On the eve of the Bali summit, I thought it might be useful to consider what's wrong with Harper/Baird's key argument on environmental restraint. This is an excerpt from Jared Diamond, "Collapse".
"The environment has to be balanced against the economy."
"This quote portrays environmental concerns as a luxury, views measures to solve environmental problems as incurring a net cost, and considers leaving environmental problems unsolved to be a money-saving device. This one-liner puts the truth exactly backwards.
Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the short run and in the long run'; cleaning up or preventing those messes saves us huge sums in the long run, and often in the short run as well.
In caring for the health of our surroundings, just as of our bodies, it is cheaper and preferable to avoid getting sick than to try to cure illnesses after they have developed. Just think of the damage caused by agricultural weeds and pests, non-agricultural pests like water hyacinths and zebra mussels, the recurrent annual costs of combating those pests, the value of lost time when we are stuck in traffic, the financial costs resulting from people getting sick or dying from environmental toxins, cleanup costs for toxic chemicals, the steep increase in fish prices due to depletion of fish stocks, and the value of farmland damaged or ruined by erosion and salination. It adds up to a few hundred million dollars per year here, tens of billions of dollars there, another billion dollars over here, and so on for hundreds of different problems.
For instance, the value of "one statistical life" in the U.S. - i.e. the cost to the U.S. economy resulting from the death of an average American whom society has gone to the expense of rearing and educating but who dies before a lifetime of contributing to the national economy - is usually estimated at around $5 million. Even if one takes the conservative estimate of annual U.S. deaths due to air pollution as 130,000, then deaths due to air pollution cost us about $652-billion a year. That illustrates why the U.S. Clean Air Act of 1970, although its cleanup measures do cost money, has yielded net health savings (benefits in excess of costs) of about $1 trillion per year, due to saved lives and reduced health costs."
So, when Harper or Baird give you their economic claptrap or any of their gullible followers call you a leftie loon who's just out to ruin the economy, ask them to give you the true and full cost to the economy, long-term and short-term, if we don't act on global warming and the rest of the environmental challenges that now confront us.
"The environment has to be balanced against the economy."
"This quote portrays environmental concerns as a luxury, views measures to solve environmental problems as incurring a net cost, and considers leaving environmental problems unsolved to be a money-saving device. This one-liner puts the truth exactly backwards.
Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the short run and in the long run'; cleaning up or preventing those messes saves us huge sums in the long run, and often in the short run as well.
In caring for the health of our surroundings, just as of our bodies, it is cheaper and preferable to avoid getting sick than to try to cure illnesses after they have developed. Just think of the damage caused by agricultural weeds and pests, non-agricultural pests like water hyacinths and zebra mussels, the recurrent annual costs of combating those pests, the value of lost time when we are stuck in traffic, the financial costs resulting from people getting sick or dying from environmental toxins, cleanup costs for toxic chemicals, the steep increase in fish prices due to depletion of fish stocks, and the value of farmland damaged or ruined by erosion and salination. It adds up to a few hundred million dollars per year here, tens of billions of dollars there, another billion dollars over here, and so on for hundreds of different problems.
For instance, the value of "one statistical life" in the U.S. - i.e. the cost to the U.S. economy resulting from the death of an average American whom society has gone to the expense of rearing and educating but who dies before a lifetime of contributing to the national economy - is usually estimated at around $5 million. Even if one takes the conservative estimate of annual U.S. deaths due to air pollution as 130,000, then deaths due to air pollution cost us about $652-billion a year. That illustrates why the U.S. Clean Air Act of 1970, although its cleanup measures do cost money, has yielded net health savings (benefits in excess of costs) of about $1 trillion per year, due to saved lives and reduced health costs."
So, when Harper or Baird give you their economic claptrap or any of their gullible followers call you a leftie loon who's just out to ruin the economy, ask them to give you the true and full cost to the economy, long-term and short-term, if we don't act on global warming and the rest of the environmental challenges that now confront us.
And that is the root cause of most environmental problems.
ReplyDeleteWe don't properly value ecosystem services, and we externalize many environmental costs. Fox those things and I believe most environmental problems will be solved.
Someone much more famous that me once said "The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment". Unfortunately many don't realize how true this is.
Dan I believe you're right. I don't think there is any part of the environment that can operate at all well for very long in a deficit. Yet we've been running most aspects of our world in a deficit for decades, always leaving the accumulated tab for the next bunch to pick up.
ReplyDeleteThe real question is whether it can be argued that reduction of carbon emissions is demonstrably helpful to the task of preventing climate change. The problem is the preconception that climate change is both A) happening and B) exacerbated by man, neither of which are proven theories. Now, I will allow that it should be prudent, as written in your article, to prevent, or inoculate against harm by taking specific measures which would mitigate risk. This seems to be coinciding with he action of the conservatives on climate change. Prudent measures taken to mitigate risk. The real billion dollar question is whether the harm to the economy through these measures would be greater than the supposed hazards which would be offset by inaction.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry Raphe, but if you don't believe climate change is happening, if you really believe there is any genuine doubt on this point, we are at total odds. The conservatives are blocking action on climate change, not effecting action. Sad, really. The financial sector gets it. The insurance sector gets it. Most of the corporate world now gets it. The scientific sector absolutely gets it. Most governments get it. SHarper and Baird pretend to get it, but it never gets past pretending for them.
ReplyDeleteI do, actually, believe climate change is happening. I just think we don't really understand enough about it to be making educated guesses as to what to do. And I agree we should be making prudent measures, but what kind and how many? What the international community is asking for seems unreasonable. I think the next few years will be very interesting for research purposes.
ReplyDeleteWell, Raphe, there's something we can agree on - the next few years will be interesting indeed.
ReplyDelete