Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
Some people argue that we are morally obliged to reduce greenhouse gases aggressively because otherwise the world’s current development path would be unsustainable, and our descendants will be worse off than we are.
But will a warmer world indeed be unsustainable, and leave our descendants worse off?
I examine these claims out to the year 2200 in a post titled, “Will Global Warming Make Future Generations Worse Off?” at MasterResources. My analysis uses the IPCC’s own assumptions regarding future economic development and results generated by the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. Note that both the IPCC and Stern are viewed quite favorably by proponents of drastic GHG reductions (see, e.g., here).
The first figure shows for both developing and industrialized countries, the GDP per capita – an approximate measure of welfare per capita – used in the IPCC’s emissions scenarios in the absence of any climate change in 1990 (the base year used to develop the IPCC’s emission scenarios) and 2100. For 2100, the figure shows the GDP per capita assumed in each of four representative IPCC scenarios used in the Stern Review. These scenarios are arranged with the warmest (A1FI) scenario on the left and the coolest (B1) on the right. Below each set of bars, the figure indicates the IPCC’s designation for that scenario (A1FI, A2, B1 and B2) and the corresponding projected increase in average global temperature from 1990 to 2085 (which ranges from 2.1-4.0°C).
This figure shows that, per the IPCC, in the absence of climate change, GDP per capita would grow between 11- and 67-fold for developing countries, and between 3- and 8-fold for industrialized countries. [Some people have complained that these GDPs per capita are implausibly high. If that’s the case then the IPCC’s estimates of climate change are also implausibly high, since these GDPs per capita are used to drive the IPCC’s emissions and climate change scenarios.]
Although the IPCC did not provide any estimates for 2200, the Stern Review assumed an annual growth rate of 1.3 percent after 2100 (Stern Review, Box 6.3). In my calculations below I will assume a more modest growth rate. Specifically, I assume that GDP per capita would double between 2100 and 2200, which is equivalent to an annual increase of 0.7 percent. This is also conservative in light of historical experience: GDP per capita quintupled between 1900 and 2000 (per Maddison 2003).
But climate change might reduce future welfare per capita. Stern famously estimated that unmitigated climate change would reduce welfare by an amount equivalent to a reduction in consumption per capita of 5-20 percent “now and forever” if one accounts for market impacts, non-market (that is, health and environmental) impacts, and the risk of catastrophe. He also raised the spectre that under the warmest (A1FI) scenario, the 95th percentile of the welfare losses due to climate change could rise from 7.5 percent in 2100 to 35.2 percent in 2200.
For the sake of argument and extreme caution, I will assume that the loss in welfare due to uncontrolled climate change under the warmest scenario (A1FI) will indeed equal Stern’s 95th percentile estimate of 35.2 percent. I make this assumption despite the fact that one can’t be too skeptical of centuries-long projections based not only on uncertain climate models but equally uncertain socioeconomic and technological trends. To quote from a paper commissioned by the Stern Review: “changes in socioeconomic systems cannot be projected semi-realistically for more than 5-10 years at a time.” [Emphasis added.] Second, the Review itself emphasizes “strongly” that the numbers should not “be taken too literally.” No less important, many notable economists have even disputed the Stern Review’s more modest 5-20% estimate for losses as overblown (e.g., Yale’s William Nordhaus and Hamburg’s Richard Tol). [The IPCC itself uses 5 percent as the upper limit.]
[For details on the methodology used to estimate welfare losses for the other scenarios check out my paper, Discounting the Future, in the latest issue of Regulation magazine. ]
The following figure shows the net welfare per capita in 2100 and 2200 after adjusting GDP per capita in the absence of climate change downward to account for welfare losses due to uncontrolled climate change per the Stern Review’s 95th percentile estimate. To put the numbers in this figure into context, in 2006, GDP per capita for industrialized countries was $19,300; the United States, $30,100; and developing countries, $1,500.
Note that net welfare per capita in 2200 is underestimated for each scenario because the GDPs per capita in the absence of climate change were underestimated while welfare losses due to climate change were overestimated.
