The New Climate Narrative

Jun 4, 2021 Kemal Derviş

Framing climate-change mitigation as a growth opportunity instead of merely a cost should make rapid progress toward a green transformation much more feasible. What previously appeared to be a political suicide mission could now yield substantial benefits for those who lead it.

WASHINGTON, DC – As the Nobel laureate economists Robert Shiller, Abhijit Banerjee, and Esther Duflo have argued eloquently in recent books, political debate and economic policy are driven much more by simple “narratives” than by complex and nuanced theories or models. What counts are plausible “stories” that have broad intuitive appeal and can thus sway public opinion.

This is certainly true of climate policy. Modeling global warming is an immensely complicated undertaking based on “probabilistic” physical relationships and huge amounts of data about natural and human activities over many decades or centuries. But relatively straightforward messages continue to dominate policy discussions.

When the climate policy debate began, the prevailing narrative was that economic growth faced a new constraint in the form of a carbon budget, and exceeding it would bring about an undesirable amount of global warming. Policymakers would therefore have to consider a trade-off between more economic output in the near term and the damage caused by global warming in the longer term.

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Kemal Derviş argues that the 2015 Paris agreement's approach remains the best strategy for combating global warming.

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Lester Soss Jun 6, 2021

Mr. Dervis's analysis, which seemed spot on to me, reminds me of a book I just read by Schiller. In it, he argues that often the movement of stocks is based as much on the prevalent narrative of that stock as it is on the economic analysis of it.

Similarly, Simon Wren-Lewis in a recent column of his "mainly macro" blog, emphasized the importance of narrative in politics.

As an aside, I notice that in the comment's section, Mr. Southway spends some time and effort disputing climate change. However, I find him less than convincing. His use of a conspiracy theory motif that appears in sentences such as, "...The Man-made climate emergency myth is the biggest Hoax of the Century with science being subjugated by over liberalized political will and media hysteria," along with the use of CAPITALS, does seem to vitiate his argument.

I'm sure I'll receive a deluge of links from him.
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nigel southway Jun 5, 2021

The Man-made climate emergency myth is the biggest Hoax of the Century with science being subjugated by over liberalized political will and media hysteria at a level not seen before.
The media hysteria has reached a point that reasonable fact based debate on the subject is impossible due to the almost religious fanaticism from “the believers” that man-made climate change is an Armageddon that requires a colossal level of immediate global action. Our governments are being railroaded into policies that will cripple the progress and sustainability of our modern civilization.
We lack Scientific Consensus…..
Many politically motivated study groups have said……..
“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century”. They believe that future climate change will cause higher temperatures, Lower temperatures, more snow and blizzards, Drought, fire, and floods, Rising sea levels, Disappearing glaciers ,loss of sea ice at the poles, Species extinction, more and stronger storms, more storm damage, more volcanic eruptions, dying forests, death of coral reefs and shellfish, shutting down the Gulf Stream, fatal heat waves, more heat-related illness and disease, crop failure and food shortages, Millions of climate change refugees, Increased cancer, cardiovascular disease, mental illness, and respiratory disease, and some say a devastating effect on the quality of French wines!
However, many credible scientific experts are now saying….
“there is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide although it has increased will in the foreseeable future cause a catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate”…
The global climate is always changing over very long periods and at this time frame it is slightly warming .. But it’s NOT significantly due to human activity or Carbon Concentration and It is NOT cause for alarm and may even be beneficial….
This global warming over the last century has been slow and has stopped increasing and has reduced in the last decade. We at present have far less global ecological issues such as forest fires, floods and storms than in recent history.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration has increased for many reasons other than humankind. But on balance, it may be a good thing as it is increasing plant growth on the planet and improving the food supply across the whole ecological structure of the planet.
The Paris accord with its focus on climate change and demanding a carbon and energy austerity program is just so much wasted political arm waving at the international level. Such policies are not in the best interests of the western world and President Trump was correct in de-committing the USA from such an expensive and economically destructive agreement…
The real enemy is Pollution not climate change..
Reducing our dependence on dirty carbon fuels is a worthy goal but it will be a very slow process…
We do need to focus on clean and sustainable sources of energy as a modern society needs energy to thrive and this need will increase in most economies.
The only viable and cleanest solution is to switch to nuclear power. Solar and Wind are Non-Strategic and Impractical and just cannot support an advanced economy that needs energy 24/7 in enough and uninterrupted amounts. Hydro power and some other clean energy solutions may assist, but we need a nuclear strategy now, and this is being accelerated by most nations to move away from energy alternatives which have a must higher pollution footprint.
In the western world we badly need to reshore our manufacturing to enable a balanced economy of resources manufacturing and services. Also, relocating manufacturing closer to these largest consumers will significantly reduce wasteful trade across oceans that will assist in cleaning up the over polluted oceans by the reduction of such duplicitous trade and the burning of such wasteful and dirty bunker fuel used by the container ships.
Further by ensuring populations as much as practical grow mine and make what they consume we will reduce pollution created through badly controlled manufacturing in poor countries and better force manufacturing to “clean up” rather than pollute its own consumers.
We must strive to continue to clear up this myth and ensure our governments get the story and the policies straight as the adoption of carbon taxes and energy restrictions that support the myth of man-made climate change will make it very difficult for prosperity to continue across the globe, with disastrous results for both mature and emerging economies. We may need some focused “adaption” projects where some changes in climate define action, but we certainly don’t need a global “mitigation” program that even if we needed to control climate would be ineffective, and based on the outlook is unnecessary, and certainly destructive toward our civilizations.
For more about our advocacy go to www.sme-tbm.org
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Mirek Fatyga Jun 5, 2021

