Green Week: EU needs to 'get to grips' with climate change

The EU's obsession with reducing greenhouse gas emissions has caused a misdirection of resources which will do more harm than good argue Kendra Okonski and Julian Morris of UK based charity International Policy Network.

"This year, the focus of the European Commission’s Green Week is ‘Getting to grips with climate change’.

Its obsession with reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to limit human-induced climate change has caused a misdirection of resources which will do more harm than good.

The EU should ‘get to grips’ with climate change by understanding the real costs and benefits of different courses of action.

The policy of restricting emissions allegedly relies on the ‘precautionary approach’, which – according to the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development – states that “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

By claiming that ‘environmental’ regulations such as emissions restrictions would not be costly, or would even have economic benefits, European proponents of the ‘precautionary approach’ ignore the injunction that such measures must be ‘cost effective’.

But do these claims hold up? The Kyoto Protocol, under which rich countries agreed to restrict emissions, entered into force this year.

The EU is attempting to implement Kyoto – yet many EU countries (plus Japan and Canada) are struggling to meet their targets because it too costly to comply.

Kyoto’s advocates seem to live in a world which assumes away reality and their wishes are fulfilled – but simply assuming away the costs of environmental regulation will not wash.

Their window-dressing exercises - such as Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas’ claim that “We are reducing emissions in a way that does not harm the economy” - suggest that they have barely understood Kyoto’s costs, though they continue to preach its virtues.

In reality, regulations do have costs. Regulators must be forced to understand the real trade-offs, so that they make decisions on a more realistic criteria. So far, the criteria for climate policy seem to be driven more by ideology than pragmatism. 

To really get to grips with climate change, the EU should assess a wide range of possible policies – not just emissions restrictions.

It could evaluate each policy’s benefits and costs for people and the environment, and this might lead them to choose a more pragmatic approach.

What might such a pragmatic solution be?

To answer this question we must decide what problem we are trying to solve.

The more than 15-year long debate about global warming has produced a range of potentially devastating consequences of a warmer world, including more frequent floods and droughts, worsening disease, biodiversity loss, reduced agricultural productivity, and property damage caused by extreme weather.

Given this general description of the problem (and ignoring for the moment whether or not it is accurate), what is the best response? Unsurprisingly, the most substantial impacts of human-induced climate change are in fact exacerbations of existing problems.

In most poor countries, climate – that is to say the prevailing weather – is a major problem. Climate affects everyone, but the poor are less able to cope with adversity than people who are relatively wealthier.

Every year, hundreds of millions suffer and several million people die from diarrhoea, malaria and other infectious diseases, caused by lack of clean water and sanitation.

At least one million children die from respiratory infections caused by indoor air pollution.

Millions of children suffer malnourishment – but food spoils because poor countries lack modern refrigeration, transport and processing infrastructure. 

In contrast, people in wealthy countries are buffered from climate problems by robust buildings with efficient heating and cooling systems.

They have better warning systems, afforded by widely-accessible mass media and communications technologies.

They have access to insurance and better infrastructure, more reliable food supplies and better health systems.

Future climate changes may exacerbate existing problems, but analyst Indur Goklany has shown that it is far more cost-effective to address these problems directly – thereby reducing their extent both today and in the future, regardless of any climate change.

By contrast, emissions restrictions would do nothing to address those problems today and would have little or no impact in the future.

Poor countries today produce 50 per cent of emissions and may produce 75 per cent by 2050. Europe’s current emissions reductions would simply be drowned out.

If poor countries were cajoled or forced to agree to Kyoto-style targets, the economic impacts would be to dramatically slow economic development by increasing the cost of all forms of energy.

Perversely, then, the effects of climate policy would be more harmful than climate change.

Today, most people in poor countries do not consume enough energy, and it is consumed inefficiently.

Crop residues, dung and fuel wood are far more harmful to people and the environment than their alternatives – grid electricity, natural gas and other modern energy sources.

Yet if all forms of energy are more costly, poor people are far less likely to make this transition.
Emissions restrictions would artificially increase the cost of consumer goods, as producers reflect the higher cost of energy in prices.

With less real income, consumers would be less able to afford energy- and resource-saving technologies. 

Emissions restrictions also mean that politicians and bureaucrats in poor countries have fewer incentives to undertake badly needed economic reforms to address present economic and environmental issues.

If politicians are genuinely concerned about vulnerability to climate change, they need to consider other approaches.

Adaptive measures are likely to be better investments: they would benefit people and the environment today, while increasing resilience to future problems.

As a result, these measures may eliminate the need for more aggressive policies in the future. 

For instance, investing in better physical infrastructure – including roads, bridges, water delivery systems, sanitation facilities and communications technology – would decrease vulnerability to a variety of climate-related phenomena in poor countries. 

Poor countries could also undertake policy reforms to strengthen market institutions.

Formalizing property rights and contracts would encourage investment in sturdy housing structures, and would also contribute to a well-functioning market for insurance. 

Wealthy countries and businesses can also help. They can develop new low - or zero-emissions technologies.

They can deploy existing technologies in countries where emissions are high per unit of GDP.

Investments in agricultural productivity would also have enormous benefits. 

The course of human history illustrates that sustainable development is a process underpinned by institutions that unleash human ingenuity to create solutions to an ever-changing array of problems, including those produced by the earth’s climate.

Wealthy countries are more resilient to change because they have enabled humans to improve their lives with technological innovation, which in turn enables a lighter footprint.

Many poor - and middle-income countries are at the beginning of this process – and restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions may slow their progress dramatically."

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