Conclusions
This figure shows that despite understating future net welfare per capita:
- Under each scenario, net welfare for both developing and industrialized countries increases from 1990 to 2100, and from 2100 to 2200. Thus Nobelist Robert Solow’s (1993) criterion for sustainable development – namely, that current generations should “endow [future generations] with whatever it takes to achieve a standard of living at least as good as our own” – should be easily met. In other words, claims to the contrary, if the world’s current developmental path is unsustainable, it won’t be because of climate change.
- Well-being in both 2100 and 2200 should, in the aggregate, be highest for the richest-but-warmest (A1FI) scenario and lowest for the poorest (A2) scenario, again regardless of climate change. That is, the richest-but-warmest world is to be preferred over poorer-but-cooler worlds. Thus, if humanity could choose between the four IPCC scenarios, for the next several decades it should choose to realize the richest-but-warmest (A1FI) world. In other words, in order to improve net welfare, governments should be striving to push their countries on the path of higher wealth rather than lower carbon. So why are the world’s governments trying to negotiate a deal in Copenhagen later this year that would make their populations poorer and reduce their welfare?
- In both developing and industrialized countries net welfare per capita should be much higher in 2100 than in 1990, and higher still in 2200, notwithstanding any climate change or which scenario one picks. That is, regardless of the circumstance, future generations, particularly in today’s developing countries, will be better off than current generations. Thus the premise underlying the argument that we are morally obliged to control emissions now to ensure that future generations won’t be worse off isn’t supported by the Stern Review’s own analysis.
In fact, this raises the question whether it is moral to require today’s poorer generations to spend their scarce resource on anthropogenic GHG-induced global warming – a problem that may or may not be faced by future, far wealthier and technologically better endowed generations – instead of the more urgent, real problems that plague current generations and will continue to plague future generations as well.
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Well, the new NCAR report would disagree with this assessment (no surprise there)…
Water Levels Dropping in Some Major Rivers as Global Climate Changes
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/flow.jsp
Many factors can affect river discharge, including dams and the diversion of water for agriculture and industry. The researchers found, however, that the reduced flows in many cases appear to be related to global climate change, which is altering precipitation patterns and increasing the rate of evaporation. The results are consistent with previous research by Dai and others showing widespread drying and increased drought over many land areas.
Of course it has to be AGW, not increased damming, irrigation, and diversion of rainfall (not to mention wetter/drier precipitation patterns due to ENSO). Has the entire world lost its mind?
“Has the entire world lost its mind?”
Uhhhh, yeah…
I’d like to know what stage of human civilization has ever been ‘sustainable’? The stone age, perhaps?
I came across a quote the other day that has a direct bearing on this thread:
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.”
– Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
Maybe it should be the motto of the Warmist Movement?
OT – but appropriate for the day: http://www.woot.com has a deal on a home weather station today (22 April 2009). For those who don’t know Woot, they have one deal a day, and for only one day. Tomorrow it’ll be something different.
Thermor BIOS Wireless Weather Station For PC
$59.99 + $5 shipping
No I’m not shilling for them, just thought it worth mentioning.
Cheers..
REPLY: Nice idea. But as a purveyor of weather stations myself, let me say that this Chinese made POS won’t provide any accurate data. Been there done that. This one is even worse than the Oregon Scientific WMR968. If you want a quality instrument, get a Davis Vantage Pro 2 here – Anthony
RE: John Levett
Human eugenics are not the only answer. I have proposed an alternate method of reducing greenhouse gas emmissions through reduced mammal respiration, see LUN
Dr. Goklany
My compliments for clear common sense arguments.
World population is projected to grow from 6.8 billion to about 9.7 billion by 2050. All practical measures will be needed to grow food production.
CO2 is the primary essential plant food.
Increasing atmospheric CO2 increases food production.
The IPCC’s effort to reduce CO2 will
1) Directly harm food production.
2) Increase the cost of energy.
3) Increase unemployment.
