THE ENVIRONMENT
From Moral Issues that Divide Us
James Fieser
home: www.utm.edu/staff/jfieser/160
Copyright 2008
Updated: 11/1/2008
Contents
1. Overview
2. Is the Global Warming Problem that Serious: Pro and Contra — Al Gore and Bjørn Lomborg
1. OVERVIEW
An auto mechanic named Joe purchased an old gas station with the intention of turning it into a repair garage. Buried beneath the ground on the property were two 5,000 gallon fuel storage tanks, which, rusting away, had been leaking gasoline into the ground for decades, and possibly leaching contaminants into the ground water. Environmental laws required that the tanks and the polluted soil be professionally removed, but the $200,000 cleanup cost was more than four times what Joe paid for the property to begin with. So Joe decided to pull out the tanks himself. In the middle of the night he dug them up with a backhoe, cut them into smaller pieces, and hauled them on a flatbed truck to a junk yard. Some months later the State inspector paid him a visit and asked about the status of the tanks. Joe said that they’d been removed years ago by one of the previous owners. “Well, if they’re gone, they’re gone,” the inspector said, and the issue was closed.
Joe’s situation contains the key ingredients of many environmental issues that we face today. The ultimate cause of the environmental damage was an older technology, specifically, steel gasoline storage tanks, developed when people were oblivious to environmental issues. Over time the environmental problem escalated to the point that, by the year 2000, tens of thousands of underground gasoline storage tanks were leaking. Under pressure of public concern for the environment, new environmental laws were enacted to address the problem, regulating the construction of new and better tanks, and mandating the removal of old ones. But the cleanup costs were exorbitantly expensive, and ultimately unaffordable by the business owner. What we have, then, is a complex interplay between bad technology, financial interests of businesses, public opinion, and governmental regulation. In this chapter we will look at some of the central issues of environmental responsibility, and the types of ethical attitudes that we might adopt concerning it.
BACKGROUND
Over the past billion years of ecological history, there have been environmental disasters of epic proportion: major volcanoes, meteor bombardments, ice ages, rising sea levels, mass extinctions. Even if humans had been alive throughout this time, there’s nothing we could have done to prevent these catastrophes since they were the result of purely natural causes beyond our control. But the issue is different with the environmental problems that we face today: they are human caused and, in theory, are within our power to prevent. There’s evidence that some early civilizations pushed themselves to the brink of extinction because of environmental mismanagement. Biologist Jared Diamond makes this case regarding the inhabitants of Easter Island. By cutting down their forests and depleting their soil, they wiped out many of their plants and animals. The island’s tribes then waged war against each other for what resources remained, and ultimately resorted to cannibalism. Assuming that Diamond got the story right, this kind of environmental destruction by early civilizations may have been rare. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century that world wide and systematic damage to the environment began, thanks largely to wide-scale coal mining, steel production, and large factories. Newer industries in the 20th and 21st century have made environmental problems even worse.
Environmental Problems
The range of environmental problems that we face today is vast and interconnected. Some issues, though, are more serious than others. At the very low end of the spectrum, some environmental problems are merely aesthetic nuisances, such as litter strewn along the side of highways, or old tires and appliances tossed into nearby wooded areas. While these activities make the scenery look ugly, in most cases they cause no actual damage to the environment itself. The more serious environmental problems go beyond our human sense of beauty and involve harm; in essence, there must be a body count, such as dead animals, destroyed habitats, endangered species. Even when some human activity genuinely harms the environment, a distinction must be made between the scope of its impact, particularly whether it is local or global. A polluted stream will typically effect the environment only within its immediate area. Other problems, though, such as global warming, impact much of life across the planet.
One of the more universal environmental problems is waste disposal, that is, the discarding of unwanted objects or substances that negatively impact the environment. The garbage that we throw out is the end result of the ever-increasing number of products that we buy in our consumer driven society. While the sheer quantity of trash is a problem to manage in itself, the real environmental damage comes from toxic chemicals in garbage that leach into the ground when dumped in landfills or get released into the air when incinerated. Some of the main offenders are batteries, automobile oil, electronic appliances, cleaning agents, and fluorescent bulbs. Recycling efforts aim to reuse these materials and thus cut back on the release of toxins and also conserve energy. Connected with the problem of waste disposal is air and water pollution, which is typically associated with byproducts of major industry, chemical solvents used in factories, drainage from mining operations, smoke from coal-powered electrical plants, oil spills, agricultural fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides. Worse yet is radioactive material from nuclear power plants, which poses a double threat. First is the problem of the safe disposal of radioactive waste, which remains hazardous to humans and animals for upwards of a million years. There is no way to destroy it, and there is no foolproof way to store it out of harm’s way for such long periods of time. Second is the problem of radioactive fallout from a nuclear core meltdown, such as what happened at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986. Nuclear material spewed into the air and was blown across Europe where it contaminated farm land as far away as England.
Another set of problems involves the shrinking of ecosystems from growing human population and industrialization. Habitat destruction occurs when an area is no longer able to support the plants and animals that were once indigenous to that region. Agricultural expansion and new road construction are the primary cause of deforestation, and the most dramatic example is the depletion of rainforests in developing countries such as Brazil. The most serious consequence of habitat destruction is species extinction – the more we encroach on ecosystems, the more we risk driving species out of existence. This is particularly so with the rainforests, which contain an especially high percentage of plant and animal species. Genetic diversity is critical for the continuation of any ecosystem, where species are mutually dependent upon each other as specialized food sources. Eliminating a few critical links in the food chain can have widespread consequences. Genetic diversity is also important for enabling species to survive when environments go through radical changes in temperature and rain fall. While some species might not survive these natural changes, others may be adapted to do so. The greater the species diversity, the greater the odds are that some will survive during periods of radical environmental change.
One of the more potentially catastrophic areas of environmental damage is the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer. The ozone surrounding the earth is not all compressed into a single region, but, instead, is dispersed within an area between 10 and 50 miles above its surface. If it was squeezed into a single layer it would be only the thickness of two pennies. The ozone layer plays a critical role in absorbing over 97% of the sun’s ultraviolet rays – a spectrum of light that is particularly damaging to DNA, and full exposure to it would destroy animal tissue. Thus, animal life on the surface of the planet depends upon the ultraviolet filtering effects of the ozone layer. During the last few decades the ozone layer has been thinning out, due largely to the release of chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFCs) into the atmosphere which destroy ozone. CFC gases are used in industry as refrigerants such as Freon, propellants to puff up Styrofoam, and cleaning solvents. Ozone layer depletion manifested in two forms, the first of which is an overall thinning of atmospheric ozone concentration everywhere. The second is the creation of an ozone hole above Antarctica, which each year from September to December is around 50% lower than normal. International agreements have been made to phase out CFCs, although some countries continue their use. Once the damage ceases, full recovery of the ozone layer is expected to take between 50 and 100 years.
The biggest environmental issue today is the global warming of the earth’s atmosphere, which threatens to make the sea level rise, turn tropical areas into deserts, and push countless species into extinction. In the past 100 years global temperature has risen by one degree, and projections are that it will continue to rise. Scientists uniformly agree that global warming is principally a human-caused phenomenon. It results from the burning of fossil fuels, which produce excess carbon dioxide, which in turn traps heat from the sun and causes temperature to continually rise. The cycle begins with combustible materials such as oil, gas and coal, which are chemically composed of carbon. In their solid or liquid forms these carbon-based substances pose no risk; even natural gas can do no damage to the atmosphere while it is trapped beneath the earth’s surface. However, once retrieved and burned, all of these carbon-based fuels chemically transform into carbon dioxide gas and are released into the atmosphere. Some carbon fuels are renewable, in the sense that once burned they can be naturally replaced with an equal amount of carbon in solid form. For example, if I cut down and burn a tree in my fire place, I can plant a new tree, which, while growing, will absorb an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store the carbon in the form of solid wood. Fossil fuels, though, are non-renewable: when oil, gas and coal are retrieved from the ground and burned, there is no way to replace them. The problem is intensified by contemporary society’s dependence on fossil fuels. This is obvious with gasoline in our cars and natural gas in our furnaces. But even electricity comes mostly from fossil fuel, over half from coal alone in the U.S.
