Bjorn Lomborg completely debunks the recent Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, explains how the review's numbers are totally fabricated, and reminds us that even if they were true there would still be far better ways to spend our money than on combatting global warming. You'll have to read the article for the debunking; my favorite part is near the end where Lomborg considers the opportunity cost of reducing carbon emissions.
Why does all this matter? It matters because, with clever marketing and sensationalist headlines, the Stern review is about to edge its way into our collective consciousness. The suggestion that flooding will overwhelm us has already been picked up by commentators, yet going back to the background reports properly shows declining costs from flooding and fewer people at risk. The media is now quoting Mr. Stern's suggestion that climate change will wreak financial devastation that will wipe 20% off GDP, explicitly evoking memories of past financial catastrophes such as the Great Depression or World War II; yet the review clearly tells us that costs will be 0% now and just 3% in 2100.It matters because Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Nicholas Stern all profess that one of the major reasons that they want to do something about climate change is because it will hit the world's poor the hardest. Using a worse-than-worst-case scenario, Mr. Stern warns that the wealth of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will be reduced by 10% to 13% in 2100 and suggests that effect would lead to 145 million more poor people.
Faced with such alarmist suggestions, spending just 1% of GDP or $450 billion each year to cut carbon emissions seems on the surface like a sound investment. In fact, it is one of the least attractive options. Spending just a fraction of this figure--$75 billion--the U.N. estimates that we could solve all the world's major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now. Is that not better?
We know from economic models that dealing just with malaria could provide economic boosts to the order of 1% extra GDP growth per capita per year. Even making a very conservative estimate that solving all the major basic issues would induce just 2% extra growth, 100 years from now each individual in the developing world would be more than 700% richer. That truly trivializes Mr. Stern's 10% to 13% estimates for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
A timely reminder that wacko environmentalists don't just love the earth, they hate humanity.
The real cost problem is in what such talk does to a society. It's meant to scare people into submission. Crucifixion, Room 101, the Guillotine, German Jews, and Lubyanka are examples of terror instruments. The suffering of a single direct victim is not nearly as important as what the act does to the people. Although the Global Warming scare is more like the Paper Tiger scam, the idea of moving millions with scare tactics stands.