Sceptical environmentalism
31 August 2010
Review of Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits by Bjorn Lomborg 2010 (Cambridge University Press)
In all my writing on climate change I maintain a strict distinction between scepticism and denial with respect to scientific evidence. The people called ‘climate change sceptics’ are entitled to challenge the evidence for climate change inducing global heating, but if they wish to do this in the name of science, they need to earn that the title ‘sceptic’ the hard way – by research, evidence and fact gained in accordance with scientific principles. Cherry picking data, helping oneself to the research of others, spinning the evidence to fit pre-determined positions, traducing the motives of others, demanding things that science cannot deliver, such as ‘conclusive proof’, exploiting the fact that science works on the frontier of uncertainty to imply that scientific evidence as such is uncertain – none of that is the work of a sceptic or a scientist. All scientists are sceptics. All climate change scientists are sceptics in that their work is open to scrutiny and testing and falsification. Climate change deniers are not scientists, they are political hacks making the world safe for the rich and the powerful. They are free, in that political capacity, to challenge climate science. This issue will, ultimately, have to be settled at the level of ethics and politics in any case. But I’m damned if I’m going to call them by the honourable and hard-earned title of ‘sceptic’. They are deniers. No more and no less.
But what is one to make of Bjorn Lomborg, the self-styled ‘sceptical environmentalist’? He has been lauded by the deniers and has been quoted and cited the world over when it comes to challenging the consensus on climate change. Now we read headlines like ‘Top climate sceptic calls for $100bn fund to fight warming’ and ‘Bjorn Lomborg says humanity must confront rising temperatures’.
Bjorn Lomborg is a Danish statistician and academic whose book, The Sceptical Environmentalist, identified him as the world's best-known and most name-dropped challenger of the scientific consensus with respect to global warming and ensuing climate change. Lomborg was the ‘sceptical environmentalist’ whose dissenting voice was quoted by climate change deniers the world over. Now, in his new book, Lomborg is advocating huge investment in order to fight global warming. Lomborg’s call must chill the blood of the deniers, who have been concerned above all to block government intervention, regulation and spending. Whilst Lomborg’s solutions are debatable - climate campaigners will like some but not others – his change of mind on the threat of global warming is worth a great deal. There must now be many deniers who used to cite Lomborg regularly who must be feeling very uncomfortable.
Lomborg made his name attacking climate scientists, environmental campaigners, the media which pushed the idea of global warming. Lomborg not only argued that the rate of global warming and its effects on humans had been exaggerated, but that attempts to deal with the problem would amount to a costly waste of policies.
One can see how such views would make Lomborg popular with climate change deniers, and with governments and industrial lobbies trying to prevent action. None of that makes Lomborg one of the deniers, and none of that makes Lomborg wrong. There is certainly a case for arguing that climate deals which are halfway house compromises between various vested interests are most likely to be very costly in terms of monetary resources as well as being a waste of time. There is indeed a danger of wasting resources through taking the attitude that any deal is better than no deal. A deal that wastes precious time and resources and yet leaves the problem unresolved is worse than doing nothing. Insofar as this was Lomborg’s position, then it is reasonable.
Whilst Lomborg's Sceptical Environmentalist was criticised as selective, unprofessional and confused, many influential voices supported him. Time Magazine declared Lomborg one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. The Cambridge University Press (CUP) published his books in the UK and the US. In the US Ondi Timoner and Ralph Winter are set to release a film which carries the subtitle: ‘the first optimistic film about global warming’ all about Lomborg’s 2007 book Cool It.
This is a misrepresentation. Lomborg is not optimistic about global warming at all. Not now, and not in 2007. In Cool It, Lomborg argued that global warming is real and largely human-made. He also argued that global warming will have a serious impact on humans and the environment toward the end of the twenty first century. What Lomborg did deny is that climate change will cause massive disruptions or inflict a huge death toll. Lomborg also claimed that we can do fairly little about global warming and only at fairly high costs. But Lomborg, in Cool It, did not advocate that we should just do nothing and embrace global warming. That’s how deniers chose to read his message. Instead, Lomborg argues that we should focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/Aids and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply. This can all be done at a fraction of the cost and can save millions of lives within our lifetime.