The critical cause of global warming, then, is burning non-renewable fuels, and the solution is using alternative energy sources, which do not involve combustible materials. But now there is another problem: old-fashioned fuels like oil, gas and coal are very cheap and widely abundant sources of energy, and no other alternative energy source will be as cost-effective or abundant. Hydroelectricity requires a large and elevated water source. Wind power requires a constant source of moving air. Solar electric panels are too costly and inefficient and, in their current forms, require an unrealistically large amount of space to meet a country’s energy needs. Geothermal power requires an underground hot spot, like geysers or volcanoes, which aren’t readily available. Nuclear power is also an option: although it is technically non-renewable (we can’t create more uranium), nothing is burned to produce carbon dioxide in the process. It is the heat generated by the nuclear reaction itself which is converted into electricity. But nuclear electricity is becoming increasingly expensive, and there are the other environmental risks mentioned above. While none of these alternative energy sources alone will provide an immediate solution to the world’s energy needs, policy makers and environmentalists often advise pursuing each of these paths, with hopes that technological improvements will eventually make them cost effective and readily available.
Environmentalism
In the face of growing environmental problems since the Industrial Revolution, environmental movements have emerged calling for changes in public attitudes and policies. One of the first environmentalists was George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882) who in is book Man and Nature (1864) traced “the history of man's industry as exerted upon animal and vegetable life, upon the woods, upon the waters, and upon the sands.” Marsh called for efforts to restore and improve the natural harmony of these environmentally exhausted regions. Another important early influence was naturalist John Muir (1838–1914), who devoted much of his life to preserving the American wilderness from human encroachment. Muir was particularly instrumental in the creation of the country’s national park system, which he hails in the following famous quotation:
The making of gardens and parks goes on with civilization all over the world, and they increase both in size and number as their value is recognized. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor . . . the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in our magnificent National parks--the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc. -- Nature's sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world. [The Yosemite, 1912]
In 1892 Muir founded the Sierra Club, which today is the leading environmental advocacy group in the U.S. The group’s current mission statement is this:
1. Explore, enjoy and protect the wild places of the earth.
2. Practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources.
3. Educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.
4. Use all lawful means to carry out these objectives. [www.sierraclub.org]
In keeping with its mission statement, the Sierra Club regularly sues industries and governmental bodies on environmental issues.
The largest international environmental organization today is Greenpeace, founded in 1972, with nearly three million financial supporters. Greenpeace exists, they explain, “because this fragile earth deserves a voice.” The organization is famous for their confrontational tactics, particularly the use of sea vessels to protest activities such as commercial whale hunting. One of their ships, The Rainbow Warrior, was bombed and destroyed by the French Intelligence Service when it entered a military zone near New Zealand to protest nuclear testing.
While Greenpeace’s protest methods are sometimes aggressive, the organization nevertheless claims that they are non-violent. Other environmental groups, though, consciously cross the line and engage in overtly violent activity —a tactic which is now commonly called ecoterrorism. They destroy the property of industries, research centers, and government agencies that they believe are engaged in environmentally harmful practices, hoping to disrupt their normal operations. A common tactic is tree spiking, that is, hammering metal rods into the base of large trees to deter loggers from cutting them down. While the spikes themselves don’t harm the trees, saw blades can break when making contact with them, which proves both economically costly and dangerous to the loggers. Other tactics involve disabling vehicles and firebombing buildings. Because their activities are blatantly illegal, ecoterrorist groups avoid having any official leaders nor any organized list of members. The most famous ecoterrorist organization is the Earth Liberation Front, and one of the websites associated with it states that “Any individuals who committed arson or any other illegal acts under the ELF name are individuals who choose to do so under the banner of ELF and do so only driven by their personal conscience” (www. earthliberationfront.com).
What People Think
The surveys below suggest that people in the U.S. are equally divided about whether environmental problems are really that serious, and whether environmental problems require governmental intervention (from www.pollingreport.com).
"Do you consider yourself an environmentalist or not?" (7/23-28/08)
Yes: 41%
No: 58%
Unsure: 1%
"With which one of these statements about the environment and the economy do you most agree? Protection of the environment should be given priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth. OR, Economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent." (6/26-29/08)
Environment Given Priority: 49%
Economic Growth Given Priority: 44%
Both Equally: 6%
Unsure: 1%
"What in your opinion is the single biggest environmental problem the world faces at this time?" (7/23-28/08)
Global warming/Climate change 25%
Air pollution 12%
Energy problems 11%
Pollution (misc.) 7%
Toxic substances in environment 6%
Water pollution 5%
Loss of habitat/Overdevelopment 4%
Waste/Not enough recycling 4%
Other 14%
None 3%
Unsure 8%
"Do you think that global warming will pose a serious threat to you or your way of life in your lifetime?" (3/6-9/08)
Yes: 40%
No: 58%
Unsure: 2%
"Which do you think would do a better job reducing global warming: the government, through laws intended to reduce the output of greenhouse gases, or businesses, through competition in the market system?" (7/23-28/08)
Government: 43%
Business: 45%
Both Equally: 8%
Unsure: 4%
PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES
The central philosophical issue surrounding the environment is whether we should only value the environment for how it affects human interests, or, instead, whether we should value it for its own sake. The competing views here are called anthropocentrism and biocentrism, respectively.
Anthropocentrism vs. Biocentrism
Anthropocentrism—literally meaning “human centered”—is the view that all environmental responsibility is derived from human interests alone. The traditional view of morality is that only human beings can be the focus of moral consideration—not rocks, rivers, plants, or even animals. Only humans are moral persons, have moral rights, and have a direct moral standing. We have a unique status among things on this planet, and morality only applies to us. Anthropocentrism assumes this traditional view that only human beings have a direct moral standing, and we therefore do not have any responsibility to the environment for its own sake. The value that we place in anything, such as a house, a car, a pair of glasses, is based on the importance that these things have in our lives; there is nothing special about any of these things apart from the value we give them. We value works of art such as the Mona Lisa for the joy that they give humans, and not for what they are independently of us. So too with the environment: it is important for our happiness and our very survival, and because of that we have an obligation towards it. But the obligation is indirect (derived from human interests only) and not direct (derived from the value of the environment itself). Our indirect obligation would include keeping the environment hospitable for supporting human life and preserving its beauty and resources so that we can continue to enjoy it. Defending the anthropocentric position, law professor William Baxter argues that the source of all environmental obligation is human benefit:
I reject the proposition that we ought to respect the “balance of nature” or to “preserve the environment” unless the reason for doing so, express or implied, is the benefit of man. I reject the idea that there is a “right” or “morally correct” state of nature to which we should return. The word “nature” has no normative connotation. [People or Penguins (1974)]
According to Baxter, it is irrelevant to discuss issues of environmental damage without linking them to human considerations:
My [environmental] criteria are oriented to people, not penguins. Damage to penguins, or sugar pines, or geological marvels is, without more, simply irrelevant. One must go further, by my criteria, and say: Penguins are important because people enjoy seeing them walk about rocks; and furthermore, the well-being of people would be less impaired by halting use of DDT than by giving up penguins. In short, my observations about environmental problems will be people-oriented, as are my criteria. I have no interest in preserving penguins for their own sake. [Ibid]
Thus, nothing in the environment is valuable for its own sake, but only for the benefit that it brings to humans.
By contrast, biocentrism is the view that we have direct moral obligations to things in the environment for their own sake, irrespective of their impact on human interests. There are two ways that the biocentric position can be understood. First is biocentric individualism: individual living things within the environment have moral worth in and of itself. According to Paul Taylor in his book Respect for Nature (1986), every organism has moral worth because each has a built in goal that directs its growth and activities towards its survival and well-being. Whether it’s a plant, human or animal, it has, as he calls it, a “teleological center of life.” This does not mean that every living thing has rights in the way that humans do, but it does mean that we have moral responsibilities towards them. That responsibility also increases as we move up the food chain, from plants, to unconscious animals to conscious ones.