4) Reduce per capita income.
5) Cause increased malnutrition.
6) Cause increased starvation.
This bears heaviest on the poor in developing countries.
IPCC and EPA’s efforts to constrain CO2 will directly endanger the health and lives of billions of people in the developing world and likely contribute to increased malnutrition and starvation of hundreds of millions of children.
John Tollison (00:04:40) :
Growth depends on cheap energy and availability is turning down. Maybe someone will breed just the right kind of super biodeisal producing bacteria, seed the odean and solve the problem, but until then, I think planning should be done with peaking fossil fuel resources in mind.
John,
No peak oil in sight this century.
Because of new (huge oil finds (coast Brazil, Afghan/Pakistan border region and China for example.
New drilling techniques.
Reprocessing old wells
Natural gas is practically everywhere you put a drill in the ground.
– Coal approx 400 years
– Oil 120 years
– Natural Gas 300 years
At this moment only one serious bio fuel mad by algae.
Any other bio fuel neither cost effective, reliable or in competition with the food chain and therefore a very bad idea.
Have trust in future scientific and technological development.
There will be a serious solution to replace oil but it will not be wind or food crop bio fuels.
The following are extracts of Nicholas Stern’s Career, taken from Wikipedia :-
“He was the Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 2000 to 2003, and was recently a civil servant and government economic advisor in the United Kingdom.”
“After his time working for the World Bank, Stern was recruited by Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to work for the British government where, in 2003, he became second permanent secretary at H.M. Treasury, initially with responsibility for public finances, and head of the Government Economic Service.”
And my point is?
Nicholas Stern has held senior positions in the banking sector and as an economist to the UK Government, he predicted the credit crunch and put in place measures which enabled the UK to be largely un-affected by economic conditions ravaging the economies of the rest of the world. It was under his advice that British Banks were restricted in activities in relation to CDO’s and the sub-prime market in the US and thus our banking system in the UK has required no government help.
His success as a servant of the UK government makes him well suited to sorting out the catastrophic problems we face of global warming.
And with Nicholas in the driving seat we can always look on the bright side of life?
i really like this approach!
why should we pay for the school of our children, if they will earn more money than we do anyway?
why care for their health, when medical improvements can fix it in the future?
why build a house today, when houses will be much better and cheaper in 20 years?
We need to change something in the way we are running our lives regardless of CO2 emissions … were are living in a world of finite resources which are rapidly being depleted as the human population increases … that only makes sense doesn’t it?
Gösta Oscarsson (00:52:34) :
This is one of the best “back-of-the-envelope-analysis” I have seen. OK! A fairly large envelope.
A parallel from another field: In Sweden we have for a long time had the ambition “not to send bills to future generations”. We have then a small public debt. This has (partly) come about by a stingy policy towards investments in infrastructure. I have always questioned this policy. Future generations benefit more from inheriting a well functioning country, than from a small debt. And – as Mr Goklany says – an increasingly wealthy population will have no problerm with the debt.
Gösta Oscarsson
Kivik
This is how the current economic crisis started, isn’t it? Borrow against the future, when we’ll be making more money?
Buy more house than we can afford now, pay only the interest on the loan and in a couple of years, our savings and the increased value of the home will provide enough equity to allow us to refinance at a better rate? Only home values don’t always go up and most people don’t save for the future.
Politicians have the same problem when they push the bills off until later. When later comes around, they want to spend that money on something else for RIGHT NOW, not paying off what they already bought.
If your country has avoided a lot of debt, then good for you. The USA has debt and crumbling infrastructure. Something more exciting or more politically correct always comes along and providing something new buys more votes than paying down the debt.
Now I’m a low tax kinda guy, and I also know building needed roads and bridges is actually one of the responsibilities of government. Perhaps the money that should be going to infrastructure is being spent on something else instead?
