is an implicit promise that western lifestyles could be promulgated to the rest of the world, which really does not seem possible under foreseeable circumstances. I think the ethics of any other position are rather dubious. But it’s fair from the point of view of someone whose concern is the very poorest countries to suggest that that is a bridge to cross in the future. Everyone should agree to a modicum of food, water and health security. This would amount to an enormous percentage growth in the poorest countries, but wouldn’t scratch the surface of the total bulk of economic activity in the world.
The clear necessity is to limit many impacts to levels at or below current levels, greenhouse gases notable among them. This is not an issue for the poorest countries. It is an issue for the rapidly developing economies, particularly the enormous ones of India and China. And here is where the equity issues become thorny indeed, because China and India, naturally, think in terms of per capita impact and are unwilling to accept a perpetual license to the west to emit at a higher rate just because we got there first.
The idea that anybody objects to the emergence of the poorest countries from abject poverty is a misrepresentation, and I think a vicious one. Our problem is balancing the rights of the new middle-classes in the rapidly developing world vs our own in the developed world.
In order for us to sustain economic growth, the rate at which impact must decline is not a qualitative matter. It is precisely quantitatively constrained. The more inclined you are to international equity and to sustainability, the more severe that quantitative constraint becomes. If there is room for economic growth in the west, our whole concept of wealth must change rapidly. I hope we can achieve all those things but the numbers just don’t look good.
Tom Fuller Says:
February 9th, 2011 at 1:53 pm I do believe that growth will be decoupled from energy usage.
I believe growth will be decoupled from fossil fuel usage in the developing world before it decouples in the developed world. In the developed world we already own trillions in fossil fuel infrastructure. We might refrain from building more but we are not going to throw away trillions in assets.
If countries like China and Vietnam are not as rich as we are today by 2050, they will not be burning the midnight oil–or coal. If the developing countries do not develop along western lines then emission scenarios as put forth by the IPCC will need radical adjustment.
But so will the plans and projections of a lot of very bright people who think their accession to Western standards of living is not only possible but very much on the way.
It’s happening unevenly and Africa seems to be last on the list–but Africa is now growing at 5% per year, and appears to finally be moving in the right direction. Ignoring those gains and the clear path to progress is as dangerous as thinking that everything will always be rosy.
What’s holding Africa (and some other places like Myanmar and North Korea) back is governance and institutions, not any inherent obstacles to progress.
Many extremely alarming visions of the future do not take population dynamics into account.
The world is rapidly approaching a level of fertility that ensures population peaks and starts decreasing some years later. According to the Medium Variant of current (2008 Revision) of the UN population projections, that extend up to 2050 but could easily be extended for a few more years using the same assumptions, world population would start decreasing after mid century (~2065). Also, Third World per capita incomes, even in worst-case hypotheses, would be reasonably higher by then, thus greatly reducing the (already falling) percentage prevalence of poverty.
That Medium Variant does indeed understate fertility decline, because it assumes that all countries would converge (from 2015 onwards) towards a common fertility rate of 1.85 children per woman, at a common rate of 0.05 children per decade, when in fact there is no basis for such assumption: fertility decreases with per capita income, and goes down and down to about 1.3 children in higher incomes countries (then it’s seen to slightly increase in the very few countries with the highest income levels, such as Norway and a few other Western European countries, albeit not as yet returning to the replacement level of 2.1 children). This trajectory is more like the Low Variant of the UN, whereby fertility converges to 1.35 children. In this case, world population would start decreasing around 2040.
Under very modest total income growth rates during the century, either of these prospects (but especially the more realistic Low Variant) imply that per capita incomes may keep growing, even if total income grows very slowly or stops growing at all (a very unlikely possibility).
Besides, at very high levels of per capita income the energy intensity of GDP (emissions per million dollars) decreases (as services become more important than agriculture and manufacturing, and overall energy efficiency improves). With a shrinking population this may help a lot to reduce the increase in CO2 concentrations, not counting on future technical change that may further enhance that process.
References:
UN, 2009. World Population Prospects – The 2008 Revision online database. http://esa.un.org/unpp.
UN, 2007. Prospects for fertility decline in high fertility countries, Population Bulletin of the United Nations, Special Issue Nos. 46/47. New York: United Nations.
Myrskylä, Mikko, Hans-Peter Kohler & Francesco C. Billari, 2009. Advances in Development Reverse Fertility Declines. Nature 460:741. http://www.ccpr.ucla.edu/Seminars/Seminar Papers/Kohler-advances in development.pdf.
