Environment vs. Economy: The False Dilemma

Action on climate change is facing one major problem at the moment: the common perception that any action comes at the cost of damaging the economy. To many people, it appears that we can either do something about the environment, or something about the economy – but not both. Just look at the polls. There are a couple of reasons why this ‘either-or’ view is inaccurate.

1. Action on climate change is a business opportunity

This is most relevant to the situation in New Zealand, but it can be applied elsewhere. If you even remotely follow climate change you will see that investment in green technology is skyrocketing. Even if it seems like a bubble (and I think it’s only just getting started), there are a few prudent individuals who are going to come out of it with a lot of money. At this stage, developing the right technology could be very lucrative in the future.

In New Zealand’s case, the ‘green’ industry is not only potentially a potentially lucrative enterprise, but it is absolutely vital that we continue to maintain our image as a clean green paradise from the outset. In fact, a report by the Ministry for the Environment stated that New Zealand’s green image “is worth at least hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of dollars.” Yet with only a little bit of digging, it’s actually quite obvious that we are not as green as we claim to be. As fossils fuels and minerals continue to decrease in abundance, it won’t be long before we are forced to make some tough economic decisions. Recent mineral explorations in New Zealand have sparked this debate. The debate is only going to intensify, with reports claiming that New Zealand may be an excellent source of mineral deposits and fossil fuels in the future. This is where the conflict between favouring the environment, and favouring the economy, comes into play in the New Zealand context.

So, the first question is – should we swap our green image for the short term lucrative fossil fuel market? The second question is – do we have to?

The answer to the first question is no - we should not trade our clean, green image for the short term lucrative fossil fuel market. It’s not that going completely green is going to be the silver bullet to prosperity, nor is it that a green tourism sector is more profitable than our world class agricultural sector. However, if we want to turn away from a market that could potentially be worth trillions in exchange for dirty 20th century business methods, there should at least be some serious debate beforehand.

In answer to the second question -- do we have to? -- no, because the green industry is potentially lucrative in itself. If New Zealand focuses on pursuing sustainable business practices, the choice between the environment and the economy doesn’t need to be made. Groups like Pure Advantage are pushing this idea, and provide a strong argument for New Zealand to move in this direction. We need to stop believing that only a carbon based economy is a strong economy.

2. The environment and the economy are symbiotic

We depend on both the environment, and the economy to sustain our standard of living. Both spheres should be treated with respect. At the end of the day, our planet will go on without us, but we -- humans -- are the ones that are going to take the full hit. It is well known that when there is more moisture in the air, the number of extreme weather events are expected to increase. Numerous reports highlight the risk that insurance companies face in these circumstances. This isn’t theoretical, but actually happening, with insurance companies paying out much more over the years due to strange weather. Some of these freak weather events have cost a fortune. As a single example, Hurricane Katrina’s total economic cost is estimated by some to be over $200 billion.

Whether or not climate change ‘caused’ the an individual weather event isn’t the issue, although there are a group of scientists who are taking the bold step of trying to link extreme weather events to climate change. The main issue is that if we are expecting an increase in extreme weather events, it doesn’t take an economist to realise that this might cause more unexpected costs in the future. The climate we currently take for granted might change in a way that is unhelpful for us. Surely we can all agree that most businesses don’t operate as well when submerged under water, or in the middle of a hurricane.

Aquariums: a solid future investment

For these reasons, we should take preventative measures to avoid unpredictable and devastating natural disasters. It will also most likely be much cheaper in the long run. In my view, humans have always used technology to solve the issues they encounter, such as the invention of automobiles and aeroplanes in the case of transport, or the use of telegrams and the Internet to increase our communications capacity. At the moment, we are facing both economic and environmental issues with energy -- we can no longer produce cheap, abundant energy without destroying the planet, and our rates of consumption are far too high. Finding a way of producing cheap, efficient and sustainable energy not only solves the economic problem, but also contributes to the solution to anthropogenic climate change. There’s no reason why we can’t kill two birds with one stone.

The damage that climate change is doing to our economy highlights the symbiotic link between the two - and to change one, we have to take care of the other. Action on climate change can be taken, and not only will it not damage the economy (certainly not in the long term), but may in fact improve it. To have to choose between the two is nothing but a false dilemma.

Bias in Climate Science

The enterprise of scientific research is built with mechanisms of critical assessment and a high standard of objectivity which has been very successful in minimising the effect of bias. As much as we like to believe the idealistic myth that scientists are all perfectly objective rational agents in white lab coats, we have to realise that these researchers are not machines but people. People with their own politics, perspectives and opinions about what should be done to make the world better.

