Fossil Fuels - Pros and Cons
The following is a radio segment from Australia's ABC Radio National Breakfast on March 20th, 2015. Bjorn Lomborg was on set discussing his call for abolishing global fossil fuel subsidies. The original article and radio segment can be found at the link below.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/cut-548-billion-of-fossil-fuel-subsidies/6334456
Bjorn
Lomborg – Well, what we have to remember is, that if you can
get better access to energy and that’s very much about better access to energy
in homes, remember about 3 billion people, almost half this world’s population,
cook and keep warm with dirty fuels, like dung and cardboard and wood. And that
is essentially the same as smoking two packs of cigarettes for all of almost 3
billion people. That’s a terrible toll, that’s actually the world’s worst
environmental problem. It kills about
4.3 million people each year. So that’s a huge boon. Remember that fossil fuels
subsidies are typically subsidies to the rich because when you subsidise
gasoline, you have to have a car in order to actually afford to use that and so
it’s a very, very ineffective way to help people. You’re essentially helping
rich people, not very much the poor people. So, the idea here is there’s a
wonderful opportunity here where you can both do economic good, you can do
environmental good, and you can actually open up government budgets to do some
of the other smart things on the environment, education and certainly health.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/cut-548-billion-of-fossil-fuel-subsidies/6334456
ABC
Interviewer – Bjorn Lomborg first grabbed world
attention in 1998 as ‘the sceptical environmentalist’, questioning global
action on climate change.
He’s currently in Australia, this is his fourth visit,
this time to talk about global poverty and development, more so than just
climate issues.
In recent years, he’s been an advocate for using cheap
fossil fuels to alleviate poverty. He now says, abolishing $548 billion dollars
of global fossil fuel subsidies would be a ‘smart’, sustainable development
goal for the United Nations to adopt later this year.
Bjorn Lomborg is the direct of Copenhagen Consensus
Centre, he joins us in our studio this morning, Bjorn welcome back to
breakfast.
Bjorn Lomborg – Good morning
friend.
ABC Interviewer –
Can I start with Cyclone Pam, the tropical cyclone that tragically hit Vanuatu
last week, killing at least 11 people, displacing missing 70% of the islands
population. The Vanuatu President, Baldwin Lonsdale, warned that soon after
that the cyclone hit, the climate change is contributing to more extreme
weather events. Do you have view on that? Do you agree with that?
Bjorn
Lomborg – Well I mean, you have to look at what would
actually help people from Vanuatu and many other places, and the simple answer
is if we try to cut carbon missions, which we for many other reasons should try
to do because global warming is a real problem, one we want to fix. There’s not
actually in any way the most effective way to help people that are vulnerable
to climate catastrophes, the simple answer is if you want to help people not
being hurt by many different natural disasters, it’s much more about lifting
them out of poverty So if you look at hurricanes, for instance, hitting
Guatemala and many other places where people are poor, you see traumatic
damages. Of course, where it hit Florida, yes of course you still see lots
material damages, but there much lower in terms of percent of GDP, much, much lower
in terms lives lost.
ABC
Interviewer – This fits in something you wrote last
month, if you want to help poor people who are most threatened by natural
disasters, we have to recognize that it’s less about cutting carbon emissions
and pulling them out of poverty, the OECD recently estimates around 1/3 of
global development aid is related to climate change. So your saying that’s too
much, we are spending the money in the wrong place, but what about helping
these communities that are in the path of these natural disasters, these major
weather events with adaptation, so that they don’t get wiped out with
mitigation so that things do change.
Bjorn
Lomborg – Oh of course we need to help them especially with
mitigation again, but the question is how much will mitigation of that cutting
carbon emissions , how much will that help Vanuatu citizens even 10, 20, 30
even 40 years down the line and the answer is very, very little. Also remember,
if you ask people themselves, this is what I’m talking about right now in
Canburn, the UN is setting global goals for the world for the next 15 years,
and they’ve asked 7 million people around the world: ‘What do you actually want?’
and very clearly, they come out and say obvious things, like they want a better
education, better healthcare, more jobs, they want an uncorrupt government, and
they want affordable, nutritious food. And actually, at the very last place, 16
out of 16 of what the UN asked them, they say our priorities are action taken
on climate change. So again, if you ask the world’s poor they overwhelming tell
you it’s about getting better healthcare, more food, more education.
