Global warming: economists don't know best

From Dr Simon Shackley

Sir: In her analysis of global warming (28 March), Frances Cairncross fails to move beyond an increasingly redundant economic framework. On the one hand, she stresses the scientific uncertainty of predicting climate change, and rightly so. But on the other hand, she treats economic analysis with far greater certainty; for example, quoting research which calculates the costs and benefits of taking action 150 years into the future.

Ms Cairncross also assumes that technologies will not change radically, yet the history of technical change points to their potential for massive and unpredictable effects on economies and societies. Treating economic analysis as more certain than climate change science seems a bizarre article of faith in an increasingly contested discipline.

One also wonders on what basis, she places so much confidence in the ability of societies to adapt to climate change, given the possibility of abrupt periods of climate change, especially if the climate system were to move into a quite different state. Arguing that economic wealth guarantees the success of adaptive responses seems unduly complacent about the sorts of societies we thereby create and ignores the critical role of communities and co-operation in responding to change.

The climate change issue is one of the few current opportunities for discussing whether we wish to continue with the increasingly dominant approach to development, and its understanding of the environment, provided by the industrialised countries. We cannot let the limiting assumptions of economics, which is, after all, the intellectual mentor of the Western paradigm, throw us off-course.

Yours sincerely,

SIMON SHACKLEY

Centre for the Study of

Environmental Change

Lancaster University

Lancaster

28 March