The same political fault lines
are emerging. “The cure is worse than the disease” refrain
echoes the revisionist climate sceptic arguments. The coronavirus disproportionately
attacks the old. Climate change should be of most concern to the young. And
until it happened very few of us rated pandemics or disease as a major threat.
This pandemic was barely on the
radar
In autumn 2019 I gave a
presentation on climate science and the role of energy policy in combatting climate
change. I began by reminding the audience that climate change was just one of
the major threats facing humanity.
It’s hard to compare the
magnitude of future unknowns. The arrival of a new respiratory pandemic has
long been known by the medical profession to be a certainty. “Not if, but when ….”.
But it was by no means clear that a
global pandemic was on any measure the greatest threat to the future of
humanity. After all, we had survived the plagues of the Middle Ages without any of
the benefits of modern science or medicine. Bubonic plague, if and when it recurs,
is easily treatable with antibiotics, and we expect a vaccine for Covid 19. And
the “Spanish flu” of 1918, despite killing at least 50 million people
worldwide, has largely disappeared from folk memory.
Also, at least in the abstract,
a projected fatality rate of up to one or two percent sounds small when compared
with James Lovelock’s sometime prediction of an 80% decline in the human
population by the end of the century as a result of climate change – words that
imply an unimaginable level of human suffering.
Significantly, a recent poll[1] across eight countries asked
respondents to name the three issues, from a list of threats, that they saw as the
world’s top priority. Climate change topped the list[2], named by 50% in the UK
and 68% in Germany. Disease, including pandemics, was listed by only 7%. This was
a collective comparison against which it is hard to mount a rational argument.
And yet …. What a difference a
few months can make to our immediate priorities! The coronavirus pandemic, barely on the radar in
the poll, is set to transform our lives, and every aspect of global and
national economies, in a way that few would have imagined just a few weeks ago.
The response to this threat, despite its lower ranking, has been justifiably
huge.
Clearly our political and
economic choices only lead us to take effective action when the threat takes a
concrete and immediate form. This is the clearest possible demonstration of our
consistent collective inadequacy in dealing with risk.
So what other lessons and parallels
could we draw for the less immediate but ultimately more dangerous threat of climate
change?
Market failure and the end of “small
state” market fundamentalism. Once again, and this will be a
common thread (I suspect) in every significant global threat, a core element is
the form of market failure defined by the economic concept of externality[3]. Agents (people, firms or
national governments) pursuing their own individual, corporate or parochial interests, whether in burning fossil
fuel, or in continuing to work, travel and socialise, and refusing to self-isolate,
cause damage to others, or to our collective future, which substantially exceed
the value to the individuals concerned. The remedies for these mutually destructive
behaviours all depend on some form of government intervention, either in prices/
taxes or direct regulation. This has already started to happen in climate and
energy policies, but is much more obvious and dramatic in dealing with the
pandemic. It is hard to see ideological arguments against state intervention
continuing to have the traction they had in the early part of this century.
Experts. Experts
are back on centre stage. In the UK they have so far been accorded a deference
that was never shown to climate scientists. The degree of convergence between
experts on the pandemic will probably be fairly similar to that in climate
science. There is little or no divergence on basics, but there can be significant
disagreements on particular features and on policy priorities.
Political fault lines. “The
cure is worse than the disease” refrain echoes the revisionist climate sceptic
arguments, that we cannot afford the remedies. To some extent the opposing camps are made up
of the same people as before, particularly in the USA where Republicans from
the “Guns, Coal, Freedom” lobby of climate science denial are far more likely
to talk about the virus as a “Democratic hoax” and oppose effective government action.
The short-term costs of combatting the
virus may well involve losses of 5% of GDP or more, compared to the
conventional assumption (following Stern) of an annual 2% of GDP as the cost of
mitigating climate change. Since permanent lockdown is not a viable strategy,
some trade-off will be required. For the pandemic the balance of economic costs
against lives saved is probably closer than the balance of cost against long
term survival and climate protection, but the arguments will have similarities.
The generational divide. Here there is a parallel but a major
difference. The parallel is the potentially divergent interests of the old and
the young. With the pandemic it is almost certainly older people who benefit disproportionately
from action to contain the pandemic, while it is younger people who bear the immediate
cost. With climate change the reverse is the case. The old will not suffer
the worst consequences of climate change. The young will.
International Cooperation and
Development. This year’s vital climate summit, COP 26, will
almost certainly either be postponed or suffer from inadequate preparation. Especially
in the UK there will be little political bandwidth left to deal with the
massive challenges of getting international agreement on climate matters. But this
has never been more important, and the pandemic, like the financial crisis, emphasises
once again the importance of international coordination, cooperation and development.
Like climate change, pandemics do not recognise borders.
All the above are themes to
which, I suspect, we shall return again and again.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/18/climate-crisis-seen-as-most-important-issue-by-public-poll-shows
. The countries were UK, US, Canada, Brazil, Poland, Germany, Italy and France.
[2]
Full details of this poll can be found at this link: https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2019/09/20/climate-change-wont-just-cause-extreme-weather-but-extreme-politics/
[3] Externalities
occur when one person's actions affect another person's well-being and the
relevant costs and benefits are not reflected in market prices. It can be
classified as a market failure because a product or service's equilibrium price
does not then accurately reflect the true costs and benefits of the product or
service.
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