Don’t be alarmed by the recent report that says scorching temperatures and rising sea levels are going to cost many billions of dollars if companies don’t take more action to stop global warming. It won’t be that bad.
The report by a team of high-profile U.S. business executives and politicians predicts that, thanks to human-caused warming, over the next century many parts of the world will be seared by heat, and coastal areas will be inundated by several feet of rising sea levels.
For example, the report suggests that by 2100, temperatures in Hawaii could be at least four degrees Celsius higher than today, with sea levels a metre higher.
The report is called Risky Business — yet the real risk is in taking it seriously.
It’s true that carbon dioxide levels have risen over the past hundred years, in part due to human action. But despite this increase, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits the planet has barely warmed for at least 15 years. In other words, the alarming temperature predictions in Risky Business are almost certainly inflated.
When it comes to stopping sea-level rise, the report ignores two basic facts.
First, rising sea levels can’t be stopped. Our planet is in a warm spell (an interglacial) that began to melt the glaciers 12,000 years ago. In that 12,000 years, sea levels have risen 120 metres; most of this rise occurred thousands of years before humans developed industry. More recently, sea levels have been rising by a fraction of an inch each year. Glacier and ice-cap melting, and therefore sea-level rise, will continue as long as the earth is in warming mode, regardless of what we do or don’t do.
It’s useful to compare our interglacial with the previous one, which peaked 125,000 years ago. Temperatures in that warm spell were one to three degrees higher than we’ve reached today — and the world didn’t “burn up.” Sea levels were four to six metres higher than today’s. It’s a safe bet that sea levels in our interglacial will still rise six metres or more — but over hundreds and thousands of years, not a century, and whether humans emit carbon or not. At worst, we might be speeding up the sea-level rise by a few years.
Second, Risky Business warns of billions of dollars in costs if we don’t tackle global warming. It doesn’t consider how many billions of dollars we will lose by hobbling economic growth through carbon taxes and the like, including major job losses and a fall in our standard of living. Again, these billions will be wasted because we can’t stop interglacial sea-level rise any more than King Canute could stop the tides.
Environmentalists promise that “green” energy will fill the gap if we cut back on fossil fuels. The facts say otherwise.
Renewable energies such as hydroelectric dams, biofuels, wind, geothermal and solar power provide only 11 per cent of the world’s power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The EIA estimates that 15 per cent of the world’s energy will be renewable by 2040. At that rate we won’t be fully “green” for more than 500 years. Until then, we need fossil fuels if we wish to keep our economies strong and growing.
Yes, we should wish to keep our economies strong. The better off we are, the better we can cope with whatever climate changes occur, including moving cities, if necessary. During the Second World War, many European cities and towns were destroyed — and then rebuilt, often within a decade.
If we need to move cities due to (inevitable) sea-level rise, a strong economy can afford this. A damaged economy cannot.
If agricultural areas like B.C.’s low-lying Delta region are threatened, dikes would be much cheaper and more effective than hamstringing the province’s economy with anti-carbon measures in hopes the seas will stop rising (again, shades of King Canute).
Slightly rising temperatures and several feet of sea-level rise will inevitably bring major costs. But spread over hundreds and thousands of years, a strong economy can afford these costs. The greater risk is wasting billions of dollars in anti-carbon measures that will throttle our economy while doing nothing to stop sea-level rise that, as part of the interglacial cycle, is inevitable.
Paul MacRae is a former Times Colonist editorial writer and author of False Alarm: Global Warming — Facts Versus Fears. He teaches writing at the University of Victoria and Athabasca University.
