This is something which Michael Tobis has been discussing in some depth on his blog.
Here are some thoughts of my own.
How best to encourage developing countries to grow their economies, in a world where one of the biggest risks from growth is ever-increasing emissions and environmental activities which do harm in their own right and contribute to the problem of global warming? Roger Pielke Sr. is one of the few climate scientists who, though he has issues with the IPCC, has long been an advocate of reducing vulnerability via a range of mechanisms, one of which, management of land-use change, also has a large part to play in both regional scale and global climate impacts. His site contains many references, so I suggest a browse if the idea interests you (it will also allow Roger to speak for himself, rather than be misinterpreted by me).
Do we need to move away from the ‘cash-crop’ model of development? (have we already done so?) In this model, there needs to be something that developing countries can produce, which has added value on the world market, and which will generate foreign exchange, work and growth opportunities. The problem is, the highest value crops are often associated with the worst kinds of environmental depredation. There’s also the problem of supply and demand; they are, in most cases, supplying what we (in the developed countries) allegedly want: cheap goods, low-priced food…
(So, in part, our low inflation rate is dependent on the exploitation of vulnerable resources and ecosystems.) An example of this is the large expansion of beef production.
There are so many strands of interrelationship now between the various economies of the world that it is very difficult to act for the best, if the main criteria for success is increased wealth, or greater economic development, for one or a few autonomous parts (countries). An example of this is Fair Trade; already, what is a simple and decent idea in principle has been hijacked (but only in a few cases) by unscrupulous organisations to generate a ‘brand identity’ with green credentials, taking no account of the effects of their investment, beyond the simple enrichment of local cooperatives. Competitive international economic strategies will struggle to provide any solutions.
There are many people better qualified than me to explain these things, but this is an example of why it is argued that dealing with climate change comes at a cost; it isn’t the cost of building stuff, but the cost of ‘constraining’ growth on a global scale. Increased wealth can (but not necessarily; look at Nigeria) improve the lives of millions and contribute to a decent chance of a life for people where disease, water, conflict and adverse climate make life hard. Climate change has an impact on all of these things, too. So the challenge is to find ways to increase wealth, health and stability via economic growth in developing countries, whilst avoiding cutting down rainforests, building coal-fired power stations, or developing land in flood plains and coastal strips.
Is this impossible? Certainly not. Will it involve cost? Certainly. Who is going to pay? There is only one way to ‘pay’ for this – to absorb the cost in the global economy, which means that those with more than they need have to be persuaded that, if they aren’t willing to share out some of their hard-earned excess, the problems are unlikely to be solved. Put this way (and it isn’t the only way, or even necessarily the best way to put it), the only viable solution to the global problems of climate, environment and economy appears to be a general redistribution of at least some wealth. Which means us (the lucky ones) choosing to allow our representatives to give some of what we earn and pay in taxes, to the representatives of people who are less lucky.
Michael has been struggling with the idea that everything in our society appears to be measured in economic terms; of cost vs benefit, of bottom line and profit and loss. I agree with him that this is at the least unconstructive, at worst, an absolute limitation on the effectiveness of any response to either climate or environmental problems. If the response to a problem is ‘what’s it going to cost me?’ or ‘what’s in it for me?’, then the problems for which the answers to these questions is ‘some of your excess wealth’ and ‘nothing, directly’, are never going to get solved.
Be loved. Be patient. Think of others first.
Old man in a cave 
10 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 9, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Heiko Gerhauser
What strikes me is that say India isn’t poor, because it doesn’t have technology, or because rich nations have chosen not to share. The latter would help, and so would fancy new technology.
What economics tells me is that to get rich, India needs capital accumulation, ie investment and time. When you start with mud huts and uneducated subsistence farmers, you first need to educate teachers and build schools, and then it takes 20 years for the school children to become adults, and then these adults can build factories that churn out road building equipment, and workers that know how to operate that equipment to build roads. And then these roads can be used to supply factories or transport concrete to build better schools.
When as with climate change the bulk of potential damage is deemed to be in the far future, I think therefore that it can make perfect sense for an India today with per capita income below $1000 to favour development rather than spend $50 metric tonne of carbon to have wind turbines rather than coal fired power plants, and for an India with a per capita income of $60,000 in 2100 then to build plenty of wind mills to then capture carbon at $500 per tonne cost.
I know that countries like Nigeria may not be the least interested in investment. You have a few corrupt very rich people, who are perfectly willing to extract oil, or strike down virgin forest and plow all of the money they get in return into consumption.
