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Is Global Warming Making Us Hungrier?

Jan 17, 2018 BJØRN LOMBORG

After achieving dramatic gains against hunger and famine, the world runs the risk

of backsliding, owing to poorly considered choices. But if we accept the claim

that climate change is to blame for a recent uptick in global hunger and

malnutrition, we also risk embracing the costliest and least effective solutions.

PRAGUE – For more than a decade, annual data showed global hunger to be on

the decline. But that has changed: According to the latest data from the Food and

Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) hunger affected 815

million people in 2016, 38 million more than 2015, and malnutrition is

threatening millions.

The world’s leading thinkers and policymakers examine what’s come apart in the

past year, and anticipate what will define the year ahead.

Research from my think tank, Copenhagen Consensus, has long helped to focus

attention and resources on the most effective responses to malnutrition, both

globally and in countries like Haiti and Bangladesh. Unfortunately, there are

worrying signs that the global response may be headed in the wrong direction.

The FAO blames the rise in hunger on a proliferation of violent conflicts and

“climate-related shocks,” which means specific, extreme events like floods and

droughts.

But in the FAO’s press release, “climate-related shocks” becomes “climate

change.” The report itself links the two without citing evidence, but the FAO’s

communiqué goes further, declaring starkly, “World hunger again on the rise,

driven by conflict and climate change”.

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It may seem like a tiny step to go from blaming “climate-related shocks” to

blaming “climate change.” Both terms relate to the weather. But that little

difference means a lot, especially when it comes to the most important question:

how do we help feed the world better? Jumping the gun and blaming climate

change for today’s crises attracts attention, but it makes us focus on the costliest

and least effective responses.

The best evidence comes from the United Nations’ climate change panel, the

IPCC, which has clearly shown that there has been no overall increase in

droughts. While some parts of the world are experiencing more and worse

droughts, others are experiencing fewer and lighter droughts. A comprehensive

study in the journal Nature demonstrates that, since 1982, incidents of all

categories of drought, from “abnormally dry” to “exceptional drought,” have

decreased slightly. On flooding, the IPCC is even blunter: It has “low confidence”

at a global level whether climate change has caused more or less flooding.

What the IPCC tells us is that by the end of the century, it is likely that worse

droughts will affect some parts of the world. And it predicts – albeit with low

confidence – that there could be more floods in some places.

Relying on climate policies to fight hunger is doomed. Any realistic carbon cuts

will be expensive and have virtually no impact on climate by the end of the

century. The Paris climate agreement, even if fully implemented up to 2030,

would achieve just 1% of the cuts needed to keep temperature from rising more

than 2oC, according to the UN. And it would cost $1 trillion a year or more – an

incredibly expensive way to make no meaningful difference to a potential

increase in flooding and droughts at the end of the century.

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In fact, well-intentioned policies to combat global warming could very well be

exacerbating hunger. Rich countries have embraced biofuels – energy derived

from plants – to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. But the climate benefit is

negligible: according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development,

deforestation, fertilizer, and fossil fuels used in producing biofuels offset about

90% of the “saved” carbon dioxide. In 2013, European biofuels used enough land

to feed 100 million people, and the United States’ program even more. Biofuel

subsidies contributed to rising food prices, and their swift growth was reined in

only when models showed that up to another 135 million people could starve by

2020. But that means that the hunger of around 30 million people today can likely

be attributed to these bad policies.

Moreover, climate policies divert resources from measures that directly reduce

hunger. Our priorities seem skewed when climate policies promising a miniscule

temperature impact will cost $1 trillion a year, while the World Food Program’s

budget is 169 times lower, at $5.9 billion.

There are effective ways to produce more food. One of the best, as Copenhagen

Consensus research has shown, is to get serious about investing in research and

development to boost agricultural productivity. Through irrigation, fertilizer,

pesticides, and plant breeding, the Green Revolution increased world grain

production by an astonishing 250% between 1950 and 1984, raising the calorie

intake of the world’s poorest people and averting severe famines. We need to

build on this progress.

