Resurgence of the ‘Consensus’
This morning the Guardian carries Bjorn Lomborg’s latest perspective on global warming, suggesting that both McCain and Obama are barking up the wrong tree in their support for a US cap-and-trade system to curb emissions.
I’m reading similar critiques of the cap-and-trade argument by leading economists/scientists in Ernest Zedillo’s book Global Warming. The main thrust of the counter-argument is that people such as Lomborg, to quote Freeman Dyson, writing in the NY Review of Books:
are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice.
This is Lomborg’s position, clearly communicated by this piece in today’s Guardian.
Lomborg pulls the article round to promote / PR the Copenhagen Consensus, Lomborg’s organisation which, back on May 30th this year, released version 2 of the list of the world’s top problems/solutions, in a priority order, that it first released back in 2004. Then, mitigation against global warming came bottom of its list of 50 actions, ordered against cost/benefit economics — that is, mitigation was the least cost effective of all the ‘public goods’ that the world leaders could invest in.
And this time round?
Global warming mitigation again comes bottom. It is ‘competing’ in the minds of the ‘Consensus’ (which, as Real Climate pointed out back in 2006, is not really a consensus but a group of eight; compare to the IPCC scientist list of 2,000) with malnutrition, women’s rights, hunger and development.
Press coverage?
Back in 2004, the ‘Consensus’ gained huge press coverage. This time round the press have been understandably more cautious. 2004 was perhaps the emotional peak of the argument between ’sceptics’ and ‘believers’. The press were reporting both sides equally, providing what Boykoff and Boykoff called an ‘informational bias’ by putting side by side arguments from an overwhelming majority against a small group of contrarians. Before this morning, only The Times had covered the 2008 consensus in any depth. Other smaller magazines (the right-wing Reason) had some coverage, and other members of the Copenhagen Consensus organisation have been pushing the news through Project Syndicate.
Here’s a decent critique of the approach that Lomborg and his ‘Consensus’ have taken.
So what’s the problem?
The ‘Consensus’ has moved on, at least, in that R&D in low-carbon technology moves onto the list as No.14 of the thirty actions that should and could be taken. This is the argument in the Guardian column: it’s only through free (and continually freer) trade that we can expect to develop technologies that deliver cost-effective carbon emissions reductions. This is clear in that the ‘Doha Talks’ are No.2 on the list of actions to take. This despite, as John Madeley wrote in The Guardian on Wednesday, Doha does not take into account or control the actions of TransNational Corporations, and so is set up to fail the poor.
Looking deeper into the ‘2008 Consensus’, the ideological position becomes more tacit when you look to see on which of the 30 priorities the group of eight would spend the allocated budget ($75b). The stop at priority No.13 (tuberculosis) and so action against climate change gets zero. Look further, and this is what the ‘Consensus’ say about adaptation:
The option including adaptation was discarded, as the adaptation is essentially included in nearly every other option presented to the Copenhagen Consensus.
This is absolutely wrong. Taking the top three to look for climate adaptation impacts:
- Option 1: increasing vitamin A and zinc intake of th world’s undernourished.
- Option 2: agreeemnt at Doha for world trade. (If it’s linked to adaptation, it is not clear.)
- Option 3: iron and salt iodization to trat malnourishment. this will not stop climate change.
Options 1 and 3 are essential and world-changing, but are nothing to do with practical deeds to work for climate adaptation, and illustrates the ideoligically constrained limits of the ‘Consensus’ thinking and the difficulties in methodology of such cost/benefit analysis. As also reported this morning, a new report warns that action is needed now, and leading auditors PWC suggest that avoiding disaster is affordable.
Last word
It looks like Lomborg has learnt subtletly in his communications strategy, feeding in the ‘Consensus’ view as support for indirect arguments in national newspaper columns. Whether or not the ‘Consensus’ view is worthy of the column inches… in terms of old fashion news values or newsworthiness, then yes it is: eight nobel laureates, a major controversy, a track record of publishing and Danish government backing.
But for me, it is our definition of news value that is in need of a change. Not to quash debate or alternative views, but for editors to increase the level of rigorous assessment on comment and opinion as much as they would do for a news article. The sub-editor’s role in catching comment that drives a specific promotional/PR agenda should be strengthened, and some discussion started to look carefully about how climate change is reported, not just in the news, but across the press, whether as a column, opinion, entertainment or cartoon. The issue is too important, and now too moral, to leave as is.
