This summer I had an extensive debate with a fellow Policy Matters Ohio intern regarding which problem should be the world’s priority: preventing climate change as much as is still possible, or confronting the immediate issues of global poverty. There is no human face to global warming as there is for global poverty and global hunger, but by the time there is, it will be too late — we are already past the CO2 threshold of 350 ppm that most scientists agree will prevent the most serious effects of warming.
In early December, leaders of more than 150 nations, scientists and academics, NGOs, industry groups and climate change activists will all converge in Copenhagen, Denmark for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Many hope that a more powerful successor to the Kyoto protocol will emerge. We all have a responsibility to make certain that the basic human rights of every individual are met, but at this precious moment in history, with Copenhagen as possibly the last chance we have to take serious and effective action to curb climate change, both the first world and the developing world must find a way to forego now for the cold rationality of the future.
As the Stern Review, commissioned by the British government, reported, “The consequences of climate change will become disproportionately more damaging with increased warming.” That means that while we are already committed to a certain amount of warming, we can still prevent the worst consequences by preventing further warming — warming that will disproportionately affect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. Continued pursuit of economic development at the cost of emissions will massively backfire on the very people my fellow intern sought to protect.
Climate change will be marked by shifts in different populations’ access to water, food, land, as well as by impacts on health and the environment. Water shortages will be compounded as water becomes scarcer for one to four billion people in Africa, the Middle East, Southern Europe and parts of Central and South America. Perhaps the most vulnerable will be those who depend on rivers that rely on glacial melt — disappearing mountain glaciers will drastically reduce the flow capacity of these rivers in China, the Indian subcontinent and the Andes region
The Stern Review estimates that with 3º of warming, an additional 150 to 500 million people worldwide would go hungry or suffer from malnutrition, as worldwide cereals production would decrease up to 10 percent, and marine ecosystem disruption would affect the livelihoods of coastal peoples. The Garnaut Climate Change Review submitted to the Australian government in February of 2008 notes that by 2040, warming will have reduced by 30 percent the available land for rice and grain production in China — at a time when that nation will need to boost its food production by 40 percent to meet the needs of its population.
Rising sea levels and rising temperatures will be a good thing for the world’s mosquitoes … and a bad thing for (once again) the world’s poor, as tens of millions more Africans will be exposed to malaria. In addition, rising sea levels will threaten more than 200 million people and $1 trillion in assets that inhabit coasts under 1 meter above sea level. Oxfam recently warned that 75 million people living in the Pacific Islands would have to relocate by 2050 due to projected sea level rise. If you think combatting global warming now will be expensive, just imagine the cost of a hundred million climate refugees.
The future cost to economies, especially those of the developing world, will be tragically high. The majority of the costs will be bourn by the world’s poor. The Stern Review estimates that the consequences of global warming could cost India and Southeast Asia 9-13 percent of GDP by 2100 and could cost developing countries an average of 5 percent annually in the future. John Houghton in his authoritative textbook, Global Warming: The Third Briefing notes several studies that conclude that a 2.5ºC temperature rise will cost 2 percent of gross world product (GWP) annually, and a rise of 6º, 7 percent of GWP.
There are those who argue that because we will experience irreversible effects of global warming even if we act now, the correct policy should be for developing nations to continue to develop so as to be able to meet the cost of those consequences, and they argue that for developed nations (from which most emissions still come) to effectively combat global warming would “kill the economy.”
First let’s be clear — the developed nations who are most responsible for the existence of global warming and have the highest per capita emissions should be responsible for the greatest share of cuts. That’s not leaving developing nations completely off the hook; they will account for 75 percent of the projected emissions increase by 2030, and if they don’t act in conjunction with the developed world, any progress will just be negated. I think the future costs of doing nothing are fairly obvious, but how do they compare to the costs of taking action now?
The Congressional Budget Office recently released an estimate for the cost of the Waxman-Markey bill to the average American family by 2020: $160 a year. Less than $0.50 a day — hardly a significant sum of money. By 2050? 1.2 percent of income, which seems slightly more significant, until you also take into account the CBO’s prediction that by 2050 average income will be 2.5 times what it is today. In total, the Stern Review concluded that stabilizing emissions at today’s levels would cost somewhere between 1-2 percent of GWP.
Yes that’s significant, but the costs of inaction are far greater. In addition, looking just at expenditures bypasses the potential economic gains from the creation of whole new industries. As Paul Krugman recently pointed out, combatting climate change will not be an economically disastrous initiative; the resistance comes from the fact that it will involve a “shuffling of the economic deck, hurting some powerful vested interest even as it created new economic opportunities.”
As Copenhagen approaches, the world must not allow economic shortsightedness and fear to stand in the way of greatness. The world must be united in confronting a defining issue that strikes at the very heart of our collective morality and imperils us all. This planet was here long before we were, and it will be here long after we are gone. The world must now come together and act thoughtfully for the most vulnerable among us, who will bear the highest cost of global warming.