Paul Krugman has had an epiphany in the wake of his recent visit to China:
Like every visitor to China, I was awed by the scale of the country’s development. Even the annoying aspects — much of my time was spent viewing the Great Wall of Traffic — are byproducts of the nation’s economic success.
But China cannot continue along its current path because the planet can’t handle the strain.
The scientific consensus on prospects for global warming has become much more pessimistic over the last few years. Indeed, the latest projections from reputable climate scientists border on the apocalyptic. Why? Because the rate at which greenhouse gas emissions are rising is matching or exceeding the worst-case scenarios.
And the growth of emissions from China — already the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide — is one main reason for this new pessimism.
China’s emissions, which come largely from its coal-burning electricity plants, doubled between 1996 and 2006. That was a much faster pace of growth than in the previous decade. And the trend seems set to continue: In January, China announced that it plans to continue its reliance on coal as its main energy source and that to feed its economic growth it will increase coal production 30 percent by 2015. That’s a decision that, all by itself, will swamp any emission reductions elsewhere.
That’s right. At China’s present rate of increase the rest of the world could reduce its emissions to zero, crippling our economies and driving our populations into the Stone Age, and it wouldn’t have a great deal of effect on the world’s total emissions. And while China’s authorities may press claims of fairness:
So what is to be done about the China problem?
Nothing, say the Chinese. Each time I raised the issue during my visit, I was met with outraged declarations that it was unfair to expect China to limit its use of fossil fuels. After all, they declared, the West faced no similar constraints during its development; while China may be the world’s largest source of carbon-dioxide emissions, its per-capita emissions are still far below American levels; and anyway, the great bulk of the global warming that has already happened is due not to China but to the past carbon emissions of today’s wealthy nations.
And they’re right. It is unfair to expect China to live within constraints that we didn’t have to face when our own economy was on its way up. But that unfairness doesn’t change the fact that letting China match the West’s past profligacy would doom the Earth as we know it.
This is only a pretext. Fairness in the sense that it’s being used here is arrant nonsense when used in a historical context. Every people responds to the circumstances in which they find themselves in the time in which they find themselves possessed of the knowledge they have at the time. Times have changed, today’s circumstances are different, and different circumstances and knowledge call for a different response. The Chinese authorities are very bright people and they understand this as well as anybody does. The truth is they don’t give a damn. They have their own problems and they’ll deal with them in the way that ensures that they retain power. Or “promotes harmony” as they put it.
Unfortunately, seeing the elephant doesn’t make you an authority on elephants:
As the United States and other advanced countries finally move to confront climate change, they will also be morally empowered to confront those nations that refuse to act. Sooner than most people think, countries that refuse to limit their greenhouse gas emissions will face sanctions, probably in the form of taxes on their exports. They will complain bitterly that this is protectionism, but so what? Globalization doesn’t do much good if the globe itself becomes unlivable.
This is claptrap. The Chinese authorities do not give a fig for any moral empowerment on our part.
To deal with the challenges that China’s society, government, increasing power, and enormous carbon emissions pose for all of us we need to do with them in a way that makes sense to the Chinese and, most importantly, to China’s rulers. Taking the moral high ground ain’t gonna do it.
This is claptrap. The Chinese authorities do not give a fig for any moral empowerment on our part.
And yet, we continually tear ourselves apart discussing whether or not we have lost on moral authority on this topic or that. Usually it’s just a cudgel for one domestic faction to use against another.
Another bit of claptrap is that the planet will become unlivable if global warming worst-case-scenarios come to pass. It will still be livable, just not the way it was under recent conditions.
Just as econometric models have their failings, as noted here recently. The global warming models have failings ….on steroids. Why strong correlation of temperature and sun activity isn’t acknowledged is beyond me……..unless you go to the dark side explanations. Which I of course do.
But its clear I won’t change minds, so after the usual tug of war the point made here trumps all: as a practical matter, there is not a chance in hell that the world will approach anything like the CO2 restriction goals the GWarmer’s prescribe. Not even close.
So I’d better be correct, or we are doomed.
Thankfully, I am.
James Fallows brags about his more extensive Chinese vacations. Krugman retorts “Oh, yea?”.
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/not_sure_exactly_who_is_talkin.php
There’s that. My guess is that they think they have a good thing going in terms of industrialization and economic growth, they can’t politically afford to ruin that (which is why they talk less of cutting emissions growth and more of “green energy” and the like, even though they’re still reliant on coal), and of course, there’s always that “victimized nationalism” crap that you occasionally see coming out from the era when they were effectively carved up by the Europeans.
Certainly “morally empowered” is the wrong wording there; “in our best long-term interests” might be more appropriate. Setting up a carbon tariff on Chinese goods if they refuse to go along with an emissions-regulation system would be a good way of making the penalty hurt, by putting it in terms of stark economic interest (something which the Chinese understand quite well). It would also keep the people here in the US who would be bitching about how the Chinese are exploiting CO2 regulation to pollute and get rich sated.
Yes, but it could also be quite unpleasant by modern standards. We’ve been in eras before when there were mega-droughts, plains turned to desert (this has happened to the Great Plains several times before already), shifting rainfall, and flooding. A few feet in sea level rise would cause massive population migration, particularly from areas like Bangladesh, with consequences for the rest of the world.
Because the correlation isn’t working in this particular case of warming. There’s been relatively little appreciable increase in sun activity in the latter half of the twentieth century (and early part of the 21st), yet temperatures have been rising.
And your comments about how it isn’t acknowledged are nonsense. It has been acknowledged, but again, they’ve pointed out that this case, solar activity has not been correlating with the rise in warming.
My guess is that we’ll just go along our merry way, with CO2 continuing to rise, and a minor amount of amelioration in the form of more efficient cars and some alternative energy. At some point, probably in the 2020s and 2030s, we’ll start seeing more pronounced effects beyond what we already have in terms of climate change (such as the Arctic going completely ice-free, then heating up), at which point the world’s nations will start hastily trying to do things to ameliorate the climate problem, hoping for a quick and easy fix. Maybe they’ll get it (technology can advance a lot in 30-40 years), or maybe they’ll just have to live with shifts in agriculture, flooding, desertification, major population shifts, and different temperatures.
“This is claptrap. The Chinese authorities do not give a fig for any moral empowerment on our part.”
Krugman revels in claptrap as a columnist because it lets him borrow his prestige gained from being eminent in one field to use in fields were he knows very little – or in this instance, where he seems to be unaware of how little he actually knows.
Imagine how Krugman would treat a master mechanic or a dentist who dared weigh in with a similar level of cocksure certainty on macroeconomics.
Mark, that’s my A-#1 complaint about would-be technocrats. They all seem to believe that their specialist expertise translates into generalist expertise. Not only ain’t it necessarily so, it’s generally the opposite.
A few feet in sea level rise would cause massive population migration, particularly from areas like Bangladesh, with consequences for the rest of the world.
Hasn’t it occurred to you that the last two hundred years have seen even larger amounts of human population growth AND human migration that anything predicted by the global warming crowd? Hell, the migration of people from the countryside to the cities in China over the last 30 years has been epic. Which is to say, we are already living in times in which the movements of people dwarfs anything from previous history. Global warming would only continue that trend.
And why is it that you imagine NOW to be some sacrosanct moment when all change should cease for ever and ever?
Don’t distort my words. I never said that all change should be stopped, but that we should slow down this particular change, which
A)We are most likely causing, and
B)is most likely to have negative consequences.
Why, yes – except that the prior two centuries of population drift and growth were by no means pleasant for many of the people involved, and – guess what? – they weren’t leaving because their farm land was turning into brackish swamp from rising sea levels!
Git yer house on stilts quick, Bret.