Planned Economic Recession
September 9th, 2008Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Last week’s Economist provided a characterization of debates over climate change as being “alarmingly prone to zealotry and taboos.” One such taboo surrounds observations that the dominant policy approach is bankrupt, which evokes a squeamish reaction among many.
In a paper just out in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (PDF) Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows disregard taboos and squeamishness and observe that the current approach to mitigation policies focused on specific targets and timetables (i.e., 2 degrees, 450 ppm) does “not, in isolation, have a scientific basis and are likely to lead to dangerously misguided policies .” (Many thanks to HD for the pointer.) This provocative paper ends by suggesting that “it is difficult to envisage anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with stabilization at or below 650 ppmv CO2e.”
The squeamish will say not to talk about such things, and the analysis by Anderson and Bows ultimately may not stand up to close scrutiny (though its analysis is quite consistent with Pielke, Wigley, and Green’s “Dangerous Assumptions”). On the other hand, others will laugh at the notion of “planned economic recession” and say we should just give up the idea of decarbonization. Both reactions would be wrong — the continuing comprehensive failure of mitigation policies, and its consequences, should be the subject of serious discussion, especially the introduction of radically new options beyond those that have yielded little progress over the past few decades.
Here is an excerpt from the paper, but do read the whole analysis for the basis for the following conclusions:
It is increasingly unlikely that an early and explicit global climate change agreement or collective ad hoc national mitigation policies will deliver the urgent and dramatic reversal in emission trends necessary for stabilization at 450 ppmv CO2e. Similarly, the mainstream climate change agenda is far removed from the rates of mitigation necessary to stabilize at 550 ppmv CO2e. Given the
reluctance, at virtually all levels, to openly engage with the unprecedented scale of both current emissions and their associated growth rates, even an optimistic interpretation of the current framing of climate change implies that stabilization much below 650 ppmv CO2e is improbable.The analysis presented within this paper suggests that the rhetoric of 2 C is subverting a meaningful, open and empirically informed dialogue on climate change. While it may be argued that 2 C provides a reasonable guide to the appropriate scale of mitigation, it is a dangerously misleading basis for informing the adaptation agenda. In the absence of an almost immediate step change in mitigation (away from the current trend of 3% annual emission growth), adaptation would be much better guided by stabilization at 650 ppmv CO2e (i.e. approx. 4 C).14 However, even this level of stabilization assumes rapid success in curtailing deforestation, an early reversal of current trends in non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions and urgent decarbonization of the global energy system.
Finally, the quantitative conclusions developed here are based on a global analysis. If, during the next two decades, transition economies, such as China, India and Brazil, and newly industrializing nations across Africa and elsewhere are not to have their economic growth stifled, their emissions of CO2e will
inevitably rise. Given any meaningful global emission caps, the implications of this for the industrialized nations are bleak. Even atmospheric stabilization at 650 ppmv CO2e demands the majority of OECD nations begin to make draconian emission reductions within a decade. Such a situation is unprecedented for economically prosperous nations. Unless economic growth can be reconciled with unprecedented rates of decarbonization (in excess of 6% per year15), it is difficult to envisage anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with stabilization at or below 650 ppmv CO2e.Ultimately, the latest scientific understanding of climate change allied with current emission trends and a commitment to ‘limiting average global temperature increases to below 4 C above pre-industrial levels’, demands a radical reframing16 of both the climate change agenda, and the economic characterization of contemporary society.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
“latest scientific understanding of climate change allied with current emission trends and a commitment to ‘limiting average global temperature increases to below 4 C above pre-industrial levels’ ”
No one has an understanding based on science which will lead to a 4 C increase. Some have an understanding based on models or faith, but none that are based on science.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
As far as I can tell, this means that if you can plan a recession you can plan an economy. In that situation, government may have to take on the function of overall wealth distribution, which may require some suppression of civil dissent by people opposed to the distribution scheme — after all, you can’t think people will just quietly accept their lot. Now, can democracy survive a prolonged recession of several decades? Is there a good example of one that has? Are there dictatorships that have survived without increased repression in the face of declining living standards?