Lomborg's new book seems to contradict much of what he has previously said. But Lomborg's views on climate change should not be evaluated by what deniers have said in his name. Whereas deniers kept citing Lomborg and repeating the view that climate change is a natural phenomenon (it is, but that doesn’t exclude it being human made in addition, they are two different and perfectly compatible cycles), Lomborg argued that global warming is happening and is largely caused by human activity. What Lomborg was really arguing was that the threat of global warming was exaggerated and that certain policies to tackle the threat were expensive and irrelevant to the problem. So Lomborg argued that the money would be better spent on, for example, reducing malaria and HIV/Aids, or extending clean water and sanitation.
Those things should be being done anyway. A new concept of security, one focused on the planet and not on the nation state, will permit a shift in resources within the global arms budget of $1.7 trillion. All the things that Lomborg advocated in Cool It can be done and should be done. But now Lomborg is addressing the picture of climate change. Acting on short and long range interests can be done as part of the same project of restoring planetary health.
In April 2004 Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, compared Lomborg to Hitler for the way that he treated human beings as mere numbers, rather than respecting their humanity. ‘What is the difference between Lomborg's view of humanity and Hitler's? You cannot treat people like cattle. You must respect the diversity of cultures on earth. Lomborg thinks of people like numbers... if you were to accept Lomborg's way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing.’ (To which, I would add, you should not treat cattle like cattle).
That dehumanisation comes with the terrain of objective analysis of trends and tendencies. Max Weber referred to the instrumental rationality of the institutions of capitalist modernity as proceeding ‘without regard for persons’. That failure to respect humanity lies at the heart of capitalist modernity, so one should not blame social science for reflecting that dehumanisation. That, I’m afraid, is how the system operates.
One can certainly understand why Pachauri was so outraged, mind. In Cool It, Lomborg argues that predicted temperature rises could save more than 1.3 million lives a year since more people would be spared early cold-related deaths than would be at risk from heat-related respiratory fatalities. It seems somewhat beside the point to state that Lomborg’s figures have been rejected by academics. Even if the figures were accurate, to trade the lives and deaths of human beings this way corresponds only to some crude utilitarian calculus gone made, not to a system of ethics. Unless we really are preparing to enter the age of the new barbarism.
Lomborg’s work as a statistician gives his views the air of unreality. It doesn’t make him wrong. He concludes that, as a result of imbalances in where deaths occur, the proposed extension of the Kyoto protocol to cut carbon emissions would "save 4,000 people annually in the developing world [but] end up sacrificing more than a trillion dollars and 80,000 people annually."
Some would read Lomborg’s approach as immoral, treating human beings as numbers to be traded. But that is Lomborg’s job as a statistician. If we don’t like the calculus – and I don’t – then we need to come up with a new game. This is what Lomborg seems to be doing. Lomborg seems to have changed his view.
Like all true sceptics and all true scientists, Lomborg has been persuaded by the evidence. That’s something that deniers never do. The title of Lomborg's new book indicates a change of emphasis on his part: Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits. In the introduction, Lomborg declares boldly that climate change is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront".
Climate change is undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today... the research presented [in the book] together answers a fundamental question that we often overlook: not if we should do something about global warming, but rather how best to go about it.
Investing about $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century.
Pachauri has given his endorsement to Lomborg’s new book, Smart Solutions to Climate Change. "This book provides not only a reservoir of information on the reality of human-induced climate change, but raises vital questions and examines viable options on what can be done to meet the challenge."
It is interesting that this apparent U-turn has received so little coverage, given that come every climate conference, Lomborg’s name was cited by deniers in putting the case against human made climate change. Interesting, but not surprising. In his new book, Lomborg calls for substantial investment into the attempt to tackle climate change. This is significant, given Lomborg’s chief bugbear previously had been with the potential waste of resources. "Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century," the book concludes, on an optimistic note.
And he’s right. Of course, it is perfectly possible to waste any fund of money – and business and government are more than capable of doing so. It all depends on how the money is spent and how the spending is controlled and monitored.
There is nothing particularly new about anything that Lomborg proposes. One could be blasé here and say it amounts to doing a little bit of everything that is already being done or being proposed.
