February 19, 2005
THE ART OF THE DOABLE:
Kyoto Protocol Misplaced Priorities (Bjorn Lomborg, 15 February 2005, The Jakarta Post)
When the Kyoto treaty enters into force on February 16, the global warming community will undoubtedly congratulate itself: to do good they have secured the most expensive worldwide treaty ever. They have succeeded in making global warming a central moral test of our time. They were wrong to do so.Global warming is real and is caused by emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). But existing climate models show we can do little about it. Even if everyone (including the United States) applied the Kyoto rules and stuck to them throughout the century, the change would be almost immeasurable, postponing warming for a mere six years in 2100 while costing at least US$150 billion a year.
Global warming will mainly harm developing countries, because they are poorer and therefore less able to handle climate changes. However, by 2100, even the most pessimistic forecasts from the UN expect the average person in the developing countries to be richer than now, and thus better able to cope.
So Kyoto is basically a costly way of doing little for much richer people far in the future. We need to ask ourselves if this should be our first priority. [...]
We live in a world with limited resources, so caring more about some issues means caring less about others. If we have a moral obligation, it is to spend each dollar doing the most good that we possibly can. With Kyoto, the world will spend $150 billion a year on doing little good a century from now. In comparison, the UN estimates that half that amount could buy clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care, and education for every single person in the world. Which is better?
Global warming really is the moral test of our time, but not in the way its proponents imagine. We need to stop our obsession with global warming and start dealing with more pressing and tractable problems first.
Global warming benefits precisely from the fact that it has to be taken on faith. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 19, 2005 6:15 AM
The real problem is that even if you believe in Global Warming, there are far more cost effective solutions or ameloriations than Kyoto, such as an L1 solar shield or a massive build up of nuclear power. You may say, that'd cost some big bucks, but I'm sure we could do it for less than the $150B/year the ineffective Kyoto would cost.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at February 19, 2005 12:38 PMAOG: My favorite is fertilizing the now infertile sections of the southern ocean. grow enormous algea blooms. Every winter they will freeze, die and sink taking billions of tons of CO2 to the bottom. The cost would be a pitance. Mostly Fe2O3 and some PO4 crushed and sprayed over the area in the spring.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at February 19, 2005 4:10 PM