The Economics of Enough_ How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters - Diane Coyle [31]
What demands should be placed on how people in each country lead their lives? Should countries reduce emissions in equal absolute or proportionate terms, over the same or different time periods, or to target the same level at a certain date? There could be justification for any of these paths, and the implications would be dramatically different for different countries. Why should people in China reduce their still low use of energy and transport at all if Americans, with their extremely carbon-intensive and resource-intensive lifestyles, guzzling gasoline, water, and minerals to sustain a high standard of living, are not making much bigger sacrifices? The tension between the aims of economic growth and environmental sustainability are acute enough within each rich nation, and all the more so when taking into account simple justice between nations. It is untenable to argue that Indians or Brazilians should not aspire to air conditioning, cars, and fridges now that the great majority of people in the Western world have attained the comforts of ample consumer goods. What’s more, much of the recent growth in emissions by countries like China has been generated by industries producing consumer goods for export to the rich countries, so all the more reason for the rich countries to make the bulk of the necessary adjustment.
The Western countries will therefore not find much support in international negotiations if it seems we’re trying to pull up the rope ladder behind us. And so it is. India’s government has firmly rejected the attempt of the “international community” to use the Copenhagen negotiations to share the burden of adjustment between the rich West and the emerging economies, though it has recently announced that it would voluntarily reduce its carbon emission by 20–25 percent of 2005 levels by 2020. The environment minister told his parliament that India’s transition to a low-carbon economy would be on its own terms and in its own self-interest: “We are not doing the world a favour. Forget Copenhagen. Forget the US. Our future as a society depends on how we respond to the climate change challenge.”8 As I write this, it is entirely unclear what the prospects are for a new international agreement on emissions targets. It might well be a matter of every country or region deciding what individual course of action to take. For people seriously concerned about the impact of human activity on the climate, this is unlikely to add up to enough of an adjustment.
DOMESTIC CLIMATE CHANGE DISSENT
The lack of an international consensus on where responsibility for adjustments should fall is a big enough barrier to changing behavior. But another looms even larger. A vocal and growing minority of people in the Western democracies distrust what they’ve been told by the scientific and political establishment about the risks of catastrophic climate change. For example, a March 2010 Gallup Poll found that the proportion of people in the United States regarding environmental issues as a higher priority than economic growth had declined to 38 percent from 42 percent a year earlier and 49 percent in 2008.9 The level of concern about climate change is the lowest since polling on the issue began. An Ipsos Mori poll in the United Kingdom found a similar drop in the proportion agreeing that global warming was “definitely” a reality, from 44 percent in 2009 to 31 percent in 2010.10
The recession and a cold winter played their part in causing these opinion shifts. But another reason is the growing doubt about the legitimacy and truthfulness of the institutions that have played leading roles in forecasting damage to the world’s future climate. The leading expert institution is the IPCC, the UN-sponsored body of scientists monitoring the climate that forecasts likely trends in the decades ahead. Some prominent environmental economists and activists, as well as political campaigners,