Dealing with climate change means dealing with poverty
One of Australia’s most brilliant economists, Professor Ross Garnaut, answers questions after a speech on the economics of climate change at ANU last year.
I recently had the opportunity to write a couple of guest posts for the Brisbane based Courier Mail’s Green Blog. (See Part 1 and Part 2). Some of the comments below those posts are quite astounding and, true to form with many many other sites, it’s easy to spot the climate sceptics by their grammar, their spelling and their ability to express their thoughts in writing. Alas, as a barometer of climate scepticism, written expression has no equal.
To be blunt, the evidence of global warming and consequent climate change is overwhelming. The science that underpins the greenhouse effect and the consequent warming of the earth by the burning of fossil fuels and rampant deforestation driving excess levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is very well understood. There is simply no reasonable doubt that by tearing up forests and burning fossil fuels we are causing climactic instability, and on top of that changing the pH of the oceans, and potentially causing seismic disturbances due to the shifts in the weight of ice as it melts away.
It’s so well understood that Carbon Planet was able to design a primary school education programme, ‘Operation: Coolenation,’ that teaches little kids some of the basics of climate science. But that is not the point.
The point is that capitalism, this amazing, dynamic, system we thrive in, that increases the overall amount of wealth in the world and that lifts people out of poverty, is long overdue for an upgrade.
Capitalism as we know it has evolved, ad-hoc, in a messy, sprawly, way that doesn’t hesitate to use force to dump costs onto people who can’t fight back, or onto us all. These costs are called externalities by economists, and right now capitalism thrives on exploiting them.
Carbon emissions are simply a massive externality right now, “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen,” as Nicholas Stern pronounced in his landmark Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change (PDF). Put simply, as it stands it effectively costs nothing to pollute. Carbon Trading makes that pollution cost around what it costs to clean it up. A Cap and Trade scheme such as the Australian Government’s proposed CPRS limits the total amount of pollution allowed. It’s fair, it’s efficient, and it’s guaranteed to reduce emissions. The question is ‘how fast’.
Bringing carbon in from the cold is just the start of a process of economic and social transition. Look at it like Occupational Health and Safety laws. When laws came in against workplace smoking and drinking there was strong resistance from business, but over a generation that controversial reform meant the nation’s healthcare budget could be spent on better things, giving much more bang for our healthcare buck.
All of the economic externalities will be systematically either eliminated, as hopefully in the case of kids in sweatshops, or properly priced, with an equitable funds distribution model at the tail end, and an incorporation of that cost in the final price of the good or service.
That transition has to happen eventually, because resources on this Earth are finite. And the sooner the externalities are gone the cheaper for all of us in the long run, or even in the mid-run as Nicholas Stern and Ross Garnaut both demonstrated in their respective reviews. Indeed rising levels of global prosperity could paradoxically reduce emissions, increase global security and ease the pressure on our troubled planet.
Dealing with climate change is first and foremost about dealing with poverty globally by enabling sustainable growth on the back of clean power, equitable funds distribution, payments for environmental services and open society. Who could have a problem with that?
In fact, done right, we get the solution to climate change for free as part of an upgrade to Capitalism 2.0. – DS
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