I just got a bit carried away in the happiness economics thread talking about climate change, which has been on my mind a lot at the moment. I'll repost some of the links here:

World's leading scientists in desperate plea to politicians to act on climate change

Life after the oil crash

Feedback effect 1 - Methane

Feedback effect 2 - Rainforest decimation

And so on. These don't paint a picture of a healthy future for our society - the coinciding of Peak Oil and climate change seems likely to make efforts to combat the latter far harder since, among other things, wind turbines, tidal generators etc all require large amounts of oil in their construction. Same goes for last-resort efforts to seed the atmosphere with enough particles to block the sun's rays. Note that the last of those links is slightly misnamed - the article describes how scientists think this will happen if the global temperature rises by the modest 2 degrees that everyone's predicting.

Even if you think this is all sensationalist catastrophism (in which case, reread the first link, since a) the Telegraph is Britain's most conservative broadsheet, and b) it's unprecedented for so many scientists to speak out so forcefully - or with such unity on any political issue), the worst case scenarios are so devastating that their expected risks are huge if you give them any credence at all. Human extinction looks like a plausible outcome, if not from the direct effects of runaway climate change then from the hugely increased competition for resources combined with our huge stockpiles of nuclear weaponry.

Schemes to combat population growth might be important, but they're certainly not enough - population growth rates have already fallen enough that when the baby boomers' generation start dying of old age, the global population will start to fall. But this won't happen until about 2070, which is about 50 years after the most conservative estimates have the effects of both peak oil and climate change becoming irreversible.

One of the reasons I'm keen to persuade people of utilitarianism is that hardly anyone objects to it in a triage situation, but most people don't think of themselves as being in one. But, when redirecting time and resources could save millions of lives, we clearly are.

All this is why, while I strongly support both Toby Ord's Giving What We Can and Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save projects, I think we can save the most lives by diverting our money not to social development for its own sake - as important as it is, it can wait, and it won't become at least five times as expensive (nb the author of that report has subsequently claimed that he underestimated the impact of climate change and also that governments haven't responded nearly vigorously enough to deal with the problem - note also the claim in that piece that a rise of 4 degrees is most likely, which would kill off 85% of the Amazon). So in response to Alan Dawrst's question, I'll only be giving my money to causes that combat the problem of climate change as efficiently as possible - and so far I have no idea what those causes are. I've emailed Givewell, but their response was that it's not a priority. I've also emailed Toby Ord but not heard back from him - he might be finishing off his PhD thesis. I might try Charity International next, and perhaps other posters here have idea?

The other thing I'm keen to do is fly as little as possible, and avoid eating meat, which seems to create slightly less carbon dioxide than driving an SUV for a year - perhaps more when you account for meat's freshwater requirements. More importantly, while I generally hate moralising at people - not least because it's so easily counterproductive - I want to start finding ways to persuade other people to do these things. Starting with you lucky people...

The peak oil theory is a myth. The way economics works, it's nigh impossible to just deplete resources unless there's no way to keep people from taking them. If people are drilling oil too fast, its price will increase faster than the interest rate, which would mean that it would become more profitable just to hold the land than to drill. Up to that point, there are better investments to be made than saving oil, so saving it is actually a bad thing. Because of this, oil is drilled at the optimal speed.

Are there any studies on how common runaway climate change is? I think it's safe to say it would cause an extinction event, and there have been five to 20 of those in the last 540 million years, so that's at most once every 27 million years. Even if we cause the climate to change at a thousand times the normal rate, it would still take 27,000 years.

The part about avoiding meat is a bit misleading. You made it sound like eating meat once creates slightly less carbon dioxide than driving an SUV for a year. It should be eating meat for a year creates slightly less carbon dioxide than driving an SUV, as opposed to a Prius, for a year. Also, I've heard that grazing cows have a tiny fraction of the carbon footprint, as they don't have to ship them feed. Of course, you may want to stop eating meat for the sake of the cows.

