If global warming is real and its effects will one day be as devastating as some believe is likely, then greater economic growth would, by increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, sooner or later lead to greater damages from climate change. On the other hand, by increasing wealth, technological development and human capital, economic growth would broadly increase human well-being, and society’s capacity to reduce climate change damages via adaptation or mitigation. Hence, the conundrum: at what point in the future would the benefits of a richer and more technologically advanced world be cancelled out by the costs of a warmer world?

Indur Goklany attempted to shed light on this conundrum in a recent paper presented at the 25th Annual North American Conference of the US Association for Energy Economics, in Denver (Sept. 21, 2005). His paper — "Is a richer-but-warmer world better than poorer-but-cooler worlds?” — which can be found here, draws upon the results of a series of UK Government-sponsored studies which employed the IPCC’s emissions scenarios to project future climate change between 1990 and 2100 and its global impacts on various climate-sensitive determinants of human and environmental well-being (such as malaria, hunger, water shortage, coastal flooding, and habitat loss). The results indicate that notwithstanding climate change, through much of this century, human well-being is likely to be highest in the richest-but-warmest world and lower in poorer-but-cooler worlds. With respect to environmental well-being, matters may be best under the former world for some critical environmental indicators through 2085-2100, but not necessarily for others.

This conclusion casts doubt on a key premise implicit in all calls to take actions now that would go beyond “no-regret” policies in order to reduce GHG emissions in the near term, namely, a richer-but-warmer world will, before too long, necessarily be worse for the globe than a poorer-but-cooler world. But the above analysis suggests this is unlikely to happen, at least until after the 2085-2100 period. Assuming that it takes 50 years to replace the energy infrastructure, that means we have at least 30 years (= 2085-50-2005) before embarking on a greenhouse gas emission reduction program that goes beyond “no-regrets” provided, in the interim, we use this time wisely by specifically focusing on:

(a) broadly advancing sustainable development (particularly in developing countries since that would generally enhance their adaptive capacity to cope with numerous problems that currently beset them, including climate-sensitive problems),
(b) reducing vulnerabilities to climate-sensitive problems that are urgent today and might be exacerbated by future climate change,
(c) implementing “no-regret” emission reduction measures while at the same time striving to expand the universe of such measures through research and development of cleaner and more affordable technologies, and
(d) monitor climate, climate change and their impacts so we can subtantially mitigate, if not foretall, nasty events and/or surprises (such as Katrina, Rita or the drought in Niger, whether or not they are caused by climate change).

Such a policy would help solve current urgent problems facing humanity while preparing it to face future problems that might be caused or exacerbated by climate change.