Second, there is biocentric holism, sometimes called ecocentrism, which is the view that we have direct responsibilities to environmental collections, such as animal species and rain forests, but not necessarily to the individual organisms within those collections. What is important is that ecosystems and species thrive. Even if there is no negative human consequence of destroying a species or ecosystem, we still have a moral responsibility towards those collections in and of themselves. Biocentric holism was first articulated by American ecologist Aldo Leopold in his essay "The Land Ethic" (1949). He describes how notions of morality have evolved over the millennia. The earliest moral conceptions regulated conduct between individuals, as reflected in the Ten Commandments. Later ones regulated conduct between an individual and society, as reflected in the Golden Rule. But now, according to Leopold, we are on the brink of a new advance in morality that regulates conduct between humans and the environment. He calls this final phase the land ethic, and states that "The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land." This involves a radical shift in how humans perceive themselves in relation to the environment. Originally we saw ourselves as conquerors of the land. Now we need to see ourselves as members of a community that also includes the land. Thus, he writes, the guiding moral principle of the land ethic is that “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Biocentric holism is often associated with other environmental theories that make even more radical claims. The theory of deep ecology holds that humans are only part of a larger ecosphere, and we should seek to understand how the environmental system operates as a whole. To gain that understanding, we need to go through a life-transforming experience called “re-earthing” by which we gradually identify more closely with the earth. Another related theory is the Gaia hypothesis, which is the view that the entire earth is a single ecosystem or organism that regulates itself through feedback mechanisms to maintain a state of equilibrium that is conducive to life on this planet. For example, when the heat from the sun increases or decreases, the planet's self-regulating ecosystem compensates by adjusting the amount of greenhouse gas that it emits; as a result, the temperature on earth has remained relatively constant for the past billion years. Defenders of the Gaia hypothesis argue that recent human intrusion into the ecosystem threatens to disrupt its self-regulating process. Deep ecology and the Gaia hypothesis share the central intuition of biocentric holism that we must value the earth’s larger ecological system apart from our isolated human interests.
Both the anthropocentrist and biocentrist views recognize that we have a responsibility to the environment. Does it matter which of these two views we adopt? The answer is yes, particularly since the two sides disagree about whether human interests or environmental interests should get priority. On the one side, anthropocentrists like Baxter criticize biocentrists for giving too much consideration to the environment at the expense of human interests. On the other side, biocentrists like Leopold criticize anthropocentrists for making environmental decisions based on what is cost-effective, and thus selling out the environment. To illustrate the differences, suppose that a chemical company was found responsible for polluting a river, and two corrective options were open to them. First, they could invest fifty million dollars in pollution control systems at their factory, but this would likely drive them out of business. Or, second, they could pay the community one million dollars in compensation for living with the polluted stream, thus costing them much less money. This second solution might very well address the human concerns of the affected community, and thus be a viable option for the anthropocentrist. However, the biocentrist would completely dismiss the second alternative and be satisfied only with the first one that seeks to repair the damage to the environment itself.
The rift between anthropocentrism and biocentrism often plays out in public debates over wilderness land management issues. For example, should the U.S. government lease out Alaskan wilderness for oil production? The regions in question are probably the last undisturbed natural areas in the U.S., and they are so desolate and remote that people don’t live there and it’s not suitable for recreation. If you are an anthropocentrist who values the environment only for its human benefit, then you’ll be in favor of oil drilling. On the other hand, if you are a biocentrist who values the environment for itself, independent of human interest, then you will oppose drilling.
The Environment and the Profit Motive
Much of the harm done to the environment is the result of business and industry. Although businesses don’t consciously set out to damage the environment, the end result is that they do, and there are two reasons for this. First, they are inherently imposing on nature insofar as they take pieces of nature and reshape them into things that didn’t exist before, such as television sets, automobiles, shopping malls, skyscrapers. The means of producing these things are demanding on natural resources, the products themselves are often toxic, and the infrastructure to create them destroys habitats. Second, from an economic standpoint, businesses are driven by the motive to make a profit. Stockholders demand a return on their investment, and this mandate transfers down through the management hierarchy. Part of making a profit is to reduce costs, and environmental responsibility is highly costly, with few immediate financial rewards. Thus a business that is driven by the profit motive will be at odds with the wellbeing of the environment.
Economists sometimes attempt to link environmental responsibility with the profit motive, and there are two approaches for doing this. The first is that good environmental practices result in good business, which means that environmentally responsible business decisions will be profitable because they will appeal to consumers. Just start out by pursuing environmental responsibility and this will lead to profits. For example, they might promote recycling, indicating on their packaging and thereby attracting environmentally conscious buyers. They might also update older energy-hungry heating or production units if the investment has the right payoff. But even if this works with some business decisions, in many if not most cases adequate attention to environmental factors such as pollution, habitat destruction and carbon emissions could drive a company out of business.
The second approach is that good business results in good environmental practices. That is, in a truly competitive and free market, the profit motive will in fact bring about responsible environmental policies. Just start out pursuing profits, and the market place will force you to be environmentally responsible. Environmentally conscious consumers will not buy from companies that are environmentally irresponsible and this will force businesses to act with that in mind. The problem with this approach is that it wrongly assumes that consumers will demand the environmentally responsible choice from businesses. In fact, consumers may opt for less environmentally sound products if they know they will be saving money. A high performing electric car may cost twice as much as its gas-powered equivalent. Installing and maintaining solar electric panels on your roof may also cost twice as much as what you would normally pay for electricity. When consumers themselves are motivated by cost savings, they will be less inclined to put economic pressure on businesses to be environmentally responsible. Thus, it seems that environmentally sound business practices will not magically emerge within a free market system, and the government must play some role through environmental regulation policy.
LEGAL ISSUES
Even during the 19th century, industries faced at least some public opposition to their environmentally destructive practices, particularly with pollution. Some polluters of the time were successfully sued under general laws prohibiting public nuisance, which were already on the books. But it wasn’t until the mid 20th century that rigorous anti-pollution laws were created and enforced.
Who Should Own the Environment?
A fundamental legal obstacle to environmental legislation involves determining who actually owns the environment—or should own it. Should environmental resources be just like any other piece of property that individuals can buy, sell, and use as they see fit? There are two basic approaches, the first of which is community property environmentalism. On this view, environmental resources are publically owned and publically managed. The best example of this is hunter gatherer tribes that throughout history have lived off of their local land areas, making use of environmental resources without parceling it out to individual tribespeople for their private ownership. The territories themselves were tribally-owned—or at least tribally occupied—and use of resources is governed by what’s best for the tribal community. In more modern times communist countries have their land and environmental resources controlled by a centralized government that presumably make environmental decisions on behalf of the country as a whole.
Community property environmentalism, particularly the tribal variety, is often associated with a philosophy of respect for the environment. That is, while tribespeople make use of the resources, at the same time they have an attitude of reverence towards their natural surroundings, often seeing it as a sacred territory that demands respectful environmental practices. However, the mere fact that property is commonly owned and managed does not mean that environmental practices will be sound ones. An open-access approach to environmental use can lead to unlimited environmental degradation. The problem is an example of a tragedy of the commons: it is easy to disregard natural resources that are held in common and seem abundant, such as air and water. It doesn’t seem wrong to pollute the air if, technically, no one owns the air and the particular damage that I do isn’t too noticeable. The best case scenario for community property environmentalism is when the resources are publically managed in a responsible way.
The alternative to community property environmentalism is free-market environmentalism: environmental resources are privately owned and privately managed. This position largely owes to a legal tradition that sees ownership as an exclusive right of possession, enjoyment and disposal. But even when land is privately owned and managed, the government might step in and prevent environmental misuse through regulation. In a free market system, the question then is how much regulation should the government impose on land owners? There are two stances on this. Radical free market environmentalism is the position that environmental resources should be subject only to very minimal public requirements and governmental regulation; most of the land management decisions should be left to the owner. One justification for this position is that those closest to and most effected by land use are in a better position to make decisions about it; governmental agencies are too far removed from the locations. On this view, private landowners won’t have the incentive to deplete their land’s natural resources since this would reduce its property value. Private landowners also won’t have the incentive to pollute the environment if surrounding neighbors who are affected by it can sue the landowners. The other position is regulated free market environmentalism, whereby, through environmental laws, the government controls the type of environmental activity that property owners can conduct on their land. The principal justification for this position is that the government is in a better position to make environmental decisions that broadly affect the country, which cannot be done when land owners act in isolation from each other.
In the U.S., all three of the above approaches to environmental ownership are present in varying degrees. First, there is a community property component insofar as the federal government owns about 30% of all land in the nation, some of which is used for military bases, Indian reservations, and nature and wildlife reserves. Other areas are leased out for mining or agriculture. Second, there is an element of radical free market environmentalism which allows land owners to develop their forested land into farms, residential areas or commercial districts. Third, there is an element of regulated free market environmentalism as reflected in the growing number of pollution and land management laws that the government has set in place over the past several decades. The balance between these three approaches to environmental ownership is constantly shifting, and often depends on which political party is in power. Conservative parties, which place a high value on economic freedom, will favor more private ownership and radical free market approaches. Liberal parties, which place a high value on environmental integrity, will favor more community ownership and free market regulation.