What exactly are the problems of runaway climate change? It would hurt humans, but not enough to justify trying to prevent it if it has an extremely low probability. It will cause an extinction event, but we're causing one rather directly right now, and we should stop doing it before we stop something that might cause one indirectly. So what if global warming might kill 85% of the Amazon in the next, what, 50 years, when at the rate we're cutting it down, that much will be gone in the next 40? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_Rainforest#Future

There is scientific consensus that human-driven climate change exists. Supposing we agree that climate change will cause immense animal suffering, all probabilities considered. Well then, as Arepo says, we might want to donate to counter climate change. It's not an avenue I've considered going down yet. But, like with the issue of world poverty, we could directly attack the problem, we could lobby for governments to do so, or we could educate and inspire other individuals to make contributions.

I could see scope for the last option there. Whenever I see advertisements for red meat arguing that we're meant to eat it and we're healthier when we eat it, I find this immensely frustrating. I think this topic is just dying for a counterpoint. Obviously, my frustration doesn't necessarily qualify this path as cost-effective. However, it's interesting to ponder these kids of issues, especially as they apply wherever you want to donate your money. (from my little research, I gather female education is some candidate)

ps DanielLC is right about peak oil. This 'peak oil' notion seems to have sprung from the minds of arts students with no understanding of a supply-demand curve.

There's more to peak oil than the supply and demand curve. The main thing that is missed is that oil can be bought and sold without actually drilling it (you can sell the land). If you have something that can't be sold like that (such as fish) you may end up with a peak oil-esque problem.

I should post a counterpoint:



I'm not at all convinced by the logic he gives in that talk, though I (like to think) I'm potentially persuadeable by such an argument. But I think there are serious problems with what he actually said:

1) hindsight - the talk was in 2005, and since then estimates of the economic damage climate change will cause have skyrocketed.

2) even if his estimates are correct, he misstates the harm CC will cause as a one-off, directly comparable to (by implication) preventing one person from catching AIDS. But it's a process that has already kicked in now, and will be causing (increasing amounts of harm) from now until hundreds or maybe thousands of years into the future.

3) his argument from authority - he has a group of economists who've all reached the same conclusion, which is not a universally accepted one even among prominent economists (see the above link), but he declares them the best economists in the world, without qualification.

4) his uncritical claim that wealth will just carry on increasing sounds like a best-case scenario, not a measured claim. I don't feel remotely qualified to opine on this, but he just gave no reason to accept the claim. What is this wealth supposed to consist of? All our key resources are running out - CC will deprive us of huge amounts of land, arable land and freshwater, which are all key to the replacement of fossil fuels, and the metals needed to built much of our current and future technology are already insufficient even to get the developed world to where the West is now.

It's worth reading the Wikipedia entries on Bjorn Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus too, I think. Hard to be sure what to think, but he has a lot of very intelligent people accusing him of serious reasoning errors and bias. Claiming that they've all based their opinions on Hollywood blockbusters while revealing so little of his own methodology is a poor way to rise to the challenge, IMO.

A quick point re Daniel and Ryan - what's with the ad hominem against humanities students? Can you be a bit clearer about what you think the mistaken peak oil claim is, and why it's mistaken, avoiding generalisations about who made the mistake? As far as I can see, the basic claims are pretty straightforward:

1) We use x amount of oil per person per day.
2) The number of people is increasing.
3) x is still increasing, or at least not decreasing anywhere near fast enough to counterbalance the increasing number of people.
4) The production growth of oil is slowing down and will soon start regressing.

I don't think anyone disputes those points. The issue seems to be what the regression implies. Pretty obviously it means we're forcibly going to start using a lot less oil per person-day. The pertinent question seems to be whether we can a) replace it with another resource or b) smoothly transition into a contracting economy.

The basic answer to a) seems to be 'no'. Oil alternatives still seem to be very costly and less versatile, and usually require oil to construct, so are going to get more so - just at the time when climate change is also hitting the global economy. (I can't find a plausible-looking source on this, but on the other hand I can't find one contradicting it, and it seems to be received wisdom among people who've researched the issue). But b) seems to be something almost everyone denies.

