2019-10-12_The_Economist_

20 The EconomistOctober 12th 2019

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Letters

Our issue on climate change

Limiting temperature rises to

2°C above pre-industrial

norms would still leave atmo-

spheric carbon dioxide at well

over 450 parts per million

(ppm) (“What goes up”,

September 21st). We evolved,

and until less than a century

ago, lived, on a 300ppm planet.

We need to return the Earth’s

climate to its pre-industrial

state, without doing the same

to our economy.

The unrecently hosted the

first Global Forum on Climate

Restoration. Entrepreneurs

and climate scientists discuss-

ed the undoubtedly gargan-

tuan challenge of removing

and permanently storing

around a trillion tonnes of

carbon from the atmosphere

by 2050, and presented

technically viable ways to do

this. Even if market-based

approaches to remove carbon

dioxide fail entirely, and they

won’t, a reasonable estimate is

that it would cost 3-5% of

global gdpfor 20-30 years to

return the atmosphere to

300ppm. As a comparison, ten

years ago America diverted

3.5% of its annual gdpto

prevent the financial system

from collapsing. That felt like a

good investment. So does this.

jon shepard

Global Development Incubator

London

Your article on British offshore

wind suggested that the tech-

nology remains expensive

(“The experiment”). Yet the

latest auctions produced a

price of about £40 ($50) per

megawatt hour, well below the

current wholesale price of

electricity. Offshore wind is

now the cheapest way of

producing power in Britain.

You also supported Dieter

Helm’s acerbic criticisms of

British energy policy for

directing subsidies towards

particular technologies, such

as offshore wind. The recent

auctions are a spectacular

rebuttal of Professor Helm’s

theory. It is precisely because

Britain has protected offshore

wind over the past 15 years that

the technology has now

become unbelievably cheap. It

is often difficult for econo-

mists such as Professor Helm

to recognise this, but active

industrial policies can work.

Lastly, you repeated the

conventional final attack on

offshore wind, pointing out

that it is intermittent. Other

countries around the North Sea

have woken up to this problem,

usually focusing on various

technologies for converting

“power to gas” as a way of

ensuring this intermittency

can be managed at enormous

scale. The hibernation of ener-

gy policy over recent years has

held up progress, but my

hypothesis is that Britain will

soon conclude, like other

countries, that using surplus

power to make renewable

hydrogen is the logical route

forward. This hydrogen will

then be used to generate power

when electricity supplies are

scarce from the North Sea.

chris goodall

Oxford

Polluting cannot be free. A

strong price on carbon will

incentivise producers and

consumers to reduce emis-

sions and innovators to create

low-carbon technologies. And

returning all the funds raised

back to the economy means

little to no economic loss and a

much healthier future. Though

the politics are challenging, as

advocates are up against a wall

of money, the American House

of Representatives is consid-

ering four bipartisan bills that

do just this, and one, the

Energy Innovation Act, has 64

co-sponsors.

jerry hinkle

Governing board

Citizens Climate Lobby

Coronado, California

You observed that most of the

benefits from reducing green-

house-gas emissions “will be

accrued not today, but in 50 or

100 years.” It is worth adding

that societies reap meaningful

and immediate benefits from

transitioning away from fossil

fuels. In a recent research

paper, our team found that

replacing fossil fuels with

renewable energy yields

substantial short-term

benefits associated with

cleaner air, improved health

and fewer premature deaths,

which exceed policy costs. We

also estimated that these

immediate benefits may be

larger than the near-term gains

from mitigating climate

change. Societies, therefore,

have ample reason to act on

climate change now.

emil dimanchev

Senior research associate

mitCentre for Energy and

Environmental Policy

Research

Cambridge, Massachusetts

In your article on small island

states and climate diplomacy,

you failed to mention the

effects of rising and shifting

sea floor, and that volcanic

islands can and do naturally

sink (“Nothing so concentrates

the mind”). Balanced reporting

would merit at least a quick

mention of these facts.

joy savage d’angelo

Fort Worth, Texas

It is true that climate change is

not just an environmental

problem and cuts across all

activities. Yet the recipe for

economic growth from main-

stream economists, including

The Economist, disregards

climate change. Yes, econom-

ics textbooks cover external-

ities or spillover effects, but

these have not been integral to

growth analysis. A search finds

abundant climate studies, but

less than 0.5% of the numer-

ous growth articles over the

past 50 years seem to factor

climate effects.

That allows politicians such

as Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s presi-

dent, to argue that environ-

mental protection is inimical

to growth, even as the emerg-

ing reality is the opposite.

American policy, too, sees any

deregulation, including policy

that mortgages the environ-

ment, as pro-growth. Yes,

environmental destruction

may boost short-term growth,

but the climate outcomes hurt

long-term growth and welfare.

So, changing the conduct of

growth economics is essential

if we are to avert a climate

catastrophe. Unless the

economics profession stops

ranking and rewarding coun-

tries based primarily on how

much they deregulate and

boost short-term gdp, the

climate action that you rightly

call for will continue to lag

dangerously.

vinod thomas

A former senior vice-president

at the World Bank

Bethesda, Maryland

Climatologists are like econo-

mists. They repeatedly produce

false predictions based on

skewed statistics and errone-

ous models. Neither wholly

understand their respective

cycles. Climatologists want to

twiddle the carbon-dioxide

knob just as central bankers

twiddle interest rates.

The Economistis fuelling

peak-hysteria near the top of a

climate bull market. The

inevitable climate bear market

will be more sudden, geologi-

cally, longer and colder than

any climatologist can at

present imagine.

james holme

Bickenbach, Germany

Your newspaper has now

shown itself to have joined the

alarmist warmists. You have

lost your way and attached

yourself to the ranks of the

activists. Very disappointing.

In order to avoid misleading

your readers you should

rename your publication The

Alarmist.

tony powell

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada

As a longtime reader of The

Economist, I have often been

moved by the Obituary col-

umn, but I was astonished to

find myself weeping over the

death of the Okjökull glacier in

Iceland, a response triggered as

much by the beauty of the

writing as the poignancy of the

event. Later that day I called my

broker and divested all my

fossil-fuel holdings.

page nelson

Charlottesville, Virginia