- The Observer of England (national motto: "Using celebrity players to beat itself in the World Cup since 1998") brings us Bjorn Lomborg offering a reminder of the economics of actions to stem global warming. Specifically, he cites a meeting of leading economists in Denmark in 2004 which concluded that of various public-policy initiatives, the ones with the least likelihood of yielding benefits to human beings were related to global warming. Those likely to do the most good were aimed at HIV/AIDS, human nutrition, free trade, and malaria (SWNID's nominee for least-publicized issue of importance).
- The Wall Street Journal offers MIT climate professor and well-known global-warming skeptic Richard S. Lindzen's objections to the rhetoric of "consensus" in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. His upshot is that global warming data does not correlate well with increases in CO2 and so a causal relationship, let alone a crisis, cannot be inferred, as Earth's climate is demonstrably dynamic and complex. Lindzen criticizes the "lassitude" of his more politically minded scientific colleagues who offer CO2 emissions as the explanation for climate change because they can't think of any other cause. No consensus exists on global warming, Lindzen argues, because we can't yet know enough about the dynamics of climate change.
As we enter deep into the political "silly season" (for the uninitiated, the summer vacation period, when politicians go to the beach and the reporters who cover them get silly in the scramble for something to fill their pages and newscasts), it is good to be reminded that the sky may not be falling, but there remains important work to be done in the world.
5 comments:
The powerful, final scene in Schindler's List shows him realizing how many more lives he could have saved had he sold each little piece of jewelry still in his possession. The value of everything he owned could be measured in lives rather than just dollars. On an individual level it's a worthy but difficult and humbling question to deal with over the course of the year... do I spend the money on an unforgettable family vacation or do we feed 3 to 5 Compassion children for a year (and go camping instead)? But at some point, not every budget decision should boil down to whatever provides the most utility. Every time I watch a nature program, about Cheetahs for instance, I imagine the extraordinary cost of their effort -- merely to protect a dozen Cheetahs. Is it really worth it? My take is: I'm glad there are still Cheetahs, and I try not to think about the cost.
None of this is say that I think #10 on the list of priorities should receive anything close to 1/10 the available funds. But I do think the strictest test of utility is not workable.
I hope that controversy over the impact of CO2 on the environment will not deflect our attention away from other, more immediately damaging, environmental pollutants. The processing and burning of coal, in particular, should be of much greater concern to everyone. That industry alone is responsible for pumping hundreds of millions of tons of carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, metal oxides, ozone, arsenic, lead, methane, and--my personal favorite--mercury (in addition to carbon dioxide) into the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we cultivate every year. I don't think there's any real controversy over the harmful effects of these contaminants.
On the use of coal, I heartily agree. What I find troubling is the apparent political reality that no one wants the available alternatives. Nuclear energy creates waste, which is scary, but nuclear waste has every appearance of being more manageable than coal waste. Yet no one wants another nuclear power plant in the United States.
More recently we've witnessed the reanimation of the NIMBY syndrome ("Not in my back yard," for the uninitiated) with local objections to the development of wind power in the Great Plains and off the California coast. Everyone likes alternative energy sources, as long as they don't ruin their view or create noise in their neighborhood.
Still, if the United States took every dollar that the government currently invests in alternative energy sources and devoted it instead to controlling malaria-bearing mosquitoes, the health benefits to the world would be hugely greater.
Perhaps the Melissa and Bill Gates Foundation--with the extra $30 billion from Warren Buffet--can take care of the mosquitoes. Isn't that on their agenda? I'm pretty confident coal emissions isn't.
As far as nuclear energy is concerned, I'm in full agreement. It's tremendously efficient, clean, and safe. The only real drawback--and it's a big one--is the radioactive waste. If Congress could get its priorities in order--which is an even bigger if--we could eliminate much of that by reprocessing the spent plutonium to be used as fuel again and monitoring the final waste product for possible future uses (as they have been doing in France for years). Unfortunately, leftist environmentalists here in the U.S. have been trading on the (largely irrational) fear of nuclear power for as long as there have been leftist environmentalists in the U.S., with tremendous success.
JB: we agree on an environmental matter! There's hope for civilization!
And I was heartened to note an article in my local paper today that Bill and Melinda G are spending loads of billions on killing mosquitoes.
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