>THE ECONOMICS AND POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE: AN APPEAL TO REASON
>
>Nigel Lawson
>
>A Lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies
>
http://www.cps.org.uk/latestlectures/
>
>1 November 2006
>
>THIS IS A HIGHLY COMPLEX SUBJECT, involving as it does science,
>economics and politics in almost equal measure. The Centre for Policy
>Studies has kindly agreed to publish a greatly extended version of this
>lecture as a pamphlet, in which I will be able to do greater justice to
>that complexity and to quote the sources of a number of the statements I
>propose to make this evening. It will also enable me to deal at slightly
>greater length with the scaremongering Stern Report, published earlier
>this week. But the essence of it is what I have to say tonight.
>
>* * *
>
>But first, a very brief comment on Stern. If scaremongering seems a
>trifle harsh, I should point out that, as a good civil servant, he was
>simply doing his masters' bidding. As Mr Blair's guru, Lord Giddens (the
>inventor of the so-called third way), laid down in this context in a
>speech last year, "In order to manage risk, you must scare people".
>
>In fact, the voluminous Stern Report adds disappointingly little to what
>was already the conventional wisdom - apart from a battery of
>essentially spurious statistics based on theoretical models and
>conjectural worst cases. This is clearly no basis for policy decisions
>which could have the most profound adverse effect on people's lives, and
>at a cost which Stern almost certainly underestimates. It is, in a very
>real sense, the story of the Iraq war, writ large.
>
>So let us get back to basics, and seek the answers to three questions,
>of increasing complexity. First, is global warming occurring? Second, if
>so, why? And third, what should be done about it?
>
>As to the first question, there is of course little doubt that the
>twentieth century ended warmer than it began. According to the Hadley
>Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, an offshoot of Britain's Met
>Office:
>
>"Although there is considerable year-to-year variability in annual-mean
>global temperature, an upward trend can be clearly seen; firstly over
>the period from about 1920-1940, with little change or a small cooling
>from 1940-1975, followed by a sustained rise over the last three decades
>since then."
>
>This last part is a trifle disingenuous, since what the graph actually
>shows is that the sustained rise took place entirely during the last
>quarter of the last century. Moreover, according to the Hadley Centre's
>data, there has so far been no further global warming since 1998.
>Whether the seven-year hiatus since then marks a change of trend or
>merely an unexplained and unpredicted blip in a continuing upward trend,
>time will tell.
>
>Apart from the trend, there is of course the matter of the absolute
>numbers. The Hadley Centre graph shows that, for the first phase, from
>1920 to 1940, the increase was 0.4 degrees centigrade. From 1940 to 1975
>there was a cooling of about 0.2 degrees. (It was during this phase that
>alarmist articles by Professor James Lovelock and a number of other
>scientists appeared, warning of the onset of a new ice age.) Finally,
>since 1975 there has been a further warming of about 0.5 degrees, making
>a total increase of some 0.7 degrees over the 20th century as a whole
>(from 1900 to 1920 there was no change).
>
>Why, then, has this modest - if somewhat intermittent - degree of global
>warming seems to have occurred. Why has this happened, and what does it
>portend for the future?
>
>The only honest answer is that we don't know.
>
>The conventional wisdom is that the principal reason why it has happened
>is the greatly increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a
>result of the rapid worldwide growth of carbon-based energy consumption.
>
>Now, there is no doubt that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide
>increased greatly during the 20th century - by some 30 per cent - and
>most scientists believe this increase to be largely man-made. And carbon
>dioxide is one of a number of so-called greenhouse gases whose combined
>effect in the earth's atmosphere is to keep the planet warmer than it
>would otherwise be.
>
>Far and away the most important of these gases is water vapour, both in
>its gaseous form and suspended in clouds. Rather a long way back, carbon
>dioxide is the second most important greenhouse gas - and neither,
>incidentally, is a form of pollution.
>
>It is the published view of the Met Office that is it likely that more
>than half the warming of recent decades (say 0.3 degrees centigrade out
>of the overall 0.5 degrees increase between 1975 and 2000) is
>attributable to man-made sources of greenhouse gases - principally,
>although by no means exclusively, carbon dioxide.
