The choice is stark: For a few hundred million dollars, we could help almost half of humanity now. Compare this with the investments to tackle climate change — US$40 trillion annually by the end of the century — which would save a hundred times fewer starving people (and in 90 years). For every person saved from malnutrition through climate policies, the same money could have saved half a million people from micronutrient malnutrition through direct policies.
Some argue that the choice between spending money on carbon cuts and on direct policies is unfair. But it is a basic fact that no dollar can be spent twice. Rich countries and donors have limited budgets and attention spans. If we spend vast amounts of money on carbon cuts in the mistaken belief that we are stopping malaria and reducing malnutrition, we are less likely to put aside money for the direct policies that would help today.
Indeed, for every dollar spent on strong climate policies, we will likely do about US$0.02 of good for the future. If we spent the same dollar on simple policies to help malnutrition or malaria now, we could do US$20 or more good — 1000 times better, when all impacts are taken into account.
On Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania — where the effects of global warming can already be felt — our researcher encountered 28-year-old Rehema Ibrahim. Rehema was divorced by her husband and disowned by her family after she failed to produce children. To find out if she was the cause of the infertility, she started sleeping with other men. She is now HIV-positive, an outcast in a terribly poor society.
Rehema has noticed changes in the weather. She says that the snow and ice have been melting. She knows what our researcher means by “global warming.”
But, she says: “The issues I am experiencing have greater priority. The HIV and the problems it is causing are greater than the [receding] ice.”
Campaigners for carbon-emission reductions regularly highlight the melting snow and ice of Mount Kilimanjaro. But we need to pay as much attention to the people living in the mountain’s shadow.
Bjorn Lomborg is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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