Inconvenient truth, a sequel

Weigh the costs and benefits

Published June 11, 2006 at midnight

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Al Gore was in Denver last month to promote his global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which features the former vice president and opened here Friday.

Unfortunately, as Gore jets around the world promoting his movie, he continues to argue that central planning on an international scale is the only appropriate response to rising temperatures. And he downplays or ignores the high cost and uncertain payoff of such an approach.

The Kyoto Protocol on global warming - the cornerstone of Gore's agenda - is flawed for two major reasons. The most obvious is that even if all of Gore's assumptions concerning the causes of global warming are accurate - a considerable if, by the way - Kyoto wouldn't halt the warming or even appreciably slow it down.

Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has calculated (according to the NCAR Web site) that compliance with Kyoto "would shave 0.11 to 0.21 degrees Celsius (0.20–0.38 degrees Fahrenheit) off global average temperatures by 2100." For the record, Wigley favors Kyoto but believes additional measures are required.

But at what cost? Kyoto compliance alone, the federal government estimates, would drain $300-$400 billion from the U.S. economy each year. An accelerated mandate for still more drastic reduction of greenhouse gases could send the world economy into a tailspin at a time when evidence is mounting that stagnant economies will not be nimble enough to adapt to the significant challenges that greenhouse warming might pose.

Even among nations that signed Kyoto, the agreement looks like a costly bust. The International Council for Capital Formation, a think tank in Brussels, reports that the 15 European Union signatories will not cut their overall greenhouse-gas emissions by 4 percent in 2010, as the agreement dictates; instead, emissions will rise by 8 percent. Great Britain indeed projects lower emissions, but that's due to a one-time switch from oil to natural gas to fuel its electric plants and because Dupont closed a large plant.

The ICCF also concludes that a Kyoto-like proposal by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to "cap and trade" U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions would reduce national income by 1.9 percentage points by 2020 and cost 1.3 million jobs; the average household would be $2,300 poorer as a result of higher energy prices and lower productivity.

Without setting goals or timetables to reduce greenhouse gases, the United States has reduced its "energy intensity" - the amount of energy we consume per dollar - nearly twice as fast as the EU over the past decade. That's because U.S. entrepreneurs have been free to invest in cleaner, more efficient technologies that will actually reduce greenhouse-gas emissions over time, rather than scrambling to meet arbitrary caps.

In fact, the AP6 partnership struck last year by the U.S., Australia, Japan, India, China and South Korea may do more to reduce greenhouse gases and push global prosperity than the Kyoto crowd could imagine.

As members of AP6, India and China (which did not sign Kyoto) will invest in cleaner technologies supplied by the other partners. That's important because the AP6 accounts for 49 percent of the global economy and produces half the planet's man-made greenhouse gases.

Richer societies are better positioned to develop and exploit cutting-edge technologies that run cleaner. The challenge for policymakers is to get beyond petty moralizing and figure out ways to democratize economic growth.

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