Flying blind.

• Author: Ayres, Ed
• Position: Global warming's impact on the environment and economy

In a recent issue of Newsweek magazine, columnist Robert Samuelson declared that "without a break through in alternative energy," the reduction of carbon emissions from fossil fuels, as required by the forthcoming climate treaty, would end up "crushing the world economy." It was a refrain we'd heard before, not as part of a reasoned argument but as a kind of ritual cry, and it seemed oddly ignorant of the fact that 2,000 economists, including six Nobel Laureates in economics, had issued a statement a few months earlier painstakingly refuting that scenario. One of their reasons, of course, is that the "breakthrough" Samuelson mentions has long since become a reality, and has become the basis of a fast-growing commercial sustainable energy industry in such places as Germany and California - places not known for the backwardness of their technology.

The evocation of economic disaster - whether by Samuelson or by the fossil fuel industry from whose increasingly strident advertising his argument seems to be derived - is highly irresponsible, in part because it fails to take into account the great gains in cost-effectiveness that will occur as the new energy industries are brought up to the same scale as the oil and coal they will replace. But what's most irresponsible about Samuelson's polemic is his summation of the political rationale for delaying action on cutting carbon gas emissions. "The idea that global warming is a certain calamity," he writes, "is by no means proven."

At first glance, that might seem an unremarkable statement - even a cautious one. But what's deceptive, and even reckless, about it is that it selectively ignores the question of risk. Oh, yes - it pays due attention to the alleged risk of damage to the economy, but it is oblivious to the vastly greater risk of undermining the planetary systems (including climate) on which that economy utterly depends. It makes no acknowledgement of the fact that when we make decisions about important actions in modern life - whether to undergo a bypass surgery, or where to invest your company's pension funds, or whether to allow a new drug to be sold - we rarely, if ever, can afford to wait for all uncertainty about possible adverse effects to be eliminated before we proceed. That's especially so when there's a high risk of even greater adverse effects if we don't proceed. The notion of refusing to take action because no-one has "proven" that the action will lead to a "certain calamity"...