Freeman Dyson reviews a book, A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies by William Nordhaus [economist] Yale University Press, 234 pp., $28.00, which projects the economic payoff/cost of a number of GW responses (taking the GW thesis as a given, not challenging the “science”), ranging from punitive emissions controls to gradually increasing carbon tax — and a hypothetical technical breakthrough, called a :
“low-cost backstop,” a policy based on a hypothetical low-cost technology for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or for producing energy without carbon dioxide emission, assuming that such a technology will become available at some specified future date. … According to Nordhaus, this technology might include “low-cost solar power, geothermal energy, some nonintrusive climatic engineering, or genetically engineered carbon-eating trees.”
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The main conclusion of the Nordhaus analysis is that the ambitious proposals, “Stern” and “Gore,” are disastrously expensive, the “low-cost backstop” is enormously advantageous if it can be achieved, and the other policies including business-as-usual and Kyoto are only moderately worse than the optimal policy. The practical consequence for global-warming policy is that we should pursue the following objectives in order of priority. (1) Avoid the ambitious proposals. (2) Develop the science and technology for a low-cost backstop. (3) Negotiate an international treaty coming as close as possible to the optimal policy, in case the low-cost backstop fails. (4) Avoid an international treaty making the Kyoto Protocol policy permanent. These objectives are valid for economic reasons, independent of the scientific details of global warming.
To summarize, he models the number of constant-dollar trillion$$ difference each policy would make in 100 years (after which the differences are small, having been mostly realized already). Gore-ism costs 21, and the best alternative is a carbon tax, at plus 3 — except for the LCB, which is +17.
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