As alchemists became chemists and astrologers became astronomers, the foundations of modern science were not born fully developed but were instead slowly distilled from ancient curiosities. The great revolution of scientific rationalism was not won overnight, but over centuries. After the birth of rational metaphysical philosophy came the birth of rational natural philosophy. With it, the effects of deliberate and sceptical examination of nature revealed the great truths and fueled the great advances that we have today. But as much as science has triumphed in its trials and tests over time, irrationality still permeates through to its core: the practitioners of science today are as human as the magicians of ancient courts were. But what makes science different from voodoo is that scientists are aware of how their weaknesses affect their work. Scientists understand that truth cannot be found by hiding flaws, but by exposing them. Science is different because it looks for human errors and isolates them, identifying them boldly so that nobody else will have to make the same mistake.

Scientists are aware of bias. The scientific method of experimenting and deducing from solid evidence demands the highest standards of accountability of human error. One would be overreaching to imply that science is flawless, but to claim that the human error discredits the entire system is to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Climate scientists are aware of bias. In the accelerating politicisation of climate science, there are increasing accusations of malpractice against the scientists who have been working on these problems for over half a century. Many of these accusations argue that climate scientists are adjusting conclusions towards alarmism, when all evidence points to the opposite: that climate scientists were pressured to tone their conclusions down.

The reason why science is so highly revered and why scientists are so greatly trusted is not because scientists are always right but because they acknowledge that they aren’t. Scientists are taught to make only conservative claims which can be backed up by reproducible evidence and solid reasoning. The biggest (valid) criticisms of the IPCC are that it is both too slow, and too conservative with its conclusions. But for an organisation of hundreds of authors and thousands of reviewers, the behemoth of dialectic collaboration serves as a prime example of how science works, where the safer of two contrasting conclusions usually wins out. For example, there has been significant research about the effects of polar ice melting on sea levels, but due to the inadequacies of climate models, upper bounds on sea level rise couldn’t be reliably concluded.

Image from OurBreathingPlanet.com

But even the most reticent scientists and most careful reviewers make mistakes. For example, in 1998, Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes published a significant reconstruction of North Hemisphere temperatures between the 15th and 20th centuries. This paper was later extended back to the 11th century in 1999 and produced the instantly recognisable ‘hockey stick’ graph of temperature change over the last millenium. However, in 2003, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published a paper identifying errors in the 1998 paper by Mann, Bradley and Hughes. In 2004, the errors were fixed in a corrigendum to the 1998 paper which concludes that “[n]one of these errors affect our previously published results.” Research was published, errors were identified and corrections were made. This is how actual ‘peer review’ happens. The public perception of peer review is that once a paper is submitted, reviewed and published, the science is complete. But long after publication, the science continues. Published papers are read by contemporaries, criticised in letters to the editor, and ultimately either reproduced and corroborated or falsified and challenged.

It is because of the relentless nature of both pre-publication and post-publication peer review that papers which are weakened by bias have little chance of survival. Even supposing that the reviewers and editor of the publishing journal were biased enough to allow the substandard paper to be published, the paper would be eviscerated by rivals upon release. The reputations of the researchers and the journal would be damaged. Researchers don’t want to risk it because reputation is job security and journal editors don’t want to risk it because reputation is readership. Pre-publication peer review doesn’t work as a perfect litmus test for determining the quality of an unpublished paper. It simply works to filter the irrelevant and obviously flawed out before public consumption. Post-publication peer review then continues effectively ad infinitum. Because of this, biased science doesn’t have a chance.

Environmental Activism: A Violent Tipping Point?

I’m going to make a bold claim and say that we’re about to reach a tipping point where climate change action is going to become very radical. It’ll certainly be within the next 5 to 10 years. What do I mean by radical? I mean more direct action. Possibly violence.

This prediction comes from my overall perception that climate change has one significant difference when compared with other social movements, such as Women’s and Civil Rights. The space that this change needs to happen has a very limited timeframe. The lukewarm efforts by governments at Copenhagen really demonstrated that action on climate change isn’t going nearly as quickly as it should. As diehard activists become increasingly agitated, it’s really only a matter of time before radical groups start forming and taking radical action. Greenpeace are about as close as we’ve got so far. When you look at nearly all of the social justice movements, they take about 30 to 40 years to hit their peak. Realistically, I’d say the climate change movement has only been taken relatively seriously for about the past 20. The problem is - we really don’t have another 20 years to muck around.

The main issue is that current ‘green’ strategies for getting people onboard are just simply not working. In my opinion, many (but not all) environmentalists are notoriously ignorant when it comes to communicating their ideas to the wider population. The whole ‘the earth is screwed, do something about it!’ attempt at communicating only really resonates with like-minded individuals. Those on the opposite end of the spectrum are extremely well organised and well funded. I completely disagree with what they’re doing, but to their credit, the climate change deniers are very good at communicating their ideas. That’s why they’re winning.