ABC Interviewer –
We’ll go to chew gum and walk at the same time, and I suppose that’s the
argument, I think. You say, let’s look at fossil fuels, you long have advocated
that access to cheap fossil fuels will best help lift poor people out of
poverty, and yet you also say you want global fossil fuel subsidies cut. This
costs governments hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
Bjorn
Lomborg – Let me just say, yes of course we can chew gum and
walk at the same time, but in some sense, we are chewing a lot of gum and I'm not sure if that’s a good metaphor, but we are spending an enormous amount of
money on helping people with cutting carbon emissions, whereas we are spending
relatively less on all the other things and that’s really where the question
is. We got to ask ourselves, should we be focusing more on some of the obvious
things, such as more education, more on healthcare, getting people rid of
malaria, tuberculous, HIV and getting nutrition to small kids. Because those
are the things that will lift people out of poverty, and hence, make them much
less vulnerable to all the other things, not just climate catastrophes, but all
the other calamities that are waiting for them. So, the realty here is simply a
question saying: what are the priorities we want to focus on and one of them,
as you mentioned, is to get rid of fossil fuels subsidies. Look, it’s not about
saying, we either do something about climate change or not, it’s much more about,
should we do smart things about climate change, which for instance is cutting
fossil fuels subsidies because they drain national government budgets, so they
can’t afford to do health and education, and at the same time of course
encourage too much sue in the atmosphere.
ABC
Interviewer – I can hear the shouts coming from the
fossil fuel lobbying now, because of course if you do cut that, I think it’s
$548 billion dollars with of global subsidies for fossil fuels, that would,
they say, would push up the price of fossil fuels and you’re saying cheap
fossil fuels access is one of the best, quickest ways to help lift people out
of poverty, or at least it’s one of the key elements of that.
ABC
Interviewer – Can I take specific example of poverty
and development in Africa. The International Energy Agency, the IEA, recently
released a report on what it thinks will happen if the energy mix in
Sub-Saharan Africa, under its new policy scenario changes. The agency does
admit, that this scenario is broadly consistent with global warming between 3
degrees to 6 degrees for the continent by the end of this century. Now, the IPCC’s
have made it clear that temperature increases of that scale would have
possibly, potentially catastrophic impacts. So you kind of can’t have one
without the other, action on poverty combined with action on climate change.
It’s just is, isn’t it?
Bjorn
Lomborg – We’re missing the mark, because really we need to
make sure that Africa and many other poor regions get the opportunity to
develop, you know it would be almost immoral to almost not let them do that.
But at the same time, as you point out, we need to tackle global warming, and
the way to do that, of course is not to deny Africa development, but to make
sure we develop green energy that is so cheap so that eventually everyone will
buy it. So, the simple point is we have been focused so much on saying
everybody has to get solar and wind because it makes us all warm and fuzzy
inside, but of course remember the same agency you just mentioned, the
International Energy Agency, they estimate we get about 0.4 percent of our
energy rate right now from solar and wind, a trivial amount. But, even by 2040
with current trajectories of development, we will just get 2.2 of our global
energy covered by solar and wind in 2040, so in 25 years from now. So the
simple answer is, unless we dramatically improve that development, and that has
to happen through research and development, we will not get cheap green energy
so that both the Africans and we can afford to buy lots and lots of it.
ABC Interviewer – So spend our money
on the research and development, and don’t spend it on adaptation?
Bjorn
Lomborg – Well no, spend it on research and development
instead of spending it on subsidising ineffective solar and wind right now,
which the world is spending to a tune of about three hundred billion dollars.
So, there is smart policies and there are poor policies for climate change just
like there is in like any other area. Let’s focus on some of the smart ones.
ABC
Interviewer – Can I just ask a question you finally
and briefly, because you are in Australia you want to see smart policies,
better value for money. Australia has recently abandoned a market solution of
carbon price for cutting carbon emissions and now the tax payers will fund the
one and half billion dollars of the direct action abatement over the next 3
years. How would you categorize that? Smart
policy, poor policy?
Bjorn Lomborg – I’m sorry, I don’t
know enough about the Australia policy, but in general don’t subsidize things
that are incredibly costly, focus on making the cheap, easy wins.
ABC Interviewer – Bjorn Lomborg,
thank you very much for joining us.
Bjorn
Lomborg – Thank you.
ABC
Interviewers – Bjorn Lomborg is the director of the
Copenhagen Consensus Centre, is invited to launch the department of foreign affairs
innovation hub. The $140 million dollar hub is designed to pilot breakthrough
global development solutions.
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