The Hartwell Paper proposes a three-pronged approach in objectives: ensuring energy access for all; ensuring that we develop in a manner that does not undermine the essential functioning of the Earth system; ensuring that our societies are adequately equipped to withstand the risks and dangers that come from all the vagaries of climate, whatever their cause may be. Learn more about their thesis on the LSE’s homepage here.

Delving into the discussion, Cambridge author Bjorn Lomborg aligns the Paper’s findings with his own approach to climate change on The Project Syndicate.

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TALKING SENSE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

Bjorn Lomborg

LONDON – In February, 14 distinguished climate scientists, economists, and policy experts came together to discuss how to tackle global warming. This week, the London School of Economics and Oxford University are publishing their conclusions. They are worth considering.

The group was brought together by Gwyn Prins, a well-regarded expert in security policy and international relations who heads LSE’s Mackinder Programme for the Study of Long Wave Events. Participants included climate scientist Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia, climate policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado, and climate economist Christopher Green of McGill University.

The group’s report, “The Hartwell Paper,” outlines a new direction for climate policy after the collapse of last year’s attempts to negotiate a global climate deal. The authors note that 18 years of the “Kyoto Protocol approach” to international climate policy have failed to produce any discernable real-world reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases.

What defines the Kyoto approach, of course, is a single-minded focus on cutting carbon-dioxide emissions. “The Hartwell Paper” argues that the Kyoto approach, based as it is on past experience with relatively simple environmental problems like acid rain, was always doomed to failure.

The group points out that it makes no sense to compare climate change to other environmental challenges that we have faced and solved. Climate change is much more complicated, involving open, complex, and imperfectly understood systems. Unlike, say, acid rain or smog, it is not “a conventional environmental ‘problem.’” It is as much “an energy problem, an economic development problem, or a land-use problem.”

Climate economists widely acknowledge that there are only four policy levers that can be used in an attempt to lower carbon emissions and rein in climate change: reducing the world’s population, shrinking the global economy, increasing the efficiency of energy consumption, and decreasing carbon intensity (meaning that we create less carbon for each unit of energy that we produce).

Reducing global population is implausible, and deliberately reducing the size of the global economy would result in increased hardship for billions. “The Hartwell Paper,” then, sets out to develop a strategy that identifies a number of ways of pulling the levers of energy efficiency and carbon intensity.

The Hartwell group proposes that we adopt three basic climate-related goals: ensuring secure, affordable energy supplies for everyone (which means developing alternatives to fossil fuels); ensuring that economic development doesn’t wreak environmental havoc (which means not just reducing CO2 emissions, but also cutting indoor pollution from burning biomass, reducing ozone, and protecting tropical forests); and making sure that we are prepared to cope with whatever climate changes may occur, man-made or natural (which means recognizing, at last, the importance of adapting to climate change).

Achieving these goals will obviously require heavy lifting. The Hartwell group correctly notes that in order to be successful, our approach to climate policy should offer obvious advantages (“rapid and demonstrable pay-back”), appeal to a wide variety of people, and produce measurable results. The Kyoto approach, of course, does none of these things.

Instead of single-mindedly trying to force people to do without carbon-emitting fuels, the Hartwell group suggests that we pursue a number of other worthy goals – for example, adaptation, reforestation, encouraging biodiversity, and improving air quality – each of which is important, and all of which may also reduce carbon emissions. As the report notes, “the all-inclusive ‘Kyoto’ type of climate policy…needs to be broken up into separate issues again, each addressed on its merits and each in its own ways.”

At the same time, the group adds, we must recognize that we won’t make any real progress in cutting CO2 emissions until we can provide developing economies with affordable alternatives to the fossil fuels on which they currently depend. “In short,” the report notes, “we need to ignite…an energy technology revolution.”

The Hartwell group argues that mass improvements are needed across many technologies, requiring the determined participation of governments. They suggest partially funding the required research and development with a “slowly rising but initially low carbon tax” that would avoid undermining economic growth.

If any – or all – of this sounds familiar, it may be because I have been arguing much the same points for some time. If my experience is any guide, the members of the Hartwell group should expect to be attacked as heretics for questioning the Kyoto orthodoxy. But that is a small price to pay. As the saying goes, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” With respect to global warming, it’s time we came to our senses.

Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, and editor of the forthcoming Smart Solutions to Climate Change (September 2010).

Even though no one should have been surprised by the outcome of last month’s global climate summit in Copenhagen, the lack of any meaningful action unleashed a torrent of angry and disappointed rhetoric. “The outcome of Copenhagen doesn’t at all match the needs . . . of mankind,” complained Sweden’s environment minister. “By delaying action, rich countries have condemned millions of the world’s poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life,” added Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International. And those were some of the milder comments.

Critics, however, should calm down. If anything, the summiteers did the planet a favor by refusing to endorse a binding agreement to drastically reduce carbon emissions. That’s because their inability to make progress may be the nudge the international community needs to face the real inconvenient truth: that after nearly two decades of fruitless efforts, it’s time to give up our Rio-Kyoto-Copenhagen fantasy and get real about combating global warming.

Two points underlie the issue of global warming: First, developing nations have no intention of letting the developed world force them to stop using carbon-emitting fuels. They are understandably wary of any policy that might curtail the domestic economic growth that is allowing their populations to clamber out of poverty. And that is precisely what drastically reducing their carbon emissions would do.

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