[DEBATE] : Shooting down the enemies of progress

[Russell]

Friday 30 May 2008
Shooting down the enemies of progress

Environmentalists argue that the debate about global warming is done and
dusted, and we now have no choice but to rein in development and shrink the
'human footprint'. Two powerful new books beg to differ.
Tony Gilland 

An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming is a concise and
interesting contribution to the debate about the significance of global
warming. According to its author, Nigel Lawson, the former British
chancellor of the exchequer in the Thatcher years, it was a major struggle
to find a publisher willing to publish something that 'flies so much in the
face of the prevailing orthodoxy'. Nevertheless, since finding a publisher,
Lawson has done a reasonable job of attracting coverage for his arguments
about the exaggerated, unnecessarily fearful stance that many are adopting
with regard to the issue of global warming. 
His message that human beings are more adaptable than they are being given
credit for in the current global warming debate is the most convincing part
of the book, and the one that has received most favourable coverage in the
press. 
Referring to the role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) and its attempt to predict what the impacts of global warming might
be by 2100, Lawson undoubtedly has a point when he argues that 'there is
something inherently absurd about the conceit that we can have any useful
idea of what the world will be like in a hundred years time'. As Lawson
points out: 'We have only to ask ourselves whether the Edwardians, even if
equipped with the most powerful modern computers, would have been able to
foresee the massive economic, political and technological changes that have
occurred in the past hundred years'. For Lawson, combining the
'uncertainties of long-range weather forecasting' with those of 'long-range
economic forecasting' and 'long range population forecasting' does not
provide a sound basis for 'seriously expensive' long-term policy decisions. 
The book is at its best when simply raising commonsense points about the
scale of the problems that may be posed by global warming in the context of
future economic and technological development and man's adaptive
capabilities. For example, using the IPCC's own assumptions that have shaped
their various future scenarios about economic growth, population growth and
growth in carbon emissions, coupled with the IPCC's associated projections
about the range of possible average temperature rises associated with these
different scenarios, Lawson demonstrates why people in the year 2100 (the
time span the IPCC focuses on) should in general be well able to cope with
any necessary adjustments that society will need to make in the face of
warming. 
According to Lawson, using the IPCC's own assumptions, even under its
gloomiest scenario with the lowest assumed rate of technological advance and
the highest assumed rate of population growth (15 billion by 2100, nearly 50
per cent higher than the United Nation's own highest projection for that
year), the costs associated with coping with the consequences of the 3.4
degrees Celsius best estimate rise in temperature made by the IPCC will mean
that people in the developing world will, on average, be 'only 8.5 times as
well off as people in the developing world today, instead of 9.5 times as
well off'. 
Similarly, people in the developed world will be 'only 2.6 times as well off
as we are today, instead of 2.7 times'. According to Lawson, if you take the
IPCC's most optimistic growth scenarios, then the corresponding figures
would be 4.7 times as well off for the developed world compared to 4.8 times
as well off, and 45 times as well off in the developing world compared to 50
times as well off. 
Thinking about these widely varying assumptions and their lack of any real
grounding in reality makes one very aware of the futility involved with
predicting the future in this way. But this number-crunching exercise does
help to put the scale of the problem of global warming into perspective. As
Lawson readily admits, global warming may well present people with
challenges and problems to overcome - whether through impacts on water
supply and food production, sea-level rise in low-lying areas, or the spread
of some diseases. But none of these problems need be catastrophic, and in
some instances the advantages of warming are likely to be greater than the
disadvantages. If we prioritise continued economic growth and technological
development, there appears little reason to believe that, in general, we
cannot take the challenges posed by warming in our stride as we march
towards greater prosperity. 
The more relaxed perspective on global warming argued for by Lawson is out
of kilter with much of what we hear about the issue in the media or from
politicians, business leaders and pretty much everybody else these days.
