The main reason to oppose the environmental movement and the entrenched institutions that have emerged is that they are bad for the environment, but it may be more compelling to recognize that they are more than bad, they are deadly for those least able to survive bad policy. This opinion piece speaks to the problem. [via Arts and Letters Daily]

In a world where we cannot deal with all the problems at the same time, we need to ask: what should we do first? This was the question answered by the Copenhagen Consensus, a project that brought together 38 of the world's top economists to set up a list of the global priorities. They looked at the main challenges to humanity, and the many solutions that we already have, analysing both their benefits but also their price tag. By using cost-benefit analysis the expert panel of economists found that HIV/Aids, hunger, free trade and malaria were the world's top priorities. Equally, the experts rated urgent responses to climate change extremely low. In fact, the panel called these ventures "bad projects", simply because they cost more than the good they do.

Last week, a coalition of environmental and development organisations published a report stating the Kyoto protocol and even stricter policies should be our first priority. Not surprisingly, they criticised the Copenhagen Consensus as "intellectually corrupt" with "bizarre conclusions" reached through "intellectual illiteracy".

That opposition group, The Working Group on Climate Change and Development are:

ActionAid International, Christian Aid, Columban Faith and Justice, IDS (Institute of Development Studies), ITDG (Intermediate Technology Development Group), IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development), Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, nef (new economics foundation), Operation Noah, Oxfam, People & Planet, RSPB, Tearfund, teri Europe, WWF, WaterAid and World Vision.

Their report, Up In Smoke, makes a number of remarkably silly demands. But it isn't the silliness that is the central issue, it is that their obsession with climate change is having and will continue to have deadly consequences for those in need. As noted in the opinion piece:

It says climate stability holds absolute precedence over all other is sues, stating: "A stable climate is something we might now call a system condition for civilisation." Without it, "civilisation is impossible". Such a gambit is politically savvy - but also incorrect. Let us agree that human activity is changing our climate and that global warming will have serious, negative impacts. Nonetheless, all the information from the UN climate panel, the IPCC, tells us that it will not end civilisation.

The coalition tells us that the proportion of hungry people may actually go up by 2015. Yet the fact is that the UN expects the proportion to decline from 17% to less than 12% of the developing world. By 2015, only a very small portion of global warming will have taken hold, and even by 2080, the IPCC expects that the global food production will have increased by about as much as it would in an unwarmed world.

It worries that malaria will rise in a warmer world. This claim has some theoretical validity, but forgets that malaria only persists with poor infrastructure and health care. Actually, throughout the 1500-1800s, malaria was a major epidemic disease in Europe, the US and far into the Arctic Circle. It didn't end because it got colder, but because Europe and the US became richer and dealt with the problem.

The paleo-environmental movement - FOE, Greenpeace, Oxfam, WWF and their ilk - are not useful any longer... if they ever were. They don't provide useful information or analyses and they don't advocate policies that would accomplish useful goals. It is questionable whether it is even politically savvy as asserted above. Are people really so impoverished for good information that they can't see the falseness of the assertions? Are they really so bad at analysis that they can't see that these are bad policies?

I think that this is an emperor's clothes situation. Everyone can see that the assertions are whole cloth but they don't speak up since they imagine that their interests are being served in some way and that if they break ranks there will be hell to pay. Much of this is political blackmail. Coalitions that depend on these ersatz greens to hold power, usually left dominated red/green coalitions - or, as in the US, what passes for a left of sorts, the Democrats - refrain from making critical statements about even this sort of nonsense to avoid fragmenting the coalition and losing power.

This is a blunder for leftists and a tragedy for the developing world. If the left has any meaning at this late date it must be solidarity with the poor and committment to ease their suffering while elevating them to fuller participation in society. Climate change is not even remotely their greatest threat. We need a decent left and a new environmentalism to cope with current dilemmas in a progressive way that is intellectually and morally admirable.

» Green Idea Trap from Crumb Trail
A new M&M rant, Against The Poor, wrestles with an example of the sort of death spiral noted by Bryan Caplan and discussed in Psycho-Logical: The main reason to oppose the environmental movement and the entrenched institutions that have emerged is tha......[read more]
Tracked: November 2, 2004 05:13 PM