HELTER SWELTER: The Debate over Global Warming

Guests:

• Carl Pope

  Executive Director, Sierra Club

• Fred Smith Jr.

  President and Founder, Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Streaming video:

• HELTER SWELTER: The Debate over Global Warming

Transcript:

Peter Robinson: Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson. Our show today: global warming--what do we know, and what should we do? This summer's big disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow depicts a world in which a sudden climate change plunges us all into a new ice age. While they're agreed that the movie is over the top, some scientists argue that a climate change, even a very sudden climate change is indeed possible and that it could indeed be caused by human activity. So, does the evidence indicate that the accumulation of so-called greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is truly making the world warmer, and if so, what should we do about it?

Joining us today, two guests: Fred Smith is president and founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Carl Pope is executive director of the Sierra Club and the author of Strategic Ignorance: How the Bush Administration is Recklessly Destroying A Century of Environmental Progress.

Title: The Heat Is On

Peter Robinson: Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense: "When history books are written, global warming will be the issue that defines President Bush's environmental legacy." That is a true or false question? Carl?

Carl Pope: I doubt it.

Peter Robinson: You doubt it. Fred?

Fred Smith: Possibly.

Peter Robinson: Possibly. As far as I can tell, everything I'm about to say is true. Arctic ice is melting. Lakes and rivers in the northern hemisphere freeze a week later than they did 150 years ago. Glaciers from the Rockies to Mount Kilimanjaro are shrinking and, this is absolutely true, in 2001 the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that global warming "has been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." So can we take it as scientifically established that the globe is getting warmer and that it is doing so as a result of human actions. Carl?

Carl Pope: Most of the evidence suggests that it's due to human actions, but what's more important is that we understand that if we keep on adding greenhouse pollutants to the atmosphere, if we keep changing the composition, we will change the amount of energy the atmosphere stores, the amount of heat, and we will change the way in which the atmosphere behaves. So, what we know for certain is that if we keep on doing what we're doing which is changing the composition of the atmosphere, a whole bunch of things are going to happen eventually, which we won't control…

Peter Robinson: But you're skittering away…

Carl Pope: …and we can't predict.

Peter Robinson: You're skittering away from the matter of what is responsible for the actual observed global warming in such a quick and rapid fashion that it suggests to me there's a weakness in your argument there…

Carl Pope: No…

Peter Robinson: …you don't want to address that one.

Carl Pope: No, I'm going to address…most of the scientists think it is but I have to say…

Peter Robinson: ...that most scientists do think

Carl Pope: …do think that the current

Peter Robinson: …okay so we the consensus is

Carl Pope: …that the current signature, what they call the signature, most scientists are saying, the current signature is consistent with man-made changes in global climate, and not with anything else, but I have to say that if you then push them and say, well, is it possible that it's something else, they will say: it's conceivable but very unlikely.

Peter Robinson: Fred?

Fred Smith: Yeah, well, I think I agree with Carl. Is what the models have done is essentially calibrate themselves on the presumption that additional carbon dioxide levels in the environment explain the temperature changes of the last century where we had about a degree to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit. To do that, though, you've got to do a lot of manipulation what the feedback effects on the model. You have got to calibrate the model, fudge the model, to make it meet reality. Now we've discovered that there are a number of other factors, some anthropogenic…

Peter Robinson: …anthropogenic meaning?

Fred Smith: …man, human-caused, human effect…

Peter Robinson: Stuff we're doing.

Fred Smith: ….solar variability, ocean current variability, a lot of other factors and these other factors are increasingly relevant or potentially relevant and none of the models take them into account, so if in fact they are more relevant, as we're learning they are,

Peter Robinson: …okay

Fred Smith: …then, in fact, the models don't predict anything.

Peter Robinson: Okay, now, let's look at a few statistics that seem to cast a doubt on whether human activity is indeed the cause of global warming.

