lomborg168_ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDSAFPGetty Images_david malpass

The World Bank Must Change Course

Apr 11, 2019 Bjørn Lomborg

The World Bank does a lot of important and effective work, especially in health and education, but its climate policies are poorly considered. The Bank’s new president, David Malpass, should refocus the institution on its core mission of eradicating poverty – including the energy poverty that wrecks so many lives.

BRUSSELS – Critics have called new World Bank president David Malpass an arsonist in charge of a fire department, because of past comments he made on Bank salaries and loans to China. But it’s far more important to focus on improving progress toward the World Bank’s core mission of ending extreme poverty.

In its most recent fiscal year, the Bank dished out nearly $67 billion in financing, investments, and guarantees. But under the “new course” set by its previous president, Jim Yong Kim, in 2016, the Bank aims to direct more than a quarter of its funding toward climate change. Moreover, thanks to Kim, the Bank insists that every single dollar it spends must take account of climate change, and it has ended financial support for coal-fired power plants.

The argument for approaching development through the prism of climate change is that rising temperatures exacerbate challenges such as malaria and lack of access to education. Though this is true, almost all problems impact all others. An increase in malaria makes children more susceptible to hunger; poor nutrition and a lack of sanitation worsen educational performance; missing school leads to greater poverty; and so on.

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Bjørn Lomborg

Writing for PS since 2005
176 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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Moshahida Sultana Apr 18, 2019

I think the author of this article has compared mangoes with jackfruist for the following reasons:
1) He compared 23 cents of global cost of emission with $100 of local benefit. The question is, where is the local environmental and health cost of coal power plants?
2) How can a survey question ask whether people's priority is health or decarbonization? The amount of air and water pollution a coal plant can create is supposed to have more health impact in a densely populated country like Bangladesh than in other countries. Decarbonization and health are not mutually exclusive thing. Building more power plants means creating demand for more treatments. Did the survey ask about the preferences for prevention (less environmental pollution) or cure (disease from local pollution)?
3) What is the distributive impact of $100? Whose income will increase? Does the author know how this $100 benefit will contribute to poverty reduction? I ask this question because the author started with poverty reduction but could not establish how poverty could be alleviated by reconsidering World Bank's decision.

I think the logic used here are contradictory to each other.
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Moshahida Sultana Apr 18, 2019

I think the author of this article has compared mango with jackfruit for the following reasons:
1) He compared 23 cents of global cost of emission with $100 of local benefit. The question is, where is the local environmental and health cost of coal power plants?
2) How can a survey question ask whether people's priority is health or decarbonization? The amount of air and water pollution a coal plant can create is supposed to have more health impact in a densely populated country like Bangladesh than in other countries. Decarbonization and health are not mutually exclusive thing. Building more power plants mean creating demand for more treatments. Did the survey ask about the preference for prevention (less environmental pollution) or cure (disease from local pollution)?
3) What is the distributive impact of $100? Whose income will increase? Does the author know how this $100 benefit will contribute to poverty reduction? I ask this question because the author stadted with poverty reduction but could not establish how poverty will be alleviated in by reconsidering World Bank's decision.

I think the logic used here are contradictory to each other.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
William Allan Apr 16, 2019

Did I detect a hint of opportunism in this advocacy of the World Bank’s dropping its policy of broad support for global emissions reduction in favour of investing in ending extreme poverty? So far, however, David Malpass, the new Trunk-nominated President has firmly committed to continue the Bank’s support of climate change action in its present form. Things may change, but it’s surely time to abandon the Copenhagen Consensus notion that the direction of global policies in any area, and most certainly climate-change action, should be steered by CC’s marginal cost-benefit analysis (CBA).

That anthropogenic climate change is occurring is not denied by Lomborg, but he doesn’t acknowledge the increasingly likely massive costs due to high risks of rising sea-levels, potential Antarctic and Greenland glacier melts, changes in oceanic currents, and rising frequency of extreme climate events. These negative probabilities are increasingly supported by climate scientists’ data and recognized by most economists as a potentially massive economic loss. Risks of this magnitude are far too high for the case for substantial and coordinated action to be judged by CBA analysis of potential economic returns from an arbitrarily determined investment amount. For many, particularly low-income and environmentally vulnerable communities, they represent looming existential threats and a direct challenge to the goal of ending extreme poverty. Global climate change policy has, by and large, recognized the need for a unified approach to these threats; they are being tackled by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The difficulties of international cooperation in this and many other fields is well recognized. The Copenhagen Consensus does not represent a remotely credible alternative.
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Michael Pettengill Apr 13, 2019

So, in Africa, with no railroads, no power lines, coal powered electricity is cheaper than wind power or solar power plus battery storage for lighting?

The author is writing in the comfort provided by massively costly capital investments in first railroads, which drove the development of steel making industry, as well as enabling it, both paying thousands of very costly workers, compared to farm workers who were supported by living on and off the farms. The industrial worker was both lacking time to grow food, but also lacking the land, crammed in cities around the factories or train stations,, mines.

Later, the complexity of industry inccreased with much more costly capital built by paying ever more costly workers and then utilized by paying more costly workers..

But the high costs of paying costly workers was covered by selling costly goods and services to workers and their households, households that previously sustained themselves by producing what they consumed on farms and in their homes.

Economies are zero sum. High living costs are paid by costly worker incomes.

The poor are not paid to produce oil, mine coal, manufacture copper wire, power plants, so they have no income to buy oil, electric power. And they can't compete with the highly capitalized food industry to sell costly food and consumption basics to those in distant industrial nations which supply all the costly capital need by a fossil fuel consuming nation.

For rural, farming nations, solar and wind and other green technologies are a much better development option. Instructing a small community on building a biowaste digester to produce methane gas used for cooking in combination with building small solar to provide lighting and power electronics make much more sense than suggesting coal power plants can somehow deliver electricity with no power lines.

Note, the cost of constructing/installing solar in industrial nations now exceeds the cost of solar panels produced in large robotic factories in Asia including ocean shipping cost. Thus local labor is a huge part of the cost of solar power. A biodigester producing methane will require imported pipe, valves, etc, but lots of local labor to build the pits and run the piping, etc., tthen operate the systemm. The labor can be bartered in exchange for production, or paid wages used to pay cash for production.

Economies are zero sum. Zero income means costs must be zero.
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Ken Presting Apr 12, 2019

If there is any cost benefit calculation in our policies toward solar energy, it has to start with the comparison to "free". Nothing is cheaper than renewables. The only objection to "free" is that some people have vested interests in selling fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, there is an editorial issue. Bjorn Lomborg is the moral equivalent of the 1950's doctors who muddied the waters of the lung cancer issue into a discussion of "smoking and health". They were murderers. Lomborg is no different.

For him to appear on Project Syndicate degrades the entire enterprise, and all the other contributors here.
- evans.steve8 Apr 12, 2019
  
  This is a ridiculous comment. Solar energy, wind, and some water energy may be "free" but the infrastructure needed to harvest it is not. Moreover much of that requires resources that are far from environmentally benign, and that wear out
  
  Argue the case, Ken, and don't stoop to nasty a personal attacks.
  - Ach Dav Aug 3, 2019
    
    How much cheaper? Provide some numbers...doubt it.
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