Matt Ridley: The Richer We Get, The Greener We’ll Become
The world’s climate change experts are now saying that strong growth doesn’t hurt the environment, it protects it
Matt Ridley, The Times
In the past 50 years, world per capita income roughly trebled in real terms, corrected for inflation. If it continues at this rate (and globally the great recession of recent years was a mere blip) then it will be nine times as high in 2100 as it was in 2000, at which point the average person in the world will be earning three times as much as the average Briton earns today.
I make this point partly to cheer you up on Easter Monday about the prospects for your great-grandchildren, partly to start thinking about what that world will be like if it were to happen, and partly to challenge those who say with confidence that the future will be calamitous because of climate change or environmental degradation.
The curious thing is that they only predict disaster by assuming great enrichment. But perversely, the more enrichment they predict, the greater the chance (they also predict) that we will solve our environmental problems.
Past performance is no guide to future performance, of course, and a well aimed asteroid could derail any projection. But I am not the one doing the extrapolating. In 2012, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asked the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to generate five projections for the economy of the world, and of individual countries, in 2050 and 2100.
[I’ve inserted the graph Matt refers to, PDF here: ENV-EPOC-WPCID(2012)6 – Anthony]
They make fascinating reading. The average per capita income of the world in 2100 is projected to be between three and 20 times what it is today in real terms. The OECD’s “medium” scenario, known as SSP2, also known as “middle of the road” or “muddling through”, sounds pretty dull. It is a world in which, in the OECD’s words, “trends typical of recent decades continue” with “slowly decreasing fossil fuel dependency”, uneven development of poor countries, delayed achievement of Millennium Development Goals, disappointing investment in education and “only intermediate success in addressing air pollution or improving energy access for the poor”.
And yet this is a world in which by 2100 the global average income per head has increased 13-fold to $100,000 (in 2005 dollars) compared with $7,800 today. Britain will be very slightly below that average by then, yet has still trebled its income per head. According to this middling scenario, the average citizen of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who today earns $300 a year, will then earn $42,000, or roughly what an American earns today. The average Indonesian, Brazilian or Chinese will be at least twice as rich as today’s American.
Remember this is in today’s money, corrected for inflation, but people will be spending it on tomorrow’s technologies, most of which will be cleverer, cleaner and kinder to the environment than today’s — and all for the same price. Despite its very modest assumptions, it is an almost unimaginable world: picture Beverly Hills suburbs in Kinshasa where pilotless planes taxi to a halt by gravel drives (or something equally futuristic). Moreover, the OECD reckons that inequality will have declined, because people in poor countries will have been getting rich faster than people in rich countries, as is happening now. All five storylines produce a convergence, though at different rates, between the incomes of poor and rich countries.
Can the planet survive this sort of utopian plutocracy? Actually, here it gets still more interesting. The IPCC has done its own projections to see what sort of greenhouse gas emissions these sorts of world would produce, and vice versa. The one that produces the lowest emissions is the one with the highest income per head in 2100 — a 16-fold increase in income but lower emissions than today: climate change averted. The one that produces the highest emissions is the one with the lowest GDP — a mere trebling of income per head. Economic growth and ecological improvement go together. And it is not mainly because environmental protection produces higher growth, but vice versa. More trade, more innovation and more wealth make possible greater investment in low-carbon energy and smarter adaptation to climate change. Next time you hear some green, doom-mongering Jeremiah insisting that the only way to avoid Armageddon is to go back to eating home-grown organic lentils cooked over wood fires, ask him why it is that the IPCC assumes the very opposite.
In the IPCC’s nightmare high-emissions scenario, with almost no cuts to emissions by 2100, they reckon there might be north of 4 degrees of warming. However, even this depends on models that assume much higher “climate sensitivity” to carbon dioxide than the consensus of science now thinks is reasonable, or indeed than their own expert assessment assumes for the period to 2035.
And in this storyline, by 2100 the world population has reached 12 billion, almost double what it was in 2000. This is unlikely, according to the United Nations: 10.9 billion is reckoned more probable. With sluggish economic growth, the average income per head has (only) trebled. The world economy is using a lot of energy, improvements in energy efficiency having stalled, and about half of it is supplied by coal, whose use has increased tenfold, because progress in other technologies such as shale gas, solar and nuclear has been disappointing.
…
These IPCC and OECD reports are telling us clear as a bell that we cannot ruin the climate with carbon dioxide unless we get a lot more numerous and richer. And they are also telling us that if we get an awful lot richer, we are likely to have invented the technologies to adapt, and to reduce our emissions, so we are then less likely to ruin the planet. Go figure.
