Since the early days of the Industrial Revolution, people have worried about the consequences of atmospheric emissions resulting from economic activity. Global warming fears are nothing new. What's new is international urgency to do something about it. That urgency led to a May 9 agreement by a United Nations committee to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases. The agreement will serve as a rallying point at next month's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Diplomatic euphoria threatens to mask the harsh reality that no effort to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can occur without significant cost. All current proposals focus on combustion of fossil fuels, the human activity that contributes most to an observed buildup of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. To reduce fossil fuel combustion requires that humans work less or use different fuels. Either option is costly.
DENYING THE COSTS
Denials of this reality aren't difficult to find in global warming debates. According to some, costs of wholesale fuel substitution would be negligible because nonfossil fuels somehow are more efficient. So what's keeping those politically proper fuels out of the market now? Costs, of course.
Cost estimates for greenhouse gas remediation, like everything else in the global warming issue, are fraught with hazard. There are too many unpredictable variables. A Charles River Associates study underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute shows the magnitude of what might be involved. The study estimates that a $200/ton carbon tax would be required to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide. In the U.S. such a tax would reduce gross national product by 1.7%/year in 2020 and 2.4%/year in 2100. It would amount to $120/ton of coal, $26/bbl of oil, and $3.20/Mcf of natural gas. The world simply cannot hike fuel costs by those amounts, or even half those amounts, without creating massive economic-meaning human-hardship.
And for what? To stop global warming?
As a series of editorials concluding here has attempted to show, science provides strong doubts that an observed greenhouse gas buildup has much or anything to do with a measured temperature increase during the past century. It provides strong doubts that a serious warming trend even exists. The fact is that science understands very little about global climate change, that the computer models humans use to assess atmospheric phenomena, the models that raised fears about temperature surges and coastal flooding next century, more often than not conflict with observations.
So little is understood about greenhouse warming and the earth's adaptability, in fact, that there's reason to suspect hasty responses would do more environmental harm than good. Economic deprivation usually has that effect.
THE ISSUE
The global warming issue should be about science and costs. It should focus on the problem, if there is one, and ask whether it warrants remedies that inevitably would require major economic sacrifice. Against the broad uncertainties that still characterize global warming science, the current rush by world political leaders to prescribe economic pain looks cavalier and wrong.
The issue is not whether U.S. President George Bush is dragging his feet on the environment. The issue is not whether countries can come together in heart and mind at the Earth Summit. The issue is whether governments can refrain from impeding human progress-the essence of economic activity-when science provides so little justification for meddling.
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
