Ahead of a U.N. summit in Copenhagen next month, scepticism is growing that an agreement will be reached on a global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.

The protocol set targets aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are believed to be responsible for the gradual rise in the Earth's average temperature. Many scientists say that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is key to preventing climate change.

But authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner argue in their new book SuperFreakonomics that humanity can take an alternative route to try and save the planet.

"If the goal is to stop warming then geo-engineering solutions are worth considering because they are far cheaper, probably much more do-able and easily reversible," Dubner told Reuters before a talk at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.

Related vlog: How to become a freakonomist

– Nancy Birdsall is the president of the Center for Global Development. Arvind Subramanian is a senior fellow at the Center and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a regular columnist for the Business Standard, India’s leading business newspaper. The views expressed are their own. –

Efforts to cut emissions of the heat-trapping gases are gridlocked over a misunderstanding about what is fair. This misunderstanding is hindering climate change legislation in Congress and threatens to torpedo international negotiations in Copenhagen next month.

We propose a new way of thinking about climate fairness that focuses not on emissions cuts but on meeting developing countries’ energy needs in a climate-friendly manner. This simple narrative can provide a framework for U.S. legislation and open the way for international collaborative efforts to avert climate catastrophe.

At present, many people in the United States focus on the large and growing emissions of the developing world, especially China, which in absolute terms is now the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases, and India, which is growing fast and like China relies heavily on coal. They argue that it would be unfair to force emissions cuts at home without similar cuts in developing countries. A recent poll found that 60% of Americans believe that in any climate agreement China should cut its emissions the most.

It is true that developing countries already account for roughly half of all greenhouse gas emissions, and that their large populations and rapid economic growth are boosting emissions fast enough to create a planetary crisis by 2050-even if today’s rich countries had never existed.

But meanwhile a quarter of humanity — including millions in China and India — live without any electricity, and one-in-three people on the planet rely on straw, brush, charcoal and animal dung for their cooking needs. The resulting indoor air pollution kills 1.5 million people a year — about 4,000 per day — mostly children. Power for small businesses, irrigation networks, clinics and schools is sorely lacking.

Developing countries point to these unmet energy needs and to large disparities in per capita emissions to argue that the rich world must move first. They note that the 20 tons of CO2 that Americans emit annually is five times the world average, well above both China (5 tons per capita) and India (below 2 tons per capita).

They see emissions as inseparable from economic growth and argue for the developing world’s “right to pollute.” Some argue that because most of the extra heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere were put there by the United States, Europe, and other industrialized countries, wealthy nations should pay “reparations” for the damage inflicted on poor countries.

Rarely in history have we seen constructive solutions come out of such blame games.

We believe that both sides should shift their focus from negotiated emissions cuts to a joint effort to find ways to rapidly meet the developing world’s legitimate energy needs at low cost in a carbon-constrained world. How can we change to this mindset, adopt a story line that would lead ordinary people in rich and poor countries, and the politicians and negotiators who do their bidding, to do the right thing?

Wealthy nations, starting with the United States, should affirm that, for any given income, people in developing countries have the same rights to energy-based services as those in the rich world-and then offer to help them obtain those energy-based services at the lowest possible cost and with the lowest possible CO2 emissions.

This should apply not only to existing technology, but to a war-footing approach to the development and deployment, at home and abroad, of new emissions-reducing and efficiency-enhancing technologies — solar, wind, tides, algae-based biofuels, smart grids and buildings — similar to the technology push of World War II.

The long-overdue climate speech by President Obama, explaining why action is urgently needed and why the U.S. must lead, would be a good place to start, and could help to open the way for progress in Congress and in Copenhagen.

For their part, developing countries should stop talking about a “right” to emit CO2, emissions are after all merely a waste product. Instead, they should insist on their right to energy-based services appropriate to their level of development — to light, and heat, and refrigeration, for starters, and then, as per capita incomes rise, to elevators, climate-controlled homes and workplaces, computers and, yes, flat-screen TVs.

To make this level of energy services possible without destroying the planet, developing countries should press the rich world for massive public funding of green energy research, and for full and rapid access to all resulting new technologies.

Framed this way — in terms of a U.S.-led push for equality of energy opportunity — it’s hard to see how Americans and others in the rich world could fairly object. We think they would agree, because it’s the fair thing to do and because it’s in their own best interest.

– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –

Resounding defeats for Democratic Party gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey on November 3 have killed any lingering hope Congress will enact climate change legislation this year, and may doom the prospect of passing a cap-and-trade bill this side of the 2010 mid-term elections.

Prospects for eventually passing legislation may now depend on winning Republican support with nuclear loan guarantees and more offshore drilling.

While the president remains personally popular, with high approval ratings, and does not need to face the voters again for another three years, 16 Democratic senators and 256 Democratic members of the House of Representatives will be on the ballot in November 2010.

The Virginia and New Jersey off-cycle elections are often idiosyncratic. But crushing defeats for Democrats at the top of the ticket in both states are already sparking a bout of soul-searching over the lessons that need to be learned if the party is to retain firm control of both houses of Congress next year.

What worries many Democrats is that turnout among the young voters who helped propel them to victory last year fell away sharply, self-identified independents broke heavily for the Republican candidates; and voters overwhelmingly cited the economy and jobs rather than healthcare or climate change as their major concern in exit polls.

Democrats face the classic dilemma for any party after a defeat — press ahead trying to enact a difficult agenda or pull back, re-focus on simpler and less controversial measures.

The White House insists both defeats were due to local factors (a poor candidate in Virginia, a souring economy in New Jersey) and will not change the president’s determination to press ahead with an ambitious domestic agenda centered on healthcare reform and climate change.

But the party’s congressional wing is divided. Liberals (mostly from safe seats at little risk next year) argue the administration and party should press ahead; voters will rally behind a record of accomplishment next year. Moderates and conservatives (mostly from swing seats or those carried by John McCain in 2008 or George W Bush in 2004) as well as those from heavy industrial states are pressing to scale-back and refocus on cutting unemployment.

In this context, it seems unlikely the administration can find the 60 predominantly Democratic votes it needs to pass a climate bill on the floor of the Senate; hammer out a compromise between the differing House and Senate versions in conference; then secure simple majorities in both houses to pass the agreed bill into law.

Even before this week’s election results, the prospects for passing climate change legislation this year were dimming rapidly. But the arithmetic, already challenging, has now become very tricky as the administration loses momentum.

60-VOTE DOUBT IN SENATE

In the Senate, only two Democrats are up for re-election in Republican-leaning states carried by John McCain (North Dakota’s Byron Dorgan and Arkansas’s Blanche Lincoln).

Both have already taken a cautious approach to climate legislation. Both broke ranks with the majority of their colleagues earlier this year to vote for a Republican amendment preventing the budget reconciliation process being used to push through cap-and-trade on a 51-vote straight majority rather than the 60-vote super-majority normally needed to end a filibuster.

But the party remains ambivalent over cap-and-trade, split between liberals from coastal states who want a commitment to tough emissions reduction objectives, and senators representing industrial areas or conservative states anxious about supporting anything that could be portrayed as a costly, job-killing energy tax by their opponents at election time.

In theory, the Democratic Party (together with its independent allies) has the 60 votes needed to push a climate bill through despite almost uniform Republican opposition. In practice, the party broke 26-31 in favor of the Republican amendment to the budget resolution earlier this year, in what many saw as a straw poll on cap-and-trade.

Some Democrats have fallen into line since then, and the administration may be able to pick up one or two Republican votes such as South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham with the promise of loan guarantees and other government help for the nuclear power industry.

With several Democrats harbouring concerns, though, there are not yet 60 votes for an ambitious climate bill.

The bill will not be openly defeated on the Senate floor. If it dies or gets delayed it will be in the cloakroom. Majority Leader Harry Reid will not bring it up for a vote unless and until 60 firm votes are in his pocket. So Democrats with doubts will be able to delay the bill indefinitely by holding out and asking for more concessions, without having to come out explicitly against it.

RISK OF REVERSAL IN HOUSE

The arithmetic looks as daunting in the House of Representatives. While the lower chamber has already approved its own climate bill (HR 2454) legislators will have to vote again to pass the consolidated version if and when it is agreed in conference.

There is nothing to stop congressmen changing their minds. As the election draws closer and the already bitter partisanship in the chamber intensifies, some of the bill’s earlier supporters may withdraw.

The original bill passed only by the narrowest of margins (219-212), with 44 Democrats voting “No.”