According to Robin McKie, reviewing Lawson's book for the Observer, this is
because Lawson 'simply piles up scientific howlers'; McKie accuses Lawson of
using 'cherry-picked' and 'distorted data'. He particularly objects to
Lawson's focus on the static average global temperature increases recorded
for the years 2001 to 2007. McKie says: 'The Met Office states clearly: "The
temperature change over the latest decade [1998-2007] alone shows a
continued warming of 0.1 deg. C per decade."' (1) 
Indeed it seems quite reasonable to object to the level of attention Lawson
pays to a very short period of time when the science of global warming is
about longer-term trends. However, given that the science of global warming
is often presented as much more accurate and well understood than it
actually is, in order to use 'the science' to push through political
objectives and specific policy responses, it seems quite reasonable for
Lawson to point out that this period of roughly static temperatures, much
commented upon within the scientific community recently, was not predicted
by any of the clever computer models wheeled out to tell us why we must all
start doing our bit to reduce our carbon footprint. 
The strength of Lawson's book is probably not in his presentation of the
science of global warming, though he does do a reasonable job of pointing
out that the science is less certain and clear-cut than it is frequently
portrayed to be. The reason to read this book is because, in the context of
all the hype and hyperbole about this issue, his pragmatic and sober
approach to examining the potential impacts of global warming against the
potential for mankind to adapt, and weighing these up against the cost of
expensive and drastic action now, is quite refreshing. 
The weakness of Lawson's book is his political analysis of the situation. To
explain the meteoric rise of the green movement, he gives the simplistic pat
explanation 'with the collapse of Marxism . green is the new red'. Anybody
who remembers the Thatcher administration, in which Lawson was a central
influence, might balk at the rosy-eyed view of the forward march of economic
growth that he puts across. During that Conservative administration, mass
unemployment was an ever-present feature. Moreover, blaming the left is
rather one-sided; it was Thatcher herself who was the first major leader to
raise the issue of global warming, at a speech to the Royal Society in 1988
(see Digging up the roots of the IPCC, by Tony Gilland). 
Nonetheless, when it comes to the issue at hand, Lawson does an admirable
job of demonstrating that there is a profoundly important debate to be had
about how we respond to global warming that is simply not being properly had
out today. 
Equally refreshing is Austin Williams' polemic against the tediously
self-righteous orthodoxy that has grown up around the sustainability agenda.
Williams' The Enemies of Progress: The Dangers of Sustainability is a romp
of a read. The author does not mince his words. 'Sustainability is an
insidiously dangerous concept at odds with progress' and 'a pernicious and
corrosive doctrine that has survived primarily because there seems to be no
alternative to its canon', he writes. 
Across eight well-argued chapters, Williams hangs out to dry those who view
humankind as our biggest threat and who celebrate the curtailment of human
activity in the name of saving the planet. He also offers up some
interesting insights and questions to explore if we are to properly
understand the stranglehold sustainability has over society (as Williams
notes, 'nowhere is the word "development" printed without its adjectival
corrective'), and how we might begin to cut loose from it. 
The Enemies of Progress starts with two hard-hitting chapters, one on
transport and mobility ('The New Parochialists') and one on energy provision
('The Opt-Outs'), which take up the central tenet of sustainability: the
idea that we need to make do with less and curb our ambitions and desires.
'The New Parochialists' begins with a wonderful early nineteenth-century
quote from Dr Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School, who, upon seeing a
Victorian steam train travelling across the countryside, stated: 'I rejoice
to see it, and think that feudality is gone forever.' Contrast this to Tony
Blair at the beginning of his premiership in 1997, when he suggested that 'a
new approach to transport may mean sometimes not travelling at all', or the
fact that in 2005/06 the UK managed to complete 'a meagre 22 miles of road
network', and you can begin to see where Williams is coming from. 
With irony, the author notes that the Chinese, 'with fewer qualms about the
human efficiency gains resulting from swapping their bikes for motor cars,
have recently announced that they will be building 5,500 miles of new
roadway in the next five years', while India has initiated a '15-year
project to widen, resurface and maintain over 40,000 miles of national
