A Tale of Two Treaties

Dec 17, 2012 Bjørn Lomborg

The world has once again failed to reach any meaningful climate agreement, this time in the negotiations that recently concluded in Doha. If we really want to help the world’s poor, we should get serious about the other Doha talks and hammer out even a modest global agreement on freer trade.

PRAGUE – The Doha meeting continued 20 years of failed climate negotiations, since the original Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. There, countries pledged to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000; the OECD countries fell short by almost 9%. The Kyoto Protocol from 1998 has almost entirely failed. And the effort intended to save the world in Copenhagen in 2009 collapsed spectacularly.

So far, the world’s emissions have continued to rise – and at an accelerating pace – with emissions in 2011 about 50% higher than in 1990. The last 20 years of global climate negotiations has reduced that increase by only about half a percentage point.

Assuming, somewhat optimistically, that this reduction will be maintained throughout the century, it will reduce the temperature increase by about half of one-hundredth of a degree Celsius (about one-hundredth of a degree Fahrenheit) in 2100. Sea levels will rise about one millimeter (one-twentieth of an inch) less. Even in a hundred years, these changes will not be measurable.

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Bjørn Lomborg

Writing for PS since 2005
181 Commentaries

Bjørn Lomborg, a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School, is Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. His books include The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cool It, How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, The Nobel Laureates' Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World, and, most recently, Prioritizing Development. In 2004, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people for his research on the smartest ways to help the world.

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Gunnar Rundgren Dec 28, 2012

An African smallholder with only manual labour produce a ton or two of corn from one hectare. Her colleagues in Illinois produce some 10 tons per hectare, but that is not the big difference. The big difference is that they produce some 2,000 to 4,000 ton per farm worker per year in Illinois and just one or two in manual farming. Even if the work of the manually working smallholder is put at zero costs they can't compete. Lomborg and other proponents can't explain which "comparative advantages" these small holders would have. Yes, it is of course absurd that farmers in OECD countries have subsidies, but even if they were abolished it would not make a lot of difference in this situation of competition.
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Shane Beck Dec 26, 2012

The logic of this article seems that free trade will reduce carbon emissions. However the evidence is that greater GDP growth equals more middle class consumption which means more carbon emissions. The experience of China and India apply demonstrates this. If anything nations should be looking at Carbon Tarriffs and Population stabilization- the two things guaranteed to reduce emissions
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Nicholas Mearing-Smith Dec 18, 2012

The underlying assumption of this article is that humans are causing climate change by the release of CO2 and that therefore action by humanity to reduce such release would be appropriate if economically justified.
Since from reading books by Bjorn Lomborg, it is clear that he does not really believe the supposed science behind this thesis of anthropogenic global warming, it is a shame that the gives it any credence at all in articles like this.
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Edward Campbell Dec 18, 2012

Yup - NAFTA has done such a wonderful job of raising living standards for the poor in the American Southwest and Mexico.

In your dreams.
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Zsolt Hermann Dec 17, 2012

The problem is that we are not even scratching the surface with these debates about reducing emissions, reducing temperatures for billions of dollars, etc.
We are still looking at the system from the wrong point of view as if there was anything to debate, as if it was our decision what we do.
In truth we have no freedom in this.
Humans, humanity is not standing alone, we are simply part of a vast, closed natural system that has strict, unbreakable laws and principles it operates on.
Up to this point in our evolution we seemingly had all the freedom to do whatever we wanted, like a child in a toyshop thinking he can take everything without payment.
But this is not the case.
As we evolved we became more and more harmful and exploitative towards the natural system, and towards each other. And today we are standing in total opposition, and this is why seemingly everything that worked before fell apart, and even the institutions we ourselves built are slipping through our fingers.
The environmental problems, climate change, global warming are just part of the whole picture, our whole socio-economic system is collapsing since it is unnatural and unsustainable, the national, and international flash-points, tensions are threatening with regional or global wars, humanity in general lost hope in the future.
We need to understand that freedom does not mean we can do whatever we want, freedom means we have the option to get to know the natural laws of the system in a proactive, conscious manner, instead of learning them through unneccesary suffering.
Our immediate and long term future hinges on this adaptation to the natural system around us.
We can become partners with the system, or we can fail to carry on with evolution.
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Simon Matthew Dec 17, 2012

It is simply embarrassing that the editors of this fine publication continue to publish Mr. Lomborg.
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Frank O'Callaghan Dec 17, 2012

The unasked question is what the cost of doing nothing on climate.

Trade agreements are useful but what would be of more benefit is a global progressive taxation system that prevents transnational entities being held to account in a national territory. The global economic crisis could be solved by this simple measure.
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jim bridgeman Dec 17, 2012

Bravo. We need more thinking and less emoting.
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