A total of 84 Democrats represent Republican-leaning districts carried by John McCain or George W Bush in 2004. It will take only a handful of further defections to sink the measure if it returns from conference.

If the consolidated bill has been toughened in line with the Senate version (S 1733), congressmen will have a ready-made excuse to claim it has gone too far.

Parties controlling the White House usually lose seats at the mid-term elections, so pressure on Democrats in Republican-leaning areas will be immense.

The party’s heavy losses in Virginia and New Jersey this week will make them very cautious.

CROWDED AGENDA, LOSING MOMENTUM

Arguably, the president has tried to push through too many ambitious reform proposals and stretched his political capital too thinly.

At the best of times, it would be difficult to get either healthcare reform or climate change through Congress when the president’s majority is an uneasy coalition of liberals and centrists. But when the president is having to deal with a recession, financial regulation, and whether to increase the military commitment to Afghanistan, it has proved impossible to rally support for them both at the same time.

Hopes that healthcare and climate change legislation could be rammed through early in the year, long before the mid-term elections, while the Republican Party was still consumed by infighting after losing heavily in 2008, have evaporated.

Climate change has become a second-order priority. The political capital needed to assemble winning coalitions for a bill in both chambers is being deployed elsewhere.

The best option for the administration may be seeking to broaden its coalition, buying more Republican support through a combination of nuclear financing guarantees and greater access to offshore drilling.

But if an agreed climate bill does not go through before the year end, its prospects next year, when legislators will be fixated on the looming elections, are no better.

Even if a deal is reached among political delegates at the upcoming United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, it is unlikely to set out specific emission targets, says Mike Hulme, author of "Why We Disagree About Climate Change" and a professor at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

"What we've done with climate change is to attach so many pressing environmental concerns to the climate change agenda that trying to secure a negotiated multilateral agreement between 190 nations is actually beyond the reach of what we can achieve," he argues.

Hulme, who will take part in a debate hosted by the Institute of Economic Affairs in November about carbon emission policies and economic activity before he heads to the Copenhagen conference, discussed his views with Reuters.

- Bjorn Lomborg is adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School. He is the organizer of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which brings together some of the world's top economists, including 5 Nobel laureates, to set priorities for the world. The opinions expressed are his own. -

In this blog, I would like to share with you some of the best – and worst – ways to fix climate change. This is important because the Earth is warming up, increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide are contributing to this warming, and humankind is dumping ever-increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Of course, this is a point that is made by many campaigners, politicians and the media every single day. But I think that in our discussions on global warming, we actually often miss a really important question: not if we should do something about global warming - but rather how best to go about this. Just like with any other problem we face, there are many possible remedies, and some of them are a whole lot better than others. Not just cheaper (although cost is one very important criteria), but more effective, more efficient and - crucially - more likely to actually happen.

We need to focus on the cost of the solutions and the real-world benefits we should expect from them. Why? Because I believe it is nothing less than morally unconscionable to spend enormous sums of money making a minor difference to long-term global warming and human well-being, if we could achieve a lot more impact – and leave future generations better-off – with a smaller investment through a smarter solution.

This year, my think-tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, commissioned 21 new research papers – you can read them all here along with summaries and op-eds on them – that examine the costs and benefits of a multitude of responses to global warming. Each research paper carefully examines one response to global warming, and highlights the costs and benefits of that approach.

The research in itself is very important, and is groundbreaking in many respects. It answers such questions as what can we achieve through climate engineering? What happens if the entire world signs up to stringent, immediate carbon cuts? Are we on the right path to achieving the technological breakthroughs needed to shift away from reliance on fossil fuel? How much can we achieve through adaptation? How much global warming damage can be prevented if we focus first on cutting methane or black carbon emissions, or if we put more emphasis on expanding forests?

The papers are written by top climate economists – many of whom are heavily involved in the work of the United Nations climate change panel, the IPCC. I believe we should pay attention to their findings, because these economists are experts in calculating costs and benefits and in looking at the ramifications of different climate policy approaches. Their work definitely fills a void in the climate debate.

But having a list of feasible responses to climate change is not actually enough. We have scarce resources, and we surely have an ethical obligation to address climate change the best that we can. That means that we need to work out which approaches could play a serious role in fixing climate change.