This just in. Today in the UK is Budget Day. For the rest of the world out there, this means the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the money man) announces various fiscal measures for the future, such as taxation allowances and rates. With the economy circling the drain, we were looking for all sorts of good stuff to do with cutting taxes and promoting growth. Instead we see increases in taxation and, you knew it was coming, a “committment” to cut greenhouse gases emissions by 34% by 2020. Mind you, that won’t be all that difficult to achieve, given that we are going to be closing about 75% of our power generation capacity in the intervening years!
NCAR shows we are losing water and it’s going into the atmosphere where 98% of GHG is water vapor. Gee, and without a computer model.
IPCC = Catlin Expedition = Gore = Canary Institute = Agenda driven activists.
All of this can be summed up very simply: we are controlling the population based on what might happen to the planet using a computer model. What could go wrong. We have seen this before and it didn’t work. It’s called socialism.
Ohioholic (22:01:04) :
“……… Is China going to be on board, or will they just wait for us to hang ourselves? “
“…. Economies…..do not act rationally…..That is the mistake Wall Street made”.
I agree with you but I do have a couple of comments
The Chinese are not fools. They know from bitter experience that Socialism just does not work. (Some 60 million of their own citizens murdered by the government and forty years of total economic stagnation does tend to get one’s attention!)
Unfortunately some people in these United States just don’t see the cosmic irony of The Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton, begging the Communist Chinese to loan us money.
The Chinese will go with what does work and they will really regret the collapse of our economy because it will cause them harm. But, they have an imperative for survival so they have started putting their reserves into strategic commodities instead of into dollars. See here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5160120/A-Copper-Standard-for-the-worlds-currency-system.html
Second, while people in finance may act irrationally, the recent world wide financial melt down was not a case. Financial people invested in worthless securities backed by fraudulent mortgages not because it was irrational but because the US government guaranteed them through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It makes perfect sense to make an investment that has no risk, especially if the returns are high.
So…..who are you going to blame: The people that played by the rules or the fools that made the rules? Wall Street did not make the rules, liberals in Government did. Poor GW Bush and John McCain tried to stop the collapse. Unfortunately, they did not have the political capital after the Democrat party put all of their efforts into making Bush fail after 9-11.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
Thanks Pearland Aggie for the link.
I see that most of the land area shows an increase in water runoff. We need to fact check these guys work. Something doesn’t look right. Based on the areas that show and increase and comparing them to areas that show a decrease it looks like good news to me.
The study didn’t say anything about alternatives to why rivers were decreasing except climate change (global warming). I wonder if it could be because of irrigation of crops? The worlds population has increased quite a bit in the last 50 years.
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/flow.jsp
Our water levels are down this spring because so much of our annual melt is still locked up in snow and ice, adding to glaciers that grew over the last two years in our little US version of the swiss alps. Look at the snow pack and water content in any area that is reporting current lower water levels in rivers and streams before you listen to the little boy crying wolf. Look also at the number of wells drilled over the last 10 years. Especially up river and in higher elevations. These wells tap into aquifers that eventually feed into a river down stream. If the aquifer is pressured down by too much water being drilled out of it, more water from above will seep into them, leaving less to seep back into rivers and streams down below, thus lowering water tables.
See also Indur M. Goklany’s papr IS CLIMATE CHANGE THE “DEFINING CHALLENGE OF OUR AGE”?
Off topic, but I thought you would find it interesting.
Story form the Telegraph, in London.
“Antarctic ice cover ‘increasing due to hole in ozone layer’ ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/antarctica/5200229/Antarctic-ice-cover-increasing-due-to-hole-in-ozone-layer.html
Some quotes:
“In stark contrast to the loss of sea ice in the Arctic over the last 30 years, the frozen seas surrounding the South Pole have increased at the rate of 100,000 square kilometres a decade over the last 40 years.”
“But the team from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Nasa warned the ozone hole was only delaying the impact of greenhouse gases on the climate of the White Continent.”
sod (06:27:54) : “i really like this approach!
why should we pay for the school of our children, if they will earn more money than we do anyway?
why care for their health, when medical improvements can fix it in the future?
why build a house today, when houses will be much better and cheaper in 20 years?”
