Making sense of the climate impasse

* JEFFREY D. SACHS | Friday July 30, 2010 00:00

The first five months of this year were the warmest on record going back to 1880. May was the warmest month ever. Intense heat waves are currently hitting many parts of the world. Yet still we fail to act.

There are several reasons for this, and we should understand them in order to break today's deadlock. First, the economic challenge of controlling human-induced climate change is truly complex. Human-induced climate change stems from two principal sources of emissions of greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide): fossil-fuel use for energy and agriculture (including deforestation to create new farmland and pastureland). Changing the world's energy and agricultural systems is no small matter. We need a practical strategy for overhauling two economic sectors that stand at the center of the global economy and involve the world's population.

The second major challenge in addressing climate change is the complexity of the science itself. Today's understanding of Earth's climate and the human-induced component of climate change is the result of extremely difficult scientific work involving thousands of scientists in all parts of the world. This scientific understanding is incomplete, and there remain uncertainties about the precise magnitudes, timing, and dangers of climate change.

The general public naturally has a hard time grappling with this complexity and uncertainty, especially since the changes in climate are occurring over a timetable of decades and centuries, rather than months and years.

Moreover, year-to-year natural variations in climate are intermixed with human-induced climate change, making it even more difficult to target damaging behavior.

This has given rise to a third problem in addressing climate change, which stems from a combination of the economic implications of the issue and the uncertainty that surrounds it. This is reflected in the brutal, destructive campaign against climate science by powerful vested interests and ideologues, apparently aimed at creating an atmosphere of ignorance and confusion.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, has run an aggressive editorial campaign against climate science for decades. The individuals involved in this campaign are not only scientifically uninformed, but show absolutely no interest in becoming better informed. They have turned down repeated offers by climate scientists to meet and conduct serious discussions about the issues.

Major oil companies and other big corporate interests also are playing this game, and have financed disreputable public-relations campaigns against climate science. Their general approach is to exaggerate the uncertainties of climate science and to leave the impression that climate scientists are engaged in some kind of conspiracy to frighten the public. It is an absurd charge, but absurd charges can curry public support if presented in a slick, well-funded format. If we add up these three factors - the enormous economic challenge of reducing greenhouse gases, the complexity of climate science, and deliberate campaigns to confuse the public and discredit the science - we arrive at the fourth and over-arching problem: US politicians' unwillingness or inability to formulate a sensible climate-change policy.

The US bears disproportionate responsibility for inaction on climate change, because it was long the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, until last year, when China overtook it. Even today, per capita US emissions are more than four times higher than China's. Yet, despite America's central role in global emissions, the US Senate has done nothing about climate change since ratifying the United Nations climate change treaty 16 years ago.

* Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.  Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.