Failure to address climate change will lead to big government

"We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. We're going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be."

- John Holdren, White House science director.

Here is an interesting article in today's Washington Post making the important argument that avoiding serious action on climate change due to fear of large government is precisely backwards. Some people committed on principle to small government (which is not a bad principle) see the regulations associated with most climate policies that take the science seriously as their worst nightmare. Yet the truth is that failure to minimise ongoing and accelerating climate disruption is much more likely to lead to governments being increasingly called upon to respond to crop failures and costly "natural" disasters (perhaps we'd better just called them extreme weather events, since it is becoming increasingly inaccurate to consider such disasters natural). Climate instability is highly likely to lead to social instability, which will either result in big government, or societal collapse.

Chinese and US carbon emissions: myths and morality

Statistics and spin

"China is inappropriately made a scapegoat in this case because what causes the climate change is not today's emissions, it's today's atmospheric composition and we [USA] are primarily responsible for the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - more than three times more than China and actually on a per capita basis more than an order of magnitude [i.e. ten times]. So to blame China and to say that we have to wait for them is nonsense."

- James Hansen, head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in this interview.

Statistics can frequently be misleading. And so it really matters which statistics are given the most attention. It is true that China is currently the country that emits the most carbon dioxide each year. Yet Hansen is right to point out the massive historical and per capita disparity between the west and China (and India, of course). The climate change we are currently experiencing and the same again (more or less) already "in the pipeline" are due to emissions so far (there is a lag between the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and rising atmospheric temperatures as most of the energy initially goes into the oceans). And the carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere is due very largely to the US, Germany and the UK (in that order).

Since cumulative emissions are more important than the current rate of emissions (due to the long period of time that about half the carbon dioxide we release stays in the atmosphere), then focussing simply on current rates without considering the cumulative totals obscures the bigger picture. And comparing countries with widely disparate populations also assumes that the only relevant moral unit is the nation state, a very odd assumption for individualists in the US to perpetuate. It makes much more sense to speak primarily in per capita terms. When these considerations are included, as Hansen points out, the US has little moral authority to consider China the largest contributor to the problem. Indeed, a further factor worth pondering is that roughly one-third of all China's emissions result from producing goods for western markets, so if we look at the consumption levels driving the dangerous emissions, then once again the west has little right to place the lion's share of blame for today's situation on China.

However, future emissions are also relevant, since (simplifying quite a bit), it is really the total amount of carbon dioxide humans release that matters. If we're to stay below 450 ppm (which has been the rough goal accepted by most governments - whether 450 is already too dangerous is a discussion for another day), then we've already spent more than half the carbon budget. Pre-industrial levels were around 280 ppm and we're currently at 390 ppm and rising (since more carbon dioxide is entering the atmosphere than leaving it). If this is accepted as a reasonable goal, then even if the US entirely stopped all carbon emissions tomorrow (impossible, but this is a thought experiment), China would never be able to emit as much carbon dioxide per capita as the US already has.

Does this mean that China (and other rapidly industrialising nations) bear no responsibility for their current (and rapidly rising) emissions? Of course not, but it is clear that the developed world has contributed far more to the problem than the developing world and so rightly ought to bear most responsibility for addressing it. Simply looking at current emissions obscures morally relevant considerations and enables the world's richer nations to downplay the role we have played in causing the mess. Unfortunately, such arguments are not widely understood or accepted in industrialised countries.

If you would like to see some of these statistics visualised, then Gapminder is an excellent resource. If you follow this link and click "play", you'll see a historical progression of various nations' contributions. The size of the circle indicates population size. The x-axis is per capita emissions and the y-axis is cumulative emissions. Colours are for region. You can play around with all the settings to see all kinds of relationships (a two minute tutorial is here). I haven't managed to find any graphs that compare per capita cumulative emissions. Doing so would demonstrate that China and the US are not simply in different ball parks but are playing entirely different games.

Mitigation vs adaptation: a question of prudence

For some time there has been a debate concerning the best response to the climate disruption human actions are currently causing. Should we try to minimise or even prevent the disruption (known as mitigation) or should we simple prepare for the changes and make adjustments as they arise (adaptation)? In other words, are we aiming for prevention or cure?

A good answer was given in a recent interview by John Holdren, science advisor to US President Obama:

“Mitigation alone won’t work because the climate is already changing. We’re already experiencing impacts from that. Nothing we can do in the mitigation domain can stop it overnight. And so a mitigation-only strategy would be insanity.

"Adaptation alone won’t work. Adaptation alone won’t work because adaptation gets more difficult, more expensive, and less effective the larger are the changes in climate to which we are trying to adapt. If you live on an island that is one meter above sea level and the sea level goes up two meters, adaptation is no longer the question. You are dealing with evacuation.

"Clearly what we need is enough mitigation to limit changes in climate to a level with which adaptation can largely cope.”

The question is whether we have the political and social will to do enough of the former in sufficient time to make the latter actually achievable.

Crucial in this is the role of the somewhat overlooked virtue of prudence, wise consideration of the future. Whether our political and economic systems are designed to encourage this virtue in our leaders remains to be seen.