Global warming will mean that more people die from the heat. There will be a rise in sea levels, more malaria, starvation and poverty. Concern has been great, but humanity has done very little that will actually prevent these outcomes. Carbon emissions have kept increasing, despite repeated promises of cuts.
We all have a stake in ensuring that climate change is stopped. We turned to climate scientists to inform us about the problem of global warming. Now we need to turn to climate economists to enlighten us about the benefits, costs and possible outcomes from different responses to this challenge.
World leaders are meeting in Copenhagen this December to forge a new pact to tackle global warming. Should they continue with plans to make carbon-cutting promises that are unlikely to be fulfilled? Should they instead delay reductions for 20 years? What could be achieved by planting more trees, cutting methane or reducing black soot emissions? Is it sensible to focus on a technological solution to warming? Or should we just adapt to a warmer world?
Much of the current policy debate remains focused on cutting carbon, but there are many ways to go about repairing the global climate. Our choices will result in different outcomes and different costs.
The optimal combination of solutions will create the biggest impact for the least money. A groundbreaking paper by economists Eric Bickel and Lee Lane is one of the first — and certainly the most comprehensive — study of the costs and benefits of climate engineering. Deliberately manipulating the earth’s climate seems like something from science fiction. But as President Barack Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, has said it has “got to be looked at,” and many prominent scientists agree.
Bickel and Lane offer compelling evidence that a tiny investment in climate engineering might be able to reduce as much of global warming’s effects as trillions of dollars spent on carbon emission reductions.
Climate engineering has the advantage of speed. There is a significant delay between carbon cuts and any temperature drop — even halving global emissions by mid-century would barely be measurable by the end of the century. Making green energy cheap and prevalent will also take a long time. Consider that electrification of the global economy is still incomplete after more than a century of effort.
Many methods of atmospheric engineering have been proposed. Solar radiation management appears to be one of the most hopeful. Atmospheric greenhouse gases allow sunlight to pass through but absorb heat and radiate some down to the earth’s surface. All else being equal, higher concentrations will warm the planet. Solar radiation management would bounce a little sunlight back into space. Reflecting just 1 percent to 2 percent of the total sunlight that strikes the earth could offset as much warming as that caused by doubling preindustrial levels of greenhouse gases.
When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, about 1 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide was pumped into the stratosphere, reacting with water to form a hazy layer that spread around the globe, and — by scattering and absorbing incoming sunlight — cooled the earth’s surface for almost two years. We could mimic this effect through stratospheric aerosol insertion — essentially launching material like sulfur dioxide or soot into the stratosphere.
Another promising approach is marine cloud whitening, which sprays seawater droplets into marine clouds to make them reflect more sunlight. This augments the natural process, where sea salt from the oceans provides water vapor with the cloud condensation nuclei.
It is remarkable to consider that we could cancel out this century’s global warming with 1,900 unmanned ships spraying seawater mist into the air to thicken clouds. The total cost would be about US$9 billion and the benefits of preventing the temperature increase would add up to about US$20 trillion. That is the equivalent of doing about $2,000 worth of good with every US$1 spent.
Many of the risks of climate engineering have been overstated. Marine cloud whitening would not lead to permanent atmospheric changes and could be used only when needed. Turning seawater into clouds is a natural process.
The biggest challenge is public perception. Many environmental lobbyists oppose even researching climate engineering. This is startling, given the manifold benefits. If we care most about avoiding warmer temperatures, it seems that we should be elated that this simple, cost-effective approach shows so much promise.
Climate engineering could remain a back-up option in case of necessity. Or we could put it on the agenda today. In either case, there is a commanding case for its serious consideration. We are on track to being the generation that wasted decades bickering over carbon-emission cuts and failed to stop the harmful effects of warming. That would be a shameful legacy — one that could be avoided by re-thinking climate policy.
Bjorn Lomborg is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under