Is Reducing Carbon Emissions Worth The Cost?

I believe that this is one of the biggest question that we, as a generation, must answer. Paraphrasing Al Gore, the numbers are out, the climate is changing and humans are the cause. Assuming we all agree on that, the question then remains: What are we going to do about it? and How far are we willing to go to change things? NPR’s Intelligence Squared held an Oxford style debate addressing these questions. Unfortunately, the show was aired minutes before the Superbowl and I don’t think many folks got a chance to listen to it. A brief summary from the NPR website states:

Three experts argued in favor of the motion; three against. Before the debate, the audience at Symphony Space in New York City voted 16 percent in favor of the motion and 49 percent against, with 35 percent undecided. By the end of the debate, those arguing for the motion had changed the most minds: Forty-two percent voted in favor of the proposition "Major Reductions in Carbon Emissions Are Not Worth the Money," while 48 percent voted against it and 10 percent were still undecided.

Diving in slightly more details, arguing for the motion was:

• Peter Huber - the co-author of The Bottomless Well, is a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans and Figel, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for Forbes.
• Bjorn Lomborg - the author of Cool It and The Skeptical Environmentalist, is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School. In 2004, he began the Copenhagen Consensus, a conference of top economists who come together to prioritize the best solutions for world problems.
• Philip Stott - Professor emeritus and a biogeographer from the University of London, was the editor of the Journal of Biogeography for 18 years.

Arguing against the motion was:

• L. Hunter Lovins - president of Natural Capitalism Solutions, which creates practical tools and strategies aimed at enabling companies, communities and countries to increase prosperity and quality of life.
• Oliver Tickell - the author of Kyoto2, in which he sets out an international framework for the control of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere intended to be effective, efficient and equitable.
• Adam Werbach - global chief executive officer at Saatchi & Saatchi S, a sustainability consulting division of Saatchi & Saatchi, is regarded as one of the world's premier experts in sustainability. At age 23, he was elected as the youngest president ever of the Sierra Club, the oldest and largest environmental organization in the United States (This guy is ridiculously impressive on paper).

The summary of the debate:

The debate that ensued was very interesting and engaging. My recap will do it no justice so I suggest that you listen to Podcast when you get a chance. Mr. Lomborg went first and presented what I would submit is a false choice argument. Essentially, he said that resources are tight, and we should spend time and money focusing on issues we can solve today such Malaria, famine and water provision. Tickell countered that Global warming is real, urgent and has major consequences should we choose to do nothing about it. He argued that we can address the problems that Lomborg brought as well as global warming. He went as far as saying that we solving global warming in a smart and efficient manner would be address some of the issues brought up by Lomborg and would also be seen as investment. Hubert followed by arguing that pouring money into global warming was putting the rich nations of the world at an economic disadvantage because “5 billion poor people are already the main problem”. As he put it, “their fecundity has beaten out our gluttony” therefore they will continue to use the cheapest resources available to them (i.e. coal, oil) while the western nations will impose unnecessary “taxes” on their companies thus making it impossible for them to compete on the international market. Mr. Werbach summed up Mr. Huber’s argument as “No, we can’t”. He then presented several anecdotal evidence how become green would positively influence the economy at individual level, the company level and the macro level. However, he did couch the cost as investment instead of expenditures. Mr. Stott then presented what I thought was the most irrationally, incoherent argument of the debate. He argued that climate science is “sub-prime science, sub-prime economics and above all sub-prime politics and will cost us dearly”. He added humanity resides in temperatures raging from –20 degree Celsius to 50 degree Celsius, implying that a change of 2 or 3 degrees Celsius will not inflict much change in the planet. And if it were to inflict any changes, the humanity would simply adapt. In her presentation, Mrs Lovins argued that there would be not much of a cost associated with major carbon reduction. she stated that we could do this by focusing on the low-hanging fruits. She said “we simply need to smart about how we use energy”. The debate then entered a QA section.

My Thoughts:

I found the debate to be very interesting. However I felt that none of the panelists really addressed the question heads on. The panelists for the motion simply argued that we had better things to do with our money and that global warming is a farse. The panelists against the motion argued that it’s an investment and would barely cost anything. The fact of the matter is that it will cost us, the tax payers, an insane amount of money to curb Carbon emissions. The fact that none of the panelists against the motion were willing to admit that was slightly discerning. If we going to make any progress of climate change, these expert have to start making a real and honest case for it. I think the vast majority of the people (despite the result of the survey at the end of programs) are for fighting climate change, they just need to presented with a convincing argument. However as some of the panelist pointed out during the debate, we must let climate change overshadow other issues we face today. In my opinion, they are just are critical and consequential as climate change.

P.S. If you think congress to should act fast on the issue of climate change, you should consider joining the Energy Action Coalition and their powershift09 campaign. They’ve done some good stuff thus far.