Carbon rationing: a valuable way of cutting carbon emissions?
Bangladesh: how to cope when the water rises?
Mayer Hillman and Claire Fox disagree
Dear Claire,
The time for denial is long over. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that the Earth’s atmosphere has a finite capacity to absorb greenhouse gases. In just a couple of centuries, human civilisation has burned reserves of the Sun’s energy, accumulated over millions of years in the form of gas, coal and oil. The result is already serious destabilisation of the climate.
We must now all share responsibility for preventing further ecological catastrophe and the ensuing loss in the planet’s habitability. A burgeoning world population and aspirations to ever higher standards of living make the search for an effective solution even more challenging.
It is wishful thinking to believe that the essential dramatic reduction in greenhouse gases can be achieved by voluntary changes in behaviour, by technological innovation, or by green taxation alone.
In the autumn of 1939, faced with the prospect of scarcity of a basic commodity, the government introduced food rationing. We are in an analogous situation now. The only realistic and fair way ahead is by adopting an international framework based on equal per capita shares of carbon emissions across the world’s population. At least in principle, do you have any objections?
Yours, Mayer
Dear Mayer,
While I commend your honesty, I disagree that climate change is an apocalyptic catastrophe that should lead to compulsory carbon rationing. No amount of hyperbole justifies such draconian austerity.
You talk of ‘overwhelming scientific consensus’. It is fashionable to hide behind science to push political messages. However, while science has important things to say about climate change, it does not and cannot provide answers to how we should deal with it in society. Scientific evidence has no jurisdiction in deciding whether we cut energy consumption or ban incandescent lightbulbs.
Our disagreement is political, not scientific. It centres on how we view human progress. You express Malthusian fatalism about ‘a burgeoning world population’. For me this means millions more minds to solve problems and create prosperity. You reduce the last ‘couple of centuries’ of ‘human civilization’ to the fact that it ‘has burned reserves of the Sun’s energy’.
I note that over the last two hundred years humanity has made enormous gains; from freeing millions from parochialism – hurrah for cars and cheap flights – to freeing women from drudgery – hurrah for white goods and microwaves. Don’t get me started on how reducing emissions will deny the gains of modernity to the under-developed world.
Yours, Claire
Dear Claire,
You highlight ‘the gains of modernity’ that have come in the wake of our use of fossil fuels over the last 200 years without acknowledging the adverse consequences.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during this period have risen in line with this use to a level that the world has not experienced for over half a million years. Citing evidence such as this can hardly be described as ‘hyperbole’ or as a cover to a hidden political agenda.
What matters are the practical and moral implications for current policies. I wonder whether you would have a different perspective if you were personally affected?
You dismiss my reference to the burgeoning world population as ‘Malthusian fatalism’. Look at recent demographic changes before rejecting this consideration so lightly. And what is the source of your confidence in the ingenuity of ‘millions more human minds’ to come up with technologies that will assuredly result in reversing the process of climate change?
Do you accept that human activity is contributing to this change? If so, I ask again, do you have any objections to an equal per capita allocation of carbon emissions across the world’s population to deliver the necessary reduction? Or do you have a better solution to what you so glibly reject as ‘draconian austerity’?
Yours, Mayer
Dear Mayer,
I don’t deny that the huge social changes may have had some ‘adverse consequences’ on the planet, but overall the consequences of progress have been massively positive. Will you acknowledge the ‘adverse consequences’ on humanity of your paralysing obsession with reducing carbon emissions? You advocate giving up freedom at home and curtailing development in the Third World.
Historically, ‘human activity’ such as science and technology have allowed us to innovate precisely to deal with whatever nature throws at us. Ironically, where natural hazards do exist – like scorching temperatures and drought – people suffer not from the weather but for lack of the ‘gains of modernity’ such as air conditioning and mains water. Yet eco warriors have opposed building dams to provide energy and water in poorer parts of the world because they clash with environmental priorities.
As Bangladesh faces flooding, shouldn’t the urgent task be to build dams, roads and dykes – as countries such as Holland do – that would allow Bangladeshis to cope with rising sea levels? Will you join me in promoting the urgent industrialisation of countries like Bangladesh to make them equal with the West, rather than merely offering the trinket of ‘equal per capita carbon allocation’?
Yours, Claire
Dear Claire,
You propose that debt-ridden countries such as Bangladesh prioritise spending the proceeds from the industrialisation of their economies to provide protection from climate changes caused by our excessive carbon emissions.
But the costs of building dykes against inundation along extensive coastlines, air conditioning to keep temperatures down and drought limitation measures, would be prohibitively high. For the same reason, they could not be covered even by a substantial increase in overseas development aid set aside from our economic growth.
Moreover, you overlook the fact that a major source of the evolving catastrophe is the planet’s limited capacity to safely absorb the greenhouse gases from industrialisation and growth! And what if your approach fails: where do the hundreds of millions of displaced ecological refugees go?
The truth is that we are faced with the choice of either achieving a massive reduction in our use of fossil fuels, or presiding over our own demise. Sufficient people will not contribute to this reduction to a sufficient extent and within sufficient time voluntarily. It is being increasingly recognized that the only solution is a global cap on emissions and their allocation on an equal per capita basis – the Global Commons Institute blueprint, Contraction & Convergence. This must be adopted urgently.
Yours, Mayer
Dear Mayer,
Putting aside your disgraceful scaremongering about hordes of ‘ecological refugees’, your reply perfectly illustrates why carbon cutting orthodoxy is paralysing. You can only view the problems of the Third World through the narrow prism of global warming. However, it is not ‘our excessive carbon emissions’ that deprive one billion people of clean water or doom the Earth’s poorest to dependence on subsistence farming. Rather, it is your man-made green fatalism that dismisses any possibility of development because ‘costs… would be prohibitively high’.
Granted you are even-handed. You preach miserabilism at home as well as abroad. You started this spat comparing energy rationing today with the Second World War. At least then temporary sacrifices promised a more prosperous and free society after the war. You offer us permanent war economy: relentless personal restraint and never-ending constraints on freedom.
Whatever the scientific truth about the difficulties warming might pose to our planet, we definitely know that freedom, autonomy, reduced regulation and ambition will be necessary tools – for scientists and political activists – to deal with what faces us in the future. To abandon them – as you advocate – would be a far greater catastrophe than anything nature can throw at us.
Yours, Claire
Dr Mayer Hillman is Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute
Claire Fox is the Director of the Institute of Ideas
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