Environmental Laws
In the U.S., one of the first and most important environmental laws was the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the key purpose of which is “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved.” The chief problem, according to the act, is that widespread extinctions have occurred within the U.S. “as a consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation.” The act specifically states that “these species of fish, wildlife, and plants are of esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people.” The governmental body chiefly responsible for setting and enforcing environmental policy in the U.S. is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created in 1970. High on its agenda are setting standards and enforcing laws regarding air and water pollution, land resource management, endangered species, and hazardous waste disposal. The EPA is also responsible for the creation of the Energy Star program which labels appliances such as water heaters that meet high standards of energy efficiency.
Environmental policy makers often straddle between two opposing interests. On the one hand, there are the economic interests of business and industry, supporters of which maintain that environmental laws are too extreme and can cripple financial growth. On the other hand, there are the interests of environmental groups who hold that governmental laws do not go nearly far enough in protecting the species and their habitats. Sometimes conflicts between opposing sides need to be settled in court.
A particularly notable Supreme Court case on the environment was Sierra Club v. Morton (1971), in which the Sierra Club opposed the creation of a ski resort near Sequoia National Park. In this case Justice William O. Douglas suggested that some ecosystems should be granted the status of legal persons, just as corporations have, and thus have a legal standing to be plaintiffs in law suits. Douglas writes,
The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes—fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it. Those people who have a meaningful relation to that body of water—whether it be a fisherman, a canoeist, a zoologist, or a logger—must be able to speak for the values which the river represents and which are threatened with destruction.
While ecosystems have not yet been granted the status of legal persons, as Douglas proposed, in the aftermath of this court case, laws were enacted that allowed people or organizations to bring suits on behalf of ecosystems and be paid for injuries to the environment.
While countries are largely in control of setting their own environmental laws and policies, there have been a growing number of international environmental treaties which aim to get countries around the world to collectively address environmental problems. Many of these have originated within the United Nations, addressing issues as diverse as climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development. The most famous of the international environmental agreements today is the Kyoto Protocol, which requires developed countries to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 37 of the world’s most developed countries have signed on, but the U.S. has not, principally because the Protocol does not impose restrictions on developing countries. The reason for excluding developing countries is this. Wealthier developed countries have had unfettered access to environmental resources as they’ve built strong industries and economies. Poorer developing countries, by contrast, are just now coming of age and placing heavy demands on the environment. While environmentally responsible policies today are expensive to implement, wealthier countries have a much easier time absorbing those costs than do poorer countries. Is it fair to impose the same strict environmental regulations on poorer developing countries that we do on wealthier developed countries? Should poorer countries be allowed to first catch up to wealthier ones? The U.S. says no on the grounds that this is a double standard that requires wealthy countries to carry the environmental burden for the rest of the world.
ARGUMENTS PRO AND CONTRA
The Conservative Position
The conservative view on environmental responsibility is that environmental policies should be directed mainly by human economic and social interests, and managed by the free market. The main arguments for the conservative position are these.
1. Nature is for people: Nature involves a hierarchy of living things, where the organisms higher up make use of the ones lower down. They instinctively manipulate their surroundings to make their own specialized habitats, and we don’t question their entitlement to do so. Humans are at the top of the natural hierarchy and we too are entitled to make use of our natural surroundings for our purposes. A criticism of this argument is that our human ability to manipulate nature is incomparably greater than any other organism and can have devastating consequences. We can reach down through the hierarchy at every level and influence what takes place, even to the point of completely destroying it, an ability which no other creature has. The fact that we have the ability to alter or destroy all of nature does not entitle us to do so.
2. Human interests are more important than environmental ones: It is natural for any organism to consider its own interests above that of other organisms. Termites care little about the habitats they destroy as they devour wooded areas. Squirrels will hoard as many nuts and seeds as they can, with no thought about sharing with other animals. It is thus natural for us to consider our own interests above those of other living things. A criticism of this argument is that there is no limit to human selfish interests. Millionaires want to be billionaires, billionaires want to be trillionaires. There are natural caps on the damage that termites and squirrels can do to the environment when they pursue their selfish interests. The environmental damage that humans can do, though, is boundless.
3. Human interests produce good environmental policies: Human wellbeing depends on the environment, and so we have a vested interest in a healthy environment. Reckless disregard for nature through poor environmental policies will not only reduce our quality of life, but put at risk our very existence. Thus, when looking for a reason to have good environmental policies, we don’t have to look any further than human interests alone. A criticism of this argument is that human interests are often driven by short-term benefits—the money that I can make or save today, the consumer products that I can enjoy right now, the immediate convenience of my fuel-guzzling car. Good environmental policies need to be based on long-term strategies that will often involve short-term sacrifices.
The Liberal Position
The liberal position regarding environmental responsibility is that environmental policies should be directed mainly by concerns for the long-term well being of the environment, not human short term interests, and should be managed by the government through regulation. The main arguments for the liberal position are these:
1. Ecosystems have an independent moral standing: Humans are not the only things that have a moral standing, and human well-being is not the only moral good. Ecosystems, species, and perhaps even some individual non-human life forms, have their own purposes and interests, and are worthy of value in their own right. It doesn’t matter that they can’t speak for themselves. We can recognize their inherent value, and we should acknowledge that they have a moral standing independently of our own. A criticism of this argument is that, even if nonhuman things have inherent value, some things have more inherent value than others. A collection of bacteria on a rotten orange has less value than a collection of trees in a forest, and a forest may have less value than a human person. In the end, even if ecosystems have some moral standing, our moral agenda may still be directed mostly by our human inherent worth.
2. Humans are part of a larger natural process: All life on earth is part of a complex web of interdependent organisms. We humans tend to think of ourselves as autonomous and independent creatures, but the biological fact is that we are just one piece of a large organic puzzle, and not necessarily even the most important piece. We are at bottom animals, and environmentally damaging animals at that. Our highest priorities should be to preserve the web of life that sustains us, and not the fulfillment of our isolated human interests. A criticism of this argument is that within the web of life, we are the only organism that knows what’s going on. Through our knowledge and self-identity, we thus stand apart from the larger natural process. A factory that manufactures chairs is also an interconnected and complex web of processes, but its end result is the chair itself. In many ways we are the end product of the web of life, not just a tiny strand within that web. Consequently, we are entitled to value our human interests, independently of the natural process from which we arose.
3. Environmental responsibility is best served through governmental regulation: Human beings are inherently selfish and we typically pursue our individual best interests at the expense of everything else, including the environment. The entire history of environmental problems is a history of human selfishness. Environmental policies cannot be left to our individual selfish whims. Governmental regulations force us to take into account the impact of our individual actions on the world outside of us; regulations protect the environment from our most selfish and ecologically damaging choices. With environmental damage as bad as it has gotten, the stakes are too high to surrender the environment to personal and economic greed. A criticism of this argument is that the government itself is not always the best manager of the environment. It often sells out to the most environmentally destructive industries, and blocks citizens from suing those industries on behalf of the environment. Personal greed certainly needs to be harnessed in the interests of preserving the environment, but we can’t trust that the government’s policies are the best ones to accomplish this. Non-governmental and even free-market solutions are also needed.
A Middle Ground
The anthropocentric and biocentric approaches to environmental responsibility are dramatically distinct from each other: one says that moral value is grounded only in human interests, and the other says that it is grounded at least in part by environmental wellbeing independent of human interests. Deep ecologists argue further that moving from an anthropocentric to a biocentric moral position requires something like a religious experience: we need to connect our individual identities with a larger ecological self through a re-earthing experience. Thus, from a strictly philosophical perspective, there is no obvious middle ground between the two positions. However, what matters most with environmental responsibility is how we act, not necessarily what motivates us. To that extent, everyone, even the die-hard anthropocentrist, should be capable of appreciating environmental policies that may improve the integrity of the environment. During the 1970s, the EPA took dramatic steps in reducing industrial pollution that was blackening the skies of major cities and poisoning surrounding rivers. At the time businesses resisted these changes at every step, but in retrospect it is evident that these environmental regulations enhanced our quality of life, and no reasonable person would want to return to the days before these regulations.