Lomborg recommends investment into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and he wants more work on geo-engineering ideas such as "cloud whitening" to reflect the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere.
These ideas are already out there. Environmentalists tend to divide on the split between decentralising-democratic soft technologies and the centralising-authoritarian hard technologies. Lomborg’s view seems to be that we should be open to all of them. Well, Nicholas Stern is also of the view that we might need a little bit of everything, remain open and try different things as we go.
Lomborg’s approach is similar. And he has some good ideas. He would tax carbon emissions in order to finance investment and to mitigate the effect of climate change by such measures as building better sea defences and providing global healthcare.
Lomborg has argued for targeted expenditure like this in the past. We are not short of ideas. The real importance of Lomborg’s new view is that he now makes clear the extent to which global heating is a serious threat, not the exaggerated threat he once claimed it to be. And he makes it clear that we need to spend some serious hard cash in order to deal with the threat.
Lomborg insists that people who have never read his work attribute false views to his position. I can account for that. I frequently heard a well-known loud mouth, know-nothing shock jock on radio denying human made climate change, endlessly citing Lomborg as arguing that climate change is a natural phenomenon. This is a misrepresentation of Lomborg’s position, and points to the need to be sceptical about everything we hear and read on the issue in the media. "I keep trying to fight this, mainly because people often hear what I say through others."
Whether fairly or not, Lomborg was regularly cited by climate change deniers concerned to challenge the evidence for global warming and block the expenditure of substantial sums. Lomborg is an economist and statistician, not a climate scientist, but he was the best the deniers could come up with. Lomborg has effectively repudiated his former supporters. No doubt a career opportunity has opened up here for some journalistic hack on the make, another self-styled ‘sceptic’ with bold and radical ideas (which coincidentally mirror private business interests perfectly).
One should not feel too sorry for Lomborg. It can be reasonably argued that he has invited misrepresentation. Whilst Lomborg did, in his past work, accept the case for human-made global warming as unarguable fact, his statements to this effect were all too brief, and surrounded by long arguments about how greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures have been higher in the very, very distant past. Deniers seized upon this emphasis to draw the thoroughly erroneous conclusion that this must mean that global warming cannot be caused by human industrial activity – ‘there were no cars back then’ I have heard commentators say (whether they are serious or merely playing politics, deliberately fooling the foolish, I can’t be bothered to work out.)
Lomborg also claimed that impacts such as rising sea levels and the threat to polar bears have been distorted. Claims like that can be tested by evidence. The evidence is that Lomborg is wrong. There has been no distortion of the data and he has certainly not shown any in his work. Exaggeration? That depends on the particular claims.
Lomborg also demonstrates a tendency to make statements which seem to be directly contradictory. In just four pages of Cool It, Lomborg writes that "climate change will not cause massive disruptions or huge death tolls", that "the general and long-term impact will be predominantly negative", and that it is "obvious that there are many other and more pressing issues". That pretty much has all options covered – but maybe the views are consistent if, by ‘predominantly negative’, Lomborg means ‘not too bad’.
Lomborg explains himself thus: "The point I've always been making is, it's not the end of the world. That is why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well."
Lomborg’s emphasis on the need for action on climate change comes at a significant moment, with international efforts to agree a global deal on emissions faltering and given the attempts by deniers to cast doubt on the reliability of the scientific evidence for global warming in light of the hacked UEA emails. In science, all evidence is always in doubt. The deniers have yet to challenge climate science at the level of evidence. Instead, they are damaging the reputation of climate scientists. This is an attack on science as such, and Lomborg has done well to pull clear of it.
One can question just how big a U-turn Lomborg has performed here. He is concerned to point out that even in The Sceptical Environmentalist he accepted the evidence for human-made global warming. "The point I've always been making is it's not the end of the world. That's why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well."
OK, but if the evidence for global heating is sound, then it will be the end of civilised life as we know it. But Lomborg is right to argue that we should be spending our money well. Whilst no-one would argue the contrary position, Lomborg does have a point: committing resources is not enough, they have to be well targeted and they have to be effective in addressing the causes of climate change. Daft time and money wasting schemes like cap and trade are not only hopeless as pretend solutions, they will ensure that the worst will happen.