Arepo wrote:4) his uncritical claim that wealth will just carry on increasing sounds like a best-case scenario, not a measured claim. I don't feel remotely qualified to opine on this, but he just gave no reason to accept the claim. What is this wealth supposed to consist of? All our key resources are running out - CC will deprive us of huge amounts of land, arable land and freshwater, which are all key to the replacement of fossil fuels, and the metals needed to built much of our current and future technology are already insufficient even to get the developed world to where the West is now.

There's a lot more to wealth than raw materials. Our production methods improve. We find new materials to do the same thing cheaper or better. We get better skilled labor and higher-quality equipment.

My response to the last comment:

I don't deny that there will be a point of peak oil production, but the most efficient way to use oil is also way the free market will naturally use it. Same goes for metals and arable land. If the oil companies protect their own interests well, they will produce oil at the optimum rate. If the companies who are affected by oil prices (i.e. all of them) protect their own interests well, they'll adjust to the changing prices in the optimum manner. If they couldn't protect their own interests, they would already be out of business.

Oil alternatives will get cheaper as we find more efficient ways to produce them, and if they get mass produced.

I wonder if there are any good ways to get the government to make it easier to use nuclear power. (I'm from the US, by the way. I've heard other countries have no problems using it.) It would replace much of oils use for generating power, and it would make oil replacements cheaper. It also has virtually no environmental impact.

Alright, I'm sorry to the extent that I was poo-pooing arts students.

Now, I think that this peak issue just attracts more drama than it deserves. I'm not saying that there won't be a decrease in our capacity to transport people and things. But I think that this peak-oil issue has achieved a trendy status among non-economist academics. What will happen is that oil will become expensive, non-oil transport methods & manufacture methods will become cheaper, people will travel less. They'll find that features of their cars that they previously thought were not-negotiable they're now willing to give up: our new cars might be smaller, they might need recharging every now and again. They might be pricier or they mightn't have such safety improvements as we've become used to. People will buy shares in those who manage the change well, the markets will adjust, and some fuel will remain for those who really need it.

It doesn't really sound as though you're saying anything substantially different from the peak oilers. They certainly don't claim oil will run out. The two basic things I think they would dispute with you are,

1) That adequate alternative forms of energy and artificial building materials actually exist as to replace oil on anything comparable to the scale it's currently used. The market can't generate replacements from nothing.

2) That this is different from other market shortfalls in that oil is used for effectively everything we produce, and thus that, if 1 is true, it will cause massive feedback, since the cost of creating any given thing will raise by the cost of the oil needed for it directly, plus the cost of the oil needed to make and sustain everything used in its creation, plus the cost of human resources needed for its creation, since the relative costs of living will increase.

It seems quite convincing that the kind of feedback in 2 would do a lot more damage to the global economy than the collapse of a couple of banks. So the question seems to be what you think is inaccurate about 1) and/or 2).

ETA: it occurs to me that neither the viability of oil replacements nor the ubiquity of oil are really questions of economics. It seems like engineers and material scientists would be more relevant experts.

I'm going to assume you were replying to me.

Peak oilers generally say we should do something about it. I am saying that what we are currently doing is the best possible thing we can, and thus trying to do something else can only make the situation worse.

Although economics does not control how easily oil can be replaced and how common it is, those both control economics. If oil was running out and hard to replace, oil companies wouldn't be so eager to drill their land. Given that oil companies are drilling their land, it must be not running out or not be too hard to replace. QED

I think the oil companies can do a better job of finding the relevant experts than I, you, or the government can. After all, if they couldn't do that sort of thing, they wouldn't be around anymore.

By the way, if the government is probably going to enact legislation to make it harder to drill oil, the oil companies will drill faster until then. In the economy's defense, that would be optimal if the government's legislation was reflecting it suddenly becoming bad for oil to be used. Also, other companies would prepare for increasing cost when the legislation starts.