There are still many more tasks that need to be done to stabilize and improve the environment as we’ve listed at the outset of this chapter, the most urgent of which is to address global warming. If we make these important changes through both governmental regulation and some voluntary self-regulation of industries, it is easy to see how our quality of life will be improved even more. Education is a large part of the battle—learning how many of the consumer products and life-style choices that we take for granted are damaging the environment, and along with that our quality of life. There is an environmental cost for virtually everything that we do, and understanding that cost is an important first step in motivating us to act responsibly. Becoming more environmentally responsible undoubtedly involves short-term personal sacrifices, but environmental education should teach us that the sacrifices are worth the long-term personal gain we’ll receive through a healthier environment. Armed with this knowledge, we will thus be more willing to reduce energy consumption, develop renewable resources, and participate in recycling programs. It may also incline us to shop more responsibly, and send a message to manufacturers that consumers prefer environmentally-friendly products and are prepared to voice that preference with their wallets. While this shift in attitude may not necessarily make me a biocentrist, it will make me a smarter anthropocentrist and enable me to see how I can personally benefit from more environmentally-friendly personal choices and public policies.
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2. IS GLOBAL WARMING THAT SERIOUS OF A PROBLEM: PRO AND CONTRA
Al Gore and Bjørn Lomborg
In 2007 a panel discussion took place regarding how serious the global warming problem actually is. On the one side, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore maintained that it is quite a bad problem, perhaps even worse than we originally thought. Reiterating the main themes of this film, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore argued that there is an important moral component to the problem: “It is about who we are as human beings and our capacity to transcend our limitations and rise to meet this challenge.” Opposing Gore was Danish political science professor Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001). Lomborg agrees that Global warming is real and human-made, but he argues that Gore and others greatly exaggerate its negative consequences, particularly regarding increases in sea level, hurricanes, and malaria. While we need to address the problem, he argues, “The current raft of policies that are either enacted or suggested are costly but have virtually no effect.” If we follow the most radical policies, we’d have to make enormous sacrifices right now, yet the effects would not be felt for another four centuries. The most cost effective response would be to make small changes now, while researching alternative fuel technologies that will become economically viable in a century. In the mean time, according to Lomborg, much greater social good can be done by focusing more attention on the problems of AIDS, malnutrition, and pollution.
PRO: AL GORE
. . . I want to testify today about what I believe is a planetary emergency—a crisis that threatens the survival of our civilization and the habitability of the Earth. Just six weeks ago, the scientific community, in its strongest statement to date, confirmed that the evidence of warming is “unequivocal.” Global warming is real and human activity is the main cause. The consequences are mainly negative and headed toward catastrophic, unless we act. However, the good news is that we can meet this challenge. It is not too late, and we have everything we need to get started.
As many know, the Chinese expression for “crisis” consists of two characters side by side. The first symbol means “danger.” The second symbol means “opportunity.” I would like to discuss both the danger and the opportunity here today.
First of all, there is no longer any serious debate over the basic points that make up the consensus on global warming. The ten warmest years on record have all been since 1990. Globally, 2005 was the hottest of all. In the United States, 2006 was the warmest year ever. The winter months of December 2006 through February 2007 make up the warmest winter on record. These rising temperatures have been accompanied by many changes. Hurricanes are getting stronger. Sea levels are rising. Droughts are becoming longer and more intense. Mountain glaciers are receding around the world.
New evidence shows that it may be even worse than we thought. For example, a recent study published by the University of Alaska-Fairbanks indicates that methane is leaking from the Siberian permafrost at five times the predicted levels. Methane is 23 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide and there are billions of tons underneath the permafrost.
However, there is a great deal of new momentum for action to solve the climate crisis. Today, I am here to deliver more than a half million messages to Congress asking for real action on global warming. More than 420 Mayors have now adopted Kyoto-style commitments in their cities and have urged strong federal action. The evangelical and faith communities have begun to take the lead, calling for measures to protect God’s creation. The State of California, under a Republican Governor and a Democratic legislature, passed strong, economy wide legislation mandating cuts in carbon dioxide. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have passed renewable energy standards for the electricity sector. Much more needs to be done, but change is in the air.
I do not believe that the climate crisis should be a partisan political issue. I just returned from the United Kingdom, where last week the two major parties put forward their climate change platforms. The Tory and Labour parties are in vigorous competition with one another—competing to put forward the best solution to the climate crisis. I look forward to the day when we return to this way of thinking here in the U.S.
The climate crisis is, by its nature, a global problem—and ultimately the solution must be global as well. The best way - and the only way - to get China and India on board is for the U.S. to demonstrate real leadership. As the world’s largest economy and greatest superpower, we are uniquely situated to tackle a problem of this magnitude.
After all, we have taken on problems of this scope before. When England and then America and our allies rose to meet the threat of global Fascism, together we won two wars simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific.
This is a moral moment of similar magnitude. This is not ultimately about any scientific discussion or political dialogue. It is about who we are as human beings and our capacity to transcend our limitations and rise to meet this challenge.
The solutions to this problem are accessible, but politically - at least in the near term - seem quite difficult. In practice, however, they will turn out to be much easier than they appear to us now.
For example, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer first negotiated in the 1980’s was opposed by industry for fear it would hurt the economy because its provisions were too stringent. However, governments and industry rose to meet the challenge and the treaty was strengthened twice in quick succession to quickly ramp down the chemicals that were causing the hole in the ozone layer.
There are some who will say that acting to solve this crisis will be costly. I don’t agree. If we solve it in the right way, we will save money and boost productivity. Moreover, the consequences of inaction would be devastating to both the environment and the economy. Recent reports make that clear.
When I think about the climate crisis today I can imagine a time in the future when our children and grandchildren ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: What were you thinking, didn’t you care about our future? Or they will ask: How did you find the moral courage to cross party lines and solve this crisis? We must hear their questions now. We must answer them with our actions, not merely with our promises. We must choose a future for which our children and grandchildren will thank us.
CONTRA: BJØRN LOMBORG
Climate is back on the agenda, thanks to a large degree to my co-presenter, Al Gore. The climate discussion was strong in 1992 when it was put on the agenda by the Earth Summit in Rio and through the Kyoto Protocol agreed in 1997. Gore deserves applause for making global warming cool again.
However, in this presentation I will move beyond recognizing the importance of global warming and ask how we should view it, deal with it and put it in perspective.
I will make 4 basic points.
1. Global warming is real and man-made. This point has been made in many places, but perhaps most strongly and convincingly by the IPCC.
2. Statements about the strong, ominous and immediate consequences of global warming are often wildly exaggerated, as I will show below.
3. We need a stronger focus on smart solutions rather than excessive if well-intentioned efforts.
4. We need – as this hearing asks for – to put global warming in perspective. Climate change is not the only issue on the global agenda, and actually one of the issues where we can do the least good first.
Let us be frank. Al Gore and the many people he has inspired have good will and great intentions. However, he has got carried away and come to show only worst-case scenarios. This is unlikely to form the basis for a sound policy judgment. The problem is compounded in that if we follow Al Gore’s recommendations, we will likely end up choosing very bad policies to solve the many problems, we agree need attention.
In short, following Gore’s logic, with its good will and fine intentions, will actually end up costing millions of lives.
Let me lay out the argument for you.
Global Warming is Real and Man-Made
I would argue that our best information comes from the UN Climate Panel, the so-called IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). In Figure 1, we have a simple, standard prediction for the coming hundred years from the medium scenario of the 2007 IPCC report. Here we are told that that over the century global mean temperatures will increase about 2.6oC (4.7oF) with a span of 1.8-4.0oC.
The total cost of global warming is anything but trivial, about $15 trillion. Yet it is only about 0.5% of the total net worth of the 21st century, about $3,000 trillion.
Consequences often Vastly Exaggerated
Global warming is being described in everyday media in ever more dire terms. The IPPR think tank (which is strongly in favor of CO2 cuts) in 2006 produced an analysis of the UK debate. It summarized the flavor thus:
Climate change is most commonly constructed through the alarmist repertoire – as awesome, terrible, immense and beyond human control. This repertoire is seen everywhere and is used or drawn on from across the ideological spectrum, in broadsheets and tabloids, in popular magazines and in campaign literature from government initiatives and environmental groups. It is typified by an inflated or extreme lexicon, incorporating an urgent tone and cinematic codes. It employs a quasi-religious register of death and doom, and it uses language of acceleration and irreversibility.
This kind of language makes any sensible policy dialogue about our global choices impossible. In public debates, the argument I hear most often is a variant of “if global warming is going to kill us all and lay waste to the world, this has to be our top priority – everything else you talk about, including HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, free trade, malaria, clean drinking water may be noble but utterly unimportant compared to global warming.” Of course, if the deadly description of global warming were correct, the inference of its primacy would also be correct, but as we will see, global warming is nothing of the sort. It is one – but only one – problem of many, we will have to tackle through the 21st century.