I use the term ‘good’ quite loosely.

Some people have pointed out that the environmental movement has simply merged with the ‘anti-capitalist’ movement. That’s a valid point to make. I think that the issue of climate change, which is quite a pragmatic problem at its core, has been hijacked by both sides of the extreme ends of the political spectrum. It seems equally as ridiculous to think that climate change can only be resolved by a socialist revolution as it is to think that we don’t need some sort of carbon tax. There’s a middle ground and we need to treat the issue for what it is, not use it to make advances in ideologies. That goes for both sides.

So, this is where my idea comes in. As we grow closer to the metaphorical window for action closing, it’s only logical for climate activists to get more desperate and angry. Every major social change I can think of has some sort of radical, violent component. So far, the fight against climate change has been relatively tame, aside from the odd death threat. But traditional forms of protest such as demonstrations and signing petitions are not the most effective method at getting change done quickly (but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be done!).

Another thing to think about is what happens if low lying Bangladesh gets hit hard by rising sea levels or if the glaciers that provide water to millions of people in Pakistan and India suddenly dry up? It would be reasonable to say that more than just a few environmentalists are going to be angry. Who knows, maybe the people who lose their livelihood as a result of climate change might become the next terrorists? Of course, this is all speculation. However, it’s not exactly unrealistic, is it? Only time will tell.

Let’s be clear here. I don’t agree that violence is the answer and don’t advocate it. But as Al Capone once said, “you can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.” Soon enough, some will start to agree with him.

We all know how that turned out.

Consensus and Climate Change

97–98% of the most actively publishing climate scientists believe climate change is real, is caused by human emissions and is dangerous. The prominence and expertise of climate scientists who don't believe this is significantly lower than those who do.

So what? If I said that 97-98% of cancer researchers believed that smoking caused cancer, or if 97-98% of astronomers believed that the Earth revolved around the Sun, you would all be laughing at how trivially obvious it is. But when we discuss climate change, consensus plays a big (and controversial) role in the debate.

Response to the survey question "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" (Doran 2009) General public data come from a 2008 Gallup poll. Image from SkepticalScience.com

It should be first noticed that it is an invalid argument to claim that "because 97-98% of experts something is true, it must be true". This argumentum ad numerum implies the truth of a proposition from only the popularity of its belief. It is not difficult for anyone to think of counterexamples which show that popularity does not determine truth. Science, itself, is full of such anecdotal counterexamples. Some of the most famous examples are those of the Scientific Revolution, where rebellious scientist-philosophers such as Galileo fought against the tide of commonly accepted 'truth' and won. If anywhere, science is where one can stand against the majority and emerge victorious and vindicated.

Looking even only briefly at the popular discussion of climate science, one quickly stumbles upon the oft-repeated argument of "There is a consensus of scientists who believe that climate change is real" to which the response is always "Science does not work by consensus!" If you're trying to explain how you know that climate change is real, the argument from consensus falls flat. The scientific method does not work by consensus. When a scientist is trying to determine how much Arctic sea ice has been lost during the summer melt this year, their answers come from the scientific evidence, not from assessing how much sea ice the majority of scientists believe has been lost. So, if you're going to argue about knowledge, you need to argue from the scientific evidence.

That all said, consensus does appear to play a role in the institution of scientific progress. My understanding of science as an advancing body of work and a congregation of like-minded investigators has been influenced by Thomas Kuhn's writings on scientific research paradigms. Kuhn, who was not without his detractors, argued that scientists are also humans bound by subjective biases which affect their scientific work. Although the Baconian scientific method does a spectacular job of focusing a scientist's work through a prism of objectivity, the work is still defined by the world view within which the scientist was trained. When the world view produces a theory which fails to explain fundamental phenomena, the world view slowly becomes challenged and eventually rejected. At this point, when a new paradigm and accompanying world view successfully arises, the consensus of scientific acceptance shifts appropriately. At this 'macro' level of science, consensus appears to play an important role. The world view is established by the consensus of scientists. When older scientists train younger scientists, the younger scientists are adopted into the consensus by being taught the world view of the older scientists.

This consensus is tested, however, when the world view is clearly plagued with inconsistencies of theory and experiment. But without this consensus, the scientific community could not function. The consensus of world view determines the terminology, methodology and even purpose of a particular scientific discipline. Without a consensus, scientists would be stuck arguing first principles and not actually performing any research. Scientists accept the consensus position, even if slightly flawed, in order to proceed with the dirty business of extending research. If the consensus position was too outrageous (e.g. if predictions clearly did not match the data) the consensus would be rejected and redrawn as a new paradigm. So while we can see that consensus does not play a role in the 'micro' level of scientific research, consensus does play a role in the 'macro' level of scientific progress. But I don't believe this level of acceptance of consensus in scientific paradigms constitutes anything fallacious or akin to 'groupthink' because scientists are trained (more than anybody else) to challenge the consensus. Consensus is accepted because it works.