Title: Helter Swelter

Peter Robinson: Much of the warming over the last century took place between 1900 and 1940, before greenhouse gases start to accumulate significantly in the atmosphere. And in fact from '40 to '70 or so, the temperature falls. Theory of greenhouse warming predicts warming in the lower atmosphere but satellite measurements over the last several decades have shown no such warming and we have--during the Middle Ages, the earth is a couple of degrees warmer than it is today. So, James Schlesinger, former Secretary of Energy, I quote him: "The lessons of our recent history and of this longer history," going back to the Middle Ages are clear, "it is not possible to know how much of the warming over the last 100 years was caused by human activities and how much was because of natural forces." That's an old-fashioned view? It's just wrong?

Fred Smith: No, I think that's a temperate view of what we know. We've learned a lot about climate change. As we learn more, some of the factors that weren't initially considered relevant have become relevant. That means effectively whatever greenhouse gas effects might be, have dropped in proportion and the timing, as you point out, is not consistent with the view of a simple relationship anyway between greenhouse gases and warming.

Carl Pope: Now the point of this attack…

Peter Robinson: Are you worried about something that's happening in practice or something that's happening in theory? That's the question.

Carl Pope: No, I'm worried about something that's happening in practice which is we're changing the composition of the world's atmosphere. That's happening in practice. And that we know. And wait, wait, wait….

[talking at same time]

Carl Pope: The important thing is we actually don't know what consequences that will have in a level of certainty that is at all reassuring for the future.

Peter Robinson: So we're not going to say that what we've experienced of warming, is the result of human agency. We're not so sure about that.

Carl Pope: We're going to say that the scientists have concluded it's likely but the scientists can't tell us it's absolutely certain.

Fred Smith: And if you look from the…

Peter Robinson: You'll grant that?

Fred Smith: Well, only with the following proviso that the IPCC Executive Report, the news release sounds more certain than the underlying science does. So we have a public relations campaign that is trying to impute more certainty than actually the data suggests.

Peter Robinson: But you'll grant--all right, you now you go ahead and reframe the debate which is that now what we know for certain and what might have, go ahead…

Carl Pope: What we know for certain is that we're changing the composition of the atmosphere; we know for certain that we're adding gases to the atmosphere which will retain more heat which is energy. We are energizing the atmosphere.

Fred Smith: All right.

Carl Pope: And we also know that our ecological systems and human societies are very finely calibrated to predictable climates. We don't deal well, and ecosystems don't deal well with rapid climate change.

Fred Smith: This is the problem of Californians who actually think climate stays the same throughout the year. In the rest of the United States…

Carl Pope: No, weather is not climate, Fred….

Fred Smith: In the rest of the United States, there are very dramatic from night to day and from season to season and indeed over man's history, recorded history, we've gone through periods when we have had warmer weather and periods of warmer weather have actually coincided with periods of human flowering.

Peter Robinson: Hold on. Carl said we're pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And he's saying the chances are very good that that's going to warm the globe and we ought to be extremely careful about that and you're saying: aaahhh, well don't worry about that. A couple of degrees a century, it'll be fine.

Fred Smith: We're changing the globe we live on. Man has been doing that for 10,000 years.

Peter Robinson: All right

Fred Smith: We change the foods we eat. We change the way land is used. All of those have effects on climate, some good, some bad and man has continuously adapted to that and has become more resilient and that's a challenge. I want…

Peter Robinson: You want to…

Fred Smith: Do we prevent greenhouse global warming or do we learn to live with its benefits and its costs?

Peter Robinson: Next: what do we know about the rate at which climate changes may occur?

Title: The Turning Point

Peter Robinson: Most arguments about global warming and greenhouse gas emissions with which I'm familiar over recent years suggest a slow warming. This degree point something or other per century, maybe a couple of degrees a century. However we now have in the public debate a quite different model, the Tipping Point model. Apparently, according to Fortune Magazine, the Department of Defense commissioned a report suggests the melting ice cap could cause the Gulf Stream to shut down. So we've got two - one is slow and take it easy and we can learn to adapt to would be sort of implicit argument that I would anticipate from you. And the other is wait a minute, we could be in for catastrophic changes within a decade or two. Which is your worry? Which do you consider most likely?

Carl Pope: It's most likely that we're going to see a series of relatively slow but still very disruptive changes. It is however--you see what worries me…

Peter Robinson: Yes.

Carl Pope: I worry about catastrophic even low probability events. You could have a tipping point and it would be catastrophic. Now it's not highly probable.