With that kind of economic model, we don’t have Nigeria in 2100 with per capita GDP of $60,000 and plenty of wind turbines and restored forests, you have a dirt poor Nigeria with per capita GDP of $100, desertified landscapes, no oil, plenty of disease and life expectancy of 20 years.
What strikes me though is that the key issue for Nigerian welfare isn’t whether climate will be 3C warmer than today. They can have desert and famine with climate exactly the same as today, and they can have $60,000 per capita and flourishing forests with an extra 3C.
The key difference I think is to get economic development right, so that, if oil is combusted, or forest is cut down, there is enough investment to compensate.
I know there can be disagreement about the respective value of Nigeria in 2100 having an extra car each, or having preserved some forest animals from extinction, and there can be plenty of disagreement whether an investment will be successful.
So, when it comes to detail, it’s always hard to make the right decisions, but overall, I think economic development and preservation of the environment don’t have to be opposed to be to each other.
As said above, I think we can have economic development and, largely, preservation of the environment, and no economic development and destruction of the environment that’s so damn obvious that you can’t really argue there hasn’t been any.
May 10, 2007 at 9:37 am
fergusbrown
Heiko: you say here that, because most of the problems are going to be distant, then the solutions can be, too. But it would be of little use to India, for example, if the state had more to invest in newer technology, if in the interim the monsoon patterns had changed and a proportion of the country thereby became untenable for habitation.
Your argument only holds if plans for mitigation are abandoned. Whilst this may allow developing countries to maintain their pace of growth in the interim, it would also be more or less guaranteeing a level of warming which would place evry nation on the planet under sever stress, and in conditions where economic growth might be the least of their problems.
Taking away references to any specific country, your point about how investment/capital is invested now is much more critical. But in the case of certain countries, investment and development are irrelevancies so long as there is no effective rule of law. The presence of warfare, severe repression or anarchy in a country more or less eliminates concerns about vulnerability or viability. I’d also argue that having both future wealth and a sustainable environmental situation, under a scenario of 3C warming, will be out of the question in about half of the places which currently sustain human life; beyond a certain level of climate change, the options simple disappear.
One of the potential consequences of projected future resource shortage is an expansion of the number and intensity of conflicts, mostly, but not all, in areas where control of one key resource literally determines life or death. If it is the case that future warming will lead to more wars, then investment is neither here nor there.
Yes, we should, in principle, be able to see both development and conservation, but there is little in the current global scenario which encourages me to think that this is likely in developing countries, at the moment.
You argument appears to boil down to the idea that future technological improvement will compensate sufficiently for consequential warming and other climate changes to justify delaying spending until it can be afforded. I can only suggest to this that it is a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
May 10, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Heiko Gerhauser
I don’t seem to have put my points across very well, if you think it boils “down to the idea that future technological improvement will compensate ..”. Really, I was talking about the mechanics of economic growth in the absence of technological improvements.
Or maybe I misunderstand what you mean by “technological improvements”. We don’t need new technology to have 50 TW (50000 GW) of wind turbines, but it’s definitely a technology related improvement to have them in a 100 years time.
If you mean the latter, then yes, I do think “technological improvements” can compensate for 3C warming, in the sense that people can be much better off than today in 2100 in spite of 3C warmer temperatures. After all, that is precisely what the IPCC scenarios envision.
If the IPCC scenarios are fine with regards to the wealth levels in 2100 contained therein, you can reasonably ask the question of intergenerational equity. Why should we who are poor pay, rather than those who will be very rich in 2100.
That argument of course entirely disintegrates, if people won’t be much richer in 2100. But, if they are, why shouldn’t they shoulder a cost of $500 per tonne of carbon to take it out of the air, rather than us paying $50 today not to emit it in the first place?
The argument likewise disintegrates, if the damage caused by the CO2 while it is in the air (between being emitted today and being scrubbed out again in 2100) is huge.
We’ve talked about me being an optimist, well, I think there’s a fair chance we shall have no more war in a few decades. I think the world will be very wealthy in 2100. The comparison I draw is with Europe 1900/2000. Today war between EU members is unthinkable, in 1900 they were preparing for WWI. I think it’ll be like that for the world as whole when comparing 2000/2100.
I might be wrong, maybe the next 200 years will bring continuous warfare with regular use of nuclear weapons. If that were to be so, the rump of 100 million still alive in 2100-2200 might be quite glad that CO2 in the atmosphere is attenuating the nuclear winter / cooling caused by the incessant warfare. They mightn’t be too bothered whether a nuked New York or London is under water or under 100m of ice.
It’s not easy to work out what to do, when we really don’t know what the future holds.
