[PEN-L:4646] Value of a human life and global warming

[Trond Andresen <Trond.Andresen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From "New Scientist" 1 April 1995
(but I don't think this is a joke..)

posted by Trond Andresen
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PRICE OF LIFE SENDS TEMPERATURES SOARING

	Fred Pearce, Berlin

Is the death of an overweight American from heatstroke a greater loss
to the world than a Bangladeshi farmer struck down by a tropical
cyclone? Economists advising the world's governments on how to cope
with global warming say yes. And their answer poses a new threat to
climate negotiations beginning in Berlin this week.

A draft of a forthcoming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), currently being circulated among economists,
values a dead American or European at $1-5 million, but a dead citizen
from a "low-income country" at a tenth as much, or $150 000.

In March, the Indian environment minister Kamal Nath wrote to 28 fellow
ministers around the world calling the calculations "absurd and
discriminatory". And the row threatens to spill over into the first
meeting of signatories to the Climate Change Convention.

Most governments in Berlin hope to agree to start negotiations on
cutting emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide after the year
2000. They also hope to agree on rules that would allow rich, polluting
countries to soak up their excess CO2 by planting forests in the
tropics. But Nath threw these proposals into disarray when he called on
developing countries to veto all discussions until the offending
calculations are "purged from the process".

The calculations are based on average earnings. They matter because,
with global warming expected to be killing more than 200.000 people a
year within 50 years, the value placed on a life largely determines the
"cost" of climate change. They will also determine what measures are
cost-effective to stop warming and to alleviate its impact. Are storm
barriers justified to protect Bangladesh from worsening tropical
storms, for instance?

The issue is even more sensitive because the economist behind many of
the IPCC's calculations, Sam Fankhauser works at the World Bank's
Global Environment Facility, which funds aid projects designed to help
poor nations comply with the convention.

Fankhauser is co-author of a draft chapter for the IPCC's Second
Assessment Report on the social cost of climate change. He calculates
that there will be five times as many deaths in the poor nations as in
the OECD countries as a result of global warm ing, but that the
mortality cost of the OECD deaths is more than twice as great.

Fankhauser, in a separate paper, has argued that the calculation is an
economic device and "does not mean that the life of a Chinese is worth
less than that of an EC citizen", but critics disagree. Paul Ekins, of
Birkbeck College, London, says that what ever the intention "the fact
is that the purpose of these figures is to inform cost benefit analysis
as to whether investments in the prevention of global warming are
economically desirable".

Ekins argues that similar faulty economics lies behind the reluctance
of many Western governments to plan cuts in CO2 emissions to fight
global warming.

Despite apparently undervaluing some human lives, the IPCC economics
studies provide some stark warnings of the impact of climate change.
They show that the doubling of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere,
now regarded as almost inevitable, will reduce the GNP of developing
countries by up to 9 per cent. The US may lose 40 per cent of its
forests and 10 per cent of its freshwater, while mid-latitude droughts
that currently occur once every 20 years could soon happen one year in
two.

The insurance claims that could follow such disasters frighten
insurance companies, represented for the first time at any of the
climate negotiations. Franklin Nutter, president of the Reinsurance
Association of America, told a meeting organised by Greenpeace on
Sunday that of the 25 largest insurance catastrophes in the US, "21
have occurred in the last decade and 16 involved hurricanes and
flooding".

The old methods of assessing climate risk, based on historical
precedent, no longer worked, he said. Andrew Dlugolecki at General
Accident, a British insurance company, said premiums on property had
almost doubled "entirely due to changes in weather patterns over the
last twenty years". The number of extremely hot months had quadrupled
since the 1960s and warmer winters brought more frequent and intense
storms, he said.  But the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere
could soon see much worse disruption. Bert Bolin, chairman of the IPCC,
told the opening session of the conference that sulphur dioxide air
pollution was shading many countries from solar radiation. But, he
warned, "this effect would be reduced within weeks if emissions [of
SO2] were reduced in order, for example, to address the acid rain
problem. We could see a gradual unmasking of past warming." *

Bolin told the meeting that climate change was now a certainty.
"Uncertainty about the detail does not diminish the risks. It merely
makes it more difficult to assess them. Larger changes than the
projections are just as likely as smaller ones."

These remarks were aimed at the oil companies and Gulf States, which
are bent on undermining the case for new steps to curb global warming.
They followed press reports warning that OPEC could deadlock the Berlin
meeting. But the Gulf States have few votes. If the "group of 77"
developing nations line up behind India to oppose the IPCC's price tag
on death, it could force the IPCC to come out on one side or the
other-a damaging retreat from its independent scientific status.

------------------

*Global warming has so far been masked over many of the most populated
parts of the planet by a thin smog of polluting particles, mainly
sulphate particles from burning coal and oil. In the run-up to the
Berlin conference the IPCC has for the first time modelled likely
cooling effects of these particles. Over much of Europe, China and
North America the cooling exceeds 1C, cancelling out global warming.
But the cooling effect is local and short-term. Sulphates last in the
atmosphere for only four or five days, travellina a few hundred
kilometres at most before falling to the ground. Carbon dioxide lasts
for at least a century and spreads throughout the atmosphere