::::::::
Bjorn Lomborg is what I guess you could call a non-denier denier of climate change. His position seems to be that climate change is real but not worth bothering about, a problem easily dealt with through geo-engineering, leaving plenty of time and money to work on other things.He has explored this line of thinking in a couple of recent op-ed pieces in the Wall Street Journal. The first piece implied that for a mere fraction of the cost of dealing with climate change, we could eliminate diseases like malaria, which for ordinary Africans is a much more pressing problem. Just ask them, they'll tell you: "If I die from malaria tomorrow, why should I care about global warming?" And who could argue with that?
The second piece I read carried this argument forward to the topic of sanitation systems in Bangladesh. He argues that .... well, let the man speak for himself:
"Getting basic sanitation and safe drinking water to the three billion people around the world who do not have it now would cost nearly $4 billion a year. By contrast, cuts in global carbon emissions that aim to limit global temperature increases to less than two degrees Celsius over the next century would cost $40 trillion a year by 2100. These cuts will do nothing to increase the number of people with access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Cutting carbon emissions will likely increase water scarcity, because global warming is expected to increase average rainfall levels around the world.
For Mrs. Begum, the choice is simple. After global warming was explained to her, she said: 'When my kids haven't got enough to eat, I don't think global warming will be an issue I will be thinking about.'''
So, Mr. Lomborg believes that cutting carbon emissions is a bad idea because it could mean less rainfall than some places would have gotten with higher global temperatures thereby aggravating their sanitation issues. Oh, and a mother is more worried about feeding her starving children today than solving climate change tomorrow. That will be one order of tortured logic and a side dish of the blindingly obvious.
Two thoughts from this humble observer. First, of course a mother worries more about feeding her children than global warming. That is her job and her responsibility. The global political leadership has its job, and that is to deal with that mother's worries AND with other problems as well, including climate change, which by the way is expected to increase the prevalence of many diseases, including malaria.
The point is, as President Obama somewhat tartly noted a while back, leaders must be able to multi-task. This brings me to a larger concern I have with Mr. Lomborg's logic. Where is it written that it has to be either/or? Why do we have to choose between dealing with climate change and feeding the poor or improving sanitation or slowing down the pace of diseases. Can we not -- must we not -- do all of the above?
Mr. Lomborg seems to be arguing that we should put off worrying about long-term problems and focus on more pressing immediate concerns. And in truth that is a very appealing argument. It truly is asking a lot for taxpayers to sink billions into a problem that won't be on top of us for another decade when there are already a host of very real problems clamoring for a solution. It is a debate worth having, but not one that relies on half-baked tortured logic to make the case.
This essay first appeared in PlanetRestart.org