And many people are quite unwilling to share. They are willing to accept a case for redistribution within countries, but are much less willing to share with people from developing countries, which is why countries spend like 40% of GDP on social programmes to help the elderly, the young, families, the unemployed or the sick, and 0.5% of GDP on foreign aid, and it’s also why there’s so much fuss about illegal immigration.
May 10, 2007 at 1:34 pm
fergusbrown
I’ll set aside the IPCC references at the moment, Heiko, and focus on your thoughts about war. Why are wars fought? As far as I understand it, they are either ideological, or about resources (including land).
Where there are two populations/nations currently with a large dependence on a shared resource, there is innately a conflict of interest. This is exaggerated if the resource is threatened, or if demand exceeds supply in either population. The populations can co-operate or compete. Once the resource become critically important for survival, such as water, and the demand exceeds supply so greatly that it can no longer serve more than one of the two populations, conflict of some kind is inevitable.
A ‘3C by 2100’ scenario contains a huge number of implications for changes in regional climate patterns which will place an intolerable strain on both food and water in parts of the globe. In the absence of a cooperative international plan to alleviate need through external support, people will be left to fight over what little is left in the name of survival.
One example, probably unrealistic, but consider this: Over the next 50 years, drought conditions in the USA intensify and result in widespread crop failure and a large growth in the area of non-viable land in previously intensively farmed agricultural zones. In the absence of suitable alternative land to work, and a similar global shortage leading to the inability for the supply to match demand, what might the USA do?
One possibility is that, under such extreme pressure that there are no longer any alternatives, it might consider that, immediately to it’s North, is a large nation with a small population and a huge capacity for agricultural production which has benefited from changing climate patterns. Unable to trade resources of any significance at a price which makes it viable, what it could do is organise a northward shift of its current border. This organisation could be negotiated or compulsory. If the latter, a brief but damaging war of acquisition might then follow. As I say, unlikely, but not inconceivable.
Then you take a look at a map of the planet and check the relationship between likely resource scarcity and internal or international conflicts. Then consider the underlying stability of the regimes in those places, or the extent of the rule of law. Whilst a martial conflict amongst nations is probably less likely now or in the near future than at times in the past, the potential for strife at a local/regional level, especially in more volatile areas, is extremely likely.
Not nukes, then, we’d hope, but still a vast loss of life, a vast and expensive investment in military (defence) technology in preference to developmental technology, and a net increase in the sum of human suffering.
May 16, 2007 at 12:13 pm
guthrie
I think the whole economics thing is a red herring anyway. The argument that Heiko is using seems to me to assume that there won’t be many ill effects by 2100, and that what there are can be reversed easily. Whereas the evidence is mounting that that is not the case. By 2050 at current rates of warming the wheat belt will be in Canada, which sounds fine until you learn that it doesn’t have soils to grow wheat. Now they are predicting millions of refugees by 2050. No amount of money can move the wheat belt south again, not can it buy new ecosystems to replace those that will have been wiped out by a combination of overdevelopment and climate change.
Also, the precise possibilities for carbon sequestration, technological replacement etc etc are constrained by the physical laws of the universe. Furthermore, we keep using money as an indicator of energy used, but the relationship is not direct- how much something costs is not just a matter of how much energy was consumed in making it.
Sorry, lost where I was going with the comment. Hopefully it makes some sense.
May 16, 2007 at 1:48 pm
fergusbrown
Hi guthrie; it’s probably more subtle than this. Heiko tends towards the view that the amount by which the climate will change is manageable, that a global average temperature rise is not likely to exceed a level beyond which the more extreme consequences occur.
Placing a timeline on likely warming and likely effects is one of the hardest things to do. It’s why the models are of such significance (for better or worse, they are the only realistic tool we have for even getting close to an assessment of likely futures based on climate change).
If the temperate agricultural zone tends northward with ongoing warming, as is suggested by the models, then the viability of current agricultural habitats is threatened and the need arises to develop new agricultural capability in lands and geographical setup which have not been viable up to now. This is not impossible; there is a long history of claiming land from the sea, and improving soils, deforestation and reforestation, going back many centuries. But these large scale adaptations take time, will and huge resources (traditionally serfs/slaves, now machinery.
But this may also be of limited use if the precipitation models are broadly accurate; these currently suggest that changes in rainfall patterns will nto help as they don’t fall in the right seasons for growing. Add to this the growing pressure on the development of cash crops for biofuels, and the recipe for food production does not look encouraging.
