Geoffrey Lean on climate change policy

I was a little disappointed by Geoffrey Lean's column in the Telegraph (via Tim Worstall).  Not because I expected to share his views, but because it dealt with the central point so lazily.  He spends paragraph after paragraph talking about how unpleasant and unproductive the fringes of the debate over global warming science are.  That's fine, though people will differ over which side of the fence bears a greater share of the responsibility for it.  For someone telling a similar story from a different perspective, read Chris Horner's book Red Hot Lies.

But Lean has a bigger point in mind:

"The debate will surely continue. But is there a productive way forward? All sides condemn waste of the world’s resources. Conserving energy, reducing the use of fossil fuels and replacing them with clean sources is important for national security, and reducing other forms of air pollution besides the emission of greenhouse gases. It is also, as more and more economists and entrepreneurs are realising, an effective way of creating jobs and stimulating new, and sustainable, economic growth.

I think such a programme is necessary to head off dangerous climate change. But even if I am wrong, it would make the world a better, more prosperous place. Could all sides back it while continuing to argue about the science? That really would be a shock."

And that's it.  End of article.  Regardless of the science of global warming, he argues that we should put in place these policies in order to create jobs, stimulate growth and accomplish a myriad of other objectives.  But, despite that being the central point in his article, he just asserts that green policies will achieve those things.

Our energy security is undermined, not strengthened, by climate change policies.  As they increase the use of wind power and discourage the use of coal (which is available from such a wide range of sources that supplies are secure regardless of whether we use our own or import), they increase our dependence on imported gas which is the source best placed to back up unreliable wind.

The case for green jobs tends to just look at one side of the ledger, it counts the jobs that subsidies create but not the jobs lost in paying for them.  Imagine the Government closed down the Telegraph, confiscated their budget and gave it to the TaxPayers' Alliance.  While we would almost certainly use that new funding "creating jobs", Geoffrey Lean - among others - would see the other side of the equation.  Shifting to much more expensive sources of energy like offshore wind (the main beneficiary of Britain's 2020 climate change targets) is likely to lead to a net loss of jobs.  It will reduce productivity - as we will have to spend a lot more to meet the same demand for energy.  In turn, that will reduce consumer and business spending power.  I linked to some sources which have studied this empirically in this post debating the issue with Left Foot Forward.

Britain is likely to have a particularly hard time of it as we have a relatively small manufacturing sector - so we will have to import much of the capital equipment needed - and will have to invest more to meet the renewable energy targets - as conditions here mean most of the renewable capacity will come from prohibitively expensive offshore wind.  And that's without mentioning the distributional side of the equation, as higher energy prices hit the vulnerable poor and elderly hardest.

Jim Manzi's peerless "Game Plan" article for the National Review in 2007 (not available online unfortunately) developed a similar premise to Geoffrey Lean's column: that we could have the policy debate without the scientists giving us a definitive, settled position.  But it came to a much more sensible conclusion:

"In the face of massive uncertainty on multiple fronts, the best strategy is almost always to hedge your bets and keep your options open. Wealth and technology are raw materials for options. The loss of economic and technological development that would be required to eliminate literally all theorized climate-change risk would cripple our ability to deal with virtually every other foreseeable and unforeseeable risk, not to mention our ability to lead productive and interesting lives in the meantime. The Precautionary Principle is a bottomless well of anxieties, but our resources are finite. It's possible to buy so much flood insurance that you can't afford fire insurance.

In fact, a much more sensible strategy to deal with climate risk would emphasize technology rather than taxes. A science-based approach would hedge by providing support for prediction, mitigation, and adaptation technologies."