From Malthus to Deng in one easy think tank

Call yourself a “Think Tank” and it’s amazing what people will fund.

The Optimum Population Trust (OPT) is concerned with the effects of population growth on the environment. It has therefore proposed compulsory limits to family size if urgent action is not taken to restrain population growth through voluntary family planning. This is a common sort of nonsense that crops up from time to time: there are too many of us, they bleat; we are out-consuming our little old planet. OPT suggest that we are consuming 25 per cent more than our planet can sustain, which is odd, because our planet’s population is six times the size that it was when Thomas Malthus was declaring that we were too many and were all doomed.

Despite OPT including some fairly impressive names (one of its chairs and four of its patrons hold professorships from leading universities) it is based on some schoolboy errors. The report says the planet faces the biggest generation of young people in history, leading to “the creation of a huge cohort of young urban males who, through frustration and unemployment…seek an outlet in violence.”

This seems a curious inversion of the truth. OPT do not explain why there should be more males than females in their over-populated world. In fact, the only reason I can think of for a disparity between males and females is the very course of action that OPT is proposing: namely, mandatory birth control.

The classic example of this is the one child policy in China. It has been a disaster – as the OPT report grudgingly admits. It has been widely ignored, where it has not been ignored it has resulted in massive female infanticide, reflecting the bias for male children in Chinese society. The lack of females for brides has been cited as a reason for the rising aggressiveness and militancy of China, as frustrated males look to take their passions out where they can. It has also lead to the 4-2-1 families, with one child supporting two parents and four grandparents.

As for the frustration and unemployment that the report identifies, it is far from inevitable. Widespread unemployment in “young countries” such as Iran and Nigeria is the result of disastrous economic policies rather than some Malthusian-cum-Mercantilist natural limit on the amount of employment. In fact, larger populations enable greater specialisation, leading to more varied jobs and more economic progress. The greatest variety and productiveness would be achieved by creating one global economic area in which six billion people could work together.

If anything, the danger in the developed world is too low a growth in population, leading to too few workers and taxpayers maintaining too many pensioners. It seems rather incongruous – indeed, positively bizarre – that OPT should propose a two-child limit in the UK when the current average birth rate is approximately 1.8 children per woman. We appear to have more than achieved their objective already without having to impose the state’s will on individual’s desire or freedom to breed.

The suggestion that we are out-consuming our planet is equally ludicrous. While humans are undoubtedly causing environmental change that may create difficulties in the future, it does not follow that we have reached or exceeded the productive capacity of planet Earth, as the authors suggest. Crop yields have increased rapidly over the past two centuries and are set to do so again as genetically modified crops yield more produce and are more disease and insect resistant. There are still vast areas of land in, for example, Africa that have not been turned to agricultural use. The UNDP estimates that by 2050 the global population will be 9.2 billion, but they do not believe that this will be unsustainable.

The solution to growing populations is not enforced birth control but economic reform. In fact, with no effort by government whatsoever (except in the removal of currently-prohibitive legislation), greater prosperity will lead to greater use of contraception and so a declining birth-rate. This has been the case in every developing country since effective contraception became available, and explains why the UNDP believes that the global population will level off in the second half of the C21st. Economic progress will enable us to feed, clothe and house 10 billion easily; indeed, it will open up to that 10 billion a level of prosperity and luxury of which 6.5 billion can now only dream.

At the same time, that rising prosperity will be accompanied by declining pollution. Another trend that is clear across the developed world is that the amount of pollution generated per person has fallen in line with economic, and thus technological, progress. This has in the past been undermined by population growth, but only because there was a cavalier attitude to pollution in the C20th. New, cleaner technologies, greater prosperity and more awareness of the impact of our activities on our environment will make the world a cleaner, easier place in which to live. Here, too, economics can lead the way, by providing liberal, market mechanisms for pricing pollutants.

Doom-mongers and population skeptics have a long pedigree, but like economic planners, reactionaries and Luddities they have been proven to be wrong time and again. I am sure that, when my allotted time expires (which on present trends should be around the time that baby 9.2 billion is born), we will be living in a cleaner, more abundant and more prosperous society, where nobody need want for the basics in life and most can look forward to a life as long as I will have enjoyed. Sadly, the patrons of OPT won’t be around to see it. But only because, like the dinosaurs, old age will have claimed them long before.

The Great Global Warming Swindle?

Last night I watched The Great Global Warming Swindle on Channel 4. It was a very interesting programme, whether or not one believes in anthropomorphic global warming. In essence, it argued that

1) Our climate is always changing. The current change is not out of the ordinary if one considers the Little Ice Age of C16-C18th, or the Medieval Warm Period

2) Man produces only a small amount of carbon dioxide compared with natural causes

3) Changes in carbon dioxide do not precede global warming. They follow global warming

4) If the theory of climate change science is correct, temperatures should be rising more rapidly in the troposphere. This is not the case

5) Global temperatures are dependent on cloud formation, which in turn are seeded by sub-atomic particles from the sun. In periods of high solar activity, such as now, fewer particles reach the earth leading to fewer clouds and therefore more warming

6) Support for global warming science began in the 1980s with an unholy alliance of anti-capitalists and anti-coal Thatcherites; after the death of communism, environmentalism became a useful rack on which to hang otherwise-discredited socialist beliefs

7) Promoting climate change was a great way for climate scientists to leverage money for their research. It has since become a way for any researcher to attract cash. It has spawned a massive industry that is now devoted to protecting its “rents”.