Peter Robinson: On this same model that Fortune Magazine wrote about, and that is that…

Carl Pope: …the underlying…

Peter Robinson: …that shutting down the Gulf Stream.

Carl Pope: They thought it was a 1% event. Most of the scientists I've talked to say that is probably a 1% event.

Peter Robinson: 1% chance over what period of time?

Carl Pope: Oh, over a couple of hundred years.

Peter Robinson: Oh, I see.

Carl Pope: And, okay, a 1% event of a catastrophe is something worth worrying about. We all worry about things that might kill us even though they're only 1% likely to kill us.

Fred Smith: Is there a surprise as they put it, the chances are 1%, I think much less than that, because in effect the one example we know of, the shutting down of the Gulf Stream, was 10,000 years ago when there was a vast fresh water lake over Canada--there is no such lake now--any effects are going to be much slower and can be readily reduced by building dams on the Canadian and Russian rivers. But the real question is, he's worried about the down side of change. Mankind has been changing this planet in many, many ways. Some very good, some not so good, and we're changing the planet more. The question is whether--he worries about global warming surprises. I worry about global warming policy surprises, because nothing can be more disastrous to the future of the world than suppressing the use of affordable energy.

Peter Robinson: Carl, surprise him. Give him a policy surprise. You have now sketched out your worry. What do you want to do about it?

Carl Pope: What I want to do about it is to recognize the fact that right now people who take from the global commons, don't have to pay for what they take. Violates all market theory. When I go to the grocery store, I have to pay for what I take for it. Right now, the people who are taking the capacity of the global atmosphere to absorb CO₂ aren't paying for it. Let's say that the only thing that happens as a consequence of global warming is we get more frequent typhoons off the Bay of Bengal. That's the only change. And you know, 10,000 people a year die in Bangladesh. Where did we get the right to hijack the composition of global atmosphere in a way that kills 10,000 people in Bangladesh a year? We don't have that right, and we ought to be paying for what we're doing with carbon dioxide and let me say…

Peter Robinson: So what're you doing about it, what are you do about it?

Carl Pope: We make people pay...

Peter Robinson: Fred's not going to say we have the right to kill people…

Fred Smith: Raise gas taxes, that's as fast as…

Peter Robinson: Is that what you want to do?

Fred Smith: But again, let me--Carl is pointing out the down side of the situation. Let's go on the other side. Anything that makes it harder for the Bangladeshis of the world to handle storms that already exist independent of any anthropogenic crisis--Florida has hurricanes. When Florida experiences a hurricane because of our technology and our wealth, we know it's coming. We have SUVs to move us out of harm's way; we have the wealth to build brick houses rather than stick houses and we basically have disasters that are relatively modest and people don't die.

Peter Robinson: And your point is…

Fred Smith: Bangladesh…

Peter Robinson: …that the reaction to global warming by people like Carl takes this form, that form or the other, but broadly speaking they are all to retard economic development.

Fred Smith: Well to retard…

Peter Robinson: Is that right?

Fred Smith: Retard the use of fossil-based fuels which in today's world and probably for at least 50 years means retarding economic growth, meaning Bangladesh becomes less like Florida than it could otherwise be with economic growth.

Peter Robinson: You are going to keep poor people poorer around the globe.

Carl Pope: No, I'm not going to keep poor people poorer because in fact, what we are doing, the fact that we don't pay what we ought to be paying for the right to emit carbon dioxide into the world, if we paid for it, there would be money available to develop Bangladesh. We are not paying for what we're using. All I'm saying is: the people who are going to benefit…

Peter Robinson: This, from an official in the Sierra Club wants to use market mechanisms to address the problems.

Carl Pope: Indeed, I do. Indeed, I do.

Peter Robinson: Not bad.

Carl Pope: I want to make people pay for what they use which is a believer in…

Peter Robinson: And how exactly would you do that?

Carl Pope: You're talking like…

Fred Smith: Market mechanisms are one of those interesting little wiz-a-words that basically goes back to the real debate that Hayek and von Mises had with Abba Lerner and Oskar Lange. What were they arguing? That socialism fails but market mechanisms, the clever use of tax and quota systems designed to allow government to pick the targets of society and the market to steer us there is, of course, being reintroduced in the way of global warming and other environmental policies. The question is what we should do about the environment? How to get there is an important question.

