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Why the Neo-Malthusian Worldview Fails the Reality Check
Why does the Neo-Malthusians’ dystopian worldview — that human and environmental well-being will suffer with increases in population, affluence and technological change — fail the reality check? Why has human well-being improved in the Age of Industrialization despite order-of-magnitude increases in the consumption of materials, fossil fuel energy and chemicals?
I offer some reasons in the last of a series of posts (1, 2, 3, 4) at MasterResource.
I note that although population, affluence and technology can create some problems for humanity and the planet, they are also the agents for solving those problems. In particular, human capital and greater affluence have helped the development and adoption of new and improved technologies, which empirical data show have reduced risks faster than the new risks that may have been created — hence the continual improvement in human well-being in the era of modern economic growth.
A corollary to this is that projections of future impacts spanning a few decades, but that do not account for technological change as a function of time and affluence, more likely than not will overestimate impacts, perhaps by orders of magnitude. In fact, this is one reason why many estimates of the future impacts of climate change are suspect, because most do not account for changes in adaptive capacity either due to secular technological change or increases in economic development.
Yogi Berra is supposed to have said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Most analysts recognize this. They know that just because one can explain and hindcast the past, it does not guarantee that one can forecast the future. Neo-Malthusians, by contrast, cannot hindcast the past but are confident they can forecast the future.
Finally, had the solutions that Neo-Malthusians espouse been put into effect a couple of centuries ago, most of us alive today would be dead and those who were not would be living poorer, shorter, and unhealthier lives, constantly subject to the vagaries of nature, surviving from harvest to harvest, spending more of our time in darkness because lighting would be a luxury, and spending more of our days in the drudgery of menial tasks because, under their skewed application of the precautionary principle (see here, here and here), fossil fuel consumption would be severely curtailed, if not banned.
Nor would the rest of nature necessarily be better off. First, lower reliance on fossil fuels would mean greater demand for fuelwood, and the forests would be denuded. Second, less fossil fuels also means less fertilizer and pesticides and, therefore, lower agricultural productivity. To compensate for lost productivity, more habitat would need to be converted to agricultural uses. But habitat conversion (including deforestation) — not climate change — is already the greatest threat to biodiversity!
Read the whole post here.
U.S. Well-Being in the Age of Fossil Fuels
Elsewhere, I have shown data that, notwithstanding the Neo-Malthusian worldview, human well-being has advanced globally since the start of industrialization more than two centuries ago, despite massive increases in population, consumption, affluence, and carbon dioxide emissions. Here I will focus on long-term trends in U.S. well-being, as measured by the average life expectancy at birth, in the age of fossil fuels.
Since 1900, the U.S. population has quadrupled, affluence has septupled, GDP has increased 30-fold, synthetic organic chemical use has increased 85-fold, metals use 14-fold, material use 25-fold, and CO2 emissions 8-fold. Yet life expectancy advanced from 47 to 78 years.
During the same period, emissions of air pollution waxed and waned. Food and water got safer, as indicated by the virtual elimination of deaths from gastrointestinal (GI) diseases between 1900 and 1970. Cropland, a measure of habitat converted to human uses — the single most important pressure on species, ecosystems, and biodiversity — was more or less unchanged from 1910 onward despite the increase in food demand.
For the most part, life expectancy grew more or less steadily for the United States, except for a brief plunge at the end of the World War I, accentuated by the 1918–1920 Spanish flu epidemic. As in the rest of the world, today’s U.S. population not only lives longer, it is also healthier. The disability rate for seniors declined 28 percent between 1982 and 2004/2005 and, despite quantum improvements in diagnostic tools, major diseases (e.g., cancer, and heart and respiratory diseases) now occur 8–11 years later than a century ago.
