Beware of Lomborgs Bearing Gifts

For some people, climate change is all a matter of priorities – the distant, far-off goal of preventing temperature rises may take second place to driving along the road to pick up the shopping. This was certainly the case with Bjorn Lomborg, who has achieved renown as the most prominent of a new breed of climate sceptics – those who accept that global warming is taking place, but downplay its consequences.

Lomborg has insisted for years that climate change is much less of a priority than other humanitarian causes – preventing diseases, securing access to clean water supplies, providing education for the poor and ensuring basic healthcare across the world. His critics level the challenge that all these causes are in some way affected by climate change – the effects of a rise in global temperature will be felt most strongly in those countries and nations with the greatest humanitarian need. As a consequence, one cannot separate action on, say, global hunger from recognising the impact of climate change and working to prevent it.

However, in an interview with the Guardian to promote his new book, Lomborg appears to have changed his tune somewhat. He now recognises the outside potential for truly catastrophic climate change, and accepts that action must be taken to avert such consequences. His new book is an effort to identify the ways in which climate change can be most cost-effectively averted, and as such it is to be welcomed – albeit cautiously, as it’s not clear that his solutions will really have the impact he claims. Rather, they could present a dangerous distraction at a time when concerted effort to beat climate change is desperately needed.

The two key examples of this in Lomborg’s approach are his reliance on government-sponsored research & development into clean energy and geo-engineering techniques like cloud whitening. While before the publication of his book it’s unfair to directly criticise his proposals without their full details being available, a note of warning should be sent out to environmentalists looking to use them as a model.

Geo-engineering is controversial in itself, but in its most basic form has been around for decades – planting trees and new forests to sequester additional carbon emissions. The outcomes of many early experiments in the field – such as sowing the sea with iron to encourage plankton growth – have been disappointing, but that in itself is no reason to discontinue research. Unfortunately, there is as yet no indication that any particular form of geo-engineering will be mature in time to help counter climate change, and over-reliance on it will not help avert global warming. This is not to say that there is no role for it in the future – merely that relying on it now is not the best option.

Additional R&D into clean energy is to be welcomed – but a focus on R&D alone by governments would likely miss the opportunities presented by the current state of technology in this field. Wind turbines are limited in the energy they can generate by physical limits to the amount of kinetic energy from wind that can be converted into useful power. This limit is 59.3% of the available energy in the wind, and is known as Betz’ Law. Modern turbines begin to approach this limit, so research in this field is now focusing on making them bigger, rather than radically re-working the design. Improvements from research in redesigned turbines are likely to be incremental at best.

Improvements to the usefulness of renewable energy sources are likely to come from research into transmission systems, materials science and maritime technology – particularly for offshore wind. Lomberg’s figure of $100 billion per year begins to look a lot smaller in this context – and we haven’t even begun to cover other renewable energy technologies.

It’s not clear that R&D spend alone would facilitate the deployment of renewable energy sources, and hence cut carbon emissions. Governments will need to intervene to ensure that these systems are deployed – and deployed soon. We urgently need to convert our energy sources to green power – and waiting for more research before we do so only increases the risk of climate change.