>
>But this is highly uncertain, and reputable climate scientists differ
>sharply over the subject. It is simply not true to say that the science
>is settled; and the recent attempt of the Royal Society, of all bodies,
>to prevent the funding of climate scientists who do not share its
>alarmist view of the matter is truly shocking. The uncertainty derives
>from a number of sources. For one thing, the science of clouds, which is
>clearly critical, is one of the least well understood aspects of climate
>science.
>
>Another uncertainty concerns the extent to which urbanisation (not least
>in the vicinity of climate stations) has contributed to the observed
>warming. There is no dispute that urbanisation raises near-surface
>temperatures: this has long been observed from satellite infra-red
>imagery. The uncertainty is over how much of the estimated 20th century
>warming this accounts for. Yet another uncertainty derives from the fact
>that, while the growth in manmade carbon dioxide emissions, and thus
>carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, continued relentlessly
>during the 20th century, the global mean surface temperature, as I have
>already remarked, increased in fits and starts, for which there us no
>adequate explanation.
>
>But then - and this is the other great source of uncertainty - the
>earth's climate has always been subject to natural variation, wholly
>unrelated to man's activities. Climate scientists differ about the
>causes of this, although most agree that variations in solar radiation
>play a key part.
>
>It is well established, for example, from historical accounts, that a
>thousand years ago, well before the onset of industrialisation, there
>was - at least in Europe - what has become known as the mediaeval warm
>period, when
>temperatures were probably at least as high as, if not higher than, they
>are today.
>
>Going back even further, during the Roman empire, it may have been even
>warmer. There is archaeological evidence that in Roman Britain,
>vineyards existed on a commercial scale at least as far north as
>Northamptonshire.
>
>More recently, during the 17th and early 18th centuries, there was what
>has become known as the little ice age, when the Thames was regularly
>frozen over in winter, and substantial ice fairs held on the frozen
>river - immortalised in colourful prints produced at the time - became a
>popular attraction.
>
>Historical treeline studies, showing how far up mountains trees are able
>to grow at different times, which is clearly correlated with climate
>change, confirm that these variations occurred outside Europe as well.
>
>A rather different account of the past was given by the so-called
>"hockey-stick" chart of global temperatures over the past millennium,
>which purported to show that the earth's temperature was constant until
>the industrialisation of the 20th century. Reproduced in its 2001 Report
>by the supposedly authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
>Change, set up under the auspices of the United Nations to advise
>governments on what is clearly a global issue, the chart featured
>prominently in (among other publications) the present Government's 2003
>energy white paper. It has now been comprehensively discredited.
>
>But it is not only over time that the earth's climate displays
>considerable natural variability. Change also varies geographically. For
>example, there are parts of the world where glaciers are retreating, and
>others where glaciers are advancing. The fringes of the Greenland ice
>shelf appear to be melting, while at the centre of the shelf the ice is
>thickening. Curiously enough, there are places where sea levels are
>perceptibly rising, while elsewhere they are static or even falling -
>suggesting that local factors still dominate any global warming effects
>on sea levels.
>
>Again, extreme weather events, such as major storms in the Gulf of
>Mexico, have come and gone, at irregular intervals, for as long as
>records exist. Katrina, which caused so much damage to New Orleans, is
>regularly trotted out as a consequence of man-made climate change; yet
>the region's worst recorded hurricane was that which devastated
>Galveston in 1900. Following Katrina, the world's authorities on
>tropical storms set up an international panel, which included the
>relevant expert from the Met Office here in the UK. The panel reported,
>earlier this year, as follows:
>
> "The main conclusion we came to was that none of these high-impact
>tropical cyclones could be specifically attributed to global warming."
>
>This may not be all that surprising, given how little global warming has
>so far occurred; but I do not recall it featuring in Mr Gore's film.
>
>But this diversity makes it all too easy for the Al Gores of this world
>to select local phenomena which best illustrate their predetermined
>alarmist global narrative. We need to stick firmly to the central point:
>what has been the rise in global mean temperatures over the past hundred
>years, why we believe this has occurred, how much temperatures are
>likely to rise over the next hundred years or so, and what the
>consequences are likely to be.