The reductions in rates of deaths and diseases since at least 1900 in the United States, despite increased population, energy, and material and chemical use, belie the Neo-Malthusian worldview. The improvements in the human condition can be ascribed to broad dissemination (through education, public health systems, trade and commerce) of numerous new and improved technologies in agriculture, health and medicine supplemented through various ingenious advances in communications, information technology and other energy powered technologies (see here for additional details). The continual increase in life expectancy accompanied by the decline in disease indicates that new technologies reduced risks by a greater amount than any risks that they may have created or exacerbated due to pollutants associated with greater consumption of materials, chemicals and energy,
And this is one reason why the Neo-Malthusian vision comes up short. It dwells on the increases in risk that new technologies may create or aggravate but overlooks the larger — and usually more certain — risks that they would also eliminate or reduce. In other words, it focuses on the pixels, but misses the larger picture, despite pretensions to a holistic worldview.
It was this mindset — legitimized as the “precautionary principle” — that led, for instance, to the premature reduction in DDT usage even in areas where malaria was endemic and could be reduced through its use.
Read the more detailed post, with figures, here.
A Reality Check for Neo-Malthusians
Neo-Malthusians bemoan population growth and view economic, technological, and fossil fuel development as inventions of the Devil. Yet between 1750 and 2007, despite an octupling of global population, and increases in affluence by an order of magnitude and CO2 emissions by three orders of magnitude, the average global life expectancy at birth — the single most important indicator for human well-being — more than doubled from 26 years to 69 years.
Not only are we living longer, we are also living healthier.
Read more here.
Return of the Neo-Malthusians
This Earth Day we heard various commentators bemoan the growth in population, consumption, and carbon emissions driven by fossil fueled technologies. Once again we are told that this is unsustainable, that we are running out of resources, prices are inevitably headed up, and, worse, such consumption reduces both environmetal and human well-being. In this worldview, industrialization and economic development were fashioned in the Devil’s crucible, and that de-industrialization and de-development will be our saviour.
I have started a series of posts at Master Resources that compares the above Neo-Malthusian view of industrialization, economic growth, and technological change against empirical data on human well-being from the age of industrialization. The first post revisits the bet made in 1980 by Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich on the direction of commodity prices, and examines long term trends in the prices and affordability of various commodities. Specifically, for metals, I look at trends going back to 1800, while for food I examine trends from 1900 onward. Parts II and III will compare long term trends in population, consumption, economic development, and carbon emissions against trends in human well-being for the world (from 1750 onward) and the United States (from 1900 onward). Finally, Part IV will provide an explanation as to why empirical data is at odds with the Neo-Malthusian worldview.
Part I, which examines the Simon-Ehrlich Bet in the context of long term trends in the prices and affordability of various commodities, is here.
The Improving State of New York City, circa 1800-2007
Two figures that say it all.
Death Rates (deaths per 1,000 population), New York City, c. 1800-2007. Source: NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene. Summary of Vital Statistics (2008). H/T to William Briggs for making me aware of this figure.
Infant Mortality Rate (deaths per 1,000 live births), New York City, 1898-2007. In 1898 IMR was estimated to be 140.9 Because of incomplete reporting of early neonatal deaths, this is almost certainly an underestimate. In 2007 IMR was 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births. Source: NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene. Summary of Vital Statistics (2008)
Are Industrialized Countries Responsible for Reducing the Well Being of Developing Countries?
A basic contention of developing countries (DCs) and various UN bureaucracies and multilateral groups during the course of International negotiations on climate change is that industrialized countries (ICs) have a historical responsibility for global warming. This contention underlies much of the justification for insisting not only that industrialized countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions even as developing countries are given a bye on emission reductions, but that they also subsidize clean energy development and adaptation in developing countries. [It is also part of the rationale that industrialized countries should pay reparations for presumed damages from climate change.]
Based on the above contention, the Kyoto Protocol imposes no direct costs on developing countries and holds out the prospect of large amounts of transfer payments from industrialized to developing countries via the Clean Development Mechanism or an Adaptation Fund. Not surprisingly, virtually every developing country has ratified the Protocol and is adamant that these features be retained in any son-of-Kyoto.
