Rapid reductions target not realistic

obmar · Rapid reductions target not realistic

Rapid reductions target not realistic

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech/...s-target-not-realistic.3690362.jp

By Bjørn Lomborg
THE United Nations-led climate change conference in Bali will be remembered less for the "road map" that it eventually created than for a messy collision between the United States and much of the rest of the world that kept onlookers transfixed.
Environmental campaigners vilified America for resisting European Union pressure to pre-commit to specific temperature targets – namely, that global warming should be limited to no more than 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial temperatures.

This target has become a veritable commandment of campaigners since the EU embraced it in 1996. The media often refer to it, sometimes saying that unless it is met, climate change would be very dangerous for humanity. In fact, the target is not scientifically backed, and the suggestion that we could achieve it is entirely implausible.

Stopping temperatures rising by more than 2C would require Draconian, instant emission reductions – for the OECD the reductions would have to be between 40-50 per cent below their expected path in just 12 years. Even if political consensus could be found, the cost would be phenomenal: one model estimates that the total global cost would be around $84 trillion (£43tn), while the economic benefits would be just a seventh of this amount.

The suspiciously round figure of 2C provides one clue to the fact this target is not based in science. The first peer-reviewed study that analysed it, published in 2007, scathingly described it as being supported by "thin arguments, based on inadequate methods, sloppy reasoning, and selective citation from a very narrow set of studies".

In any case, a temperature limit is obviously a political rather than a scientific statement. Setting a limit means weighing up the costs and benefits of a world with temperatures at one level, and comparing them with the costs and benefits if we were to turn down the thermostat. This is an inherently political process.

Deciding how much we should let temperatures rise is like working out how many people should die in traffic accidents by adjusting the speed limit. There is no scientifically "correct" number of traffic deaths.

It has been widely reported that the UN's climate change panel (the IPCC) tells us that science shows that industrial countries' emissions should be reduced by 25-40 per cent by 2020. This is simply incorrect: the IPCC's Nobel Peace Prize-winning scientists are "policy neutral".

Yet many journalists reported from Bali that the US had rejected the science of the 25-40 per cent emission reduction. They lamented how the science in the final document had been relegated to a footnote, stressing how shortsighted national self-interest had won out. But this interpretation is flatly wrong. If we look at the reference in the Bali footnote, the IPCC clearly says that emissions should be reduced 25-40 per cent if you choose the low EU target, but 0-25 per cent or less if you choose a higher target.

Our one-sided focus on rapid reductions in emissions is both unnecessarily expensive and unlikely to succeed. At the Rio summit in 1992, we promised to cut emissions by 2000, yet overshot the target by 12 per cent. In Kyoto in 1997, we promised even more radical emission cuts by 2010, which we will miss by 25 per cent. Making ever-stronger promises on top of ever more failed promises is hardly the right way forward.

Instead, we should look for smarter policy options, such as aiming to ensure that alternative-energy technologies at reasonable prices will be
available within the next 20-40 years. This could be achieved if all countries committed to spending 0.05 per cent of GDP on research and development of non-carbon-emitting energy technologies. The cost – a relatively minor $25 billion (£13bn) per year – would be almost ten times cheaper than the Kyoto Protocol . Yet it would increase R&D globally ten-fold. Moreover, while it would embrace all countries, the rich would pay the larger share.

When we talk about the environment, deciding what level of temperature change we should aim for – and how to achieve it – is a discussion that should engage all of us. But confusing political campaigning with scientific reason won't help.

• Bjørn Lomborg, the organiser of Copenhagen Consensus, is author of Cool It: The Sceptical Environmentalist's Guide to Climate Change and editor of Solutions for the World's Problems: Costs and Benefits.

The full article contains 739 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Last Updated: 18 January 2008 11:00 PM