>
>As is already clear, the only honest answer is that we do not know.
>Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to try and guess; and this is
>essentially what the IPCC has devoted itself to doing. Its conclusion is
>that, by the end of this century, on a business-as-usual basis, global
>mean temperature might have risen by anything between 1 degree and 6
>degrees centigrade. This is based on a combination of the immensely
>complex computer models of the relationship between carbon dioxide
>concentrations and global temperature, developed by the Hadley Centre
>and others, coupled with a range of different projections of the likely
>growth of carbon dioxide emissions.
>
>This last part is not, of course, a scientific matter at all, but
>consists of economic forecasting. That is to say, it depends on the rate
>of world economic growth over the next hundred years (which in turn
>depends to a considerable extent on the projected world population), the
>energy-intensiveness of that growth, and the
>carbon-intensiveness of the energy used.
>
>The upper part of the IPCC's range of scenarios is distinctly
>unconvincing, depending as it does either on an implausibly high rate of
>population growth or, in particular, an unprecedented growth in energy
>intensiveness, which in fact has been steadily declining over the past
>50 years.
>
>Equally implausible are its estimates of the costs of any warming that
>may occur. For example, it makes great play of the damage to agriculture
>and food production from climate change. Quite apart from the fact there
>are many parts of the world where agriculture and food production would
>actually benefit from a warmer climate, the IPCC studies are vitiated by
>the fact that they assume that farmers would carry on much as before,
>growing the same crops in precisely the same way - the so-called 'dumb
>farmer' hypothesis.
>
>In reality, of course, farmers would adapt, switching as the need arose
>to strains or crops better suited to warmer climates, to improved
>methods of irrigation, and in many cases by cultivating areas which had
>hitherto been too cold to be economic.
>
>It is important to bear in mind that, whatever climate alarmists like to
>make out, what we are confronted with, even on the Hadley Centre/IPCC
>hypothesis, is the probability of very gradual change over a large
>number of years. And this is something to which it is eminently
>practicable to adapt.
>
>This points to the first and most important part of the answer to the
>question of what we should do about the threat of global warming: adapt
>to it. There are at least three reasons why adaptation is far and away
>the most cost-effective approach.
>
>The first is that many of the feared harmful consequences of climate
>change, such as coastal flooding in low-lying areas, are not new
>problems, but simply the exacerbation of existing ones; so that
>addressing these will bring benefits even if there is no further global
>warming at all.
>
>The second reason is that, unlike curbing carbon dioxide emissions, this
>approach will bring benefits whatever the cause of the warming, whether
>manmade or natural.
>
>And the third reason why adaptation - most of which, incidentally, will
>happen naturally, that is to say it will be market-driven, without much
>need for government intervention - is the most cost-effective approach
>is that all serious studies show that, not surprisingly, there are
>benefits as well as costs from global warming. Adaptation enables us to
>pocket the benefits while diminishing the costs.
>
>The main argument advanced against relying principally on adaptation is
>that it is all right for the rich countries of the world, but not for
>the poor, which is unacceptable.
>
>As Professor Mendelsohn of Yale, author of a number of studies of the
>impact of climate change, has written,
>
>"The net damages to mid to high latitude countries [such as the UK] will
>be very small if not beneficial this coming century. The impacts to poor
>low latitude countries will be harmful across the board...Climate change
>will hurt the poorest people in the world most."
>
>This is no doubt true, although it is frequently exaggerated. But it
>does mean that those of us in the richer countries of the world have a
>clear moral obligation to do something about it - not least because, if
>the man-made warming thesis is correct, it is we who caused the problem.
>
>According to the IPCC, the greatest single threat posed by global
>warming is coastal flooding as sea levels rise. Sea levels have, in
>fact, been rising very gradually throughout the past hundred years, and
>even the last IPCC Report found little sign of any acceleration.
>Nevertheless, Sir Nicholas Stern, charged by the Government to look into
>the economics of climate change is particularly concerned about this,
>especially the alleged melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
>
>He has written that:
>
>"The net effect of these changes is a release of 20 billion tonnes of
>water to the oceans each year, contributing around 0.05 millimetres a
>year to sea-level rise."