highways'. Contrast this to the UK, which added a mere 6.3 miles of road
improvements between 2006 and 2008! 
Williams is scathing of the impact of 'carbonistas' (translation: obsessive
carbon counters and moralisers) on transport policy, pointing out how
'sustainable transport has won a considerable pyrrhic victory; undermining
the legitimacy of mobility and the sociability, aspiration and
inquisitiveness which are contained within the desire to transport ourselves
beyond the local'. He is equally scathing of the drive towards
'microgeneration' to meet energy needs and the 'constant subliminal drone of
public service broadcasting all directed cynically to encourage civic
engagement in an "energy dialogue"' where, he argues, 'the mere process of
people getting involved in deciding which jumper to wear while the
thermostat is turned down a degree or two is the real victory for
sustainability devotees'. 
The seriousness with which all of this is taken is well-illustrated by an
amusing quote from the chairman of America's Edison Electric Institute,
stating that 'the most efficient and environmentally responsible (power)
plant you can build is the one that you don't build'. That such a comment
can be made in seriousness demonstrates the strength of the problem that
Williams rightly rails against when he argues 'human time spent on these
penny-pinching activities is automatically deemed to be worth it', when in
fact 'it is the minimisation of human effort, not external energy, that is
the key to progress: the freeing up of labour so that humans can do other
things'. 
The book continues with, among others, interesting chapters on the
subversion of education in the cause of propagandising to the young about
sustainability and green issues; sour-faced attitudes towards the remarkable
economic development taking place in China and India; and the dressing up of
reactionary attitudes about what the Third World should aspire towards as
enlightened thinking in the guise of sustainable development. The chapter on
education, 'The Indoctrinators', is particularly worth reading. The tedium
that is being inflicted on our children's minds when the same old green
agenda is stuck in front of them at every opportunity becomes obvious when
you reflect on how many extra-curricula initiatives choose to orient
themselves towards the sustainability agenda. 
Children's Book Week, a national students' entrepreneurship and technology
competition and a national poetry competition are just a few examples of
initiatives that have chosen the environment as the theme or focus for their
activity in the past couple of years. And the way in which the integrity of
education itself becomes undermined as even the basic teaching of subjects
becomes subverted by the environmental cause is drawn out by a nice example
from Beech Hill Primary School. Apparently, with assistance from the World
Wildlife Fund, music lessons at this school involve children matching
different rhythms to suit pictures of nature and of people such that the
resulting cacophony provides 'a springboard to consider the effect that
humans have on the environment'. No longer, it would seem, are students
simply allowed to learn music; rather, they now need to demonstrate due
deference to the sustainability agenda while listening to a tune. 
The Enemies of Progress concludes by addressing the growing tendency for
some environmentalists to react against the doom and gloom associated with
environmentalism. For example, leading environmentalists Ted Nordhaus and
Michael Shellenberger worry about environmentalism's 'failure to articulate
a positive and inspiring vision', while Sir David King, former chief
scientific adviser to the UK government and leading advocate of drastic
reductions in carbon emissions, has worried about a sense of despair
dissuading people from taking action over climate change. 
But for Williams the corresponding and growing emphasis on 'techno-optimism'
among some environmentalists does not wash. Their fundamental point and
approach still views human beings as the problem and seeks to curtail our
ambitions: 'What does ambition mean if we allow humanity to be represented
as the biggest problem on the planet, rather than as creators of a better
future...? If our ambition is to put nature first, humans come second.
Period.' 
For those excited about the potential of humanity to shape the world,
Williams' book is a refreshing and useful polemic. 

Tony Gilland is science and society director at the Institute of Ideas. 
An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, by Nigel Lawson is
published by Gerald Duckworth & Co. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) 
Enemies of Progress: The Dangers of Sustainability, by Austin Williams is
published by Societas. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) 
(1) Talk about hot air, Robin McKie, Observer, 20 April 2008 
reprinted from:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/5204/