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cue predictable Paul Ehrlich insanity rant in 3…2…1
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Mat Ridley is always worth reading, he is one of the most important skeptical scientists up there with Lindzen, Spencer, Christy etc. Solidly argued common sense and sound science.
Enjoyed the formula 1 race in Shanghai yesterday. This year’s new engines might sound like tractors, but they bring a big step forward in the technology and efficiency of the internal combustion engine – especially the ingenious design by Mercedes – which will soon find its way to road cars and still further improve fuel efficiency. Improved fuel efficiency in petrol and diesel cars thus continues to undermine the case for electric cars.
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/formula1/26946444
Someone in the Congo might be earning $42,000 in 2100? I don’t want to throw cold water on such a positive scenario, and I like Ridley, but he’s way too optimistic here. And these projections? They just seem goofy to me. I don’t like hearing all the doom and gloom nonsense from the IPCC; this sort of thing is the other end of that. How does Dr. Bohr put it? “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”
Economic growth and ecological improvement go together. Thank you! I’ve been saying this since the Nixon era.
Titan – Seems reasonable enough. In 1900, avg US income was $438, by 2000 it had increased to $42,000 almost a 100 fold increase. If other countries benefit from technology, educate their population and begin to participate in global commerce then these projections are reasonable.
The Economist has what looks like a pretty honest take on poverty reduction:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim
Based on UN figures, in 20 years(1990-2010) half of the folks in really grinding poverty in the poorest 15 countries(~2billion) went from $1.25 a day to $4/day, merely poor. The poverty rate dropped from 43% to 21%. Nobody in the developed world is close to $1.25/day. The US uses $63/day for a family of four, over 10x better than the poorest. China was responsible for most of the drop. The next 20 years will be harder because of the problems with authoritarian/statist/corrupt regimes in Africa, India, and other poorly developed countries. This tremendous improvement was achieved 5 years ahead of plan(2010 vs 2015).
So the projections/predictions which Ridley used(also from the UN) don’t look too optimistic to me. But improving development is a surefire way to improve lives, reduce deaths, and reduce pollution. Right now someone at $1.25/day in India simply has no means to use anything but cow dung for fuel, get water from polluted sources, and work like a dog every day just to eat.
Hurray for free markets. Most of China’s development is attributed to freer markets. India and Africa are saddled with numerous monopolies, restrictive practices, and tariffs.
But other OECD reports related to Green Growth commencing in 2011 and the Great Transition commencing in 2013 state repeatedly that such economic growth will no longer be permitted. It is not environmental degradation that puts us all at risk but all the predatory cronyism going on in the name of Climate Change, Inequality, Race, etc. Whatever themes of grievance and difference can be used to justify a public-centric economy.
We can’t ruin the climate no matter what,
And green BS has no effect either.
What this report does say is that the current policy of rolling back our economies is a very bad thing to do. So blow up the EU, the UN and the current US/FED policies because they are contra productive.
It’ a positive Easter message but where is the Easter Bunny and where are the eggs because I can’t find them.
Many of the world’s poor countries are rich in resources as yet unexploited, and there is much still to be found. For instance there is an opportunity for cocoa growers, ignoring the doom laden report here:
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/choc-horror-cocoa-shortage-rising-prices-threaten-chocolate-bars-f8C11418435
From Cadburys
The main central American producers, Brazil and Ecuador
In Asia, public and private plantations have been developed as well as small farms.
Malaysia and Indonesia, where the cocoa is a relatively new crop, are becoming increasingly important growing areas
Ghana, which grows some of the best quality cocoa in the world, Nigeria and Cote D’Ivore,
The benefits of wealth creation should be obvious to all but the ecoloons.
According to the “consensus” (in the 60’s) we are currently starving because the World’s population has exceeded both the food and water supply. Of course we’re doing it in the dark because we ran out of oil 30 years ago.
Plus Ehrlich knows that his real area of emphasis is in the social sciences. Hard science models give him the money and power to intervene in his real area of interest–education. That way he can use his hype to force changes in instructional practices and curricula, especially using online gaming, to “change the way we perceive the world, the way humanity sees the world.”
For the Ehrlichs, language about reducing the ecological footprint tends to be quickly juxtaposed to the real rationale–reducing “social inequities.” Precisely the same aims and means as the OECD’s Great Transition and the UN’s Post-2015 described Agenda.