>
>This would imply an additional sea-level rise of less than a quarter of
>an inch per century, something it ought not to be too difficult to live
>with.
>
>But the major source of projected sea-level rise is from ocean warming
>expanding the volume of water. As a result, some of those low-lying
>areas already subject to serious flooding could find things getting
>significantly worse, and there is a clear case for government money to
>be spent on improving sea defences in these areas. The Dutch, after all,
>have been doing this very effectively for the past 500 years. The
>governments of the richer countries, like the United States with its
>Gulf coast exposure, can be left to do it for themselves; but in the
>case of the poorer countries, such as Bangladesh, there is a powerful
>argument for international assistance.
>
>Another problem for the poorer and hotter countries of the world,
>according to the IPCC, is an increase in vector-borne diseases, notably
>malaria. This is more controversial. Most experts believe that
>temperature has relatively little bearing on the spread of the disease,
>pointing out that it was endemic throughout Europe during the little ice
>age.
>
>Be that as it may, some two million children in the developing world die
>every year from malaria as it is; and the means of combating, if not
>eradicating, the scourge are well established. There is, again, a clear
>case for international assistance to achieve this.
>
>Of course assistance in either the building of effective sea defences or
>in the eradication of malaria will cost money. But that cost is only a
>very small fraction of what it would cost to attempt, by substantially
>curbing carbon dioxide
>emissions, to change the climate.
>
>The argument that we need to cut back substantially on carbon dioxide
>emissions in order to help the world's poor is bizarre in the extreme.
>To the extent that their problems are climatic, these problems are not
>new ones, even if they may be exacerbated if current projections are
>correct. If, twenty years ago, when as Chancellor I was launching the
>first concerted poor-country debt forgiveness initiative, subsequently
>known as the Toronto terms, anyone had argued that the best way to help
>the developing countries was to make the world a colder place, I would
>probably have politely suggested that they see their doctor. It makes no
>more sense today than it would have done then.
>
>Indeed, it is worse than that. As Frances Cairncross, the Chairman of
>the Economic and Social Research Council, pointed out in her thoughtful
>and honest Presidential address on climate change to the British
>Association's annual
>
>conference in September, the cost of effectively curbing carbon dioxide
>emissions "will definitely be enormous". Precisely how large it is
>impossible to say - even by Sir Nicholas Stern. Last year's report on
>the economics of climate change by the House of Lords Economic Affairs
>Committee quoted estimates ranging from $80 billion a year to $1,100
>billion a year. It would depend greatly, among other things, on how it
>is achieved and how soon - the earlier it is done the greater the cost.
>Of critical importance is how great the increase in the price of carbon
>would need to be to stifle the demand for carbon sufficiently; and that
>we cannot know unless and until we do it.
>
>But it is clear that the cost will be large enough, among other
>consequences, to diminish significantly the export markets on which the
>future prosperity of the developing countries at least in part depends.
>So far from helping the world's poor, it is more likely to harm them.
>
>Nevertheless, curbing carbon dioxide emissions, along the lines of the
>Kyoto accord, under which the industrialised countries of the world
>agreed to somewhat arbitrarily assigned limits to their CO2 emissions by
>2012, remains the conventional answer to the challenge of global
>warming. It is hard to imagine a more absurd response.
>
>Even its strongest advocates admit that, even if fully implemented
>(which it is now clear it will not be, and there is no enforcement
>mechanism), the existing Kyoto agreement, which came into force last
>year, would do virtually nothing to reduce future rates of global
>warming. Its importance, in their eyes, is as the first step towards
>further such agreements of a considerably more restrictive nature. But
>this is wholly unrealistic, and fundamentally flawed for a number of
>reasons. In the first place, the United States, the largest source of
>carbon dioxide emissions, has refused to ratify the treaty and has made
>clear its intention of having no part in any future such agreements.
>
>The principal American objection is that the developing countries -
>including such major contributors to future carbon dioxide emissions as
>China, India and Brazil - are effectively outside the process and
>determined to remain so. Indeed, both China and India currently
>subsidise carbon-based energy.