The carbon problem is just one of the many we are likely to face. To be frank, it doesn’t really matter what we are doing with our carbon if we are competing for control over key food and water resources in increasingly concentrated key geographical areas. The current situation in Australia’s Murray-Darling basin is a case in point; there simply is no longer enough water to both service the huge agricultural production – which represents half of the entire Australian agri. output, and the city of Adelaide and other populated parts of the area. For the first time, the Aus. government is expected to enforce a complete cessation of irrigation this year, to make sure that the urban areas have enough water. This will effectively destory a percentage of the agricultural land and put many farmers and producers out of business. So what happens next year? The implications are huge and worrying. And that’s just one case, on one continent.
May 16, 2007 at 2:26 pm
guthrie
I agree entirely. You have read much more on this topic than myself, so I shall plagiarise your argument when necessary.
As for Australia, we’re talking about a civilised country with all the appurtenances of modern society. As such, the farmers will probably get compensation. But what about other countries that are less modern? And what about the effects all the water diversion have on the local ecology anyway?
May 18, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Heiko Gerhauser
Sea water desalination is surprisingly cheap, it’s 50 cents per m3. It’s not cheap enough to produce grain competitively at today’s prices, because it takes about a m3 of water to produce a kg of grain, and a kg of grain only sells for about 10-20 cents. But it’s not that far from being competitive. A kg of grain is enough to feed a person for 2 days, from which it follows that $200 per person and year would be enough to desalinate the water to produce the grain to feed them. Even when you multiply that by ten to account for meat and vegetable consumption, it’s not that much compared to present US income or what the IPCC assume as the world average for 2100 (around $60,000 per capita, or about twice year 2000 levels in the US).
Incidentally, you may have heard of Lester Brown’s calculation that a 25 gallon SUV tank of ethanol could feed a person for a year … (think about what that implies for grain prices)
I think overall, there’s huge amounts of fat in the system. As James Annan put it, when potential yields in Africa given use of present technology are 5 times what subsistence farmers are actually achieving, a 20% change in the potential due to climate change doesn’t seem that big a deal (and that calculation itself basically completely discounts large water schemes, as far as I am aware).
May 19, 2007 at 12:40 am
fergusbrown
Heiko, you’re post is a bit confusing. Are you suggesting desalinisation as a strategy for the Australian case, or as a solution to projected water shortages?
I am sure the price you quote doesn’t take distribution costs into account. Apart from this, it is the scale and timing of these problems which are also a matter of worry. I can’t speak for the Mutray-Darling, but I know that aquifers in many African countries are simply not coping with the stresses placed on them by intensive irrigation (which is often being used to grown non-native, non-food, cash crops like cotton and soy (for biofuel).
The point of the Murray-Darling example is that, once you reach a point where the natural capacity for self-sustenance is passed, the relative cost and complexity of solutions get increasingly great. On top of which, any further imbalance in the system has a magnified effect. Without precipitation in the area, nothing is going to replenish the Australian aquifers. Yes, you could provide drinking water via a desalinisation plant to the people of Adelaide, at a cost, but how long do these take to build, and how much water can they provide on a daily basis? Australia’s problems exist now, and for the coming year. It’s going to be tough for someone.
guthrie; sorry I didn’t respond earlier; you are right that the farmers might get compensated, but once the crops have died and the land has dried up, and once the numbers of farmers who can wait out a crisis has diminished sufficiently, the agricultural capacity becomes semi-permanently damaged, with knock-on effects for the entire Australian economy.
May 19, 2007 at 10:15 am
Heiko Gerhauser
Sorry, maybe I wasn’t terribly clear.
One of my points was that current projections of climate change and agriculture are such that there will be plenty of scope to increase agricultural production even in an IPCC worst case scenario.
Another point was about the relative amounts of water used by agriculture and households, and their ability to pay. Agriculture with current prices for grains needs very low priced water. Households can pay an extra 50 cents, my parents already pay some 4 Euros per m3, a large fraction of which is for distribution, and an even larger fraction for flood protection measures and sewage treatment.
In the case of Adelaide, I think this means that household usage should come first, and irrigation be stopped. The grain can be grown elsewhere. Australia can make more money from exporting coal.
I know it’s disruptive for Australian farmers, but what’s disruptive about it, is that it is sudden. Farm employment has been in a long downward spiral anyway.
You are right that sudden changes imply a cost penalty, it takes time to retrain people or to build desalination plants. I don’t think that the evidence indicates that climate change will lead to greater variability, let alone substantially greater variability, I think the evidence is strong that it’ll primarily affect trends. These are much easier to deal with, considering the continuous decline in farm employment experienced everywhere, a slightly faster rate in Australia over 100 years (instead of 2% per year say 2.5% per year), wouldn’t be a big deal, and if in 2050 we start building desalination plants there in some places, it’s not as if lead time was a show stopper.