Peter Robinson: Give me your answer then.

Fred Smith: What I think we should do is liberalize the entrepreneurial and technological forces the world needs to make it possible for the Bangladesh…

Peter Robinson: How? How?

Fred Smith: Well, the things that we're beginning to do already. Economic liberalization around the world.

Peter Robinson: Next, the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.

Title: Abandoning Protocol

Peter Robinson: Kyoto, signed in December, 1997 by the United States and 37 other nations would have required the signatories to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to an average of 5% below their 1990 levels by 2012. It varies among the members, but an average of 5%. The United States agreed to cut its emissions to 7% below 1990 levels. However, it was a non-starter. The Senate of the United States voted 95 to zero to oppose the Kyoto Protocol and Clinton never even sent it up to the Senate and in this administration, Condoleezza Rice said Kyoto is dead. However, the European Union and the Russians have just struck a deal and it looks as though Russia may join the Kyoto Protocol and Kyoto is alive! Is Kyoto good, bad? Should the United States join the Protocol? Tell me about Kyoto.

Carl Pope: The United States should rejoin the process. If the United States has a better idea, and I certainly think I have some better ideas than Kyoto, we should lay them on the table. But the goal of the ideas should be to recognize the principle that we don't have the right to put risks on people in Bangladesh. We shouldn't gamble with the world's climates. We are being very wasteful in the way we use fossil fuels. It would not disrupt economic growth globally to be more careful about the way we use fossil fuels, and there are a bunch of different ways, wait a minute, there are a bunch of different ways that we can get a handle on this problem, that we….

Peter Robinson: That we can cut our emissions by 7%?

Carl Pope: Oh, more than that, more than that.

Peter Robinson: Without hampering our own economic….

Carl Pope: Without hampering our own economic growth.

Fred Smith: Well, it's a good theory. The reason we use fossil fuels is because they were less environmentally damaging than the renewable energies we had earlier. We used to use wood to make charcoal, to make iron and steel. That denuded the United Kingdom of its forests and was rapidly denuding the United States and then a better, more concentrated energy source, coal, became useable and that--and we saved the forests of the Eastern United States and indeed of the world by moving to a more concentrated energy form. That form of energy, coal, oil and natural gas drive the engines of economic growth today and there is nothing to replace them in the next 40, 50 years. We should be looking for alternatives as the President's program is doing, but we should recognize that to curtail fossil fuel energy today, means to curtail economic growth to make the world more like Bangladesh…

Peter Robinson: You just have a fundamental disagreement that the use of fossil fuels can be curtailed quickly, and sharper right now, is that right or not?

Carl Pope: What I'm saying is the use of fossil fuels, fossil fuels are being wasted. We shouldn't waste them. If we price them properly, again, I'm talking here about market mechanism. If we price them properly and we make people, for example, if people who want to burn coal have to make sure that mercury doesn't get out of the smokestacks and into the streams, then they'll be more likely to charge appropriate prices. We will buy better light bulbs. If people had to pay for the cost of affecting the Persian Gulf when they drive their SUV, they would drive hybrid SUVs, might still drive SUVs. There are a whole host of ways in which we can use energy more efficiently. Diversify energy sources…

Peter Robinson: You're talking about using the government as a rule-setting body, that is to say, not command and control.

Carl Pope: All markets are based on governments as rule-setting bodies.

Peter Robinson: Well, say they're different approaches to environmental policy.

Carl Pope: I'm not saying we have to have command and control. I'm saying that those who take from the commons, ought to pay for what they take, and without people's permission, you shouldn't have the right to do harm to them.

Fred Smith: One of the reasons Russia, I think, is unlikely ever to actually ratify Kyoto, even though they're playing nicey with the Europeans today is because they want to get into the World Trade Organization. If you read the language closely and followed the debate, the Russian Academy of Sciences has said that in their view, the science of global warming is too shallow to permit any nationalizing, and they are very prestigious, and their economists have pointed out and Putin has repeated that what would be wrong with Siberia warming up two or three degrees?

