The case for a sustainable climate policy: Why costs and benefits must be temporally balanced

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

Volumn 155, Issue 6, 2007, Pages 1843-1857

  Pielke Jr , Roger A ^a  

^a University of Colorado ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34548069698     PISSN: 00419907     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (42)

1. U.S. Global Change Research Program: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on the Environment of the H. Comm. on Science, Space, and Technology, 102d Cong. 88 (1992) (statement of Rep. James H. Scheuer)
2. Kathleen Ellison, Turned Off by Global Warming, N.Y. TIMES, May 20, 2006, at A13.
3. See generally United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], http://unfccc.int/2860.php (last visited May 1, 2007).
4. See generally Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], http://www.ipcc.ch (last visited May 1, 2007).
5. INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, WORKING GROUP I, CLIMATE CHANGE 2001: THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS 17 (J.T. Houghton et al. eds., 2001).
6. Id. at 787.
7. Id. at 789.
8. See infra Part VI.
9. Climate Change: Hearings Before the S. Comm. on Energy and Natural Res., 109th Cong. 42 (2005) (statement of James W. Hurrell, Director, Climate and Global Dynamics Div., Nat'l Ctr. for Atmospheric Research).
10. Kathy Wren, No Turning Back From Climate Change, Mar. 18, 2005, http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2005/0318scipak.shtml.
11. See Gerard A. Meehl et al., How Much More Global Warming and Sea Level Rise?, 307 SCIENCE 1766 (2005);
12. T.M.L. Wigley, The Climate Change Commitment, 307 SCIENCE 1766 (2005).
13. William D. Nordhaus, After Kyoto: Alternative Mechanisms to Control Global Warming 1 (Int'l Relations Ctr., Foreign Policy in Focus Discussion Paper, 2006), available at http://www.fpif.org/pdf/papers/0603afterkyoto. pdf.
14. Memorandum from Steve Rayner, Dir., James Martin Inst., Univ. of Oxford, to the Envtl. Audit Comm. of the House of Commons (Nov. 24, 2007), available at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/EAC%20memo%20fin. doc.
15. Nordhaus, supra note 11, at 1.
16. Id.
17. Tim Dyson, On Development, Demography and Climate Change: The End of the World as We Know It?, 27 POPULATION & ENV'T 117, 132-33 (2005) (citations omitted);
18. cf. Pekka E. Kauppi, The United Nations Climate Convention: Unattainable or Irrelevant, 270 SCIENCE 1454, 1454 (1995) (stating presciently that the goal of the UNFCCC to "prevent dangerous . . . interference with the climate system" was either "unattainable or irrelevant" and that if climate model "projections are right, the climate will change, there will be dangerous effects, and the Convention objective will be unattainable").
19. IPCC, WORKING GROUP III, CLIMATE CHANGE 2001: MITIGATION 12 (Bert Metz et al. eds., 2001) (emphasis omitted).
20. Michele M. Betsill, Mitigating Climate Change in US Cities: Opportunities and Obstacles, 6 LOCAL ENV'T 393, 404 (2001) (citations omitted), available at http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/ PoliSci/fac/mb/Local%20Environment.pdf.
21. See infra Part VI.
22. See supra Part II.
23. Note that the more general term for a hurricane is a "tropical cyclone." See Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, FAQ: Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Tropical Cyclones, http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/ A1.html (last visited May 1, 2007).
24. The Figure assumes that by 2050 all hurricanes will increase in intensity by 18%, that population and wealth will increase by a combined 2.5% per year, and that hurricane damage increases are proportional to the cube of the increase in wind speed. The full analysis can be found in Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Future Economic Damage from Tropical Cyclones: Sensitivities to Societal and Climate Changes, PHIL. TRANSACTIONS ROYAL SOC'Y A. (forthcoming 2007), available at http://sciencepolicy. colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2517-2007.14.pdf.
25. Of course, the real climate system does not work this way and the effects of mitigation on tropical cyclone behavior remains poorly understood, but the effects are certainly less direct than in the oversimplification offered here.
26. The maximum potential effectiveness of adaptation is equal to the total costs. If atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases could instandy be held constant such that there would be no effect of human-caused climate change on hurricanes, then the maximum effectiveness of mitigation in this case would be $1.80. In reality, this number is substantially smaller, given the general global commitment to climate change and the time lag of emissions-reduction effects on the climate system. Of course, the desirability of particular courses of action will also depend upon a comparison of costs and benefits.
27. By contrast, Working Groups II and III often utilize the FCCC definition of climate change. For further discussion, see Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Misdefining "Climate Change": Consequences for Science and Action, 8 ENVTL, SCI. & POL'Y 548, 555-56 (2005).
28. The logic behind costs without benefits is that without the marginal influence of GHG-induced effects on the climate system, such adaptation would be, by definition, unnecessary.
29. See, e.g., Richard J.T. Klein et al., Integrating Mitigation and Adaptation into Climate and Development Policy: Three Research Questions, 8 ENVTL. SCI. & POL'Y 579, 588 (2005).
30. REPORT OF THE JOINT IPCC WORKING GROUP II & III EXPERT MEETING ON THE INTEGRATION OF ADAPTATION, MITIGATION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INTO THE 4TH IPCC ASSESSMENT REPORT (2005), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/am-sd.pdf.
31. As a practical matter, discourse on climate policy reinforces the intellectual gerrymandering through new concepts, such as "mainstreaming, " which preserve rather than move beyond the status quo. See Roger A. Pielke, Jr. et al., Climate Change 2007: Lifting the Taboo on Adaptation, 445 NATURE 597 (2007).
32. For differing opinions on this issue, see Real Climate, http://www.realclimate.org (last visited May 1, 2007), and Climate Audit, http://climateaudit.org (last visited May 1, 2007).
33. Dyson, supra note 15, at 133-34.
34. Inside Washington: Congressional Insiders Poll, NAT'L J., Apr. 1, 2006, at 5-6.
35. Id. at 5. Interestingly, as has been found in many areas, the views of members of Congress are more ideologically determined by their party membership than those of the general population. In opinion polls of the public asking a similar question, neither Democrats nor Republicans show such unanimity of opinion. Gallup Org., Americans Still Not Highly Concerned About Global Warming, GALLUP POLL, Apr. 7, 2006, available at http://poll.gallup.com/content/?ci=22291. This may be a consequence of the effects of the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, which has often been criticized as generating a legislature that is more ideological than its constituents.
36. Inside Washington, supra note 31, at 5.
37. Id. at 6.
38. Id.
39. Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Scientific Information and Global Change Policymaking, 28 CLIMATIC CHANGE 315, 315 (1994).
40. Id. at 317.
41. For an early evaluation of USGCRP, see Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Usable Information for Policy: An Appraisal of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, 28 POL'Y SCI. 39 (1995).
42. See Roger A. Pielke, Jr. & Daniel Sarewitz, Wanted: Scientific Leadership on Climate, ISSUES IN SCI. & TECH., Winter 2003, at 27-28 ("The situation persists not only because the current research-based approach supports those happy with the present political gridlock, but more uncomfortably, because the primary beneficiaries of this situation include scientists themselves.").