Comment Re:first, do no harm... (Score 1) 688
Problem with that is that it misses the idea that there are costs associated with both actions ...
1) potential cost of not taking action if global warming, for example, is real: we get global warming
2) cost of taking action, whether or not global warming is real: slowed economic growth, or perhaps contraction.
It is CRUCIAL to remember that things like the Kyoto treaty are in NO WAY costless, but instead will definitely have penalties to economic growth. Also, given that pollution (to stick with the global warming example) lessens as economies mature and technological developments occur, penalizing economic growth could have a 'double-whammy' effect of slowing economic growth causing slowing rate of improvement in greenhouse gas emissions, for example.
So, even in the 'absence of information', it does not necessarily follow that we should try to enforce drastic emissions cuts "to be on the safe side". Because if we are wrong about global warming (which you yourself admit that we may well be), we will do nothing but screw ourselves economically for decades to come.
An interesting side point: Matt Ridley (very well known evolutionary biologist) noted something in a recent Spectator article which I believe came from Lomborg --
"It is well known that meeting the Kyoto treaty on carbon-dioxide reduction will delay global warming by six years at most by 2100. Yet the annual cost of that treaty, in each year of the century, will be the same as the cost -- once -- of installing clean drinking water and sanitation for every human being on the planet. Priorities, anyone? "
I have to agree -- the so-called Green movement does very little to think about these trade-offs, and seems content to raise scare after scare. And eventually, this creates a situation where we no longer know where to spend our money. Listening to them, we may find in 50 years that we wasted so much time, money, and effort trying to fight off 30 imagined 'doomsday' problems along with the handful of real ones that we can't actually address the real problems in a meaningful way!
1) potential cost of not taking action if global warming, for example, is real: we get global warming
2) cost of taking action, whether or not global warming is real: slowed economic growth, or perhaps contraction.
It is CRUCIAL to remember that things like the Kyoto treaty are in NO WAY costless, but instead will definitely have penalties to economic growth. Also, given that pollution (to stick with the global warming example) lessens as economies mature and technological developments occur, penalizing economic growth could have a 'double-whammy' effect of slowing economic growth causing slowing rate of improvement in greenhouse gas emissions, for example.
So, even in the 'absence of information', it does not necessarily follow that we should try to enforce drastic emissions cuts "to be on the safe side". Because if we are wrong about global warming (which you yourself admit that we may well be), we will do nothing but screw ourselves economically for decades to come.
An interesting side point: Matt Ridley (very well known evolutionary biologist) noted something in a recent Spectator article which I believe came from Lomborg --
"It is well known that meeting the Kyoto treaty on carbon-dioxide reduction will delay global warming by six years at most by 2100. Yet the annual cost of that treaty, in each year of the century, will be the same as the cost -- once -- of installing clean drinking water and sanitation for every human being on the planet. Priorities, anyone? "
I have to agree -- the so-called Green movement does very little to think about these trade-offs, and seems content to raise scare after scare. And eventually, this creates a situation where we no longer know where to spend our money. Listening to them, we may find in 50 years that we wasted so much time, money, and effort trying to fight off 30 imagined 'doomsday' problems along with the handful of real ones that we can't actually address the real problems in a meaningful way!
