When Nicholas Stern’s review on the economics of climate change came out in late 2006, it changed the terms of the climate debate. The warnings from scientists and environmental campaigners about the dangers posed by global warming had been growing increasingly loud, but here, for the first time, was a detailed and hard-headed examination of the economics of the subject. Stern demonstrated to many people’s satisfaction that without drastic global action to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, the world faced the risk of economic meltdown.
Now Stern has a political plan to add to his economic review: a six-point manifesto for a global deal on climate change that he says will take in both the rich and poor worlds, and exploit the power of technology and markets to reduce carbon emissions as effectively and efficiently as possible.
What are the plan’s chances of success? Alun Anderson interviewed Stern for the current issue of Prospect to find out.
I do not dispute the need for a carbon constrained world. However I object to many of the premises in Sir Nicholas’s shorthand arguments in the interview. It is a very elitist view of the world requiring leadership by the people who know more than those ordinary people called the voters. It also appears to him to be so easy to convince the mass of ordinary people in the democratic world that they should reduce their standards of living to pursue the no doubt worthy aims he has enunciated for a carbon constrained world. The practicality and the inter-mixing of aims will definitely lead to failure. Foreign aid might be a good thing but providing anything to Zimbabwe right now for adaptation to climate change will destroy the many other arguments as to the expectations of Sir Nick. Justifying CDM as a good mechanism will also raise eyebrows as there is now analysis coming out as to how it has been rorted especially by the Chinese.
As to ethics and the valuing of human life, where does he stand on the question of including agriculture in any emissions reduction program which is the economically first best answer in terms of efficiency with the dilemma that it is likely to reduce production and therefore increase price when there are significant numbers of people suffering from starvation or malnutrition in the current period.
Regarding tjr’s charge of ‘elitism’:
If a number of individuals sharing a depletable or degradable common resource (such as a stable climate) each carry out and act on their own individual cost-benefit analysis, then non-one has an incentive to act in ways that preserve the resource. This is commonly known as the ‘tragedy of the commons’. It does not happen because people are ignorant or stupid but because they are uncoordinated. Small groups of people can be good at coordinating themselve, but large groups of people commonly choose leaders to undertake coordination tasks. When they do so formally, by voting, it is called ‘representative democracy’.
One of the advantages of representative as opposed to direct democracy is that elected representatives can specialise in considering complicated issues and appoint others to do the same. If, and only if, you are an anarchist, then you can consistently say that this system is too ‘elitist’ for your own taste, but by no measure can it be called ‘very’ elitist.