>
>The developing countries' argument is a simple one. They contend that
>the industrialised countries of the western world achieved their
>prosperity on the basis of cheap carbon-based energy; and that it is now
>the turn of the poor developing countries to emulate them. And they add
>that if there is a problem now of excessive carbon dioxide
>concentrations in the earth's atmosphere, it is the responsibility of
>those that caused it to remedy it. Nor are they unaware of the
>uncertainty of the science on the basis of which they are being asked to
>slow down their people's escape from grinding poverty.
>
>The consequences of the exclusion of the major developing countries from
>the process are immense.
>
>China alone last year embarked on a programme of building 562 large
>coal-fired power stations by 2012 - that is, a new coal-fired power
>station every five days for seven years. Putting it another way, China
>is adding the equivalent of Britain's entire power-generating capacity
>each year. Since coal-fired power stations emit roughly twice as much
>carbon dioxide per gigawatt of electricity as gas-fired ones, it is not
>surprising that it is generally accepted that within the next 20 years
>China will overtake the United States as the largest source of
>emissions. India, which like China has substantial indigenous coal
>reserves, is set to follow a similar path, as is Brazil.
>
>Then there is the cost of the Kyoto approach to consider. The logic of
>Kyoto is to make emissions permits sufficiently scarce to raise their
>price to the point where carbon-based energy is so expensive that
>carbon-free energy sources, and other carbon-saving measures, become
>fully economic. This clearly involves a very much greater rise in energy
>prices than anything we have yet seen. The trebling of oil prices since
>Kyoto was agreed in 1997 has done little to reduce carbon emissions.
>
>There must be considerable doubt whether a rise in energy prices on the
>scale required would be politically sustainable. Particularly when the
>economic cost, in terms of slower economic growth, would be substantial.
>
>In reality, if the Kyoto approach were to be pursued beyond 2012, which
>is - fortunately - unlikely, the price increase would in practice be
>mitigated in the global economy in which we now live. For as energy
>prices in Europe started to rise, with the prospect of further rises to
>come, energy-intensive industries and processes would progressively
>close down in Europe and relocate in countries like China, where
>relatively cheap energy was still available.
>
>No doubt Europe could, at some cost, adjust to this, as it has to the
>migration of most of its textile industry to China and elsewhere. But it
>is difficult to see the point of it. For if carbon dioxide emissions in
>Europe are reduced only to see them further increased in China, there is
>no net reduction in global emissions at all. The extent of ill-informed
>wishful thinking on this issue is hard to exaggerate. To take just one
>example, the government's 2003 energy White Paper proposed a 60 per cent
>reduction in the UK's carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, based on the
>notion of supplying most if not all of the country's electricity needs
>from renewable sources, notably that particularly trendy source, wind
>power.
>
>But as experienced electrical engineers have pointed out, government
>estimates of the cost of wind power are grossly understated, since wind
>power (like most renewable sources of energy) is intermittent. In other
>words, the wind doesn't blow all the time. But the electricity supply
>does have to be on tap all the time. Given the fact that electricity
>cannot be economically stored on an industrial scale, this means that
>conventional generating capacity would have to be fully maintained to
>meet demand when the wind stops blowing, thus massively adding to the
>true cost of wind power.
>
>There are all sorts of things we can do, from riding a bicycle to
>putting a windmill on our roof, that may make us feel good. But there is
>no escaping the two key truths. First, there is no way the growth in
>atmospheric carbon dioxide can be arrested without a very substantial
>rise in the cost of carbon, presumably via the imposition of a swingeing
>carbon tax, which would require, at least in the short to medium term, a
>radical change of lifestyle in the developed world. Are we seriously
>prepared to do this? (A tax would at least be preferable to the
>capricious and corrupt rationing system which half-heartedly exists
>today under Kyoto.) And the second key truth is that, even if we were
>prepared to do this, it would still be useless unless the major
>developing nations - notably China, India and Brazil - were prepared to
>do the same, which they are manifestly and understandably not.
>
>So we are driven back to the need to adapt to a warmer world, and the
>moral obligation of the richer countries to help the poorer countries to
>do so.
>
>* * *
>
>It is clear that, despite the regrettable arrogance and intolerance of
>the Royal Society, the uncertainty surrounding the complex issue of
>climate change is immense, and the scope for honest differences of view
>considerable. But uncertainty cuts both ways.
