Global climate change and poverty

[jay gw]

Do you want global warming, nuclear power or poverty?
Graham Searjeant, Financial Editor

CHINA’S economic take-off, closely followed by India’s, is bringing the biggest gains from trade in generations. For those facing competition from cheap goods or outsourcing of services, the process is painful. More than all the world’s development aid, however, this trade revolution offers the real prospect of raising the living standards of billions of people from $1 or $2 a day to decent levels.

Unless the US economy and the eurozone are stuck with low growth, which would itself hobble the rest of the world, regular energy shortages and bouts of high prices look inevitable. On present policies, there will be a direct conflict between the advance of the world’s two most populous countries and stable prosperity in the West. That is only one unwelcome energy effect of Asian expansion. On the IEA’s projections, 85 per cent of additional energy will come from fossil fuels.

If carbon dioxide released when coal, oil and gas are burnt is already heating the earth’s atmosphere alarmingly, as many scientists claim, the impact of China and India coming up to Western levels would be catastrophic.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8209-1334482,00.html

 

[BPSCG]

Do you want global warming, nuclear power or poverty?

(...snip...)

the impact of China and India coming up to Western levels would be catastrophic.

The answer's obvious. Send in the B-1's. This planet ain't big enough for the three of us.

 

[Rob Lister]

Do you want global warming, nuclear power or poverty?
Graham Searjeant, Financial Editor

CHINA’S economic take-off, closely followed...
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8209-1334482,00.html

That was actually a pretty good article. I take exception with some of the implicit conclusions however.

On present policies, the rise of China and India from poverty is incompatible with any attempt to slow, let alone halt, global warming. A choice has to be made to keep poor people poor or to take our chances on the environment.

Unless you define your environmental policies strictly upon the global warming predictions, I think just the opposite is true. The richer the nation, the cleaner the nation. So it seems to me that you take your chances either way.

If you allow nations to remain poor they cannot afford to implement policies that keep the environment clean in other ways, which is surely just as important. Poorer nations also have larger population growths, which further exasperates the environmental problem.

If you allow nations to become rich then they will emit more CO2 which might (I think probably) increase warming by some degree. What is unknown is how much, if any that increase will be.

Let's assume the warming is significant. If so then humans will either adapt to the change (my bet) or they will not (never bet). If not, then that non-adaptatation solves the problem in direct proportion that it is a problem, thus reducing the cause of the problem in the first place.

I'm all for using nuclear power wherever nuclear power is possible. It is unlikely to ever be our only power source necessary. But to restrict the use of CO2 emitting sources, or to expend resources in capturing and disposing of that CO2, may just as easily be as bad for the economy, environment, and the human-species as dealing with the warmth that the CO2 might cause.

Ah, Fusion. Just 50 more years away. Sigh.