Peter Robinson: On to the Bush Administration's approach to global warming.

Title: Some Like It Hot

Peter Robinson: Three principles in the current Bush policy: One, the administration seeks reductions not in carbon emissions directly but in carbon intensity of an economy, the ratio of carbon emissions to Gross National Product--I see looks of amusement and scorn on both your faces--if the carbon intensity of a country falls 10%, that country's economy can grow 10% without increasing the country's carbon emissions. Conceptually, a good way of thinking the problem through?

Carl Pope: First of all, a reduction in carbon intensity is like being in favor of the Law of Gravity. It's going to happen unless we actually really screw up our economy.

Peter Robinson: Which he argues you are about to do.

Fred Smith: Yes, exactly.

Carl Pope: But second, the fact is we need to reduce emissions because we are overloading the globe. We're changing the atmosphere's composition and you can't reduce emissions by just reducing carbon intensity.

Peter Robinson: Which brings me to, hold on, hold on--it's television so time is limited--this brings me to point two of our three in the Bush policy, since the only way to cut carbon intensity is by developing in their view new low carbon technologies, the Administration is using government initiatives--heavy hand of government here, Fred--and funds, initiatives and money, to promote hydrogen cars--there's that smile--ways to burn coal without carbon emissions and other low-carbon technologies. Baloney, is what your face is telling me.

Fred Smith: Well, what I'm telling you is that it's all right to say let's do research. No one's opposed to knowledge acquisition, but, as Carl said earlier, reducing the intensity, the efficiency with which we transform our fossil fuels into useful activity, that is improving and will improve as long as we continue to deregulate, to privatize and not only we, the world. There are dramatic amounts of wasted energy around the world, not much in the United States actually. Many in the former Soviet economies where methane and gas is leaking out of pipelines.

Peter Robinson: In his State of the Union Address, the President pledged billions of dollars--I don't recall, it was single digits, three billion, four billion--for the development of hydrogen cars. Take that in isolation, was that a good proposal?

Carl Pope: That was a head fake. That was a …

Peter Robinson: He's using three billion dollars.

Carl Pope: That was a fraud.

Peter Robinson: To buy off the Sierra Club and its supporters and it didn't work.

Carl Pope: Well, that's right. And I think Fred and I will agree that…

Fred Smith: It was just politics…

Peter Robinson: The third point here in the Bush policy: the administration, again I look at you, the use of government power here, the administration is calling for voluntary compliance with emissions guidelines and the Department of Energy is writing rules by which enterprises will keep detailed accounts of their greenhouse gas emissions. Now, wait a minute. Is this just politics or is this the beginning of a vast, new scope for federal regulation. In other words, I have the feeling that you're broadly supportive of George W. Bush, but don't you feel the urge to slap the administration around for this nonsense?

Fred Smith: As a matter of fact, we have slapped the administration around on exactly this point. Our argument is that it's not a sinful activity, don't have to go to confession every year to the DOE. The argument is if we really understand that energy use is not something sinful. Affordable energy is one of the great virtues. The democratization of energy is which America's achieved, then the last thing you want to do is to demonize it by requiring that you report your peccadillos each year.

Peter Robinson: Okay, so…

Fred Smith: And creating a lobbying force among the Enrons or the future Enrons of the world, to lobby for more of these kind…

Peter Robinson: And by the way on that hydrogen car business, the first thing that happened is that the Chairman of GM said what a wonderful idea. Okay, so in the Fred Smith view of the world, the environmental policy of George W. Bush runs from ridiculous to possibly harmful.

Fred Smith: Incoherent I would say is a more logical way of saying it.

Peter Robinson: Then you'd agree with that?

Carl Pope: No, I would say it's more than incoherent, it's actually malicious.

Peter Robinson: Malicious because?

Carl Pope: Because they actually understand…

Peter Robinson: It's intentional; it's intended to confuse the political situation.

Carl Pope: And they understand that this will not get them where they go, they understand their policies won't achieve the results they lay out for them, and they are simply offering that to--in Frank Luntz's phrase, they are doing this so that the American people will not understand that on climate change, the science is against them…

Peter Robinson: Here is my guest, Carl Pope, Fred, I turn him over to you for questioning.

