Date created:24/2/04 Last modified:24/2/04 Maintained by: John Quiggin John Quiggin
9 October 2003.
At least for those inclined to take matters at face value, there is plenty of good news to be taken from the recent visit to Australia by 'skeptical environmentalist' Bjorn Lomborg, sponsored by the Institute of Public Affairs, and enthusiastically endorsed by a string of conservative commentators, not to mention Federal government ministers.
The only current policy issue on which Lomborg had a substantive contribution to make was that of the Kyoto protocol on global warming. Lomborg argues that, rather than incur the costs of Kyoto, which he estimates at around $US 200 billion per year, the money should be spent on aid to poor countries such as improvements in health and drinking water. This is more than 1 per cent of the GDP of the developed countries as a group, compared to current aid levels ranging from 0.1 per cent of GDP for the United States to 1 per cent for Denmark, Lomborg's home country.
If Australia adopted Lomborg's proposal, foreign aid would need, at a minimum to be quadrupled. The cost to the budget would be somewhere between $5 billion and $10 billion per year.
It's not surprising that the conservative commentariat has endorsed Lomborg's opposition to Kyoto - they were against the idea long before anyone had ever heard of Lomborg. What's striking is that, without exception, they have either explicitly endorsed or tacitly accepted the second part of Lomborg's argument, calling for a massive increase in foreign aid.
The position of the Institute of Public Affairs, Lomborg's sponsor, is particularly
interesting. The Institute has recently been hired by the Commonwealth government
to conduct a review of our foreign aid programs. Until now, it has generally
been assumed that the review would be nothing more than a hatchet job on the
leftish non-government organisations, such as Amnesty International and Oxfam,
that undertake receive funding or tax concessions for aid work. But if the Institute's
sponsorship of Lomborg indicates support for the kind of massive increase in
foreign aid he espouses, disputes about who should deliver the aid are of only
secondary importance.
Not everyone takes things at face value. Some might suspect that Lomborg's stated
concern for the poor is merely a cheap debating point to be used against environmentalists
and that his supporters know they will never be called upon to put their money
where their mouth is. There is a fair bit of evidence to support such cynics.
First, there are significant contradictions in Lomborg's own position. Lomborg's
estimate of the cost of Kyoto is much higher than most others. For example,
Australian economist Warwick McKibbin, also an opponent of Kyoto, has estimated
the annual cost at less than 0.5 per cent of GDP for an implementation that
allows for global trading of emissions permits. Similar or lower cost estimates
are obtained by other modellers.
The difference arises because Lomborg rejects cost estimates based on global emissions trading. His reason for doing so is striking. In The Sceptical Environmentalist, he says that global emissions trading is 'politically infeasible' because it would involve transferring billions of dollars from rich to poor countries. He may be right, but if so, he shouldn't discuss aid to poor countries as an alternative to Kyoto.
Then there's the situation in Denmark, where a rightwing government, elected
in 2001, has installed Lomborg as the head of an Environmental Assessment Institute.
Given Denmark's pride in its status as the world's most generous donor of foreign
aid, one might expect Lomborg's arguments to have a particular resonance there.
The new Danish government has been much more critical of Kyoto than its predecessors.
Unfortunately, ithas also cut foreign aid repeatedly. As far as I can determine,
Lomborg has had nothing to say about this, and has certainly offered nothing
so quixotic as a principled resignation.
Regardless of whether Lomborg's argument is put forward in good faith, or merely as a debating point, it is worth taking seriously. There is no investment the rich countries of the world could make that would yield higher returns, even in terms of our self-interest in a less chaotic world, than $100 billion per year allocated to improved health and sanitation in the world's poorest countries.
Fortunately, we do not need to choose between Kyoto and aid. As Lomborg and others, both critics and supporters of Kyoto, have pointed out, implementing Kyoto through global emissions trading would amount to a massive foreign aid program as well as being an important first step towards resolving the problem of climate change.
Professor John Quiggin is a Senior Research Fellow of the Australian Research Council, based at the University of Queensland and the Australian National University.Read more articles from John Quiggin's home page