If countries like China and Vietnam are not as rich as we are today by 2050, they will not be burning the midnight oil”“or coal.
Countries like China and Vietnam are not as rich as we are today, and they are still burning a lot of oil and coal. I’m not sure what even Tom thinks this statement means.
The IPCC, of course, envisions multiple scenarios where “developing countries do not develop along western lines,” as Tom certainly knows. Even under the pie-in-the-sky B1 scenario, with a declining (but still much larger) population and widespread adoption of clean technologies allowing fossil fuel consumption below 1990 levels, we’d still be adding something like 950 GtC to the atmosphere.
The idea that no one is thinking about this is bizarre.
From MT: “The idea that anybody objects to the emergence of the poorest countries from abject poverty is a misrepresentation, and I think a vicious one.
Where did you get that idea from? Best as I can tell from calls to action like Roberts’ is that the issue is simply ignored. Read into that what you will.
From MT: “Our problem is balancing the rights of the new middle-classes in the rapidly developing world vs our own in the developed world.”
Any ideas on how to balance them while also getting the respective countries to reduce their carbon emissions?
Re PDA comment: IPCC SRES scenarios are based on quite old population projections, prepared by the mid 1990s based on growth up to the late 1980s or early 1990s. All of them have been greatly superseded by more recent projections, which project much lower population growth. The UN still produces a “High” variant where fertility is supposed to converge to 2.35, thus ensuring continued growth of population because 2.35 is larger than the replacement level, but this is practically certain not to happen, especially in view of rapid development in the Third World, ever faster decline in fertility, and an increasingly integrated and globalised world.
PDA, the question is what are they thinking about them? IIRC, the IPCC has 145 alternative scenarios which they refuse to rank in order of probability. This has resulted in the selection by analysts of a handful of these to represent the possible futures without explanation of the factors influencing their choices.
This has led to things like Nicholas Stern using a population figure for 2100 of 15 billion, which makes his projected impacts large and scary, but not extemely realistic, as the population will probably be about 9 billion.
China and Vietnam are indeed burning a lot of coal and oil right now. But most of the scenarios under discussion assume it’s going to increase dramatically. If it does not, things need to be recalculated.
Tom, according to current (2008 Revision) UN projections, the Medium variant foresees 9 billion as near the peak world population about mid century, then declining to some lower number by 2100 and afterwards. These projections are less realistic than the current Low Variant, and both (like their predecessors issued every 2 yrs since the 1990s) are very likely to be further reduced in the near future as demographers take on board more recent data.
“Any ideas on how to balance (rights of the new middle-classes in the rapidly developing world vs our own) while also getting the respective countries to reduce their carbon emissions?”
No, not without some fairly major realignment of our institutions and, I suspect, a thoroughly reinvented economic theory, unfortunately. I wish there were a simpler answer but every simpler answer I have seen seems to come from someone who doesn’t fully grasp the question.
I do think in principle it is possible to avoid terrific disruption in the general well-being or day to day life in most societies. The hurdles are not technological. In practice, though, it looks difficult to achieve. I wish people wouldn’t go so far as to call such difficulties “iron law” though; that is pretty far from constructive.
Michael Tobis comments seem to imply that socioeconomic reality can be purposely molded by human (political) volition, perhaps based on a better “theory” (e.g. economic theory). I doubt it. Macro-social, macro-economic historical processes, also built upon the decisions and behaviour of human beings, evolve according to their systemic properties, which are usually not sought or foreseen by individual actors (even the more powerful or influential ones) not emerge as a direct result of a coordinated plan. Economic theory, on the other hand, is not the cause behind economic reality (rather the opposite is true).
Repost because of typos:
Michael Tobis comments seem to imply that socioeconomic reality can be purposely molded by human (political) volition, perhaps based on a better “theory” (e.g. economic theory). I doubt it. Macro-social, macro-economic historical processes, although built upon the decisions and behaviour of human beings, evolve according to their systemic properties, which are usually not sought or foreseen by individual actors (even the more powerful or influential ones) nor emerge as a direct result of a coordinated plan. Economic theory, on the other hand, is not the cause behind economic reality (rather the opposite is true).
Hector and I disagree. I believe the modern commercial “marketplace” is an artifact, one which requires constant intervention to maintain. Some of the underlying principles are constant, but the way in which they interact is a matter of design, not of nature.