Very clearly this is seen in Mr. Gore’s own description of his movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Here it is said that:
We have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.
Yet this is simply incorrect, both as it stands and in its policy conclusions. Let us look at heat deaths, sea level rise, hurricanes and malaria as outstanding examples of Gore’s claim.
Heat and cold deaths
Very often, we only hear about the heat deaths but not the cold deaths – and sometimes this is even repeated in the official literature, as in the US 2005 Climate Change and Human Health Impacts report, where heat is mentioned 54 times and cold just once. We need to know just how much more heat deaths we can expect compared to how many fewer cold deaths.
Much has been made of the heat wave in Europe in early August 2003, which killed 35,000 people, with 2,000 deaths in the UK. Yet, each year more than 25,000 people die in the UK from cold. It can be estimated that every year more than 200,000 people die from excess heat in Europe. It is reasonable to estimate that each year about 1.5 million people die from excess cold in Europe. This is more than seven times the total number of heat deaths. Just in this millennium Europe have lost more than 10 million people to the cold, 300 times the iconic 35,000 heat deaths from 2003. That we so easily forget these deaths and so easily embrace the exclusive worry about global warming tells us of a breakdown in our sense of proportion.
The important fact, of course, is what will happen with future temperature increases. Let us for the moment assume – very unrealistically – that we will not adapt to towards the future heat. Still, the largest European study conclude that for at least for 2oC, “Our data suggest that any increases in mortality due to increased temperatures would be outweighed by much larger short term declines in cold related mortalities.” For Britain it is estimated that a 2oC increase will mean 2,000 more heat deaths but 20,000 fewer cold deaths. A paper trying to incorporate all studies on this issue (a so-called meta-study) and apply it to a broad variety of settings both developed and developing around the world found that “global warming may cause a decrease in mortality rates, especially of cardiovascular diseases.” For the US, the net lower death count from global warming in 2050 is estimated at 174,000 per year.
Sea level rise
In its 2007 report, the UN estimate that sea levels will rise about 34.5cm over the rest of the century. While this is not a trivial amount, it is also important to realize that it is certainly not outside the historical experience. Since 1850 we have experienced a sea level rise of about 29cm [i.e., 11.4 inches], yet this has clearly not caused major disruptions. Sea level rise is a problem, but not a catastrophe. Ask a very old person about the most important issues that took place in the 20th century. She will likely mention the two world wars, the cold war, the internal combustion engine and perhaps the IT revolution. But it is very unlikely that she will add: ‘oh, and sea levels rose.’
It is also important to realize that new prediction is lower than the previous IPCC estimates. The new span is 18-59cm (midpoint 38.5cm), down from 9-88cm in 2001 (midpoint 48.5cm). This continues a declining trend from the nineties (where the first IPCC expected 67 cm), and the 80s, where the US EPA projected several meters.
But this information is much less troublesome than what we often hear from global warming advocates. Al Gore has perhaps made their point most forcefully in his book and film. In a very moving film clip he shows us how large parts of Florida, including all of Miami, will be inundated by 20 feet of water. He goes on to show us equally strong clips of San Francisco Bay being flooded, the Netherlands being wiped off the map, Beijing and then Shanghai being submerged, Bangladesh be made uninhabitable for 60 million people, and even how New York and its World Trade Center Memorial will be deluged.
How is it possible that one of today’s strongest voices on climate change can say something so dramatically different from the best science, as we see from the IPCC in Figure 2. The IPCC estimates a foot, Gore tops them 20 times. Well, technically, Al Gore is not contradicting the UN, because he simply says: “If Greenland melted or broke up and slipped into the sea – or if half of Greenland and half of Antarctica melted or broke up and slipped into the sea, sea levels worldwide would increase by between 18 and 20 feet.” He is simply positing a hypothetical and then in full graphic and gory detail showing us what – hypothetically – would happen to Miami, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Beijing, Shanghai, Dhaka and then New York.
But of course, the impact of the film clearly suggest immediate inundation, reinforced by such comments as rising sea levels around Beijing would mean that “more than 20 million people would have to be evacuated.” Yet, take an overview of the simulations of Greenland sea level contributions. None are higher than 3mm/year by the end of the century, whereas Gore’s claim – if valid even in a century span – would have to be around 120mm or 40 times higher than the very highest model estimate. The IPCC estimate that Greenland is expected to contribute 3.5 cm over the century by itself, and with models indicating a lower estimate of 1cm and high estimate of 15cm. This means that Gore’s claim is 174 times higher than the IPCC, see Figure 2. It is unlikely that such an approach will lead to good policy initiatives.
Hurricanes
Stronger and more frequent hurricanes have become one of the standard exhibits of the global warming worries. The solution offered is invariably CO2 cuts and Kyoto.
With the strong 2005 hurricane season and the devastation of New Orleans by Katrina, this message has reverberated even more powerfully. Al Gore spends 26 pages on showing pictures of the suffering from New Orleans and names every single hurricane in 2005.
So has global warming caused stronger and more frequent hurricanes, and what will happen in the future? Let us here use the latest consensus statement from the UN World Meteorological Organization (parent organization for the IPCC), which is more recent and more specific but generally in agreement with the 2007 IPCC report. It makes three strong and specific points.
1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic [human-caused] signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.
They basically tell us that the strong statements of humans causing more and stronger hurricanes (or tropical cyclones as researches call them) are simply not well supported. We just don’t know as of yet. When Al Gore tells us that there is a “scientific consensus that global warming is making hurricanes more powerful and more destructive” it is incorrect.
2. No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.
The strong statements on hurricane Katrina are simply not supportable.
This brings us to the third and perhaps most important WMO consensus point. In reality, we don’t really care about hurricanes as such – what we care about is their damage. Do they end up killing people and cause widespread disruption? And with global warming, will they kill and disrupt even more? The answer is – perhaps surprisingly – that the whole hurricane debate is somewhat tangential to this important question.
3. The recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.
The top part of Figure 3 clearly show us that the US cost of hurricane damage has increased relentlessly over the past century, and it seems to provide ample underpinning for Gore’s “unmistakable economic impact of global warming.” Yet, just comparing costs over long periods of time does not make sense without taking into account the change in population patterns and demography as well as economic prosperity. There are many more people, residing in much more vulnerable areas, with many more assets to lose. In the US today, the two coastal South Florida counties, Dade and Broward, are home to more people than the number of people who lived in 1930 in all 109 coastal counties stretching from Texas through Virginia, along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.
In the top of Figure 3 we see the damage costs for rising through the century. Essentially no costs before mid-century, and just three years close to the present standing out. Here Katrina makes up two-thirds of the 2005 season costs, Charley and Ivan makes up most of 2004 and hurricane Andrew is responsible for almost all of 1992. It looks like a slam-dunk for climate-makes-badder-hurricanes.
But look what happens if you assume that all hurricanes would have hit the US as it is today, as can be seen in the lower part of Figure 3. Suddenly, the picture change dramatically. If the 1926 Great Miami hurricane had hit today it would have created the worst damage ever in the US hurricane history. What this tells us is that damages will continue to grow as long as more people with more stuff move closer to the sea.
We have to ask what it is we want. Presumably our goal is not to cut CO2 emissions per se, but to do good for humans and the environment. We want to help the people who are potential victims of future Katrinas, Charleys and Andrews. But how can we best do that?
In Figure 4 we see the relative impact of climate changes and social changes on hurricane damages over the next half-century. It essentially tells us the efficiency of turning the big knob of climate versus the efficiency of turning the social policy knobs.
If society stays the same – no more people living close to the coast, no more costly and densely built neighborhoods – and climate warms causing somewhat stronger hurricanes, the total effect will be less than a 10% increase in hurricane damages. To put it differently, if we could stop the climatic factors right now, we would avoid 10% more damage in 50 years time.
On the other hand, if climate stays the same – no more warming – but more people build more and more expensive buildings closer to the sea, as they have done in the past, we will see an almost 500% increase in hurricane damages. To put it differently, if we could curb societal factors right now, we could prevent 500% more damage in 50 years time.
So if we want to make a difference, which knob should we choose first – the one reducing damage by less than 10% or the one reducing damage by almost 500%? The difference in efficiency between the climate knob and the societal knob is more than 50 times.
