Peter Lilley, a British Member of Parliament, seems to have rather missed the point of climate change legislation. He is kicking up a fuss about how the UK’s Climate Change Bill might have costs larger than benefits in the period between now and 2050. Of course, the whole point of climate change mitigation is to avoid the worst effects of climate change and not leave future generations with a severely damaged planet. Almost by definition, the majority of the benefits associated with such an approach will accrue in the distant future.
Even if mitigating climate change has serious net costs between now and 2050, we still need to do it, at least if we care at all about the welfare of future generations and the integrity of the planet. That being said, we can certainly hope to mitigate effectively at a relatively low cost (taking advantage of mechanisms like carbon pricing to secure the lowest cost emission reductions first). We can also work to maximize the co-benefits of climate change mitigation, such an enhancing energy security and reducing other types of air pollution.
It is also entirely possible that we will end up spending more money on climate change than we should have, or than would have been possible if we had taken the best possible approach from the outset. To use an analogy, it is possible for a speeding car to brake too sharply to avoid hitting a pedestrian. Doing so jostles the driver and may damage the car, but it is a less undesirable outcome than braking too hesitantly and ploughing right into the person. When you are making a decision with important consequences and lots of uncertainty, erring on the side of caution and expense is the prudent and ethical approach.
This may interest you. It’s a video of the meteor that recently landed in Alberta.
Hilarious. I bet Cameron at al are pissed off. He’s the Tory MP for a constituency close to where I’m registered to vote and I don’t reckon it’ll put the North Londoners off voting for him any; there’s really no shortage of people recklessly driving huge gas guzzling cars in Hitchin.
I hope I never have to own a car that is so poorly made that it can be damaged by its own breaking force.
Environmental politics
A rod for our backs
Nov 20th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Britain decides that climate change is too important to leave to the politicians
“GIVE me chastity and continence, but not yet,” Saint Augustine besought God more than a millennium ago. Those worried by global warming but unwilling to change their behaviour take a similar approach. Evidence of the damage that economic activity does to the planet is mounting, but given the cheapness and convenience of fossil fuels, the temptation to avoid tackling climate change for just another year (and another and another) is hard to resist. This is even truer as economic woes mount.
Britain’s government thinks it has a solution, and it is one that so far no other country has adopted. The approach is rather like that of a desperate dieter padlocking his pantry. If all goes according to plan, a climate-change bill will be passed next week that takes the power to set carbon-reduction goals away from politicians and enshrines them in law. A climate-change committee will recommend five-year carbon budgets for different parts of the economy, such as power generation, transport and manufacturing, with the ultimate goal of cutting emissions by 80% from their 1990 levels by the time 2050 rolls around.
This is a fantastic photo. Any chance I could get a high-res copy?
Would you prefer a full resolution JPEG, a Canon RAW file, or both?
A jpeg would be ideal, I don’t have any software to work with RAW files.
This photo makes me want to use my SLR more.
I transferred both, via my FTP server.
You observed that most of the benefits from reducing greenhouse-gas emissions “will be accrued not today, but in 50 or 100 years.” It is worth adding that societies reap meaningful and immediate benefits from transitioning away from fossil fuels. In a recent research paper, our team found that replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy yields substantial short-term benefits associated with cleaner air, improved health and fewer premature deaths, which exceed policy costs. We also estimated that these immediate benefits may be larger than the near-term gains from mitigating climate change. Societies, therefore, have ample reason to act on climate change now.
Emil Dimanchev
Senior research associate
MIT Centre for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Any new regulations—including repeals—must be rigorously costed, or else they risk being overturned in the courts. The environmental rules that the Trump administration is rewriting were signed just a few years ago. Their costings then showed social benefits vastly exceeding the compliance costs.