Investing an extra $88 billion in agricultural R&D over the next 32 years would

increase yields by an additional 0.4 percentage points every year, which could

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save 79 million people from hunger and prevent five million cases of child

malnourishment. This would be worth nearly $3 trillion in social good, implying

an enormous return of $34 for every dollar spent.

By the end of the century, the extra increase in agricultural productivity would be

far greater than the damage to agricultural productivity suggested by even the

worst-case scenarios of the effects of global warming. And there would be

additional benefits: the World Bank has found that productivity growth in

agriculture can be up to four times more effective in reducing poverty than

productivity growth in other sectors.

We are at a turning point. After achieving dramatic gains against hunger and

famine, we run the risk of backsliding, owing to poorly considered choices. The

stakes are far too high for us to pick the wrong policies.1

Bjørn Lomborg, a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School, is

Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which seeks to study

environmental problems and solutions using the best available analytical

methods. He is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cool It, How to

Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place and The Nobel Laureates'

Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World, and was named one of Time

magazine's 100 most influential people in 2004.

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Sustainability & Environment

Bjørn Lomborg

Bjørn Lomborg, a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School, is

Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which seeks to study

environmental problems and solutions using the best available analytical

methods. He is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cool It, How to

Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place and The Nobel Laureates'

Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World, and was named one of Time

magazine's 100 most influential people in 2004.

JUN 16, 2017

Paris is Not the Solution

COPENHAGEN – President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the United States

from the Paris climate agreement leaves the US without a global warming policy.

That is alarming. But the world’s response – to double down on the pact in

opposition to Trump – should also cause concern.

There have been two conflicting responses to Trump’s decision – often heard

from the very same person.

On one hand, we are told that the move imperils the planet. Former US Vice

President Al Gore says that Trump is damaging “humanity’s ability to solve the

climate crisis.” Business leader Tom Steyer says the Paris accord is “essential to

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leaving a healthy, safe, and prosperous world to our children” and blasts the

president’s “traitorous act of war.”

On the other hand, we hear the defiant suggestion that Trump’s decision might

not be so important, because renewable energy is already becoming so cheap that

a future without fossil fuels has nearly arrived. Gore claims the planet is in the

midst of an “inevitable transition to a clean energy economy,” and Steyer recently

said that the time when “renewables plus storage is cheaper than fossil fuels” has

already arrived.

Not only are these arguments mutually contradictory; each also happens to be

wrong. Abandoning the Paris agreement does not risk our planet’s future, because

the agreement itself does little to solve global warming. And green energy is far

from locked in as a cost-effective replacement for fossil fuels. Fooling ourselves

on these points means failing to address climate change effectively.

To keep the increase in global temperature below the target of 2°C (relative to the

preindustrial era), the planet needs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions during this

century by about 6,000 billion tons. The United Nations Framework Convention

on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the organizer of the Paris accord – estimates

that even if every country makes every promised cut, CO2 emissions would fall

by just 56 billion tons by 2030.

The UN’s own figures reveal that even in an implausibly optimistic, best-case

scenario, the Paris accord would leave 99% of the climate problem in place. This

is hardly a sure-fire policy to solve global warming.

Moreover, even before Trump announced his decision, it was unlikely that every

country would fulfill every promise. Consider the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on

climate change. Countries signing that agreement actually ended up dropping out

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or simply ignoring it. The evidence shows that Kyoto ended up having almost no

effect.

The inadequacies of the Paris agreement were acknowledged by

environmentalists at the time it was signed, though some are changing their tune,

in order to stand steadfastly against Trump. Back in 2015, the noted

environmentalist Bill McKibben concluded that the accord did just enough “to

keep both environmentalists and the fossil fuel industry from complaining too

much.” Now, he fears the withdrawal “undercuts our civilization’s chances of

surviving global warming.”

There is nothing new in the politicization of climate policy or the over-selling of a

political agreement. But the deeper problem is that a lot of puffery about the state

of renewable energy has accompanied the Paris hype.