This seems to suggest that policies addressing societal factors rather than climate policies will do the much more good first.
Malaria
Al Gore writes: “Mosquitoes are profoundly affected by global warming. There are cities that were originally located just above the mosquito line, which used to mark the altitude above which mosquitoes would not venture. Nairobi, Kenya, and Harare, Zimbabwe, are two such cities. Now, with global warming, the mosquitoes are climbing to higher altitudes.”
Yet WHO and researches have documented that malaria epidemics happened in Nairobi many times between WWI and the 1950s. The town’s first medical officer, Dr. D.E. Boedeker, wrote that even for the early ivory and slave caravans, Nairobi “had always been regarded as an unhealthy locality swarming with mosquitoes.”
Like most stories there is at core some truth to the claim that malaria will increase with temperature, but it is a small part compared to richness and health infrastructure.
How much does global warming matters to malaria. One way to get an upper limit on the importance of global warming is to look at the projections of populations at risk. These models show an extra almost 300 million people will be living in areas that could harbor malaria in the 2080s because increasing temperatures expand the area where the parasite can multiply. These models also tell us what will happen without climate change. Here, they project an increase from 4.4 billion in 1990 to 8.8 billion people at risk in 2085. The total population at risk will thus be 9.1 billion out of a population of 10.7 billion.
But notice the proportions. 8.8 billion will be at risk from malaria in 2085 due to social factors, whereas 0.3 billion will be at risk due to global warming. Thus, even if we could entirely stop global warming today (which we can’t) we would only change malaria risk in 2085 by 3.2%. More realistically, with the Kyoto Protocol, including the US and Australia, and committing everyone to constant emissions throughout the rest of the century, would reduce malaria risk by 0.2% in 80 years. As the model team tells us: with a stringent climate policy “there is little clear effect even by the 2080s.”
Compare this to current expectations that we can cut malaria incidence to about half to three-fourths by 2015 for about $3 billion annually – or 2% of the cost of Kyoto. This was the number 4 priority in the Copenhagen Consensus. Because we can do this within a decade whereas climate policy will take half a century or more, the difference in actual people helped is even more dramatic. Till 2085 Kyoto will avoid about 70 million people from getting infected by malaria (or about 0.1% of all malaria infections). Compare that to a simple and cheap halving of malaria incidence by 2015, which will avoid more than 28 billion people suffering from malaria. This policy will do about 400 times more good, as is illustrated in Figure 5.
Smarter Policies
The current raft of policies that are either enacted or suggested are costly but have virtually no effect.
Take the Kyoto Protocol, which even if it had been successfully adopted by all signatories (including the US and Australia) and even if it had been adhered to throughout the century, would have postponed warming by just 5 years in 2100 at a cost of $180 billion annually, see Figure 6.
In the first real commitment since Kyoto in 1997, the EU announced in March 2007 that they would unilaterally cut emissions to 20% below 1990-levels by 2020. This would mean a 25% cut of emissions from what they would otherwise have been in 2020. Yet the effect on temperature would be smaller than Kyoto, as shown in Figure 7, postponing warming by the end of the century by about two years. The cost would be about $90 billion per year in 2020. Thus, we see the same pattern from both the well-established Kyoto protocol and the new EU minus-20% decision – that they have fairly small impact at fairly high cost.
This is also the case for Al Gore’s public commitment to tackle global warming. In his recent speech to New York University, he explicitly said that he would eliminate payroll taxes and substitute them with pollution taxes, principally a CO2 tax. Yet he never actually says how much this would cost or how much good it would do.
If one calculates the impact of such a promise, it shows that payroll taxes (social security) in the US amounted to $841 billion in 2006. With the US emitting about 6Gt of CO2 this means a tax of $140/tCO2, and a tax on gas at about $1. per gallon. In one respected model, the annual economic cost amounts to about $160 billion for the US economy in 2015. This would cut emissions to about half in 2015 and about 25% in 2105. Yet, since the US will make up an ever smaller amount of the total CO2 emitted throughout the century, the total effect in 2100 will be a reduction of global temperature by 0.1oC (see Figure 8). Essentially, what Al Gore is suggesting is that the US carries through a Kyoto-type restriction all by itself.
This is why the major peer-reviewed economic cost-benefit analyses show that climate change is real, and that we should do something but our cuts should be rather small. In the latest review the previous research is summarized:
“These studies recommend that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced below business-as-usual forecasts, but the reductions suggested have been modest.”
This was the state of the art economics till October 2006, when a 600-page UK government report under economist Sir Nicholas Stern came out and created headlines everywhere.
Virtually everyone has come away with the understanding that Stern has made a cost-benefit analysis and shown that the benefit (avoided cost of global warming) is 20% and the cost just 1% making strong climate action a slam-dunk.
Yet, a raft of academic papers have now come out, all strongly criticizing Stern, liberally using words as “substandard,” “preposterous,” “incompetent,” “deeply flawed,” and “neither balanced nor credible.” While there is a long list of problems with the analysis, I will just point out two issues.
1. The damages from climate change (the benefits of action) are vastly inflated. As several peer-reviewed papers point out, “the Stern Review does not present new data, or even a new model.” How can it then find conclusions that are completely outside the usual range? It turns out that the Review has counted damages several times, and somewhat arbitrarily increases the damages 8-fold or more according to new and conjectural cost categories that have never been peer reviewed. At the same time, the review has decided to change a key parameter in all cost-benefit analyses to a value that gives huge damage. Oddly, it forgets to use this parameter for the costs below, where it would count against a strong policy response. The parameter is also vastly out of sync with our present-day behavior: it would suggest that we should today save 97.5% of our GDP for future generations. This is patently absurd – today’s saving rate is about 15% in the UK.
2. The costs of action are vastly underestimated, continuing a well-known ‘appraisal optimism’ which was also seen in the 1950s onwards in very low cost-estimates for nuclear power. Again, it finds itself on the edge of the state-of-the-art and simultaneously forgets to count any costs after 2050, although they presumably continue way into the 23rd century.
If you look at Figure 9 you see that Stern has essentially swapped the peer reviewed literature on costs and benefits, and that is why he gets the opposite result of everyone else. The most well-known climate economist, Richard Nordhaus, concludes that the Stern review is “a political document.”
The Stern review must be praised for having put the economics squarely back into the climate debate. Whether or not we like to acknowledge it, doing something about global warming will have both costs and benefits, and we need the dialogue on how much we should do. But the Stern review does not change the fact that all peer reviewed economic analyses show we should only reduce CO2 emissions moderately.
Why is this a robust result? If we look at costs and benefits over time in Figure 10 we see the reason. Essentially, the cost comes up front, whereas the benefit comes much further down the line. For the first 170 years the costs are greater than the benefits. Even when the benefits catch up in the late 22nd century, there is still a payback time before the total benefits outweigh the total costs around 2250. Thus, as one academic paper points out, “the costs associated with an emissions stabilization program are relatively large for current generations and continue to increase over the next 100 years. The first generation to actually benefit from the stabilization program is born early during the 24th century.”
This does not mean we should do nothing at all about climate change. It means we need to be much smarter. We need to abandon expensive and inefficient strategies like Kyoto and search for new opportunities.
Of course, part of us still want to say “let’s do it all”. And I agree. In an ideal world we would deal with all the world’s woes. We should win the war against hunger, end conflicts, stop communicable diseases, provide clean drinking, step up education and halt climate change. But we don’t. And so we have to start facing reality.
When we realize that there are many areas in the world – like HIV, malnutrition, free trade, malaria, clean drinking water etc. – where we can do immense amounts of good, it seems obvious to me we must focus our attention and our big expenditure there first.
But it does not mean we shouldn’t start thinking about how we can cheaply tackle climate change in the long run. The big problem about cutting carbon emissions Kyoto style is that it costs a lot now, and does very little for the future. Moreover, if we paid the bill for cutting emissions down to 1990- level this year, we will have to pay just as much (or even a little more) next year to cut it to the same level. That is a bad deal. And it also means that for the next hundred years, we will have to negotiate ever more excruciatingly costly treaties between 192 countries, many of them poor countries like China and India, hungry for more power. That is going to be hard. Or looking just at Kyoto, maybe more like impossible.
The trick probably lies in understanding that what matters is not whether we cut a little now, but whether we eventually cut a lot. So maybe we should try going a different way.