In short, I think economics is best construed not as a branch of science but as a branch of engineering. Many of our contemporary problems can be traced directly to the obviously incorrect idea that collective behavior cannot be influenced by collective decisions about the structure of the marketplace.
Indeed, the lack of a revenue neutral carbon tax capturing externalities can be considered a particularly apparent misfeature of the present design.
I agree, Michael, that we disagree. However, I am in good company. The naturally evolving nature of economies is a long-held tener of social and economic science, including Mandeville, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes and many others. Recent developments in “evolutionary economics” concur. Policy interventions of course have an influence, but the overall course of the system is beyond the will of any authority (especially now that authorities are chiefly national, and supra-national institutions are barely nascent, whilst the economy is global).
Hector–What do you think of ‘Nudge?’
Tobis–What do you think of ‘The Rational Optimist?’
There are 40 SRES scenarios, divvied into six main scenario families for the TAR and AR4, and the details of each in terms of population and emissions growth is given in the Emissions Scenarios document. Range of population is 7.1 to 15 billion by 2100, median 10.4 billion, range of CO2 is 773 to 2538 GtC with a median of 1509 GtC.
You don’t trust the IPCC to predict the temperature, but you want them to predict population growth? Nice try.
Tom,
I am not sure why you ask. The book (Nudge) is about acts or situations that tend to influence the behaviour of others. Mostly operates at micro level (upon individuals). Now, that kind of decisions (produced by “nudge”) or other decisions (say, those caused by rational deliberation) are all part of the normal functioning of human beings and their societies. What I meant in my previous intervention is that the overall structure, order and direction of society is not something that is consciously “designed” but something that emerges and evolves, including its emergent properties, out of all the objective and subjective factors at play. Thus nobody has planned that precisely my favourite newspaper will be in sufficient (but not quite excessive) supply tomorrow morning at my usual newsstand, and that some remote and unknown farmer has planted months ago the tomatoes I will be purchasing next week. Overall societal tendencies (such as a slightly decreasing energy intensity of GDP) also emerge in the same unplanned way, although they may be “nudged” by policy (but only if policy does not go counter the nature of things: see for instance the counter-productive and disastrous policies applied by the now extinct Soviet Union or that great eulogizer of “Will Power”, Adolf Hitler).
Hector, I actually think that book is pretty important for this issue in terms of policy directions. I think people can be ‘nudged’ into public transport by incentives and disincentives, electric vehicles favored over ICE, choices for building materials influenced, etc., etc.
I think governments can indicate their clear preferences and favor decisions without mandating behaviour. And I think it’s the only way in a reclining nation that is a bit too over-developed for its own good.
And I think the consensus team missed a huge opportunity when they chose the scare metaphor of cancer for comparison. Had they been smart enough to choose something like Type 2 diabetes, it would not have been as tough to put out the notion that we will have to manage this condition as opposed to cut out our lungs or die.
PDA, While I’m not sure I trust anyone these days to tell me what the temperature is, I’ll confirm your worst suspicions and say that I don’t trust the IPCC to use half-baked scenarios to tell me what to do about climate change without a bit more work on their scenarios. Which is why so many people have dismissed WG2 and WG3 as not useful.
PDA,
I did not say that I “trust” IPCC climate predictions, nor do I want them to “predict” population. The SRES scenarios use older population projections, all of them above current predictions (which are themselves in the process of been further reduced). The new crop of scenarios prepared for AR5 do not include any population hypothesis: they are simply a set of emission trajectories, produced by whatever economic or demographic process; this approach would allow impact estimates that use updated income or demographic projections.
The SRES are, furthermore, internally inconsistent in the way they model economic and demographic growth: there is no way of growing at the rates required to produce the foreseen global warming AND having such a high population growth. In fact, the SRES assume (a priori and separately) a certain demographic trajectory and a certain growth in per capita income, thus resulting in often incompatible outcomes. Thus the demographic growth of the A2 scenario, where population in 2100 reaches 15 billion, is conceivably acceptable as a theoretical demographic scenario (though utterly contrary to existing trends) but is definitely incompatible with the A2 rate of economic growth in either developed or developing countries. The same for other scenarios.
Interestingly, the idea that we lack global governance of economic matters is false. By far the most powerful international organization is the WTO, built on the GATT, which essentially unifies all the world’s economic transactions (except in a very small number of marginal countries) under a single framework.
