Bjorn Lomborg: Emission-Cut Pledges Cost $1 Trillion for Save of 0.3°F

Summary: Bjørn Lomborg's Nov. 16 commentary in The Wall Street Journal finds COP21 emission-cut pledges cost $1 trillion for a save of 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit.

pre-2007 photo of Bjørn Lomborg: Emil Jupin, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Emission-cut pledges for the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris will reduce global warming by 2100 by only 0.306 degrees Fahrenheit at an annual cost of $1 trillion, according to environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg's commentary Nov. 16, 2015, in The Wall Street Journal.

Lomborg finds that the United Nations is not providing official cost estimates for greenhouse gas emission-cut pledges. To create an unofficial cost estimate model, he looks to the peer-reviewed Stanford University Energy Modeling Forum for gross domestic cost scenarios for greenhouse gas reductions. His model performs regression analyses across cut percentages for the four pledges accounting for about 80 percent of the promised global emission cuts: the United States, the European Union, Mexico and China. The total gross domestic product cost of their pledged cuts amounts to $730 billion annually by 2030. Pledges by 127 other nations cut total emissions by one-fourth and, adding $270,000,000,000 in annual gross domestic product costs, bring the total to $1 trillion.

Lomborg suggests that the actual annual cost to gross domestic products could climb higher, possibly even doubling: “So in total, the Paris promises of the EU, Mexico, U.S. and China will diminish the economy at least $730 billion a year by 2030 -- and that is in an ideal world, where politicians consistently reduce emissions in the most effective ways.”

As director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a non-profit think tank now based in Lowell, Massachusetts, Lomborg focuses on economic research and cause prioritization. His cost-benefit outlook favors an efficiently steady whittling of emissions through modest taxes on carbon or a switch from electricity generation to natural gas. He disfavors funding green energy arenas, such as solar and biofuels, which he views as “both unaffordable and inefficient.”

Lomborg’s Energy Modeling Forum-based regression analysis calculates that the United States’ pledge of a 26 to 28 percent cut below 2005 levels by 2025 will have the impact of an annual reduction in the U.S. gross domestic product of $154 billion to $172 billion. The European Union’s pledge of 40 percent cut below 1990 levels reduces the gross domestic product for the 28-member politico-economic community by €287 billion annually.

Lomborg’s model finds that Mexico’s pledge of 40 percent cut below the current trend line exacts a cost of $80 billion in 2005 money by 2030, rather than the range of $6 billion to $33 billion in 2005 money estimated by the Mexican government. China’s pledge of at least 60 percent cuts below 2005 yields an annual cost of $200 billion.

Lomborg finds that the annual $1 trillion cost to world economies only lightly nudges global warming. Using the standard Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC), he determines that the emission cut pledges for the United Nations Climate Change Conference at Paris’ Le Bourget Centre from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, 2015, will, at best, equate to less than one degree of influence.

“All of these high-flown promises will fail to accomplish anything substantial to rein in climate change. At best, the emissions cuts pledged in Paris will prevent a total temperature rise by 2100 of only 0.306 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a peer-reviewed study I recently published in Global Policy,” explains Lomborg.

Bjørn Lomborg credits COP21 with an impact of only 0.05 degrees Celsius: Project Syndicate‏ @ProSyn via Twitter Nov. 19, 2015

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Bjørn Lomborg: Emil Jupin, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg_1.jpg

Bjørn Lomborg credits COP21 with an impact of only 0.05 degrees Celsius: Project Syndicate‏ @ProSyn via Twitter Nov. 19, 2015, @ https://twitter.com/ProSyn/status/667308853424295937

For further information:

Lomborg, Bjorn. "Gambling the World Economy on Climate." The Wall Street Journal > Opinion > Commentary. Nov. 16, 2015.
Available @ http://www.wsj.com/articles/gambling-the-world-economy-on-climate-1447719037

Lomborg, Bjørn. "Impact of Current Climate Proposals." Global Policy, vol. 7, issue 1 (February 2016): 109-118. DOI: 10.1111/1758-5899.12295
Available @ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1758-5899.12295/epdf

Project Syndicate‏ @ProSyn. ".@BjornLomborg: The @UN's climate plans will achieve too little and cost too much." Twitter. Nov. 19, 2015.
Available @ https://twitter.com/ProSyn/status/667308853424295937