When it comes to communicating climate science, however, consensus is an important talking point. Climate change is incredibly complicated. Climate scientists have known about climate change for decades and have understood the physics for over a hundred years. But only in the last decade or so has the public really started to catch onto this issue. Why? Other than political obstruction (which is a story for another day), the big issue seems to be the difficulty of communicating the science. Naturally, when a journalist has neither the time nor expertise to appropriately convey the complex science, an argument appealing to the trustworthy authority of the scientific majority is made instead. Is it fallacious? Yes. But is it fair? I think so. We should trust our scientists on complex issues concerning the health of our climate just as we would trust our doctors on complex issues concerning the health of our children.

Science Diplomacy and Climate Change

What the hell is science diplomacy and what does it have to do with climate change?

That was what was going through my head when I recently went to my first academic conference titled ‘Science Diplomacy: New Day or False Dawn’ held at Otago University. Overall, it was fantastic, with an excellent range of speakers discussing a broad array of topics.

But first off, what exactly is science diplomacy? You can be forgiven for thinking that it’s some sort of wanky buzz word used as a conversation starter at a cocktail function. That’s only half of it. While the definition appears to be relatively fluid, broadly speaking it’s the idea that scientific links between countries can be used as a form of soft power and/or to strengthen international relations. The assumption behind it is that since scientific method is objective, scientific cooperation between countries can be used to help solve some of the world’s major problems.

The main idea is that whether you’re communist or capitalist, scientific method is consistent. It's this consistency that enables trust between parties. We know that water boils at 100 degrees not because Adam Smith thought it would be a good idea to mention that in The Wealth of Nations but because scientists of all creeds can empirically test and confirm this. Since results don't discriminate, strengthened scientific ties could pave the way for improving future international relations. For example, the US has very poor relations with countries such as Iran. The theory is that if the two were to engage in science diplomacy, the objective nature of scientific cooperation between the two could build the foundations of a bridge to improve their relations. After all, something is better than nothing. As you’ve probably realised, international scientific cooperation is hardly uncommon and the only new thing about it is the fancy name. Whether or not something like the IPCC is an example of science diplomacy is another debate, depending on your definition.

Of course, there are some potential problems. Not all scientific collaboration can be positive. Obvious examples include the multi-national development of nuclear, biological and conventional weapons for nefarious purposes. Science may also be used to create problems we can’t even imagine right now.

So, what does this have to do with climate change? For New Zealand, I think science diplomacy has great potential. Science diplomacy may allow us to ‘punch above our weight’ by specialising in certain scientific areas, which could benefit us economically and provide us with a bit more diplomatic leverage. Anything that adds to (or has the potential to add to) New Zealand’s soft power is intrinsically beneficial. After all, what other power do we have?

Pictured: New Zealand’s last line of defence

During the conference, Dr. Stephen Goldson gave a very interesting presentation on science diplomacy in relation to New Zealand. He pointed out that it’s New Zealand’s methane output that’s the real killer for us, since our highly developed agricultural industry accounts for a significant portion of our emissions. Methane is rather nasty because it’s at least 25x more effective at heating the planet than carbon dioxide. Currently, there’s no known way to stop cows burping methane (yes, apparently it’s burping, not farting).

However, Goldson pointed out that this creates a unique opportunity for New Zealand. We can specialise in researching how to reduce methane output from grass fed livestock and potentially become a world leader in that field. By doing this, we might be able to draw in some of the best scientists and collaborate with other countries in similar situations as us to help fight climate change, while improving our relations with certain countries simultaneously. This isn’t just an idea. It’s actually happening. Just recently, 30 countries including New Zealand have signed up to a Global Research Alliance to tackle this very issue head on. It’s science diplomacy in full flight and is both economically and environmentally beneficial.

I think that despite the potential of science diplomacy to help resolve climate change, we still need to be a bit wary not to over-emphasise its capacity. The fundamental assumption that science can solve many of the world’s issues without politics getting in the way should be treated with caution. The big question is: can we really remove the politics out of scientific issues in the public arena? Despite the fact that there is an overwhelming consensus from scientists that anthropogenic climate change is happening, it seems that politics comes before science. Some of our politicians prefer to base their policies on their opinions as opposed to what the science tells us. Unfortunately for science diplomacy, as long as our politicians are in the driver’s seat, all scientists can do from the back seat is give directions.