This, too, is not new. “A largely or wholly solar economy can be constructed in

the United States with straightforward soft technologies that are now

demonstrated and now economic or nearly economic,” environmentalist Amory

Lovins declared in 1976. In 1984, the Worldwatch Institute assured us that wind

subsidies “will not be needed within a few years.”

In fact, the world will spend $125 billion on wind and solar subsidies alone in

2017. Despite four decades of financial support, the International Energy Agency

(IEA) reports that wind provides just 0.5% of today’s energy needs, and solar

photovoltaic a minuscule 0.1%.

More than $3 trillion will be spent on subsidies just on wind and solar

photovoltaic over the next 25 years. Even by 2040, and assuming that all of the

Paris agreement’s promises are fulfilled, the IEA expects wind and solar to

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provide, respectively, just 1.9% and 1% of global energy. This is not what an

economy in the midst of an “inevitable” shift away from fossil fuels looks like.

Solar and wind energy depend on considerable subsidies because in most

contexts, they remain more expensive than fossil fuels. When the United

Kingdom cut solar power subsidies, installations plummeted. Spain was once

paying almost 1% of its GDP in renewable subsidies, more than it spent on higher

education. When it cut back, new wind energy production collapsed.

Green energy investors and politicians lead the public-relations advance, assisted

by a credulous media that likes to tell green-technology “success” stories. But if

green energy were already competitive or near-competitive with fossil fuels, the

Paris agreement would be unnecessary. The entire world would be dumping fossil

fuels for the cheaper, better option.

Hyping the effects of the Paris agreement and the state of today’s green energy

gives us false assurance. We believe that we are doing what is required to “save

the planet,” Trump’s move notwithstanding. And we don’t focus on what we

actually need to do to rein in temperature rises.

It’s not very complicated: We must end wasteful subsidies for both fossil fuels

and inefficient solar and wind. And we should focus on investment in innovation

to improve green energy.

Governments and donors must spend much more on research and development

than they do now. The fund announced by philanthropist Bill Gates is a very

promising start, as is the agreement by 22 countries and the European Union

double their investments from $15 billion to $30 billion.

But, to reduce temperatures by more than a fraction of a degree, the planet needs

something more like a sixfold increase in green energy R&D. This would still be

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much cheaper than the Paris agreement, which requires the rollout of expensive,

inefficient energy. And it would be much more effective.

Trump richly deserves criticism for abandoning the Paris climate agreement

without any alternative plan of action. But, by ignoring reality, the rest of the

world is not doing much better.

http://prosyn.org/FqT10tK

© 1995-2017 Project Syndicate

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The Neglected Menace of Pollution

www.project-syndicate.org

Mar 20, 2018 PHILIP J. LANDRIGAN , RICHARD FULLER

With leadership, resources, and well-formulated data-driven strategies, pollution

– and its devastating effects on human health, wellbeing, and prosperity – can be

controlled. The process will not be easy, and will meet fierce opposition

worldwide from vested interests, but it cannot be delayed any longer.

NEW YORK – Pollution is one of the great existential challenges of the twenty-

first century. It threatens the stability of ecosystems, undermines economic

development, and compromises the health of billions of people. Yet it is often

overlooked, whether in countries’ growth strategies or in foreign-aid budgets, like

those of the European Commission and the US Agency for International

Development. As a result, the threat continues to grow.

The first step toward mobilizing the resources, leadership, and civic engagement

needed to minimize the pollution threat is to raise awareness of its true scale. That

is why we formed the LancetCommission on pollution and health: to marshal

comprehensive data on pollution’s health effects, estimate its economic costs,

pinpoint its links to poverty, and propose concrete approaches to addressing it.

Last October, we published a report that does just that. We found that pollution is

responsible for nine million deaths per year, or 16% of all deaths globally. That is

three times more than AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined, and 15 times

more than all wars, terrorism, and other forms of violence. In the most severely

affected countries, pollution is responsible for more than one in four deaths.

The specific causes of such deaths vary, reflecting the changing composition of

pollution. As countries develop, household air and water pollution – ancient

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forms of pollution linked to severe poverty – decline. But phenomena associated

with economic development – namely, urbanization, globalization, and the

proliferation of toxic chemicals and petroleum-powered vehicles – cause ambient

air, chemical, occupational, and soil pollution to rise, with cities in developing

countries hit particularly hard.