To help achieve this, the Copenhagen Consensus Center convened an expert panel of five of the world’s leading economists, including three recipients of the Nobel Prize. Last week, this impressive team deliberated on the research and engaged with the research authors. The expert panel was asked by the Copenhagen Consensus Center to answer the question:

If the global community wants to spend up to, say 250 billion dollars per year over the next 10 years to diminish the adverse effects of climate changes, and to do the most good for the world, which solutions would yield the greatest net benefits?

They have now come up with their answer – a prioritized list representing their consensus opinion, showing the best and worst possible responses to global warming. (A summary of all of their findings is available to download at the same website).

I believe that the expert panel’s findings highlight the problems with the world’s current political fixation on carbon taxes, and – equally importantly – underscore the vast promise shown by alternative responses to global warming.

The expert panel concluded that the most effective use of resources would be to invest immediately in researching marine cloud whitening technology. (This, fundamentally, is where boats spray seawater droplets into clouds above the sea to make them reflect more sunlight back into space, reducing warming). They also highlighted a need to immediately boost research into non-carbon energy sources to ensure that we can move away from reliance on fossil fuels.

The first of these policy options, climate engineering, could provide a cheap, effective, and rapid response to global warming. Remarkably, the research considered by the expert panel, written by lead author Dr Eric Bickel, suggests that a total of about 9 billion dollars spent developing marine cloud whitening technology might be able to cancel out this entire century's global warming. That is a remarkable finding, and shows exactly why this is deserving of further, serious consideration.

I think it’s instructive to quote one of the Expert Panel members, Nobel Laureate economist Thomas Schelling, who said that “climate engineering has great promise. Even if one approaches it from a skeptical viewpoint, it is important to invest in research to identify the limitations and risks of this technology sooner rather than later.” In other words, regardless of your starting point about this technology – whether you are optimistic or pessimistic or plain cynical – there’s a really strong argument to start researching it now.

The finding that greater investment is needed in energy research came after the Expert Panel considered an excellent research paper by economists Professor Chris Green and Isabel Galiana of McGill University showing that non-fossil energy sources will – based on today’s availability—get us less than halfway toward a path of stable carbon emissions by 2050, and only a tiny fraction of the way towards stabilization by 2100. That’s a very significant finding. In other words, they are saying that there is a need for a total technology revolution which has not yet even started.

The expert panel’s findings don’t just show what we should be doing – they also highlight the policy responses that are not effective. In doing so, they really reveal the problems with the world’s current approach, which is of course a narrow focus on carbon taxes. The Expert Panel found that expensive, global carbon taxes would be an expensive, ineffective way to reduce the suffering from global warming, and placed these at the bottom of their list.

This finding was based on a groundbreaking research paper by renowned climate economist Professor Richard Tol, who showed that a high, global CO2 tax starting at 68 dollars could reduce world GDP by a staggering 12.9 percent in 2100—the equivalent of 40 trillion dollars a year – costing many times the expected damage of global warming.

There are really important implications for policy-makers here. Although carbon taxes and a ‘cap-and-trade’ scheme should, in theory, have very similar outcomes, the latter produces a much higher opportunity for pork-barrel politics and waste. So cap-and-trade schemes – which many politicians are considering implementing today – would be even less effective than taxes.

All of this is crucial knowledge, because we do not have the money to waste, nor the time to spend pursuing bad strategies. The reason for gathering the Expert Panel of economists now was that, this December, world leaders will gather here in Copenhagen to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Their current path – of making ever-bigger promises of carbon cuts – is not likely to work. As the Expert Panel highlighted, it is flawed economically. Carbon taxes will cost a fortune and generate very little temperature reductions in a very long time.

It is also flawed politically, because negotiations to reduce CO2 emissions will become ever more complicated, pitting developing nations – which rely on burning fossil fuels to lift billions of people out of poverty – against richer nations.

And even if lofty promises are made in Copenhagen, the experience of past agreements in Rio de Janeiro and Kyoto shows that they are not likely to be fulfilled. The reason for this isn’t because of any lack of good-will, but because cutting carbon emissions this way is incredibly difficult and expensive.

I believe that if world leaders don’t change track ahead of Copenhagen, they will be doing us – and future generations – a huge disservice.

If we care about the environment and about leaving this planet in the best state that we can, we actually have only one option: we all need to start seriously focusing, right now, on the most effective ways to fix global warming.