Governments dealing with cholera acted despite large remaining uncertainties about how the disease was caused and transmitted. Science had shown strong links between contaminated water and the disease, but the disease organism had not been identified. Despite the uncertainties, and the arguments from the business community against taking actions, the governments moved to help people. Our modern understanding of the causes of climate change is much better than the scientific understanding of cholera when the governments committed to sewer and water systems to stop cholera.
The idea known as the Golden Rule in some western traditions is found in a similar form in all major traditions, and urges us to treat other people in the way that we wish those other people to treat us. Successful societies all over the world have found this to be a useful rule to follow.
Wealthier people in colder places are burning fossil fuels most rapidly, contributing most to global warming, but are not suffering too much yet from the climate changes, which are hurting poor people in hot places, and people everywhere in future generations. This is not consistent with the Golden Rule.
By acceding to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, governments agreed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic influence on the climate system. But, the Convention did not define what dangerous anthropogenic influence is. Many scientists and others have linked “dangerous” to a specific warming, such as 2oC. But, this is not a limit that was adopted by international treaty.
CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas, but not the only one. Agreeing on a limit on warming means agreeing on an upper limit on the CO2 we emit to the atmosphere (unless we take major efforts to remove the CO2, or block the sun). Because the temperature responds to other greenhouse gases as well as CO2, emissions of those other gases influence the amount of CO2 that can be emitted to keep warming below the specified level.
The atmosphere doesn’t care much where or when humans emit CO2; more emissions mean more warming. So, agreeing on an upper limit for warming means we have agreed on an upper limit to CO2 emissions, unless we take “geoengineering” approaches such as removing CO2 from the air or blocking the sun. But, who should get to emit the CO2 raises serious ethical questions, and the world has not yet agreed on answers.
Economists observe that our behavior is consistent with models in which having things now is more valuable than having the same things in the future. This is generalized as the “pure rate of time preference”.
The pure rate of time preference is part of the discount rate. A high discount rate, from a high pure rate of time preference, means that we do a little now to reduce climate change, but not very much, to follow the economically optimal or efficient path. Reducing the discount rate by reducing the pure rate of time preference increases the amount of effort needed now to be optimal.
The task of putting the entire economy into a model is immense, and never complete. The value that species might have in the future as we learn new ways to use them is generally not included in models, nor do we really know how tourism will decrease as rare and endangered species disappear. And, the belief that we have a moral or religious obligation to preserve creation is generally not monetized. All of these tend to motivate additional actions to reduce climate change. If one belonged to a group that favored extinctions as a good thing, or believed that extinctions would preferentially increase tourism or otherwise help the economy, then you might favor less action to reduce climate change, but the available scholarship clearly points to extinction motivating more effort now to reduce climate change.
The relations between rents or dependence on natural resources, and student performance or economic growth, are clearly complex, but the best student performances and economic growth were associated with low reliance on rents from valuable natural resources, and the countries relying most on natural resources had low economic growth and poor student outcomes.
Correlation does not prove causation, but there are reasons to believe that too much reliance on a valuable natural resource might lead to bad outcomes in other ways. Many issues contribute to such correlations, but this might be one. Some of the best-performing countries believe a football is spherical.
Building is harder than breaking; many tools are required to build something important, but only one may be needed to break what has been built. CO2 by itself cannot make everything in the world wonderful, but it might cause changes that break many important things we care about. Thus, the uncertainties are mostly on the “bad” side—the most-likely future is near the good side of the possible futures.
We take out insurance against disasters that are possible but unexpected. Most people never “use” the fire insurance on their houses or the air bags in their car, but analyses show clearly that buying fire insurance and air bags is wise. This Precautionary Principle can be applied to climate change, too.
The evidence is quite clear, and has been for decades, that using our knowledge of climate and energy can make us better off.
Many of the proposals put forward to deal with climate change involve no growth in government revenues, and might simplify taxes, while reducing future climate stress and disasters that might trigger large government actions. Governments could take actions that would cause government growth and be intrusive in many ways, but such actions are not required to deal with climate change.