[Vision2020] New In Theaters: Economist Lomborg's Film "Cool It" Regarding Anthropogenic Climate Warming

[Ted Moffett]

A review of Lomborg's film "Cool It" from Andy Revkin of the New York
Times, with a response from Lomborg, is lower down.

I first address recent comments on Vision2020 that connect to economic
issues that relate to Lomborg's film, comments that did not mention
fossil fuel depletion or climate change, and reference Nobel Prize
winning economist Paul Krugman regarding Lomborg's arguments in a
debate between Krugman and Lomborg.
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The national debt should only be incurred "in the event of sudden
emergency?"  As possibly, protecting the US coastline from a 1 meter
or more rise in sea level from climate change?

This severe economic impact may occur from climate change even if
there is no major economic crisis from resource depletion, even if air
and water remain clean, safe food is abundant, human rights are
protected, terrorism and war stops, Wall Street finds ethical
salvation, in short, even if every aspect of human life appears to be
progressing well... Fossil fuel depletion, and of many resources, is
eventually a major problem, of course, especially with expanding
population, but...

We are facing or are soon to face two "emergencies" that may impact
the national debt: fossil fuel depletion and climate change.  And
these are two problems that our government, both Democrats and
Republicans, are not sustantially addressing, though I think it clear
that the Democrats are trying to do more overall, even if their
approach is flawed, to face these issues.

I'm not going to mostly blame politicians or fossil fuel coporations
for the inaction on these problems, though of course they are partly
to blame:  voters may vote out of office politicians who promote
policies that indicate economic sacrifices must be made in the costs
of energy (cap and tax, NO!), and fossil fuel corporations are
supplying products most consumers demand, regardless of political
orientation.  How many operators of fossil fuel powered vehicles
participated in Moscow's recent "Park It" 350.org action?

"...quasi-sustainable economy" in Western Europe?  I'm not sure what
"quasi" means in this context, but there is not one major developed or
developing nation on Earth, in Europe, Asia etc. whose economy would
not face drastic consequences if the global multinational economic
system shifted away from non-renewable non-sustainable fossil fuels as
a primary energy source, before a massive shift to atlernative energy
sources was in place, which is not realistically possible for decades.

Even nations who have shifted energy sources more to solar, wind
etc.(and consume far fewer resources and energy per capita as do
people in the US), as some nations in Europe, still depend on trade
with nations who have not, to maintain their standard of living;
therefore these nations are still dependent on multinational economic
activity that is largely fossil fuel powered and resource extractive
intensive, contributing to climate change.

Fossil fuels, especially the world's huge coal reserves, can likely
continue to greatly power the multinational economic system for
decades, some would argue longer, with coal liquification or
gasification, before depletion, especially of oil, will become
critical.  The US has huge (think Saudi Arabia) oil shale deposits,
though environmental impacts and costs are large for development.
Natural gas exploitation may also allow for a longer period before
critical depletion of fossil fuels has drastic economic impacts (now
the damage to water supplies from "fracking" to extract natural gas is
a major issue).  If development of methane hydrates becomes practical
as an energy source, highly uncertain, another fossil fuel will be
available (total carbon in methane hydrates is more than is contained
in all traditional fossil fuels: oil, coal, natural gas).

But anthropogenic climate warming should be addressed before fossil
fuel depletion is even close to critical, or probable severe impacts
of climate change from CO2 emissions (large scale CCS, carbon capture
and sequestration, remains questionable, despite the US coal
industry's claims in their "Clean Coal" propaganda campaign) are
likely to be beyond human capacity to prevent ( MIT study on
probabilities of global warming discussed here:
http://globalchange.mit.edu/resources/gamble/ ), without risky
untested geo-engineering.

While estimating the economic costs of climate change is difficult,
these costs could stress the multinational economic system rather
drastically (an academic review of the "Stern Report on the Economics
of Climate Change," an often cited and also criticized analysis, is
here: http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/weitzman/files/JELSternReport.pdf
).

A new film from economist Bjorn Lomborg, "Cool It," is now or soon to
be showing in theaters in the US.  Lomborg is well known for
conceeding that global warming from human impacts is happening, but
that the proposals put forward by many environmentalists to address
the problem are ineffective and expensive, that economic resources
would be better spent on adaptation to climate change and addressing
other problems: poverty, hunger etc.  However, Lomborg does advocate a
carbon tax!

Regardless of the truth of Lomborg's specific arguments, it is highly
improbable, given a realistic assessment of the political, economic
and technological hurdles to largely shifting the multinational
economic sytem away from massive CO2 emissions from fossil fuel
dependence within a few decades, that climate change will be addressed
soon enough to prevent serious impacts that will demand expensive
adaptation and possibly extreme geo-engineering of the Earth's climate
system.