It was in his 2004 book Global Crises, Global Solutions that Lomborg first reported the detailed analysis by economists of how best to spend money to help the world's people. This concern has now been institutionalised in the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, of which Lomborg is the director. And the approach is in line with Lomborg’s latest book on climate "solutions".
It was the Copenhagen Consensus project which induced a change of mind on Lomborg’s part. In this project, a group of economists were asked the question of how best to spend $50bn.
The first results, in 2004, had global warming near the bottom of the list, with policies such as fighting malaria and HIV/Aids higher. The results in 2008 introduced new ideas for reducing the temperature rise, and some of these were ranked halfway up the list. At this point, Lomborg decided to consider a greater variety of policies designed to tackle global warming.
"If the world is going to spend hundreds of millions, where could you get the most bang for your buck?" was the question Lomborg posed. Denying that he has performed a U turn, Lomborg argues that circumstances have changed. The first Copenhagen Consensus of 2004 considered only the predominant idea of cutting carbon emissions through a cap or tax. When the exercise was repeated in 2008, he examined not just the dominant international policy to cut carbon emissions, but also seven other "solutions", (comprising 15 policy suggestions), including boosting R&D in technology, climate engineering, cleaning up soot and methane, which also contribute significantly to global warming, and planting more trees.
Lomborg should have examined a wide variety of options like this in the first place, before he dismissed climate policies and, in the process, handed ammunition to those who really are climate change deniers. It is this that makes environmentalists sceptical of Lomborg – he’s a loose cannon, unreliable and prone to mislead people. However, his conclusion is clear enough: "If we care about the environment and about leaving this planet and its inhabitants with the best possible future, we actually have only one option: we all need to start seriously focusing, right now, on the most effective ways to fix global warming."
Well, that’s what some of us have been attempting to do all along. But Lomborg is welcome to join us.
And Lomborg remains profoundly critical of the dominant, cutting-carbon approach, as indeed are four of the five economists in his team, and who ranked the approach at the bottom of their lists. Only Nancy Stokey, of the University of Chicago, ranked lower- and mid-level carbon taxes higher, and even then only around the middle of her list.
Against the predominant approach, Lomborg’s book advocates investment in clean technology research and development and more development work in climate engineering.
That sounds reasonable enough. However, in evaluating Lomborg’s suggested policies, one needs to know what kind of timescale Lomborg is working on. Scientists and energy experts are giving us merely five years to avoid transgressing the critical threshold of a 2C temperature increase. Without substantial reductions in carbon emissions, we are in the terrain of dangerous climate change. And Lomborg is also advocating carbon taxes to fund his investment, a $7-a-tonne tax on carbon emissions, which would raise $250bn a year. $100bn could be spent on clean-tech R&D, about $1bn on climate engineering, $50bn on adapting to changes (building sea defences, for example), and the remaining $99bn or so on "getting virtually everybody on the planet healthcare, basic education, clean drinking water, and so on. It seems a pretty good deal."
Lomborg’s case is strengthened by the manifest failures of government and politics. Frankly, the past quarter of a century is a sorry tale of missed opportunities that should embarrass and shame all those involved in politics, including members of the electorates themselves. I would like to know where politicians, political commentators and voters have had their heads shoved these past decades.
Lomborg sees climate engineering as a back-up plan. I see it as a last throw of the dice. Many seem to think that the time has come to gamble. Politics has failed, we have no option. Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, is calling for accelerated research into geo-engineering and demanding a worldwide nuclear power station "binge" to avoid runaway global warming.
I call it technological madness and gambling, and Wadhams recognises that both potential solutions possess inherent dangers and offer no guarantees. But there is no denying Wadhams point that time is running out.
"Co2 levels are rising at a faster than exponential rate, and yet politicians only want to take utterly trivial steps such as banning plastic bags and building a few windfarms. Having done almost nothing for two decades we need to adopt more desperate measures such as considering geo-engineering techniques as well as conducting a major nuclear programme."