Unsurprisingly, the poor bear the brunt of the burden. Nearly 92% of pollution-

related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. In countries at every

income level, disease caused by pollution is most prevalent among minorities,

members of marginalized groups, and those who are otherwise vulnerable. This is

environmental injustice on a global scale.

Beyond the human costs, pollution-related diseases cause productivity losses that

reduce developing countries’ GDP by up to 2% per year. They account for 1.7%

of health-care spending in high-income countries, and up to 7% in low- and

middle-income countries. Welfare losses due to pollution amount to $4.6 trillion

per year – 6.2% of global economic output. And that does not take into account

the massive costs of climate change, to which the combustion of highly polluting

fossil fuels is the leading contributor.

Despite these losses, the problem is set to worsen. Without aggressive

intervention, deaths from ambient air pollution alone could increase 50% by

2050. Chemical pollution is another growing challenge, with an estimated

140,000 new compounds having been invented since 1950, far too few of which

have been tested for safety or toxicity. Infants and young children are especially

vulnerable.

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Pollution is not some “necessary evil” that inevitably accompanies economic

development. With leadership, resources, and a well-formulated data-driven

approach, pollution can be minimized, and viable strategies have already been

developed, field-tested, and proven effective in high- and middle-income

countries.

These strategies balance legal, policy, and technological solutions. For example,

following the “polluter pays” principle, they include the elimination of tax breaks

and subsidies for polluting industries. Moreover, such strategies adhere to clear

targets and timetables, against which they are continuously evaluated, and are

subject to strong enforcement. And they can be exported to cities and countries at

every income level around the world.

Careful planning and well-resourced application of pollution-control strategies

can enable developing countries to avoid the worst kinds of human and ecological

disasters that have accompanied economic growth in the past. The old assumption

that poor countries must endure a phase of pollution and disease on the path to

prosperity can finally be put to rest.

For rich and poor countries alike, such strategies would lead to more sustainable

GDP growth. The removal of lead from gasoline has returned billions of dollars

to economies around the world, as reduced exposure implies lower cognitive

impairment and higher productivity. In the United States, air-quality

improvements have yielded $30 for every dollar invested, for an aggregate return

of $1.5 trillion on a $65 billion investment since 1970.

Reducing pollution thus creates enormous opportunities to boost economic

growth, while – more importantly – protecting the lives and health of people

worldwide. The Lancet Commission calls on national and municipal

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governments, international donors, major foundations, civil-society groups, and

health professionals to make pollution control a much higher priority than it is

now.

This demands a substantial increase in the funding allocated to pollution

prevention in low- and middle-income countries, both from national budgets and

donor aid. This can be achieved on the international level by expanding existing

programs or establishing new stand-alone funds, analogous to the Global Fund to

Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Such programs should kick-start and

complement national contributions, while providing technical assistance and

supporting research. International funding can also be used to back the creation of

a “global pollution observatory.”

Effective pollution control also means embedding strategies for prevention in all

future growth and development strategies, recognizing that success is possible

only if societies change their patterns of production, consumption, and

transportation. Key steps here include creating incentives for a broad transition to

non-polluting sources of energy; ending subsidies and tax breaks for polluters;

rewarding recycling, re-use, and repair; replacing hazardous materials with safer

substitutes; and encouraging both public and active transportation.

The transition to less polluting systems will not be easy, and will meet fierce

opposition worldwide from vested interests. But, as the Lancet Commission

report shows, the low-pollution transition is essential to the health, wellbeing, and

prosperity of our societies. We cannot afford to neglect this global menace any

longer.

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ECONOMICS

JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

Joseph E. Stiglitz, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in

2001 and the John Bates Clark Medal in 1979, is University Professor at

Columbia University, Co-Chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the

Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and

Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute. A former senior vice president and

chief economist of the World Bank and chair of the US president’s Council of

Economic Advisers under Bill Clinton, in 2000 he founded the Initiative for

Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia

University. His most recent book is The Euro: How a Common Currency

Threatens the Future of Europe.