Mr Dervis is up to something. let's just refine his argument a little bit.

If one wanted to extend the North American oil consumption per capita to 8 billion people, world oil production would have to increase by ~600%. To the EU level, which is more compact and weighed down by the poorer members, by ~300%. I doubt that either scenario can happen. While new oil deposits are being found, the old ones deplete and the new deposits are in hard to get to places.

The civilization desperately needs new sources of energy and new systems of commercial use of this energy if it wants to survive. These sources of energy will be non-fossil fuel sources, because there are not enough fossil fuels to go around. This is the reality where "green energies" and "conventional energies" can meet and the reason why "green energies" are definitely a growth opportunity.

The primary problem of the modern world remains scarcity ,as the rapid population growth in the XXth century outran the ability of industrial civilization to accommodate with existing technologies. This is the bad news.

The good news is that there is no climate crisis. There is climate change that happens whether we like it or not, but not a crisis that we are causing. On balance, adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is beneficial. Even if it causes a slight temperature bias, it is good for the plants, hence agriculture. And slight temperature bias would not be that bad either. A return to Little Ice Age conditions would be a huge problem, never mind something even colder. Colder is far more dangerous than warmer.

Since there is no human induced climate crisis, we can continue to use fossil fuels while we are developing new technologies necessary to accommodate 8 billion people (going on 10) into industrial civilization. The alternative to this accommodation would be a world of permanent conflict, human suffering and war, possibly ending in global, nuclear conflagration.

Now we have a way forward. We just need to get the climate hustlers out of our life and focus our efforts on advancing human welfare with good stewardship of the environment. Ten billion people will put a strain on the environment. If 8 billion of these 10 billion remain mired in poverty, they will devastate their environment and cause an ecological collapse. So we need to focus our efforts on the actual stewardship of the planet, not the imaginary one, which is the climate hustle.
- nigel southway Jun 5, 2021
  
  I 100% agree, and I would add a roadmap... move as much of our use of oil toward nuclear power and use it for as much transportation as possible and only use oil to produce materials such as plastic etc... rethink coal for use in nations that take time to build up nuclear... stay away from sun and wind its a joke.
  Stop moving materials and products around the world via manufacturing globalization and build sustainable economies using what is local to dig grow and make for the local consumers.
  Again, stop this fetish about climate change... the planet has its own agenda, and it does not care about us any which way.... just get on with not polluting it.
  Maybe a bit more thought toward population growth and migration control.
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- Joe Comment Jun 5, 2021
  
  There's no human-induced climate change and even if there is a little, it's a good thing? You need to get fact-checked.
  - nigel southway Jun 5, 2021
    
    You make the statement as if the other person has no right to state any facts. The problem is The facts don't support the scares about climate change and many are now taking a deeper look at the so called expert claims that are found to be either mis-quoted or aligned with some political motivation or professional entrapment.
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  - Mirek Fatyga Jun 5, 2021
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0FL1QyWilM
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G25FxnF6e1U&t=3117s
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Qat3L0HwY
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq60W2pRk84
    
    just a few examples of prominent people having a welcome epiphany, and being immediately attacked for it, in words similar to yours, though yours are kind in comparison to many others, so I will thank you for that.
    - nigel southway Jun 5, 2021
      
      Yes correct they used to burn those that did not have the same religion.. which is what climate change has become.. far from science and correct policy making.
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nigel southway Jun 5, 2021

Climate change is normal
We don’t have any crisis
Any mediation is unnecessary
We don’t need to do anything about changing our lifestyle
More can be done on pollution but don’t confuse with climate change
Tell these reactionaries to calm down
Stop spending my money on others.
- Joe Comment Jun 5, 2021
  
  You have which qualifications to make this claim? If true, you should try getting it published in a peer reviewed journal of the field and you'll become an instant superstar.
  - P. Kamath Jun 7, 2021
    
    A devoted Trumpist doesn’t need to have qualifications . They have ready-made alternate facts!
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  - nigel southway Jun 5, 2021
    
    I don't have to... we have plenty of others now that are saying what i am saying... just takes time for the religious fanatics to be dispersed
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The New Climate Narrative

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