For their part, UN and other multilateral agencies favor this approach because lacking any taxing authority or other ready mechanism for raising revenues, they see revenues in helping manage, facilitate or distribute the enormous amounts of money that, in theory, should be available from ICs to fund mitigation and adaptation in the DCs.
Continue reading here.
The Economist‘s Flawed Backgrounder on Climate & Development
The Economist’s print edition has published my letter taking it to task for a pretty uninformed piece it published on the impacts of climate change last month. Although the editors changed the title, dropped the references which I furnish reflexively, and is somewhat briefer, the printed version is for the most part quite faithful to the spirit of the original. For the benefit of readers interested in checking my statements and going beyond the “he said, she said” nature of most exchanges on the opinion pages of newspapers and magazines, my original letter is here.
Why Future Net Negative Impacts of Global Warming Are Overestimated: Response to Conor Clarke, Part IV
This post responds to the last of Conor Clarke’s comments on my study, “What to Do About Global Warming,” published by Cato. This series started with the imaginatively titled, Response to Conor Clarke Part I, and continued with Cherry Picking Climate Catastrophes and Do Industrialized Countries Have a Responsibility for the Well-Being of Developing Nations?
CONOR said:
I think Goklany is a bit picky and choosey with the evidence. … I also like the Goklany paper a lot. [THANK YOU!! I'll take whatever I get.] But in this case it’s hard to resist. [Emphasis in original.]
To take one example (of several), Goklany’s hunger estimates rely heavily on those published by Global Environmental Change (GEC), which he uses to make the argument that “the world will be better off in 2085 with respect to hunger than it was in 1990 despite any increase in population.” But the GEC produced two estimates of hunger and climate change — one that assumes the benefits of CO2 fertilization and one that does not. Goklany picks the former estimate (I have no idea why), despite the fact the GEC says the effects of climate change “will fall somewhere between” the two. … [I}f you embrace anything other than the most Pollyanish CO2 fertilization estimate -- the one that Goklany uses in his Cato paper -- we will be living in a world in which climate change puts tens of millions of additional people at risk of starvation by 2085.
My RESPONSE:
First, let me elaborate on my selection of the set of studies that I used in my paper. Essentially, the selected set of studies (published in Global Environmental Change) was the only one that had estimated global impacts using detailed process models in conjunction with the IPCC’s latest scenarios, and were peer reviewed. Moreover, they come with a provenance that people who may be unhappy with my results cannot impugn. [This is important only because many people arguing about global warming seem to be more concerned about who did the study and whether the results bolster their predilections, than how the study was done.] Specifically, virtually all the authors were intimately connected with the IPCC. The senior author of the hunger study was also the co-chairman of the IPCC’s Work Group II, which was responsible for compiling the portion of the IPCC’s latest assessment that dealt with impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. The authors of the water resource and coastal flooding studies were the lead authors of corresponding chapters in that IPCC report. An earlier version of the same set of impact studies was the basis for the claim by Sir David King, erstwhile science advisor to Her Majesty’s Government, that global warming was a more serious threat than terrorism (see here). The Stern Review also drew quite heavily from these studies (see below).
Do Industrialized Countries Have a Responsibility for the Well-Being of Developing Nations?
Conor Clarke’s second comment at The Atlantic blog on the study, “What to Do About Climate Change,” was that:
Goklany’s estimates are based on global aggregates that hide the unequal distribution of the climate change burden. Yes yes, I know Manzi will say that’s not decisive: As long as global GDP is higher, we can redistribute our way out of the problem more effectively tomorrow than we can today. I would be more comfortable with that debate if I thought vast international restributions of income in the name of global equity were more likely tomorrow than they are today.