JUL 2, 2017

Trump and the Truth About Climate Change

BRUSSELS – Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, the United States

took another major step toward establishing itself as a rogue state on June 1, when

it withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. For years, Trump has indulged the

strange conspiracy theory that, as he put it in 2012, “The concept of global

warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing

non-competitive.” But this was not the reason Trump advanced for withdrawing

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the US from the Paris accord. Rather, the agreement, he alleged, was bad for the

US and implicitly unfair to it.

While fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, Trump’s claim is

difficult to justify. On the contrary, the Paris accord is very good for America,

and it is the US that continues to impose an unfair burden on others.

Historically, the US has added disproportionately to the rising concentration of

greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and among large countries it remains

the biggest per capita emitter of carbon dioxide by far – more than twice China’s

rate and nearly 2.5 times more than Europe in 2013 (the latest year for which the

World Bank has reported complete data). With its high income, the US is in a far

better position to adapt to the challenges of climate change than poor countries

like India and China, let alone a low-income country in Africa.

In fact, the major flaw in Trump’s reasoning is that combating climate change

would strengthen the US, not weaken it. Trump is looking toward the past – a past

that, ironically, was not that great. His promise to restore coal-mining jobs (which

now number 51,000, less than 0.04% of the country’s nonfarm employment)

overlooks the harsh conditions and health risks endemic in that industry, not to

mention the technological advances that would continue to reduce employment in

the industry even if coal production were revived.

In fact, far more jobs are being created in solar panel installation than are being

lost in coal. More generally, moving to a green economy would increase US

income today and economic growth in the future. In this, as in so many things,

Trump is hopelessly mired in the past.

Just a few weeks before Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord, the

global High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices, which I co-chaired

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with Nicholas Stern, highlighted the potential of a green transition. The

Commission’s report, released at the end of May, argues that reducing

CO2 emissions could result in an even stronger economy.

The logic is straightforward. A key problem holding back the global economy

today is deficient aggregate demand. At the same time, many countries’

governments face revenue shortfalls. But we can address both issues

simultaneously and reduce emissions by imposing a charge (a tax) for

CO2 emissions.

It is always better to tax bad things than good things. By taxing CO2, firms and

households would have an incentive to retrofit for the world of the future. The tax

would also provide firms with incentives to innovate in ways that reduce energy

usage and emissions – giving them a dynamic competitive advantage.

The Commission analyzed the level of carbon price that would be required to

achieve the goals set forth in the Paris climate agreement – a far higher price than

in most of Europe today, but still manageable. The commissioners pointed out

that the appropriate price may differ across countries. In particular, they noted, a

better regulatory system – one that restrains coal-fired power generation, for

example – reduces the burden that must be placed on the tax system.

Interestingly, one of the world’s best-performing economies, Sweden, has already

adopted a carbon tax at a rate substantially higher than that discussed in our

report. And the Swedes have simultaneously sustained their strong growth

without US-level emissions.

America under Trump has gone from being a world leader to an object of

derision. In the aftermath of Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris accord,

a large sign was hung over Rome’s city hall: “The Planet First.” Likewise,

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France’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, poked fun at Trump’s campaign

slogan, declaring “Make Our Planet Great Again.”

But the consequences of Trump’s actions are no laughing matter. If the US

continues to emit as it has, it will continue to impose enormous costs on the rest

of the world, including on much poorer countries. Those who are being harmed

by America’s recklessness are justifiably angry.

Fortunately, large parts of the US, including the most economically dynamic

regions, have shown that Trump is, if not irrelevant, at least less relevant than he

would like to believe. Large numbers of states and corporations have announced

that they will proceed with their commitments – and perhaps go even further,

offsetting the failures of other parts of the US.

In the meantime, the world must protect itself against rogue states. Climate

change poses an existential threat to the planet that is no less dire than that posed

by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. In both cases, the world cannot escape the

inevitable question: what is to be done about countries that refuse to do their part

in preserving our planet?