A new way to think about climate change
It’s real, it’s dangerous – and more prosperity is the road out
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Not long ago, ExxonMobil discovered an elephant – a vast deposit of oil and natural gas – in the coastal waters of Guyana.
This tiny country, then with a GDP per capita of $6,000, less than a tenth the figure for the United States, was barely getting by on low-wage ecotourism and sugar fields, places of backbreaking labor.
Many urged Guyana not to develop its discovered resources, because oil and gas unquestionably contribute to global warming. Good coverage of the controversy, by Gaiutra Bahadur, is here.
Guyana gave ExxonMobil the green light. In less than a decade the nation’s GDP per capita trebled, changing lives for the better.
The country’s greenhouse gas output also rose, by a tiny amount compared to the global figure. But, definitely rose.
So should Guyana have refused to sell oil and gas, passing on economic growth? Or should Guyana trade oil and gas for prosperity, knowing there would be an environmental cost – small, but real?
Here is the president of Guyana last month telling off a BBC twit who essentially told him Guyana’s poor should continue to suffer, in order to keep the tennis courts at the twit’s London club slightly cooler.
Spoiler alert: these questions don’t just apply to the developing world. They apply to the United States, European Union, Japan and others.
Especially to the United States, today the world’s largest producer of petroleum and holding the world’s fourth-largest reserve of natural gas.
Should the United States produce less oil and gas, forgoing economic growth in order to realize relatively minor reductions of carbon dioxide? This would be good for the environment but prevent middle-class living standards from rising.
Or should the United States sell fuels and grow its economy – then use the prosperity to improve living standards, build housing and mass transit, improve health care and energy efficiency, even knowing that during the short run greenhouse gases will rise?
In the Oval Office, Joe Biden has canceled oil pipelines and refinery permits, declared a “pause” on selling natural gas (currently in oversupply) to other nations desperate for clean fuels. (Natural gas does result in greenhouse emissions, but nowhere near as bad as those from coal, which gas usually replaces.)
That is, Biden has chosen to surrender economic growth, and accept more inflation, in order to achieve greenhouse reductions that are imperceptibly tiny compared to greenhouse increases from China.
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