What would it cost the US economy to protect valuable coastline from a
1 meter rise in sea level?  Would the private sector pay for this
protection (costs of course passed on to consumers), would the cost be
totally immediately supported by the taxpayer via government action,
or by more government debt?

As Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman phrased it in a
discussion regarding anthropogenic climate warming with Lomborg on CNN
with interviewer Zakaria, Dec. 13, 2009 (transcript of interview here:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0912/13/fzgps.01.html )  "You
have to guard against the substantial possibility of really
catastrophic change."

Loomborg's approach appears to not face the degree of probability of
catastrophic change from human impacts on climate, that climate
science indicates, in his economic equations, though I think he raises
important issues regarding the problems, even failures, with the
approaches to solving the problem that many environmentalists
advocate, the Kyoto Protocol, etc. and what may be unavoidable though
very risky, geo-engineering of the Earth's climate.

However, humanity is already unwittingly geo-engineering the climate,
and any response to this development is only a more deliberate
conscious effort at geo-engineering to prevent undesirable impacts.
Planting a forest with the intent of sequestering carbon to lower
atmospheric CO2 levels is geo-engineering climate.

The choice now is not whether or not to geo-engineer Earth's climate,
but how best to geo-engineer with the least risks.
---------------------------
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Below is a review of "Cool It" by the New York Times Andy Revkin,
which Lomborg took seriously enough to respond to, as can be read
below:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/cool-climate-film-takes-on-truth/

November 12, 2010, 9:52 am
‘Cool’ Climate Film Takes On ‘Truth’
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
1:29 p.m. | Updated below

An earnest non-scientist probing the relationship of people, climate
and energy travels the globe describing his menu for avoiding
dangerous global warming.

Cameras follow every move. The articulate, energetic man, aided by a
skilled filmmaker using evocative imagery, distills a momentous but
complicated issue to digestible sound bites, jabs at his ideological
and intellectual antagonists and delivers an illustrated lecture to a
rapt audience.

This description could easily fit former Vice President Al Gore and
the film crew that shot “ An Inconvenient Truth.” But now it also fits
Bjorn Lomborg, the self-described “skeptical environmentalist” who is
the focus of (and a co-writer of) “Cool It,” a new documentary that is
clearly trying to be a counterpunch to the Gore film.

The prime theme of “Cool It,” taken from  Lomborg’s book of the same
name, is that global warming is a serious problem but that raising the
cost of polluting forms of energy is a highly inefficient solution.

There are many experts in energy technology who have made this point
for a very long time, perhaps most notably  Martin Hoffert at New York
University in a string of influential papers and  Richard Smalley, the
Nobel laureate in chemistry who devoted the final years of his life,
even as he fought cancer, to describing how advancing energy
technologies was the prime imperative of this generation. With the
paralysis of the climate treaty process and American legislation
capping greenhouse gases, a direct focus on  energy innovation as a
climate, economic and security strategy is gaining some traction in
policy circles.

But these days, celebrity and edge appear to be required ingredients
if you want to make a feature-style documentary.  Ondi Timoner, a
much-lauded documenatarian who directed the film, told The Wall Street
Journal she had  no intention of making her film on Lomborg an assault
on Gore:

I’m a Democrat, I was a page in the U.S. Senate. I’m not against Gore…
The anti-‘Inconvenient Truth’ would say global warming is not
happening. The reason I wanted to make the film is the pragmatic
solutions that he puts forward… Until alternative energies become less
expensive, fossil fuels are never going to go away…. That’s my
favorite point and I hope that’s what people take away from the film.

I hope she’s right, although my guess is a lot of viewers will focus
on the conflict — and the jabs at the environmental left — more than
the substance, where it exists. (I know. It’s a movie. How dare I ask
for substance…)

Lomborg’s main prescription, derived in part from his periodic
consultations with panels of prominent economists, is to invest
heavily in research on non-polluting energy technology and
countermeasures to greenhouse heating, collectively known as
geo-engineering. (He reprises his geo-engineering push in a
forthcoming issue of Time Magazine.)

In his book, Lomborg proposes that a modest carbon tax could pay for
all of this work at a fraction the cost of a cap on emissions of
greenhouse gases, the approach pursued by Europe under the Kyoto
Protocol (and rejected in the United States).

Does the film succeed? “Cool It” is eminently watchable — which is no
surprise given Timoner’s involvement. Lomborg, as always, is charming
and persuasive, frequently shown riding his bicycle through
Copenhagen’s busy streets — in what has to be seen as a dig at Gore,
who in his film is often seen racing through airports.