8) The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change is a political body, and its findings are shaped by politics, not science. Of the thousands of scientists listed as contributing, many are not scientific contributors but reviewers and government officials. Other scientists that demurred from the agreed position had their names added to the IPCC’s list of supporting scientists anyway. Sceptical portions of the IPCC’s report were excluded in the final draft

9) The global environmental movement has been radicalised by its own success: once they became mainstream, movements such as Greenpeace could only continue to make headlines and generate revenue by becoming ever more extreme (e.g. their campaign to ban chlorine, an element!).

10) Efforts to convince Third World nations to limit their development to the use of renewable energy sources will retard their economic development and leave them mired in poverty.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten large parts of it, but I think that’s a reasonable précis. Other viewers are welcome to add (or disagree with) bits.

What was interesting was that the programme interviewed many physical and climatic scientists from renowned institutions (including MIT and Harvard), as well as Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder and critic of Greenpeace and now a hate figure for some environmentalists. On the one hand this would appear to undermine the suggestion that only a few kooks and petrophiles still question the “global warming consensus”. On the other hand, at least one blogging colleague has suggested that some of these academics and researchers may not be all that they seem.

Other criticisms include The Independent saying that many of the scientific objections have already been addressed long ago (certainly no.1 is not new), and suggestions that the producer of the programme, Martin Durkin, has in the past used selective editing and misrepresentation to present interviewees’ beliefs in a manner that supports his views (though, to be fair, the people interviewed last night seemed fairly categorical).

Personally, this reminds me of much of the debate that flies around many major issues. It is a debate between scientists, which we poor mortals are obliged to look upon with increasing incomprehension as the debate becomes ever-more arcane. As we have been warned many times, the tyranny of “experts” is one of the most dangerous of all; we need to keep strict democratic control of policy, while trusting neutral and well-informed people to judge the evidence and advise accordingly.

However, if there is one accusation within the programme that is undoubtedly true, it is that those who dissent from the “global warming consensus” are increasingly being treated not as mistaken or even stupid, but as callous or wicked. As liberals we should be open minded to debate. As I have argued elsewhere in other contexts, we need sceptics. If we are correct then they will help sharpen our arguments and iron out any inaccuracies in our theories; if we are wrong they will save us from disaster.

So I welcome Mr. Durkin’s programme (as long as it was not deliberately disingenuous or based on misrepresentation or lies), not because I believe that the “climate consensus” is exaggerated, but because I believe that it is important that people question received wisdom.

Let the debate roar on!

Environmental hysteria poses real challenges

Tristan Mills’s excellent article on Environmental Hysteria highlights his concern that our future – even a future where we counter or adapt to global warming – is in danger. “We need sensible debate, not hysteria,” he writes. “We should not dismiss someone because they go against the orthodoxy, we should listen and argue based upon evidence.” I heartily agree.

One of the greatest dangers that we face as a society today is the polarisation of debate and the demonisation of opponents. In the environmental arena, this has manifested itself in virulent attacks on those who question the received orthodoxy. For example, to argue that Bjørn Lomborg was wrong and to point out errors in his work would have furthered debate and aided our understanding of environmental challenges. Instead, opponents brought a case in front of the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty in a deliberate effort to destroy him and his career. The lesson of this action was clear: heresy will lead to trial by fire.

Indeed, like a fire, a lot of the environmental debate has generated more heat than light. This is a tragedy, for no matter what the truth, it will not be found in closed-mindedness. At all times, all progress has begun with people who demurred from the orthodoxy of the day. Whether their opinions became the new truth or merely helped sharpen the arguments of those who were right all along, they served mankind. Thus I not only defend the freedom of speech but positively encourage it. I would urge a rational debate with David Irvine as much as I would have with Galileo; it was on a thousand years of tyranny that the great liberals cut their teeth.

I have found myself on the wrong end of this. Having questioned environmental hysteria myself, I have been branded a global warming sceptic (or sometimes, more strongly, a denier) and given the look that left-wing friends usually reserve for oil barons and Americans that vote Republican. In fact, I have never denied that planetary average temperatures are rising, that the effect may be anthropogenic or that it may lead to negative effects. What I have done is argue that we must still entertain the debate, that dirigiste solutions should not be our first recourse, and that there may be more urgent emergencies facing the human race that deserve priority. But nobody is listening; they think I drive a Humvee.

I’ve probably done myself few favours by adopting the Devil’s Advocate approach and confronting my interlocutors with counter-arguments rather than discussing the issues in the round. That is a matter of style, and perhaps one I need to address. Nonetheless, I would have hoped that people whom I called friends would have been capable of engaging in a mature debate.

Having said this, there is an important lesson for us all, and it is not just one of style. Those who wish to promote discussion are becoming victims of “triangulation”, a devious stratagem that involves associating an opposing view with other views that are so outlandish that third parties are alienated and so give you their support. The enviro-fascists (by which I specifically mean those who would use authoritarian means to pursue their environmental agenda, or conversely those would use the environment as a fig-leaf for tyranny) would like nothing more than to paint liberals, genuine sceptics and the open-minded as short-sighted carbon-junkies in league with Big Oil or blind to the obvious truth.

As a result, those who would question environmental orthodoxy – because they doubt the science, the risks, whether it is a priority or simply whether the solutions prescribed are the best available – are in danger of ending up on the wrong side of the history. For the sake of all our futures, they need to recapture the intellectual high ground. For those who question the very fact of environmental danger, only sound evidence and rigorous method will provide protection. For those who accept that there is cause for concern but who would seek to change priorities or approaches, it is important that they stake out their own ground within environmentalism. For both groups, a steely determination will be needed if they are to weather the storm of protest that will engulf them.

In this bitterest of public debates, emotion is running high. If we are all to prosper into the 21st century, heated words call for cool heads.