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(Mis)Justifications for Climate Mitigation

Last week’s Science has a very interesting exchange (subscription required) between Indur M. Goklany, of the Office of Policy Analysis, U.S. Department of the Interior and Sir David A. King, Chief Scientific Adviser to U.K Prime Minister Tony Blair and Head of the Office of Science and Technology.

Goklany writes that King justifies action to mitigate climate change on the argument that because "of continued warming, millions more people around the world may in future be exposed to the risk of hunger, drought, flooding, and debilitating diseases such as malaria. Poor people in developing countries are likely to be most vulnerable." Goklany responds to this justification by considering the case of malaria:

“… the population at risk of malaria (PAR-M) in the absence of climate change is projected to double between 1990 and the 2080s, to 8,820 million (2). However, unmitigated climate change would, by the 2080s, further increase PAR-M by another 257 to 323 million (2). Thus, by the 2080s, halting further climate change would, at best, reduce total PAR-M by 3.5% [=100 x 323/(323 + 8,820)] (3). On the other hand, reducing carbon dioxide emissions with the goal of eventually stabilizing carbon dioxide at 550 ppm would reduce total PAR-M by 2.8% (2) at a cost to developed nations, according to King, of 1% of GDP in 2050 (p. 177), or about $280 billion in today's terms (4). But malaria's current annual death toll of about 1 million could be halved at an annual cost of $1.25 billion or less, according to the World Health Organization, through a combination of measures such as residual home spraying with insecticides, insecticide-treated bednets, improved case management, and more com!
prehensive antenatal care (5). Clearly, implementing such measures now would provide greater malaria benefits over the next few decades than would climate stabilization at any level. It would also reduce vulnerability to malaria from all causes--man-made or natural--now and in the future (3).”

This is a powerful point that deserves a response. Does it make sense ethically and scientifically to invoke malaria as a primary justification for climate mitigation? King’s extremely weak response is to avoid the issue:

“There is no real choice between action on climate change and action on poverty, disease, hunger, and other millennium development goals. These are part of the same sustainable development agenda. Climate change is already affecting developing countries, and it is the poorest regions of the world--such as Africa and Southeast Asia--that are most at risk. The many people who have died and the millions now homeless through the monsoon flooding in Bangladesh will bear witness to that. This kind of event can be expected to become more frequent and more extreme as global warming accelerates, exacerbated by rising sea levels.”

Goklany’s more general conclusion on the importance of vulnerability reduction is well supported by our own research. He writes:

“Similarly, reducing present-day vulnerabilities to the other risk factors mentioned by King (i.e., hunger, water shortage, and flooding) could well provide larger benefits at lower costs over the next few decades than would climate change mitigation efforts that go beyond so-called "no-regret" actions, that is, actions that are worth undertaking on their own merits unrelated to any climate change-related concerns (e.g., elimination of subsidies for fossil fuel usage or land clearance) (3).”

Goklany’s letter is much stronger when he discusses what we ought to be doing on malaria, rather than what we ought not to be doing on energy policy. Goklany misses the fact that the same sort of argument that he presents on vulnerability can also be applied to energy policy, i.e., there are powerful reasons to address energy policy, and climate mitigation is but one of them

The reality is that justifications advanced by folks like King for climate mitigation matter a great deal. They matter for resource allocation decisions on climate policies as well as on science policies. Decisions must be made because allocated because money, time, attention, etc. are scarce, and contrary to what King says, choices about priorities have to be made.

But there is a deeper reason why justifications matter having to do with symbolism, science, democracy, and the framing of problems in a way that motivates particular actions. If the justifications used to advance a particular cause don’t stand up to close scrutiny, then it probably makes sense to rethink policy as the actions advocated may not address the concerns explicit in the justifications. Further, when justifications do not match results, it raises the possibility that those doing the justifying have some unstated agenda. This opens the door for gridlock and a lack of accountability in the decision making process.

Of course, I am squarely in the camp that thinks that climate mitigation policies are presently hopelessly misjustified, but I also believe that that there are strong and valid justifications for changing our approach to energy policies in ways that will reduce the human influence on climate. The biggest challenge facing real (not symbolic) progress climate policy today is not political or technological, but in how we think about the problem.