What we do lack is direct democratic control over this institution. We also lack comparable institutions to protect other global interests besides economic interaction.
Tom Fuller Says:
February 9th, 2011 at 2:26 pm If countries like China and Vietnam are not as rich as we are today by 2050,
Vietnam only has 3 years of domestic coal reserves left. 50% of their generating capacity comes from oil. Vietnam ordered a pair of nuclear plants from Russia and another pair from Japan in 2010.
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/11/01/Vietnam-signs-nuclear-power-deals/UPI-63981288635619/
Inexpensively extractable coal is not evenly distributed throughout the world. Most of the developing world doesn’t have the coal resources to become prosperous on the back of coal.
In the Asia Pacific region Indonesia and Australia are the only substantial export capable coal countries. Indonesia has 17 years of reserves left.
Michael, the WTO lacks coercive power, and entirely relies on the autonomous decisions of governments. Moreover, nations can opt out of the WTO if they so desire. The same is valid for the United Nations in general (except for armed intervention in missions authorized by the Security Council). Of course, many countries have signed up as members of the WTO for their own convenience, and not exactly for love of free trade. But that is precisely my point.
Indirect democratic control of all international organizations operates through the national representatives to such organizations, which vote for policies dictated by their governments (which may or may not be democratically elected, of course). US citizens, for instance, choose a general course of action for the US regarding the UN each time they elect a president.
I do not know whether some form of “world government” will someday emerge from these nascent supranational institutions, other than the toothless bodies now existing (even some that are dentally better endowed, such as the European Parliament, are relatively weak in comparison to national European Parliaments).
Moreover, I do not think any consensus exist, within and among nations, to form any kind of world government, democratic or not. Give that idea at least a century or two to mature and evolve. And if anything, it will evolve according to the nature of the evolving international economy.
The recent world financial crisis demonstrated the lack of an effective international authority in economic and financial matters, and also the lack of coordination in national economic policies (most notably the large difference between US and EU approaches to fiscal stimulus policies, and the very different conduct of China). We still live in a world of nations, although these “political superstructures” (to use the old-fashioned Marxian term) are likely to follow in due course in the steps of the increasingly globalised and interconnected world economy.
Tom Fuller, of course people can respond to incentives. They do, all the time. But incentives and regulations may be counter-productive and crippling (remember the strong incentive, nay obligation, to use the Trabant car in East Germany, to give just an example).
All three of Roberts’ assumptions are wrong.. Humanity has always had to grapple with problems measured in centuries, the Egyptians and the Nile, the post Roman preservation of knowledge e.g..
Our population demographics and our lifestyle comfort is threatened, but not our existence.
It does not require global cooperation to overcome. If it did, it would never happen.
Rather than endlessly discuss grand plans and complex tasks for higher authorities, why don’t we just do one thing. Do one thing, and when it is done, do another.
People are capable of envisioning the “perfect” world and resolving any problem without resort to violence. However, to be honest, people have not shown the ability to achieve such results since they first stood up and started walking on their hind legs. One other little fact of life on planet Earth, do not discount man’s capability to ignore anything he wants to, and be as mean and cruel as he pleases no matter what the cooler, calmer, more intelligent members of the caveclan say.
“SRES Scenarios”
To be fair to the IPCC, the price of steam coal on world markets had been dropping in relation to inflation up to 2002 for 30 years. By 2005 which I believe was the data cut off date there was only anecdotal evidence that the 30 year coal price trend had ended.
The price of steam coal on global markets has increased 400% in the last 8 years and continues to rise.
The IPCC assessment that steam coal is evenly distributed throughout the world and virtually limitless is correct.
Inexpensively extractable steam coal is not evenly distributed throughout the world and it’s supply is limited as evidenced by the major price differentials.
Steam coal in Wyoming costs 75 cents/MMBtu, on the Eastern Seaboard of the US between $3.50 and $4.00/MMBtu, in Western Europe between $4.50 and $5.00/MMBtu and in Asia between $5.00 and $5.50/MMBtu with recent spikes above $6/MMBtu.
Coal costs about 3 cents/ton mile to transport by rail. Humanity has already burned up it’s inexpensively extractable coal located near major population centers.
New Nuclear competes well with New Coal at a coal price of about $4/MMbtu.
The Cancun declaration included the phrase ‘technology transfer’.
Diplo-speak for nuclear power plants.