>
>While it may well be the case that, on a business as usual basis, the
>earth is highly unlikely to get as warm as the climate alarmists tell us
>it will over the next hundred years, we cannot be sure: it might.
>
>In particular, we cannot be completely sure that, at some far-off point,
>it might not warm sufficiently to trigger what the IPCC refers to as
>"large-scale singular events".
>
>The most frequently talked about such event is that it might reach a
>point where it shuts down or reverses the Gulf Stream, which keeps
>Europe's temperatures up to 8 degrees centigrade warmer than they would
>otherwise be. So global warming might paradoxically make Europe
>seriously colder.
>
>So far, of course, there is no sign of this. And according to many
>reputable oceanographers, there could never be - at least not as a
>consequence of global warming. In their understanding of the science,
>the Gulf Stream is primarily wind-driven, and thus will continue to
>exist regardless of the future temperature of the planet.
>
>But inevitably we cannot be absolutely sure; and the same applies to all
>the other much-discussed disasters.
>
>It is at this point that the so-called precautionary principle is
>invoked. Conventional cost-benefit analysis is irrelevant, it is argued.
>A climate catastrophe may be unlikely; but if it occurred the
>consequences would be so
>appalling that we must do whatever it takes, here and now, to prevent
>it. At first sight this seems a persuasive argument. But a moment's
>reflection shows its shortcomings as a guide to practical policy
>decisions.
>
>In the first place, while the prospect of catastrophic consequences from
>global warming cannot be regarded as impossible, nor can a number of
>other possible catastrophes.
>
>It is perfectly possible, for example, that over the next hundred years
>or so, the world might enter another ice age. There is ample evidence
>that this has happened at fairly regular intervals over the long history
>of the planet, and that we are overdue for another one.
>
>More immediately - and thus demanding much more urgent attention and
>priority in the expenditure of resources - there are the possible
>consequences of nuclear proliferation to worry about, not to mention the
>growth in the terrorist threat in an age when scientific and
>technological developments have brought the means of devastation within
>the reach of even modestly funded terrorist groups. Above all, in a
>world of inevitably finite resources, not only can we not possibly spend
>large sums on guarding against any and every possible eventuality in the
>future; but the more we do spend on this the less there is available to
>deal with poverty and disease in the present.
>
>Perhaps the most important application of the precautionary principle is
>to the precautionary principle itself. Otherwise we may find ourselves
>doing very stupid things in its name.
>
>As a general rule, rationality suggests that we concentrate on present
>crises, and on future ones where the probability of disaster if we do
>not act appears significant - usually because the signs of its emergence
>are already
>incontrovertible. The fact that a theoretical danger would be
>devastating is not enough to justify substantial expenditure.
>
>A modest degree of global warming clearly occurred during the last
>quarter of the 20th century, but the evidence that this will now
>accelerate to disastrous levels is, to say the least, unconvincing, for
>the reasons I have already set out. If we are going to take out an
>insurance policy against the remote risk of a warming-induced climate
>disaster then it needs to be both affordable and effective. The
>conventional front-runner, a substantial enhancement of the Kyoto
>approach of curbing carbon dioxide emissions satisfies neither of these
>requirements. It is not affordable, in the sense that the people of
>Europe - to whom Kyoto largely applies - are not prepared to make the
>sacrifices in terms of the drastic change in lifestyle required, and it
>is ineffective, since the major nations of the developing world - quite
>apart from the United States - are, for good reason, not prepared to
>join the party.
>
>The notion that if we in the UK are prepared to set an example, then the
>rest of the world will follow, is reminiscent of the old unilateralist
>CND argument that if we in the UK abandoned nuclear weapons, then the
>Soviet Union and the United States would follow suit, and just as
>far-fetched.
>
>Apart from creating the conditions most favourable to technological
>innovation, the only practicable insurance policy, on which a great deal
>of serious work has been done in the United States (a potentially
>important 'workshop' on this is to be held in San Francisco later this
>month), concerns what has become known as geo-engineering: taking active
>action to cool the planet, in relatively short order, should the need
>become pressing.