That’s just a desperate statement. So that’s what two to three centuries of industrial progress in the service of our machine gods has achieved? That’s a pretty miserable comment on the failures of politics and ethics – which are our failures. I believe geo-engineering and nuclear power are massive gambles, part of a technocratic madness that still sees the world as external dead matter to be manipulated. But I reserve the greatest contempt not for the likes of Wadhams but for governments and the people who elect them into office, for business and the way it has systemically violated the planet, and for climate change deniers and the people daft enough to believe them or greedy enough to want to believe them.
Lomborg now appreciates the possibility of "something really bad lurking around the corner" – this is the small-chance, big-consequence outcome that Lomborg appeared to dismiss in his earlier work.
Lomborg is adamant that he is not performing a U-turn. He emphasises that he has never denied anthropogenic global warming. And this is true. Lomborg was a sceptic open to evidence and reason, not a denier. And Lomborg also insists that he estimated the cost of damage to be between 2% and 3% of world wealth by the end of the twentieth century. Lomborg insists that this is the same estimate given by Lord Stern, whose report for the British government argued that the world should commit 1-2% of gross domestic product on spending to tackle climate change and so avoid future damage. There is some confusion, here, however, since the Stern report estimated the cost of damage at 5-20% of GDP, however, substantially more than the 2-3% estimated by Lomborg. Lomborg explains the difference as attributable to the use of a different "discount factor". How do we discount the future? The discount factor is the method used by economists to recalculate the value today of money spent or saved in the future – how much is this generation's grandchildren's lives worth? That’s a question that should concentrate a few minds. Individuals come and go, but extinction ends that reassuring sense of continuity. Extinction renders life pointless. But I digress.
Lomborg claims that neither is measurably "right", they are judgments, judgements with a profound impact on subsequent analysis of the costs and benefits of spending money now to halt climate change. Judgements? As I have argued all along, when all the science and statistics and economics has been done and the information and evidence is before us, this question remains a political and ethical one – it calls for prudential judgement, it calls on all of us to act as citizens and assume moral responsibility for the way we choose to live our lives. How much value do people place in the future? What are we all living for?
The best that has been achieved is the Kyoto process. It isn’t ideal, its advocates claim, but it’s the best we’ve got. It’s some way of keeping governments focused on the future, which is better than nothing. Lomborg doubts the reasoning. Kyoto is vulnerable to unkept promises, too slow to deliver, and unrealistic with respect to the economic aspirations of developing countries. The closer to people and practices solutions are, the more likely they are to be undertaken and sustained. Governments are remote, moving slowly, if at all. Critics of Kyoto claim that has proved to be an unwieldy and ineffective way of delivering necessary investment in energy efficiency and clean electricity, and has frequently resulted in unnecessarily expensive and hugely ineffective policies. For most policy areas, says Lomborg: "We say to people, what are the smartest ways to deal with this?" Curiously, with climate change, they say there's a right solution: that's cutting carbon."
The appeal of the "biggest bang for the buck" Copenhagen Consensus approach lies in its ability to identify practicable solutions on the ground, developing momentum from below in complete contrast to the bloated, inert and frankly useless approach of government from above.
Critics are not convinced, questioning in particular the huge assumptions required in order to convert human wellbeing and suffering into numbers (such as the discount rates). Many important factors that have never been quantified, such as the predicted total loss of coral reefs and other impacts of rapid ocean acidification, are simply excluded. They don’t exist. Professor Katherine Richardson, a marine biologist and vice-dean of science at the University of Copenhagen, exposes the limitations well: "A lot hinges on whether you think that societal decision should be made by economists alone. [For example] I can think of much cheaper ways of taking care of our elderly in society than building expensive and modern nursing homes. In reality, we get very little return for that investment."
The case is not against the economists’ approach as such but against the economic approach alone. We need not only a range of options with respect to technologies, but a range of approaches. And rather than begin anew, with however many years it may take to generate momentum, many climate scientists think it best to accept that we are where we are. A radical change of tack risks a further delay in political action, with the odds being, within existing political institutions, some quarter of a century down the line we end up with Kyoto in another form. The problem of climate change needs to be addressed now, with whatever tools and resources are now available, developing others as we go.
"Fundamentally," Lomborg argues, "it would have been better if Pachauri or Stern were to make this argument. This isn't about ownership of the idea, but it's an idea we need to listen to if we want to get the climate fixed."