Right now we could get all the world’s energy from solar cells taking up very little (and otherwise useless) space. The equivalent of 2.6% of the area of the Sahara. Why don’t we? Because it would be horrendously costly. But solar energy has come down in price about 50% per decade over the past 30 years. Even at a much lower pace, it will probably become competitive before mid-century for many uses, and before the end of the century for most uses. If we invested more in research and development (R&D) this development would probably go faster. Likely, such an investment would do much more good than Kyoto ever could, and be much cheaper.
And of course, solar power is but one – if very promising – opportunity. We have wind, that is already competitive some places, as in Denmark. We have carbon capture, fusion and fission, energy efficiency, biomass and biodiesel. It is hard to tell which will work best, but maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe we should let nations search out these opportunities for the long-term benefit for the world.
My proposal for tackling global warming in the long run is that all nations commit themselves to spending 0.05.% of GDP in R&D of non-carbon emitting energy technologies. This approach would cost about $25 billion per year, seven times cheaper than Kyoto and many more times cheaper than a Kyoto II. It would involve all nations, with richer nations naturally paying the larger share. It would let each country focus on its own future vision of energy needs, whether that means concentrating on renewable sources, nuclear energy, fusion, carbon storage, or searching for new and more exotic opportunities.
Such a massive global research effort would also have potentially huge innovation spin-offs (a bit like how NASA’s going to the moon also gave us computers and velcro). Because the costs are low and there will be many immediate innovation benefits, countries do not have to be ever more strongly cajoled into ever more restrictive agreements. They will partake because it involves them in a strong, science-based endeavor. They will partake, because it is a smart thing to do.
And most importantly, it will likely have a much greater impact on the long-term climate.
Global Warming only One of Many Issues
Global warming is not the only issue we need to tackle. This especially holds true for the third world. It is obvious that there are many other and more pressing issues for the third world, such as almost 4 million dying from malnutrition (underweight), 3 million from HIV/AIDS (unsafe sex), 2.5 million from indoor and outdoor air pollution, more than 2 million from lack of micronutrients (iron, zinc and vitamin A) and almost 2 million from lack of clean drinking water.
Even if global warming exacerbates some or more of these problems, it is important to point out that the total magnitude of the problems is likely to far exceed the contribution from climate change. Thus, polices to reduce the total problems will have much more leverage than policies that only try to address the global warming part of the issues. Again, we have to ask if there are better ways to help than by cutting CO2.
We have to ask ourselves: what do we want to do first? Do we want to focus on cutting CO2, at fairly high costs and doing fairly little good a hundred years from now? Or would we rather want to fix some of the many obvious problems in the world, where we could do a lot more good and do it now?
In the so-called Copenhagen Consensus process, we asked this general question to some of the smartest economists in the world: where would you spend extra resources to do good first? Experts put forward their best solutions from climate change and communicable diseases, over conflicts, education, financial instability, governance & corruption, malnutrition and hunger, population: migration to sanitation & water and subsidies & trade barriers. But they didn’t just say their proposals would do good – they said how much good they would do and how much they would cost.
A panel of top-level economists, including four Nobel Laureates then made the first explicit global priority list ever, shown in Table 1. It divided the world’s opportunities into very good, good, and fair according to how much more good they would do for each dollar spent, and bad opportunities where each dollar would do less than a dollar worth of good.
Preventing HIV/AIDS turns out to be the very best investment humanity can make – for each dollar it spends saving lives it will do about forty dollars worth of social good. For $27 billion, we can save 28 million lives over the coming years.
Malnutrition kills almost 2.4 million lives each year. Perhaps even more dramatically, it affects more than half the world’s population, by damaging eyesight, lowering IQ, reducing development and restricting human productivity. Investing $12 billion could probably half the incidence and death rate, with each dollar doing more than 30 dollars worth of social good.
Ending first world agricultural subsidies and ensuring free trade would make almost everyone much better off. Models suggest that benefits of up to $2,400 billion annually would be achievable, with half of that benefit accruing to the third world. In achieving this, it would be necessary to bribe first world farmers, but the benefits of each dollar used would do more than fifteen dollars worth of social good.
Finally, malaria kills more than a million each year. It infects about two billion people each year (many several times) and causes widespread debilitation. Yet, an investment of $13 billion could cut incidence by half, protect 90% of newborns, and cut deaths of under-5s by 72%.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Nobels placed climate change opportunities, including Kyoto at the bottom under the heading ‘bad opportunities’, underlining what we saw above, namely that for each dollar spent, we would end up doing much less than a dollar worth of good for the world.
But the Copenhagen Consensus did not just ask top economists. We asked 80 young college students from all over the world, with 70% from developing countries, with equal gender representation, and from arts, sciences and social sciences. After five days independently inquiring [with] the experts in all the areas, they came to a surprisingly similar result as the Nobels. The placed malnutrition and communicable diseases on top, climate change next to last.
In 2006 we asked a wide range of UN ambassadors to make their priority list after two days of intensive debates. Besides the three biggest countries China, India and the US, countries as diverse as Angola, Australia, and Azerbaijan participated, along with Canada, Chile, Egypt, Iraq, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, South Korea, Somalia, Tanzania, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and many others. They came out with a quite similar list, placing communicable diseases, clean drinking water and malnutrition at top, with climate change towards the bottom.
This should make us stop and pause. None of these forums have said that climate change is not real or not important. But they ask us to consider, whether we would do better by addressing the real and pressing needs of current generations that we can solve so easily and cheaply, before we try to tackle the long-term problem of climate change where we can do so little for so much.
To put it very bluntly, the Kyoto Protocol would likely cost at least $180 billion a year and do little good. UNICEF estimates that just $70-80 billion a year could give all Third World inhabitants access to the basics like health, education, water and sanitation. More important still is the fact that if we could muster such a massive investment in the present-day developing countries this would also give them a much better future position in terms of resources and infrastructure from which to manage a future global warming. What would we rather do first?
Source: U.S. House, Energy and Commerce committee hearing, Perspectives on Climate Change, 2007. Notes and figures have been removed (see www.gpoaccess.gov/chearings for complete text).
Questions for Review
[Overview]
1. What are the major environmental problems today?
2. What is the source of global warming, and what are the alternative energy sources that might help the problem?
3. What is ecoterrorism?
4. Describe the differences between anthropocentrism, individual biocentrism, and holistic biocentrism.
5. Explain the two ways of linking environmental responsibility to the profit motive.
6. Describe the differences between community property environmentalism, radical free market environmentalism, and regulated free market environmentalism.
7. What is Justice William Douglas’s view regarding the possible legal status of the environment?
8. Explain the problems of international environmental agreements with regard to poor developing countries.
9. What are the criticisms of the three conservative arguments regarding the environment?
10. What are the criticisms of the three liberal arguments regarding the environment?
[Gore and Lomborg]
11. Why, according to Gore, might the global warming problem be worse than we thought?
12. Lomborg argues that the consequences of global warming have been exaggerated; give some examples.
13. What is Lomborg’s proposal for tackling global warming in the long run?
14. According to Lomborg, what other major social problems demand at least as much if not more attention than global warming?
15. According to the Copenhagen Consensus of economists, which humanitarian projects would do the most good?
Questions for Analysis
[Overview]
1. Nuclear power does not produce greenhouse gasses, but has other serious environmental problems. In view of this, should the U.S. build more nuclear power plants? Explain.
2. Between anthropocentrism, individual biocentrism, and holistic biocentrism, which of these seems right to you and why?
3. Between community property environmentalism, radical free market environmentalism, and regulated free market environmentalism, which of these seems right to you and why?
4. Defend one of the conservative arguments regarding the environment against the weakness indicated in the reading.
5. Defend one of the liberal arguments the regarding the environment against the weakness indicated in the reading.
[Gore and Lomborg]
6. Suppose that Al Gore is exaggerating the negative consequences of global warming as Lomborg suggests. Might exaggeration be justified as a strategy for getting people’s attention on the issue?
7. In his economic analysis of the global warming problem, Lomborg doesn’t take into account the value of preserving the environment for its own sake. Should he have factored that in?
8. The Copenhagen Consensus suggested that some of the greatest humanitarian good could be done by ending agricultural subsidies to farmers in developed countries like the U.S. In essence, this would mean outsourcing more of our food production. What are the risks of abandoning our domestic food production?
9. Lomborg argues that we would see greater social benefits from modestly investing in third world humanitarian projects (such as health, education, water and sanitation) than we would through major investment in global warming reduction. He thus assumes that the money available for global warming reduction could be just as readily available for humanitarian projects. Is there a problem with that assumption?