RESPONSE:
Global greenhouse gas controls will also have uneven consequences. First, cost of controls will vary from country to country, and sector to sector. Second, because the impacts of climate change will also vary from area to area, the benefits of control will necessarily be uneven. They will also vary over time. In fact, for some sectors, some areas may benefit even under the IPCC’s warmest scenario, at least through the foreseeable future. For example, through at least 2085, climate change would increase the global population at risk of water stress (see Figure 2, here). Therefore controlling climate change would exacerbate the global population at risk of water stress. So both the costs and benefits of climate change controls will also be distributed unevenly. Third, as noted here, implementing climate change controls that go beyond no-regret actions requires that today’s poorer generations delay solving the real problems they face here and now and instead put resources into solving the hypothetical problems that may (or may not) confront tomorrow’s far wealthier — and technologically better-endowed — populations. Nothing equitable about that.
Conor Clarke’s third comment was:
… I’m suspicious of the ethical calculus that says we should not focus on one large global problem because larger global problems might exist. [Emphasis in the original.] That kind of moral math rarely corresponds to the political reality. (Do you think the average congressperson opposed to Waxman-Markey has trouble sleeping at night over new cases of malaria or global hunger?) Nor does it correspond to the historical responsibility: Industrialized nations are more responsible for the global problems created by climate change than the problems of population growth.
RESPONSE:
Cherry Picking Climate Catastrophes: Response to Conor Clarke, Part II
Conor Clarke at The Atlantic blog, raised several issues with my study, “What to Do About Climate Change,” which Cato published last year.
One of Conor Clarke’s comments was that my analysis did not extend beyond the 21st century. He found this problematic because, as Conor put it, climate change would extend beyond 2100, and even if GDP is higher in 2100 with unfettered global warming than without, it’s not obvious that this GDP would continue to be higher “in the year 2200 or 2300 or 3758”. I addressed this portion of his argument in Part I of my response. Here I will address the second part of this argument, that “the possibility of ‘catastrophic’ climate change events — those with low probability but extremely high cost — becomes real after 2100.”
The examples of potentially catastrophic events that could be caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas induced global warming (AGW) that have been offered to date (e.g., melting of the Greenland or West Antarctic Ice Sheets, or the shutdown of the thermohaline circulation) contain a few drops of plausibility submerged in oceans of speculation. There are no scientifically justified estimates of the probability of their occurrence by any given date. Nor are there scientifically justified estimates of the magnitude of damages such events might cause, not just in biophysical terms but also in socioeconomic terms. Therefore, to call these events “low probability” — as Mr. Clarke does — is a misnomer. They are more appropriately termed as plausible but highly speculative events.
Consider, for example, the potential collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS). According to the IPCC’s WG I Summary for Policy Makers (p. 17), “If a negative surface mass balance were sustained for millennia, that would lead to virtually complete elimination of the Greenland Ice Sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7 m” (emphasis added). Presumably the same applies to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
But what is the probability that a negative surface mass balance can, in fact, be sustained for millennia, particularly after considering the amount of fossil fuels that can be economically extracted and the likelihood that other energy sources will not displace fossil fuels in the interim? [Remember we are told that peak oil is nigh, that renewables are almost competitive with fossil fuels, and that wind, solar and biofuels will soon pay for themselves.]
Second, for an event to be classified as a catastrophe, it should occur relatively quickly precluding efforts by man or nature to adapt or otherwise deal with it. But if it occurs over millennia, as the IPCC says, or even centuries, that gives humanity ample time to adjust, albeit at a socioeconomic cost. But it need not be prohibitively dangerous to life, limb or property if: (1) the total amount of sea level rise (SLR) and, perhaps more importantly, the rate of SLR can be predicted with some confidence, as seems likely in the next few decades considering the resources being expended on such research; (2) the rate of SLR is slow relative to how fast populations can strengthen coastal defenses and/or relocate; and (3) there are no insurmountable barriers to migration.
This would be true even had the so-called “tipping point” already been passed and ultimate disintegration of the ice sheet was inevitable, so long as it takes millennia for the disintegration to be realized. In other words, the issue isn’t just whether the tipping point is reached, rather it is how long does it actually take to tip over. Take, for example, if a hand grenade is tossed into a crowded room. Whether this results in tragedy — and the magnitude of that tragedy — depends upon how much time it takes for the grenade to go off, the reaction time of the occupants, and their ability to respond.
Response to Conor Clarke, Part I
Last week Conor Clarke at The Atlantic blog , apparently as part of a running argument with Jim Manzi, raised four substantive issues with my study, “What to Do About Climate Change,” that Cato published last year. Mr. Clarke deserves a response, and I apologize for not getting to this sooner. Today, I’ll address the first part of his first comment. I’ll address the rest of his comments over the next few days.
Conor Clarke:
(1) Goklany’s analysis does not extend beyond the 21st century. This is a problem for two reasons. First, climate change has no plans to close shop in 2100. Even if you believe GDP will be higher in 2100 with unfettered global warming than without, it’s not obvious that GDP would be higher in the year 2200 or 2300 or 3758. (This depends crucially on the rate of technological progress, and as Goklany’s paper acknowledges, that’s difficult to model.) Second, the possibility of “catastrophic” climate change events — those with low probability but extremely high cost — becomes real after 2100.
Response: First, I wouldn’t put too much stock in analyses purporting to extend out to the end of the 21st century, let alone beyond that, for numerous reasons, some of which are laid out on pp. 2-3 of the Cato study. As noted there, according to a paper commissioned for the Stern Review, “changes in socioeconomic systems cannot be projected semi-realistically for more than 5–10 years at a time.”
Second, regarding Mr. Clarke’s statement that, “Even if you believe GDP will be higher in 2100 with unfettered global warming than without, it’s not obvious that GDP would be higher in the year 2200 or 2300 or 3758,” I should note that the conclusion that net welfare for 2100 (measured by net GDP per capita) is not based on a belief. It follows inexorably from Stern’s own analysis.
Third, despite my skepticism of long term estimates, I have, for the sake of argument, extended the calculation to 2200. See here. Once again, I used the Stern Review’s estimates, not because I think they are particularly credible (see below), but for the sake of argument. Specifically, I assumed that losses in welfare due to climate change under the IPCC’s warmest scenario would, per the Stern Review’s 95th percentile estimate, be equivalent to 35.2 percent of GDP in 2200. [Recall that Stern’s estimates account for losses due to market impacts, non-market (i.e., environmental and public health) impacts and the risk of catastrophe, so one can’t argue that only market impacts were considered.]
The results, summarized in the following figure, indicate that even if one uses the Stern Review’s inflated impact estimates under the warmest IPCC scenario, net GDP in 2200 ought to be higher in the warmest world than in cooler worlds for both developing and industrialized countries.
Source: Indur M. Goklany, “Discounting the Future,” Regulation 32: 36-40 (Spring 2009).
The costs of climate change used to develop the above figure are, most likely, overestimated because they do not properly account for increases in future adaptive capacity consistent with the level of net economic development resulting from Stern’s own estimates (as shown in the above figure). This figure shows that even after accounting for losses in GDP per capita due to climate change – and inflating these losses — net GDP per capita in 2200 would be between 16 and 85 times higher in 2200 that it was in the baseline year (1990). No less important, Stern’s estimate of the costs of climate change neglect secular technological change that ought to occur during the 210-year period extending from the base year (1990) to 2200. In fact, as shown here, empirical data show that for most environmental indicators that have a critical effect on human well-being, technology has, over decades-long time frames reduced impacts by one or more orders of magnitude.
As a gedanken experiment, compare technology (and civilization’s adaptive capacity) in 1799 versus 2009. How credible would a projection for 2009 have been if it didn’t account for technological change from 1799 to 2009?
I should note that some people tend to dismiss the above estimates of GDP on the grounds that it is unlikely that economic development, particularly in today’s developing countries, will be as high as indicated in the figure. My response to this is that they are based on the very assumptions that drive the IPCC and the Stern Review’s emissions and climate change scenarios. So if one disbelieves the above GDP estimates, then one should also disbelieve the IPCC and the Stern Review’s projection for the future.