But it suffers from the same simplification syndrome that weakened “An
Inconvenient Truth.”

In that film, for example, Gore breezily concluded by saying, “We
already know everything we need to know to effectively address this
problem,” a phrase  he modified in subsequent statements, saying
existing technology was sufficient to start on the path to limit
warming.

In “Cool It,” Lomborg breezily ticks down a laundry list of high-tech
ways to engineer the atmosphere, for example, but punts on the tougher
questions related to such planet-scale enterprises — such as the
inevitable diplomatic dispute over who sets the planetary thermostat
and how blocking the sun does nothing to stem the buildup of carbon
dioxide, much of which will stay in the atmosphere for many centuries.

He proposes spending tens of billions of dollars (a bargain, he
insists, compared to the hundreds of billions that would be spent on a
cap-and-trade style approach), but he doesn’t say how he’d convince
the United States or China to adopt the necessary carbon tax.

And he doesn’t deal with the full pipeline for innovation that is
required to take a promising technology from idea to breakthrough. A
greatly intensified research effort is a vital, but insufficient,
facet of any plan to foster progress without disrupting the climate.

Its chiding tone in places is unlikely to build the sense of consensus
and excitement around an energy quest that Lomborg seems to desire.

The film makes fun of British students exploring ways to save energy
instead of pointing to such students — and education on the globe’s
energy challenge — as a critical component of a strategy to foster
progress without overheating the planet.

I would have loved to see Timoner explore the world’s energy challenge
and opportunities without building her film around the tug of war
between liberals and libertarians. I think there’s a way, but that’s
easy for me to say.

The film is provocative and well worth seeing, and I’m sure it’ll have
a long life on Netflix. But my guess is that it will end up being
another slosh to the shallow pan of public attitudes on climate.

A more substantive discussion of the policy issues can be found in  a
recent onstage conversation between Lomborg and Carl Pope, the head of
the Sierra Club, following a screening of the film at the Commonwealth
Club in San Francisco.

I know. I’m an energy and climate wonk. The most compelling, even
exciting, argument I’ve seen for the United States to engage in a
sustained energy quest was that of Richard Smalley. The following
video of Smalley making his presentation is funky and grainy, but, to
my eye, more compelling than anything brought to movie screens so far.

I’ll be posting a short interview I did with Lomborg about the film
over the weekend, along with an open call for questions for him.

1:29 p.m. | Updated
Lomborg sent this initial reaction to the post:

The film doesn’t zero in on mechanisms to raise money for the
solutions advocated, but focuses on the fact that we’re already
willing to stomach a cost of around $200 billion to achieve very
little (EU 20/20/20), so looks at ways to better allocate that.

Ideally for me the film would have been an hour longer and contained
many more of the points I make in the book! :-)

Instead, this is a film that focuses strongly (and, I hope,
powerfully) on the smart solutions, and I’ve shot extra videos for the
movie’s website, DVD, YouTube, etc., that address points that didn’t
fit in. So there’s a clip put out already that elaborates on my view
of how the money can be raised, and there’s more such videos in the
works on a range of other points.

I’ll be tracking down links to the ancillary content and will add them
as I find them (or as you find them!).
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Another review of "Cool It" from "Seattle Weekly:"

http://www.seattleweekly.com/movies/cool-it-1101446/

Cool It

The science of global warming is tough enough to evaluate without the
sort of hard-sell Ondi Timoner pushes on behalf of her subject, Bjorn
Lomborg. Author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and the movie's
eponymous source book, the Danish adjunct professor of statistics
became, over the past decade, a thorn in the side of the
environmentalist consensus on climate meltdown. Given a soapbox (and
an inexhaustible supply of black tees), the gadfly gets to air his
cost-benefit objections to widely accepted proposals and entertains
what-if alternatives that sound dubious for the long-term. Thanks to
knee-jerk condemnation by scientists back home, he's cast as the
rationalist victim of groupthink, and has a counterproductive advocate
in Timoner. How seriously can you take any portrait that follows a
segment of criticism with its subject doting on his momma? Versed in
the visual rhetoric of pseudo-journalism, the Sundance-approved
director of DiG and We Live in Public displays a weakness for
heavy-handed pivots, unexamined arguments, and wall-to-wall filler
music. Timoner does present a colorful cast of supportive scientists
and scores a funny dig at green indoctrination with a classroom of
schoolkids fretting over Dad's toaster usage. But by the time we're
being hustled through the finer points of algae energy and the renewed
viability of dikes, Lomborg sounds like an infomercial huckster, down
to the vow to have money for “all the remaining problems of the world”
thanks to his low, low price for managing global warming.

Nicolas Rapold
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett