Why We Shouldn't Be Doing Anything (Much) About Global Warming (Yet)

Re-watching Bjorn Lomborg's talk about the Copenhagen Consensus got me to thinking a bit more about global warming and what we should be doing about it.

The subject of climate change is one of those 'issues' that tends to divide people into two discrete camps. On the one hand there are those who think that global warming is the biggest problem we are facing, and that we should be devoting a sizable chunk of our resources and attention to solving it as soon as possible. On the other hand there are those who either deny that the problem exists at all, or deny that it is going to significantly affect us.

As with so many things, this extreme polarisation of the subject has had a detrimental effect on the debate surrounding it by shutting out any shades of argument in between the two dominant positions.

And that's unfortunate, because climate change is a complicated issue and I believe that the correct approach to it lies in between the polar extremes. Let me explain why.

First of all, there's no reasonable doubt that global warming is both real, and a significant existential problem for our species. If you don't believe me, read the summary of the fourth assessment report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which concludes that 'warming of the climate system is unequivocal', and that the cause of such warming is 'very likely' anthropogenic in nature.

Given this fact, the reasonable response seems to be to take decisive action to avert a global catastrophe. Indeed, this move seems to be assumed by most commentators. Once you have been convinced that the problem is real and serious, advocacy of immediate evasive measures seems to be automatic. This, I think, is a mistake.

Let us examine the various solutions that have been proposed. The most well known is the Kyoto Protocol, which is the agreed result of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. This protocol has the aim of reducing emission of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. As a result of signing up to the protocol thirty-six developed countries are now required to reduce their greenhouse emissions to levels specified in the treaty. Notably, the United States has been the target of considerable criticism for not ratifying the treaty.

Another oft-discussed approach to the problem is a 'carbon tax'. This solution proposes taxing emissions of carbon dioxide in order to encourage reduction in the quantity of greenhouse gas we pump into the atmosphere. Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK have all imposed some form of carbon taxing.

Finally, there is the increasingly popular notion of 'emissions trading' (sometimes known as 'cap and trade'), which is both an administrative and an economic approach. Under this system the government sets a limit on the amount of CO2 that can be emitted, and issues emissions credits (whose total market value is equal to the governmental limit) to companies that need to pollute. These companies are then able to buy and sell the credits if they need to pollute more, or if they want to trade their credits for cash. The idea is that a market in emissions credits will emerge, thus ensuring that those companies that can most cheaply reduce emissions will do so. This ensures the most economically efficient reduction in CO2 pollution.

These aren't the only proposed solutions, but they are some of the most popular and most discussed. They all fall into a category of solutions that I want to call 'passive'. They are passive in the sense that they all aim to reduce the amount of carbon that we are putting into the atmosphere, rather than trying to actively reverse the process of global warming that is already in motion.

The problem with passive solutions is two fold. First, they are expensive. A number of studies have explored to cost of Kyoto compliance. A meta-study conducted by the US Energy Information Administration put the cost of compliance, in 1996 dollars, at between $102B and $437B a year in 2010 and between $120B and $311B in 2020. Even taking into account the savings that may be possible through carbon trading, offsets and other efficiencies, it seems safe to say that reducing our carbon emissions will have a significant and detrimental impact on the global economy.

The second problem with passive solutions is that the potential upside is relatively small. As Bjorn Lomborg points out in Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, full compliance with Kyoto for all time would only slow the rate of warming by 5% over the next century. The momentum in the global climate system is already too great for a mere reduction of emissions to have much effect. In other words, the result of spending trillions of dollars would only be to push back a global catastrophe for a few years.

Bu there are alternatives to the passive approaches. By actively seeking to remove carbon from the atmosphere we could have a realistic prospect of not just delaying global warming, but of putting an end to it altogether. A number of techniques have been proposed that might enable artificial sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere. None, though, have as much promise as nanotechnology.

The birth of nanotechnology can be traced to Richard Feynman's famous 'plenty of room at the bottom' speech in 1959, but it was Eric Drexler who was the first to lay out a high-level design for what has become known as a 'molecular assembler'. Sometimes known as a 'Drexler Assembler', this device has the potential to manufacture anything at all that is consistent with the laws of physics and chemistry.

Current exponentially increasing trends in miniaturisation, and the price-performance of computing point to a realisation of these techniques in the 2020s. Once we have harnessed the power of the very small we will have the technology to manipulate the environment at the molecular level, allowing us to re-design the world around us. The implications for global warming are that we will have the means to cheaply, and on a global scale, remove carbon from the atmosphere, thus reversing the current climate trends. Ray Kurzweil notes that we will in fact have to be careful not to go too far in this endeavor, lest we instigate a global cooling trend.

The choice before us is clear. We can either act now, which will cost trillions of dollars and have little impact on the problem, or we can act in 10-15 years' time, which will cost relatively little, and will bring about a complete end to the problem. A simple cost-benefit analysis seems to make the correct choice clear.

And yet we are making the wrong choice. I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that the world is still blighted, as Kurzweil notes, by the historical-linear view of the pace of technology advancement. It is still the case that most of the world does not take into account the exponentially increasing speed of advances in information technologies when planning for the future. Because of this, it is hard for most commentators and decision makers to envisage a near-future with such astonishing technological power, and thus they fail to take such power into account when making plans for the future.

The second reason is that, as a species, we seem to have a predilection for action. Simply by doing something, no matter how ineffective it might be, we feel better. The idea that we should wait, and that the best course of action might be patience, is anathema to most leaders, and indeed strikes many observers as positively immoral. This is a patently self-indulgent attitude.

It will be essential that we shed these prevailing attitudes if we are to avoid damaging the global economy by piling untold burden on the very wealth-creation powerhouses that will drive the coming technological revolutions. As I have noted before on this blog, it is always better to put something off until tomorrow if doing so gives us a better chance of success.