Fourth, even if analysis that appropriately accounted for increases in adaptive capacity had shown that in 2200 people would be worse off in the richest-but-warmest world than in cooler worlds, I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. Even assuming a 100-year lag time between the initiation of emission reductions and a reduction in global temperature because of a combination of the inertia of the climate system and the turnover time for the energy infrastructure, we don’t need to do anything drastic till after 2100 (=2200 minus 100 years), unless monitoring shows before then that matters are actually becoming worse (as opposing merely changing), in which case we should certainly mobilize our responses. [Note that change doesn’t necessarily equate to worsening. One has to show that a change would be for the worse. Unfortunately, much of the climate change literature skips this crucial step.]
In fact, waiting-and-preparing-while-we-watch (AKA watch-and-wait) makes most sense, just as it does for many problems (e.g., some cancers) where the cost of action is currently high relative to its benefit, benefits are uncertain, and technological change could relatively rapidly improve the cost-benefit ratio of controls. Within the next few decades, we should have a much better understanding of climate change and its impacts, and the cost of controls ought to decline in the future, particularly if we invest in research and development for mitigation. In the meantime we should spend our resources on solving today’s first order problems – and climate change simply doesn’t make that list, as shown by the only exercises that have ever bothered to compare the importance of climate change relative to other global problems. See here and here. As is shown in the Cato paper (and elsewhere), this also ought to reduce vulnerability and increase resiliency to climate change.
In the next installment, I’ll address the second point in Mr. Clarke’s first point, namely, the fear that “the possibility of ‘catastrophic’ climate change events — those with low probability but extremely high cost — becomes real after 2100.”
The Deadliest U.S. Natural Hazard: Extreme Cold
Reuters reports that:
Heat is more likely to kill an American than an earthquake, and thunderstorms kill more people than hurricanes do, according to a U.S. “death map” published on Tuesday…
Heat and drought caused 19.6 percent of total deaths from natural hazards, with summer thunderstorms causing 18.8 percent and winter weather causing 18.1 percent, the team at the University of South Carolina found.
However, the result that heat is the most deadly natural hazard seems to be an artifact of the data source employed by the authors of the so-called “death map.” Their primary data source is the National Climatic Data Center’s Storm Data. However, the NCDC data for mortality from extreme heat and cold is questionable.
As is evident from the paper, the authors are aware that mortality data for these two types of extreme events from NCDC are substantially different from mortality data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) based on the Compressed Mortality File for the United States. The latter uses death certificate records, which provide the cause of each recorded death (based on medical opinion). I would contend that when it comes to cause of death, particularly for extreme cold and heat, medical opinion as captured in death certificate records is probably more reliable than determinations made by the meteorologists in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s NCDC.
The following table from Goklany (2007) provides a breakdown of mortality due to the major types of extreme weather events for 1979-2002 based on data from the CDC database for extreme cold and extreme heat, and various arms of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for floods, lightning, hurricanes, and tornadoes. It indicates that extreme cold, rather than heat, is the deadliest form of extreme weather event. In fact, over this period, extreme cold was responsible for slightly more than 50 percent of deaths during this period for the categories listed in the table.
Note that despite the hoopla about natural weather disasters, they contribute less than 0.06% to the annual U.S. death toll!
Moreover, as the following figure, also from Goklany (2007), shows, both US death and death rates from weather events are declining, despite any climate change, which we are assured can only make matters worse.
Finally, the Reuters report notes, “Researchers who compiled the county-by-county look at what natural disasters kill Americans said they hope their study will help emergency preparedness officials plan better.” [The study was apparently funded by the Department of Homeland Security.] As a taxpayer, I hope that emergency preparedness officials look beyond this study to identify and prepare for future emergencies, or they might miss out on the larger disasters, even as they prepare for lesser ones.
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