Tackling Global Warming Cheaper Than Ignoring It

Coryoth writes, "In a report commissioned by the UK government, respected economist Sir Nicholas Stern concludes that mitigating global warming could cost around 1% of global GDP if spent immediately, but ignoring the problem could cost between 5% and 20% of global GDP. The 700-page study represents the first major report on climate change from an economist rather than a scientist. The report calls for the introduction of green taxes and carbon trading schemes as soon as possible, and calls on the international community to sign a new pact on greenhouse emissions by next year rather than in 2010/11. At the very least the UK government is taking the report seriously; both major parties are proposing new green taxes. Stern points out, however, that any action will only be effective if truly global."

Comments

Side Note:

[Ceribia]

Also of some note is the fact that we are all going to die. ...but yeah, 5 percent, lets do something about that...

Taxes: is there anything they can't do?

[rufusdufus]

The primary method of fighting global warming suggested in this article is to increase taxes! Globally! It staggers my mind to think how many people might think this is a good idea. Giving politicians more money will save no one.

Re:Taxes: is there anything they can't do?

[nido]

Public education is underfunded.

Public schools do not educate, according to reformed schoolteachers like John Gatto and John Holt. If they did, the populace wouldn't take the crap that 'we' do - teh masses would know how to recognize tyranny when it happened, and find a way to circumvent it.

The government is in debt because of the tax "cuts" Bush pushed through.

The government has been in debt for a very long time - Johnson started printing money to pay for Vietnam, and there was no turning back. Clinton only balanced the budget by borrowing money from social security. If the government had to abide by the same accounting standards as corporations, there would have never been a 'surplus', and the current deficits would be much, much worse than the numbers they currently put out.

Our medical and college education costs are out of reach because ... because the government subsidizes college, and has sent all the low-skill jobs (that used to pay well) to Mexico and Asia, and has looked the other way while corporations imported Mexicans for the jobs that couldn't be moved. College has, therefore, become the new highschool diploma, not that the original ever meant anything in the first place...

we're spending our money on things like the War on Drugs(which just makes illegal drugs more expensive)

If not for the war on drugs driving up prices, how could the various black-op agencies finance their nefarious operations? Read something about Clinton being in on cocaine smuggling through Arkansas - seems like a possibility to me...

and the War on Terror(abject failure due to our inability to concentrate on the nation that actually caused the terror).

You are refering to the traitors in the whitehouse, right?

The United States has the lowest tax levels of the Western world. We also have the highest debt and the worst healthcare. There is a connection.

'Highest debt' is because our Feral Government has had free reign to "print" money for its various programs for 35+ years, and no one's had the ability to call them on it. See Ron Paul's The End of Dollar Hegemony.

'Worst healthcare' is because a certain kind of doctor lobbied themselves a monopoly, and the government set the rules such that employers paid their employees' healthcare bills (wage ceilings during WWII led companies to pick up their workers' doctor bills). Medicare was created to pay for retired workers who'd gotten accustomed to the 'health insurance' paradigm, and that program's costs have been spiraling out of control ever since. See 100 Years of Medical Robbery and Real Medical Freedom.

Cheaper for whom?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Sure it might be goverall cheaper to deal with global warming now than try to fix it later, but the problem is this: The people that would have to pay for it now, are not the people that would have to pay for it later. I can save five bucks now, why should I care about saving five hundred bucks for someone later? That is the mindset you're up against with anything like this. Greed is part of human nature (well at least the consumer driven parts of the human race).

The only way to correct for something like this is through taxation etc, where the law can be applied and force better behaviour.

Re:The American Way

[cperciva]

Ignoring problems is the new American Way. We're doing the same thing with [...] solving the root cause of global terrorism.

Nonsense. George Bush was very clear after 9/11 in saying that "terrorists hate the USA because it is a land of freedom".

Assuming that George Bush was correct in this assessment, he has done far more to combat terrorism than any other US President in recent history.