Fred Smith: Let me ask you a question. Well, what would happen if they actually put in place which they've tried to do in foreign aid generally, a program that said we're going to try to do everything that we can do by removing subsidies from sugar and other areas where you and I would agree. Free trade, by moving to--move aid from subsidy aid to direct investment by American firms in these countries so that efficiency gains we have would be there, and effectively we're going to try to make the world more like Florida and less like Bangladesh, that would be a program that would have economic benefits, but it would certainly have environmental benefits also.

Carl Pope: Well, there are a lot of they--the Administration--another thing you and I could probably agree about frankly. If we just said look, we're spending $180 billion a year on farm subsidies and we're completely screwing up the world doing so.

Peter Robinson: Let me press Carl on the connection between economic growth and global warming.

Title: What's Up, Dhaka?

Peter Robinson: You have just granted an extremely large point, namely, Fred Smith's colorful contention that economic growth is good for the environment.

Carl Pope: That's not a huge point. That is like common sense.

Peter Robinson: Wait a minute! It means that people--that the continent of Africa suddenly starts--that the people, poor people in Bangladesh suddenly start pumping more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

Carl Pope: Look, the people in Bangladesh are going to pump more greenhouse gas into the air, the people of China are. The challenge is to enable them to do so in a way to grow in a different way than we did, so that at the end of the process, we're all using more energy and putting out less carbon.

Peter Robinson: Final segment for this television program because I now understand Fred Smith's agenda which is global growth make people rich, it's environmentally good, clearly it's good for them. What exactly do you want to do?

Carl Pope: What I think we ought to be doing is recognizing that these environmental problems involve impoverishing or taking things or putting at risk future generations and other communities. And we ought to move as rapidly, not instantly, not disruptively, but we ought to move rapidly in a consistent way to use better technology, stronger standards of accountability, better pricing to actually insure that we feed ourselves and get to work and clothe ourselves and house ourselves in ways that do minimum harm to other people in the future…

Peter Robinson: One follow-up question: the better pricing arises how? Not through the organic, unfettered workings of the market but you have to have government involved to set rules and say you pay for that emission…

Carl Pope: In some cases, you have to set rules…

Peter Robinson: Is that right?

Carl Pope: Yes, you have to set rules because in many cases, the people you're taking from are not able in fact to insist that you pay them. You don't actually have contractual relations between Exxon and Bangladesh.

Peter Robinson: So you get a bigger role for government in your plan but it's as a rule setter.

Carl Pope: Right.

Peter Robinson: All right. You get about a 30-second rebuttal and we've got to move to the final question.

Fred Smith: The question generally is when you--anything that makes the cost of energy higher in the United States, which because this is a world market and it's higher in the world, will slow the rate of the Bangladeshs of the world, gaining the technological and economic ability to address their current environmental problems, and of course to make it easier for them to address whatever, future risk may or may not produce results.

Peter Robinson: Two predictions to round out the show. Five years from now, will the United States have rejoined, if not signing the Kyoto Treaty, will we have rejoined the Kyoto process? Carl?

Carl Pope: Five years from now, the United States will be back working with the rest of the world on how to solve this problem because the American people will choose a new leadership in Washington if this leadership doesn't step up to the plate.

Peter Robinson: Fred?

Fred Smith: Whether there's new leadership or not, I think America's rational approach to economic development which is really reasonably good Democratic and Republican, create wealth, create knowledge and the world can absorb whatever risk we face, environmental or otherwise, that's what we want to do.

Peter Robinson: Second question: 50 years from now, will the ambient temperature on the planet be higher, lower, or about the same? What are we in for? Fred.

Fred Smith: I think the world will look a little bit more like Florida and California and a little less like Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. Most people would prefer that.

Peter Robinson: Carl?

Carl Pope: Most people don't live in Minnesota, actually. I think people in the Sahara Desert and Bangladesh and India may not prefer that and I think Fred's right: the world's going to be warmer.

Peter Robinson: Carl Pope, Fred Smith, thank you very much. I'm Peter Robinson for Uncommon Knowledge. Thanks for joining us.