I was going to write two posts about matters musical, but it'll wait. First, Krugman has an NYT column about global warming and China, where he says the Chinese need to cut back on emissions, and should face economic sanctions if they don't voluntarily do so fast enough:
As the United States and other advanced countries finally move to confront climate change, they will also be morally empowered to confront those nations that refuse to act. Sooner than most people think, countries that refuse to limit their greenhouse gas emissions will face sanctions, probably in the form of taxes on their exports. They will complain bitterly that this is protectionism, but so what? Globalization doesn’t do much good if the globe itself becomes unlivable.
It’s time to save the planet. And like it or not, China will have to do its part.
I don't think he gets nearly enough push-back in the comments section. A few thoughts:
0: Speaking for myself, a world 4-6 C warmer with all that entails, but with continued third world growth, is still preferable to that of today, with manageable temperatures but billions in absolute poverty. Both of those are awful options, and better can be done than each, but those two alternatives aren't equally awful.
1: The different costs of climate change aren't all uniformly distributed across the planet. The Chinese are more likely to pay attention to costs that impact them directly. Loss of land in Bangladesh/Bengal or more malaria in sub-Saharan Africa aren't such costs, for example.
2: The Chinese argument - that the emissions cost of their exports shouldn't be counted against them, because the benefits of the goods produced go to Westerners - seems fishy. It seems they can't really accept the money payment for those same exports while disclaiming any carbon cost. I'm not dismissing outright these more sophisticated transnational accounting schemes, at least not in theory. Maybe the rest of the world ought to subsidize American/Western/Japanese research efforts, particularly in medicine and high yielding crops. Western Europe could help pay for the US Army and China and India could compensate the rest of the world for imposing a large unproductive body burden upon it. Maybe. Meanwhile, it seems a bit self-serving to use such arguments only in this specific instance.
3: There is the problem of divvying up not just carbon consumption per-annum from but the extra atmospheric carbon already created. In practice I suspect the latter won't be accounted for. I do think deviations from per-capita-equity based carbon allocations will tend to be increasingly hard to enforce and police with time.
4: Any accounting of the cost of fighting climate change, must include the cost of forcing the Chinese (and other third-world economies) to accept lower growth rates, and by implication, lower life expectancy, lower levels of material comfort and the like.
5: There needs to be a conversation about optimal levels of environmental degradation. To be florid, we must have targets of x units of per-capita GDP growth per species extinction or acre of rainforest lost. Indeed, to say that there are economic tradeoffs, more so when dealing with poor countries, is to say that these levels aren't optimized at small values. IPPC says we'll experience 2 - 4 C of temperature rise this century if we do nothing. How much do we want to do, assuming magical solutions don't drop out of the sky?
6: The more stories like this we see, the more attractive geoengineering schemes (with their considerable power and risk) will seem. About time the public conversation moved beyond glib hubris-of-man to seriously consider the technical and geopolitical challenges.
Unconnected closing thought: The New Yorker is the anti-Playboy. One only ever reads it for the pictures.
Calculating the cost-benefit ratio for the third world is indeed a dilemma. I heard Bill Maher grumble on his show that millions more Indians will be adding to global pollution now that the Tata Nano is within the average Indian's means. So, what should the Indians do? Resort to walking, bicycling or clogging up the motorways with horse and buggy? The desirable answer of course would have been that Tata had invested in an affordable "green" car to begin with. India's pollution is not a laughing matter as one realizes just by stepping outdoors. But this debate about "progress" vs "pristineness" is always touchy when the living standards of poorer nations are involved. I wish that given the available knowledge, less developed nations should learn to industrialize without repeating the earlier mistakes made by richer nations in the beginning of the 20th century, thus avoiding poisoning their own environments. Also, sad to say that too often in these countries, the deep seated culture of corruption in the public-private nexus of business and govt. oversight is more to blame for lower standards rather than the actual absence of know how.
I feel that an average of 4-6 degrees C rise in global temps is way too high.
Posted by: Ruchira | May 16, 2009 at 06:42 PM
Ruchira,
I'll defend Ratan Tata more than you do. The Nano is as fuel efficient as a Prius, uses much less material to produce, and has no battery related pollution. Also, given the lifecycle of Indian cars, each Nano will be used longer than most American cars are.
In fact, forget the American comparison entirely. I'd say the Indian elite have been almost as awful as Maher or the New York Times. Nano is more eco-friendly than any car Tata has ever made before - it's probably the greenest car sold on the Indian market. If tomorrow Tata made a Nano-prime ten times more polluting and five times more expensive - and in all other respects identical to Nano - there'd be no eco-brouhaha over it whatsoever.
That makes the fuss seem to me like naked, transparent elitism and selfishness. This isn't to dispute that fifeen million Nanos will be worse for the climate than none, but the solution (at least no solution a decent left can countenance) can't be to arm-twist peasants and factory workers to not have cars while genteel people debate in wonderfully civilized ways whether and when fuel standards for their Accords and Jettas should be strengthened!
Posted by: prasad | May 16, 2009 at 08:33 PM
I actually agree with you quite a lot. The "Don't do as we do, do as we say" posture of the elitists is something that annoys me just as much as it does you.
A very similar argument took place (and still does) up in the Himalayas and the Karakoram range regarding modernizing the living conditions of Nepal's Sherpa and Pakistan's Balti populations, mountain dwelling people, among the poorest and most isolated in the world. The mountaineering world was divided on this. One group (people like Edmund Hillary, Jon Krakauer and Greg Mortenson) argued that the aspirations of the Sherpas and the Baltis to see their children better educated, better fed, more mobile and having access to modern amenities and the outside world should be encouraged and facilitated. But there are equal number of "elites" on the opposite side who turn their noses up at any prospect of modern housing, satellite dishes or modern transportation "polluting" the pristine existence of these "innocent" folks. It matters little to them that the malnourished and poor laborers make it possible for the well trained, Gore- Tex clad sportsmen and women to have their food, oxygen, medicines and satellite phones available to them at 27,000ft + altitudes. The irony is that the "conquered" virgin territory is left littered with the indestructible plastic and metal trash and frozen turds of the rich adventurers.
But that's not my point. I only wish that India, China and other countries which are modernizing at a fast pace, should do so with some prudence - for their own future, not for Bill Maher's peace of mind.
Posted by: Ruchira | May 16, 2009 at 09:32 PM
0: We are cooling, folks; for how long even kim doesn't know. We are far more likely to face a climate holocaust from global cooling than from global warming. I agree with your point about the lethal poverty of billions. Cheap energy will save many lives, and encumbered carbon will destroy many more.
1: Sea level rise has started to plateau. At any rate, sea level rise is not from global warming caused by CO2.
2: Trade wars hurt everyone.
3: The CO2=AGW paradigm is exaggerated. There is no need to feel guilty about past carbon use.
4: The CO2=AGW paradigm is exaggerated. There is no need to force poor people into accepting lower growth rates and other phenomena of destitution.
5: There is no question we must keep our environment as clean as possible consistent with supporting the humans in it. One must keep one's room as clean as possible, too, consistent with living in that room.
6: Geoengineering almost guarantees horrific unintended consequences. Please don't go down that road.
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Posted by: kim | May 18, 2009 at 01:35 AM
what else do you expect from the self styles arbiters of human destiny!
and they are sitting on the fence with kyoto protocol!
dont you know, the first world is divinely ordained to enjoy the fruits of the world?
Posted by: kochuthresiamma p j | May 18, 2009 at 01:05 PM