The case for a sustainable climate policy: why costs and benefits must be temporally balanced.

• Author: Pielke, Roger A., Jr.

How much longer do you think it will take before [the nation's climate researchers] are able to hone [their] conclusions down to some very simple recommendations, on tangible, specific action programs that are rational and sensible and cost effective for us to take ... [and] justified by what we already know? (1) Clearly, it's time for some radical ideas about solving global warming. But where's radical realism when we need it? (2) The question of what actions on climate change make sense in the short term--raised in the quotes above--remains largely unanswered. Until we better organize the climate science and technology enterprise to focus on policy options for the short term, the climate debate is likely to remain in its present gridlock. Policies that address climate change--including both mitigation and adaptation--have both long-term and short-term effects. To date, climate policy has focused primarily on the long term, and so too has the research intended to inform that policy. As a consequence, too little attention is paid to policy options and technological alternatives that might make sense in the short term. One reason for the short term being overlooked is the intellectual gerrymandering of the climate change issue at the international level, which has maintained a narrow focus on greenhouses gases (GHGs) and their effects. Billions of dollars of public investments in climate science and technology might be reoriented to better serve the needs of decision makers grappling with climate change, which will be a policy issue for decades to come, by focusing on policies that make sense in both the short and long terms.

This Article presents a series of seven assertions. First, human-caused climate change is real and requires attention by policy makers to both mitigation and adaptation--but there is no quick fix. The issue will be with us for decades and longer. Second, any conceivable emissions reductions policies, even if successful, cannot have a perceptible impact on the climate for many decades. Third, costs (whatever they may be) are consequently borne in the near term, while climate-related benefits are achieved in the distant future. Fourth, many policies that result in a reduction in emissions also provide benefits in the short term which are unrelated to climate change. Fifth, adaptation policies can similarly provide immediate benefits. Sixth, climate policy, particularly international climate policy under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), (3) has been structured so as to keep policy related to long-term climate change distinct from policies related to shorter-term issues of energy policy and adaptation. Seventh, research agendas have followed the political organization of international climate change policy and have emphasized the long term, meaning that relatively little attention is paid to developing specific policy options or near-term technologies that might be put into place with both short-term and long-term benefits. The climate debate may have slowly begun to reflect these realities, but the research and development community has not yet focused much attention on research to develop policy and technological options that might be politically viable, cost effective, and practically feasible.

1. NO QUICK FIX FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

   This Article begins by underscoring the scientific consensus presented in assessment of climate change science provided by Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (4) The IPCC has concluded that GHG emissions resulting from human activity are an important driver of changes in climate. On this basis alone, it makes sense to take action to limit GHG emissions. Of course, the answer to the question of what action should be taken is not at all straightforward, and involves a number of considerations (e.g., on what time scale, at what costs, with what consequences, with what foregone opportunities, etc.). One of the important messages of the IPCC is that there is no quick fix to issues of climate change. In its third assessment report, the IPCC concluded that "[a]nthropogenic climate change will persist for many centuries." (5) More recent research has concluded that, even assuming a hypothetical instantaneous curtailment of emissions, the world will continue to experience some degree of climate change into the future.

   Throughout this Article, I use the phrase "climate change" to mean:

   a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer). Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use. (6) I will further use "climate variability" to mean:

   variations in the mean state and other statistics (such as standard deviations, the occurrence of extremes, etc.) of the climate on all temporal and spatial scales beyond that of individual weather events. Variability may be due to natural internal processes within the climate system (internal variability), or to variations in natural or anthropogenic external forcing (external variability). 7 Under the IPCC definitions, both climate change and climate variability have human and non-human elements, and the human element goes beyond GHGs to include other sources of human influences on the climate system. Clearly explicating these definitions is important because the FCCC uses a different and much narrower definition of climate change that is focused only on the marginal effects of GHG emissions on the climate system. (8) The different definitions profoundly affect climate policy and its relationship to research and policy, which I will discuss in Part VI.

2. SUCCESSFUL POLICIES WILL HAVE A DELAYED IMPACT

   At a 2005 Senate hearing on climate change science and economics, James Hurrell of the United States National Center for Atmospheric Research made a very important observation about the time scale of the benefits of mitigation policies for altering climate behavior: "it should be recognized that mitigation actions taken now mainly have benefits 50 years and beyond now." (9) Science magazine further reported in 2005 that "the wheels of global climate change are in motion, and there is little we can do to stop them, at least in the short -term." (10) That the long lead time until mitigation can have a perceptible effect on climate systems seems to be well appreciated by many scientists and policy analysts, but seems to be less well appreciated in public and political debates over climate policy.

   Scientists sometimes tend to skirt around this important point by talking about "scenarios" for future emissions rather than actual policies that lead to particular scenarios. Such scenarios have an important role in shaping thinking and research on the range of possible futures. At the same time, it is quite easy to postulate various alternative scenarios for future emissions that lead to discernible changes in global temperature. It is, of course, similarly easy to discuss various "rosy" scenarios for global poverty, democracy in Iraq, or the future state of the deficit. What matters for real-world outcomes are not scenarios of the future, but the concrete, practical policy actions that lead to outcomes that are distinguishable from outcomes that result from the implementation of alternative policy actions.

   From this perspective, despite all of the bluster about the Kyoto Protocol, its implementation is more about symbolism and preparation for future policy action than about any significant effect on the climate system. In 2006, economist William Nordhaus of Yale University wrote that

   [t]he Kyoto Protocol is widely seen as somewhere between troubled and terminal.... Even if the current Protocol is extended, models indicate that it will have little impact on global temperature change. Unless there is a dramatic breakthrough or a new design, the Protocol threatens to be seen as...