Greater wealth also promotes the development of technology. With estimates of climate sensitivity coming down, there will be a longer period until Earth’s atmosphere becomes dangerously hot (assuming that we accept some variant of CAGW). We may be talking about a postponement of one to two centuries. In the meantime, humanity will be burning fossil fuels, but there is a limit to how much we can burn. I won’t suggest that peak oil kicks in, because the peak oil prophesies have somehow repeatedly missed their mark. But what can be foreseen is that we will burn the more accessible stuff first, leaving the more expensive stuff for later. The price of energy will necessarily increase, driving both conservation and discovery of alternative technologies. Now, it’s true that if someone suggests alternate forms of energy immediately, be they solar or fission or fusion, there will be all sorts of serious objections. However, it’s quite unbelievable, at least to me, that we won’t have worked out the problems of one or more of these forms of energy within the course of a century. And if we do, then emissions of carbon dioxide will cease to be a worry.
To have a factor of three real growth in income will require roughly a factor of three increase in energy production and consumption of resources. That might be fairly easy in some undeveloped countries, but will not be easy at all in the west. We have gotten to here on cheap oil, but the low hanging fruit has definitely been picked already.
CRS, DrPH says:
April 21, 2014 at 10:22 am
Of course, the problem with the GreenReich is that they think they know which comes first – and they’re wrong.
bones
April 21, 2014 at 10:48 am
says:
‘We have gotten to here on cheap oil, but the low hanging fruit has definitely been picked already.’
In all respect I suspect that in the late 1700s and early 1800s they said pretty much the same thing in relationship to wood from trees and whale oil.
travel the globe. third world countries have rubbish lying everywhere because there is no money to clean it up. rats and flies are the norm. It is only as countries become richer, that surplus funds become available to clean up the environment.
And it is only after the environment is cleaned up that the environmental movement itself becomes a threat to the prosperity that made the cleanup possible. Like auto-immune disease, after the disease is beaten back, the immune system then goes on to attack the body.
Perfection is the enemy of good. In seeking to make the environment perfect, ultimately the environmental movement needs to eliminate the source of pollution, humanity itself.
Beyond that, every life form produces waste products that are harmful to other organisms. This pollution can only be eliminated by eliminating life itself.
Titan28
April 21, 2014 at 9:51 am
says:
‘Someone in the Congo might be earning $42,000 in 2100? I don’t want to throw cold water on such a positive scenario, and I like Ridley, but he’s way too optimistic here.’
While this is not quite an accurate example may I respectfully state that, in 1914, I could’ve envisioned someone saying: “Crossing the Atlantic in 6 hours at 600 mph sounds way too optimistic. The Titanic, if it hadn’t sank, would’ve been about as fast as we’ll ever cross that ocean.”
Titan28
It’s not Ridley being optimistic. Here’s his quote: “But I am not the one doing the extrapolating. In 2012, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asked the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to generate five projections for the economy of the world, and of individual countries, in 2050 and 2100.” It’s the UN “alphabet soups” providing the optimism.
Population explosion has already stopped 2 decades ago. Since then global population under age 15 is stable, slightly below 1.85 billion. Population is still increasing, but just because people are getting older, for they have a chance to, as opposed to the good olden days when most of our progenitors used to die at a young age. However, this population is not explosive any more, one can never produce more than one old fart by simply getting old, therefore growth is not exponential.
See UN World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision
>> According to the “consensus” (in the 60′s) we are currently starving because the World’s population has exceeded both the food and water supply. Of course we’re doing it in the dark because we ran out of oil 30 years ago.<<
I never thought much about the CAGW movement until just a few years ago, when it dawned on me how much it sounded like the Population Bomb movement I had previously read about, and I subsequently came to the conclusion that both movements were, in my opinion, intimately connected to each other. Did not know at first that any others felt the same way, but the connection is becoming more and more obvious. There are so many parallels, and in some cases the same loathsome cast of characters. They both have the same anti-human/misanthropic/repulsive ideals behind them, and, in both cases, are more anti-science, and anti-human progress, than pro-science. Especially as a Christian, I cannot believe people of faith can study this stuff for any length of time and not be thoroughly disgusted by it all. I’m glad I found this site, I’ve only been here a short while, and it ain’t perfect by any means , but it has a lot of value for me. Thanks again.
What jobs will the worlds future worker be performing that will earn $42000.
Will a McJob be paying that kind of money in 2100?
This assumes that the world economies wont collapse because of the massive debts governments owe.
>> might sound like tractors,
Quite agricultural in fact. A pity since the racing is pretty decent right now.
Matt Ridley: The Richer We Get, The Greener We’ll Become
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Other way round: put the word “green” somewhere in your company name, or product name or description, and gov’t will float yer boat.
Riches for a few in the short run, crap sandwiches for all in the long (hold the bread).