Re:Better off coping with a warmer planet

[Coryoth]

Our money is far, far better spent learning to cope with a warmer planet, assuming again that things are getting warmer and staying warmer.

That's an interesting assertion. The point of the report is that this precise question was studied in great depth by a well respected economist (Stern was a former chief economist for the World Bank), and that the results of all that detailed anaylsis is that, in fact, it is far more expensive to learn to cope with a warmer planet. I fail to see how you dismiss that result quite so easily - especially given that you have not read the report (it is not officially released till tomorrow).

Cheaper for you, still

[BeeBeard]

It makes sense because you will be paying for this, in your lifetime. It used to be easy to dismiss this as a "children and children's children" problem, but the fact is that the rate at which these changes are taking place as drastically increased, making this no longer the exclusive concern of those who have not been born yet. Sadly, ten years from now, "I told you so" will not be nearly as financially telling as the changes we put into place now.

This is from the article:

However the review says failure to act early could end up costing between 5% and 20% of global GDP and render large parts of the planet uninhabitable with poor nations hit first and hardest.

The article does not say when that is supposed to happen, and like everybody else here I haven't read the 700-page report that the article refers to, only the article itself. What I do know is that if the current world response to climate change doesn't change for the better soon, then you will start to see real consequences in the next several decades. If you don't plan on being alive 10-30 years from now (depending on the data you're relying on), then, well--I hope your life was successful and fulfilling. For the rest of us, we have a very real global problem on our hands that will become at least partially realized within our lifetimes. And you better believe we will be picking up the tab for it.

Re:Long term solution

[B.D.Mills]

It would be terribly inefficient to plant another billion trees

In what way is it so terribly inefficient?

Startup costs? Well, all one does is dig a hole and drop the seedling tree in. It's possible for one person to plant more than 300 trees an hour with the right equipment. How much does that cost, maybe 20 cents per tree? The land needs to be acquired as well. There's plenty of waste land that can be used, like the land near freeways. It will require a lot of land, but that's the only major resource that would be required. When compared to the billions of dollars of farm subsidies that the US already pays to agriculture producers, a subsidy for growing trees would be small by comparison.

There won't be maintenance costs, except for possible subsidies to private growers. The costs when the tree needs to be replaced won't be great either.

So let's make our own carbon converters. 2CO2 + energy -> C2 + 2O2.. it's really not complicated.

Such conversion is what trees are good at. Why invent useless technology when natural means are already available that can do what is required for less cost? The big cost in the conversion will be the energy. The energy input in your equation has to come from somewhere, and when noncarbon energy is in short supply that is an important consideration. Trees capture the energy for free.

Re:Long term solution

[geobeck]

...my favored techniques involve providing tax incentives in cities to paint rooftops white. This results in an increased albedo, reflecting more sunlight (and heat) - not only reducing global warming directly, but indirectly in the form of reduced energy consumption for air conditioning and the like (the urban "heat island" effect). It's a simple, low-impact way to Do Something.

...and make the problem much, much worse. Increased albedo is a huge problem, from the light-gray scars that mark the existence of cities to the reduced dark green of the world's forests due to logging. Increasing the Earth's albedo leads to increased desertification--and the worst part is, this is a positive feedback cycle because increased desertification leads to increased albedo.

The best solution for roofs is not painting them white, but turning them green. Cover as many flat roofs as possible with plant cover, and increase evapotranspiration. Stop paying farmers not to farm, and pay them to grow hemp instead. Use hemp to replace all wood pulp and wood fiber applications, especially paper, and save millions of acres of trees, not in tropical rainforests, but in temperate rainforests, where the problem is just as dire.

The central problem with global warming is not the temperature in itself; it's the mechanism that is raising the temperature, which is primarily an increase in certain atmospheric gases. We don't need half-baked ideas involving producing millions of gallons of toxic paint, which will worsen the problem at every stage from the production of the paint, to its effect on albedo, to the contamination that will inevitably result from improper application and cleanup. We need to focus on reducing greenhouse gases. Period.

For the record, IANAEE (Environmental Engineer), but I will be in nine months.