The problem with your argument is that “you” want “us” to pay for “your” ideals. I say this because you use the words “we” and “our” in regards to educating children. Although you don’t use those words in your other scenarios, the meaning is clear. Just because YOU believe it needs to be done doesn’t mean I believe the same way. You have no right to force your beliefs on the rest of us, no matter what you claim your holier than thou intentions are.
David L. Hagen (06:15:21) :
“The IPCC’s effort to reduce CO2 will
1) Directly harm food production.
2) Increase the cost of energy.
3) Increase unemployment.
4) Reduce per capita income.
5) Cause increased malnutrition.
6) Cause increased starvation.”
Well said, and I will add another (which I think is the main idea)
7) Greater dependance on government – think about it, over the past 20 to 50 years, the common man on the street has strayed further and further from the controls of government – through an increase in wealth, information flow (the internet) and energy “comfort”. The easiest way to bring the people closer to government control/dictatorship is to remove basic needs.
Combine the effects above with the possibility of a much colder period ahead (crops did not do too well during the dark ages as I recall) and you have a well-laid Eugenics plan by the back door – no?
Cold Play,
If Britain is in such good economic shape, why did a gentleman justly castigate the PM(?) for bankrupting the nation??
Primarily you mentioned the banks being in good shape. Where did you get that idea??
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/08/creditcrunch.banking
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ambrose_evans-pritchard/blog/2008/11/24/is_britain_going_bankrupt
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/business/20markets.html
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2009/04/15/eu_approves_extension_for_british_bank_bailout/
David Hagen,
I read recently (sorry no link) world pop. will peak in 2040 at 8.5 billion. Pop. in 2100 will be less than today.
Does anyone else see the similarity between the wildly erroneous population models of the 1960’s and the climate models of today (i.e., since the late 80’s)? Wasn’t population supposed to exceed 50 billion? Yea, that was accurate. I would like to see a graph of expected peak population as a function of the time when the projection was made. Similarly, we could have a graph of expected 21st century temperature rise as a function of time when the project was made. I would bet these graphs would lie on top of each other.
Jack Green (06:56:16) :
Thanks Pearland Aggie for the link.
The study didn’t say anything about alternatives to why rivers were decreasing except climate change (global warming). I wonder if it could be because of irrigation of crops? The worlds population has increased quite a bit in the last 50 years.
Check NOAA USA precip over the last “whatever climate cycle length” you like. It’s increasing. Negative correlation to this studies conclusion. It’s BS. we need to spend tax dollars on water storage, not CO2 reduction.
Pamela Gray:
Looking out my office window to the West, the entire horizon is the Rocky Mountains… currently looking a lot less “rocky” and a lot more “snowy”. Usually by this time of year there is more gray than white. Calgary had a record year for snowfall, which is not something to celebrate unless you’re an avid skier, and the mountain areas are still reporting unusually high snow pack. Of course, the glaciers out there are still growing, but it’s funny that the most recent official word on them is several years old, and they most likely get counted as “shrinking”… funny how 1998 did that.
All that horizon full of white has to go somewhere, and over the next 6-8 weeks it will be washing in this direction. There have been years in the past that our rivers have crested at dangerously high levels after snowy winters, but we may be looking at records. And of course, because of the way we chose sites for cities, everything is built on a river somewhere.
In 2005 Calgary had an exceptionally wet June, on top of the already saturated ground from spring melt. The end result was flooding, and a LOT of it. Our main dam, which holds our drinking water, got a very scary crack down the middle after it started overflowing even with the gates wide open, and nobody is actually certain that it can survive another flood year. If it goes, the city’s most affluent area and the downtown core will take massive damage.
And back on topic, ALL generations are morally obligated to leave the world, if not better, then also not worse for future generations. Once again, it comes down to the question of… define better! I agree with commenters who point out that dismantling our very way of life is NOT leaving a better world. And if the kids I know who are part of the current generation is any indication, they won’t be smart enough to fix anything themselves.