I can’t think of any. So, the authors would appear to be indicating we face the most widespread repression the world has ever seen or will require transformation of human character of Biblical proportions in order to save the planet. Unless technology comes to the rescue, or these prophets of doom like most others are proven wrong, our choices and prospects appear pretty bleak.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I am expecting the chinese recession anytime now, which will restore the downgoing emission growth trend.
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/co2sres.gif
September 9th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I’m not expecting a recession in China anytime soon. But what I don’t understand is why China and India (not to mention Japan, South Korea, Germany, and the rest of the EU) aren’t aggressively pursuing development of thorium fission or (non-tokamak) fusion power.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that building one 1000 MW coal-fired power plant every week for years on end isn’t sustainable (even from the standpoint of trying to supply enough coal to meet the demand).
September 9th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Obviously, such a recession would result in the collapse of the Free Market Capitalist system of economic management. No-one could possibly want that, could they?
September 10th, 2008 at 1:18 am
(4) well, a few weeks ago the largest Dutch party quite suddenly announced that maybe nuclear fission is not such a bad idea after all. Before that, fission had been more or less of a taboo for years. Interestingly, even some outspoken political opponents of fission did not reject it immediately.
Interestingly, putting fission back on the agenda appears to motivated by the combination of last years high energy prices, worries about global warming, the recogniztion that wind and solar are no viable alternatives at the moment and the recognition that we will be running out of natural gas reserves in a couple a decades (we, the Dutch, have quite a lot natural gas reserves, Hans Erren knowns a lot more about that) . Probably our (potentially increasing) reliance on Russian oil and gas may also have had something to do with it.
September 10th, 2008 at 1:57 am
Taking this post and ‘The Carbon-Free Energy Gap’ post together, for example,
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/the-carbon-free-energy-gap-4539
it is becoming blindingly obvious that global CO2 reductions are impossible on the timescales demanded, and we don’t have viable alternatives with which to replace fossil fuels. Developing countries will more than make up for any CO2 emission reductions by the developed world. ‘Climate policy’ is therefore a front for the real UN agenda of wealth redistribution, and will have no effect on climate. So, rather than deliberately engineering a recession, we need to keep burning fossil fuels and keep our economies strong in order to facilitate the development of viable alternatives.
Meanwhile, the world is in a cooling trend (since 2002) despite rising CO2 emissions.
September 10th, 2008 at 5:13 am
“Obviously, such a recession would result in the collapse of the Free Market Capitalist system of economic management. No-one could possibly want that, could they?”
No one. Except a Watermelon.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:31 am
Mark
You’ll be interested to hear that “France is a hotbed of activity on [Thorium-fueled] Molten Salt reactors”, ie Liquid Fluoride. Straight from the horses mouth here:
http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2007/08/thanks-for-invite.html
Note also the comments from Dr. Elsa Merle-Lucotte (assistant professor in the LPSC lab in Grenoble, France)
September 10th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
I’m not sure what to make of this post. Does Roger really find this lunacy creditable? Command and Control economies have been an abysmal failure; the ones which have survived have done so on shirt-tails of the market economies, which have lifted millions out of poverty, and will do so for millions more provided governments resist the temptation to do more than regulate just enough to dampen the feast and famine swings of pure laissez-faire economies. And make no mistake: An induced recession would require a command and control approach.
But this debate is premature. We don’t propose solutions for problems that are ill-defined at best, and possibly non-existent; and there is not a single piece of evidence to support the notion of dangerous, human-abetted climate change. The hypothesis rests on claims that we understand climates of the past & have a firm understanding of natural variability. We don’t. Paleoclimatology is close to a pseudo-science at the moment, and attitudes will have to change quite a bit if it is ever to mature into a true science.
If we were wise, we’d be in a crash program to better understand the wild swings of natural climate variability, and how best to prepare for them.
If it is true, as the architect Le Corbusier once noted, that the well-stated problem finds its own solution, then the converse must be equally true: A poorly stated problem can never be solved. We need to be better problem-seekers.