![]() ![]() The IPCC says that the world would continue to warm for decades even if all human greenhouse-gas emissions were to magically stop tomorrow, which of course they won't. That's not good, but it hardly seems catastrophic. On the Stern Report's own assumptions, "This means that per capita consumption would grow from $7,800 today to only $81,000 in 2200," instead of $94,000 (in today's dollars). Reanalyzing the Stern Report, Yale University economist William Nordhaus recently noted that a "high-damage" scenario might reduce global GDP by almost 14 percent in the year 2200. Other analyses come up with cost figures more like 3 percent of GDP, but leave that aside. In The Baltimore Sun, Bryan Mignone, a science and technology fellow at the Brookings Institution, cites that report's conclusion with alarm: "The damage associated with warming under a 'do-nothing' policy is likely to be 5 percent to 20 percent of global gross domestic product, an outcome to which the word 'catastrophic' would seem to apply." "It is not in doubt," he said in October, "that if the science is right, the consequences for our planet are literally disastrous." He was commenting on a recent British government report (popularly known as the Stern Report) on the economic effects of warming. But what sort of problem?Ī crisis, Blair says. Last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that the Earth is definitely warming and that human emissions of greenhouse gases (principally carbon dioxide) are almost certainly an important cause. As problems go, in fact, climate change appears to be one of the most convenient that humankind has ever faced. It would hold that climate change is real and deserves action, but that the problem is nowhere near as overwhelming as the rhetoric commonly suggests, and the solutions nowhere near as difficult. To listen to Blair, former Vice President Gore, and many other political figures and environmental activists, you would conclude that global warming is an onrushing cataclysm and that prevention requires all of us to take radical steps right away.Ī fairer assessment would be many degrees cooler. Something about the global-warming debate encourages overheated rhetoric. That gives us precisely three years-2009, 2010, and 2011-to save the planet.Īll right, that was a cheap shot. environmentalists want to defer any legislation until President Bush is out of office. In hopes of taking stronger steps, however, many U.S. "We can't wait the five years it took to negotiate Kyoto," he said. In October, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for "radical international measures" to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions, and fast. ![]()
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