>
>The front runner here is the idea of blasting aerosols into the
>stratosphere, so as to impede the sun's rays. Such grand schemes
>obviously need to be approached with caution; but it is striking that
>they have gained the support of scientists of the eminence of the Nobel
>Prize-winner Paul Crutzen. Another possibility may be the
>geo-engineering of clouds, which play such a large part - far greater
>than carbon dioxide - in determining the earth's climate. The insurance
>policy is to spend government money on further research into
>geo-engineering, and on developing the capability (where this does not
>already exist) to put it into practice should the need arise.
>
>* * *
>
>Essentially, I have sought to argue three key propositions.
>
>First, the relatively new and highly complex science of climatology is
>an uncertain one, and neither scientists nor politicians serve either
>the truth or the people by pretending to know more than they do.
>
>Second, far and away the most rational response to such climate change
>as, for any reason, may occur, is to adapt to it.
>
>And third, the rich countries of the temperate world have an obligation
>to assist the poor countries of the tropical world to undertake whatever
>adaptation may be needed.
>
>It is not difficult to understand, however, the appeal of the
>conventional climate change wisdom. Throughout the ages something deep
>in man's psyche has made him receptive to apocalyptic warnings: "the end
>of the world is nigh". Almost of all us are imbued with a sense of guilt
>and a sense of sin, and it is so much less uncomfortable to divert our
>attention away from our individual sins and causes of guilt, arising
>from how we have treated our neighbours, and to sublimate it in
>collective guilt and collective sin.
>
>Throughout the ages, too, the weather has been an important part of the
>narrative. In primitive societies it was customary for extreme weather
>events to be explained as punishment from the gods for the sins of the
>people; and there is no shortage of examples of this theme in the Bible,
>either - particularly but not exclusively in the Old Testament.
>
>The main change is that the new priests are scientists (well rewarded
>with research grants for their pains) rather than clerics of the
>established religions, and the new religion is eco-fundamentalism. But
>it is a distinction without much of a difference. And the old religions
>have not been slow to make common cause. Does all this matter? Up to a
>point, no. Unbelievers should not be dismissive of the comfort that
>religion can bring. If people feel better when they buy a hybrid car and
>see a few windmills dotted about (although perhaps not in their own back
>yard), then so be it. And in a democracy, if greenery is what the people
>want, politicians will understandably provide it, dressed in the most
>high-flown rhetoric they can muster.
>
>Indeed, if people are happy to pay a carbon tax, provided it is not at
>too high a level, and the proceeds are used to cut income tax, that
>would not be a disaster, either. It would have to be a consumer-based
>tax, however, since in the globalised world economy industry is highly
>mobile, whereas individuals are much less so.
>
>But the new religion of eco-fundamentalism does present dangers on at
>least three levels.
>
>The first is that the governments of Europe, fired in many cases by
>anti-Americanism (never underestimate the extent to which distaste for
>President Bush has fuelled the anti-global warming movement), may get so
>carried away by their rhetoric as to impose measures which do serious
>harm to their economies. That is a particular danger at the present time
>in this country. No doubt, when the people come to suffer the results
>they will insist on a change of policy, or else vote the offending
>government out of office. But it would be better to avoid the damage in
>the first place.
>
>The second, and more fundamental, danger is that the global Salvationist
>movement is profoundly hostile to capitalism and the market economy.
>There are already increasing calls for green protectionism - for the
>imposition of trade restrictions against those countries which fail to
>agree to curb their carbon dioxide emissions. Given the fact that the
>only way in which the world's poor will ever be able to escape from
>their poverty is by embracing capitalism and the global market economy,
>this is not good news.
>
>But the third danger is even more profound. Today we are very conscious
>of the threat we face from the supreme intolerance of Islamic
>fundamentalism. It could not be a worse time to abandon our own
>traditions of reason and tolerance, and to embrace instead the
>irrationality and intolerance of ecofundamentalism, where reasoned
>questioning of its mantras is regarded as a form of blasphemy. There is
>no greater threat to the people of this planet than the retreat from
>reason we see all around us today.
>
>
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>
It's really scary when a non spiritual person can totally debunk a weak spiritual statement.
