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The Copenhagen Consensus and its critics
Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton, and Esther Duflo are all upset. You might recall the most famous recommendation of the Copenhagen Consensus was to invest in anti-HIV/AIDS programs as a higher priority than global warming. Banerjee writes:
Similarly, the proposal on HIV/AIDS seems to have entirely missed the mounting evidence...that we do not really know how to get people to behave in ways that would reduce the transmission of HIV.
Angus Deaton writes:
Lomborg's Consensus does not even identify the "we" who are to spend the $50 billion, although it certainly shares Sachs' confidence in the usefulness of social engineering by well-meaning outside experts.
Maybe that criticism is unfair; Lomborg might say he is playing by the rules of other people's games. Esther Duflo writes:
...to my knowledge there is very little rigorous evidence on effective [HIV-AIDS] prevention strategies in Africa.
The three reviews are all in the Journal of Economic Literature, December 2007. The bottom line is that $50 billion doesn't go as far as you might think.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 29, 2008 at 11:38 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
"You might recall the most famous recommendation of the Copenhagen Consensus was to invest in anti-HIV/AIDS programs as a higher priority than global warming."
I don't understand why that was the most famous recommendation. There were a number of things that were considered a higher priority. In terms of cost effectiveness, I believe the best one was clean water access.
Posted by: Sebastian at Jan 29, 2008 12:08:14 PM
Exactly the same things could be said about global warming:
Similarly, the proposal on global warming seems to have entirely missed the mounting evidence...that we do not really know how to get people to behave in ways that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
...to my knowledge there is very little rigorous evidence on effective global warming mitigation strategies.
What exactly is their point? That solving the AIDS crisis is a hopeless situation beyond the greatest minds of science, but that global warming isn't?
Posted by: Kelly at Jan 29, 2008 12:32:15 PM
It seems the JEL consensus is that this is an exceptionally bad book :)
Posted by: David at Jan 29, 2008 1:00:10 PM
Um, did I miss something or didn't Emily Oster offer up a pretty good investment vehicle for that $50 billion for HIV-AIDS prevention?
Posted by: Keith at Jan 29, 2008 1:16:47 PM
Sebastian,
if memory serves, Lomborg said in his TED talk that fighting AIDS would be the best use of the money. (I have never read his book.)
I agree with Keith; Emily Oster made a convincing case for fighting AIDS by ftreating other STDs on the basis that having one of those (I don't remember the specifics) greatly increases the chances of being infected with HIV if you sleep with a positive person.
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at Jan 29, 2008 2:17:59 PM
I studied with Dougy North (on the CC) for a while back in college. He explained, in class, that the goal was to dicide the "best" use of the "money" and had experts/activists for each field come in and argue for their cause. If i recall correctly (college was a haze in some respects) they put global warming at bottom of their top-10 list of priorities. Again, if i recall correctly (and on this one i may be completely wrong...please correct if i am), malaria was at the top of their list, along with Clean Water and HIV/AIDS.
None the less, how the economists above believe we can effectively affect people's behavior with respect to global warming and not aids is preposterous. Incentives can't fix everything--life is about trade-offs not solutions--but they WILL change the way people act. Creation of the right incentives is the tough part.
Posted by: 1-2 at Jan 29, 2008 2:58:58 PM
Seems to me that ... those of us with Priuses and CarbonFund receipts(*) have shown our ability to spend for global warming. And it seems to me that Lomborg's arguments have been made time and time to me by people who DON'T turn around and actually do anything.
Lomborg may be authentic but he is easily used as a canard by shallower comment critters.
* - I have more lifetime contributions to Médecins Sans Frontières than environmental funds though, actually.
Posted by: odograph at Jan 29, 2008 4:22:07 PM
The number 2 recommendation of the Copenhagan Consensus deserves wider publicity than it has gotten: micronutrient fortification of staples foods. For example, putting enough iodine in salt to prevent cretinism and goiters can cost only 5 pennies per person per year. Iodine and iron fortification would, according to a 2004 UNICEF report, help raise the "national IQ" of 3rd world countries, which, as we all know from reading "IQ and the Wealth of Nations," should have excellent long term effects on per capita GDP.
Here's my 2004 article on Lomborg's recommendations:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/copenhagen.htm
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jan 29, 2008 4:56:23 PM
Following up on Lemmus's follow-up, I daresay the return on investments in Oster's approach of treating other STDs (those that produce genital sores) are quite a bit more certain than the return on investments in reducing global warming.
Posted by: Keith at Jan 29, 2008 5:55:22 PM
Odograph: You've demonstrated your willingness to spend money on reducing global warming but you haven't demonstrated that that money is performing a service that has much value. I think Lomborg's point was to question whether the premium you spent on the Prius is worth its opportunity costs in environmental terms. You could have bought a diesel VW Jetta and got 41 mpg and spent the difference fighting malaria by buying hundreds of families mosquito nets.
As an ecologist working to draft protocols to certify forestry projects for offset credits in California, I'm EXTREMELY sceptical of offset projects like the one you mentioned. Consider just as one small problem offsets from forest conservation projects. In this case your money goes to pay landowners not to cut down their trees for timber, leaving the carbon stored in them intact. But does this reduce the demand for timber in any way? Of course not (except by slightly reducing supply, thereby increasing the value of other people's timber), so timber harvesting just shifts to a different location--most likely somewhere with few or no environmental regulations.
So if your choice is between spending your "environmental charity" dollars on global warming or something else, I'm with Lomborg--just about everything else is better value.
Posted by: Kelly at Jan 29, 2008 7:22:58 PM
Obviously there are many factors at work in any one life. I did search for a VW diesel a bit, but this being California and the year being 2005 the market was closed. I was aware of the maintenance issues. As a past owner of 3 VWs I'm aware of the trade-off in maintenance/repair vs other benefits. Seeing the statistical summary of repair costs (Edumnds or Consumer Reports) I feel somewhat fortunate that I ended up with the Prius.
On the rest you seem to be making an argument based on "additionality." That is correct to do in answer to carbon offsets, but I think "projects like the one I mentioned" understand this as well.
Certainly you need to demonstrate good additionality for a long-term offset to be real, nowadays.
Posted by: odograph at Jan 29, 2008 8:51:39 PM
i really dont have a clue what the copenhagen cocensus is or anything, but from what i gathered a few certain people are mad because they were wanting a proposed 50 billion dollars to go towards HIV/AIDS effort instead of going towards the mounting global warming problem. i know that the AIDS epidemic is truly a bad thing, but there has been numerous attempts and tries to find a cure to the problem and nothing has came from that. I feel as if global warming has become a much bigger issue at this point and time than the HIV/AIDS problem.
AIDS and HIV can be missed and prevented if a person follows the right steps. i think that we could spend 50 billion dollars on some other things to better the enviroment because that seems to be the bigger of the two problems at the moment. i mean if we keep on polluting the earth and causing the enviroment to change we aint going to have to worry about all the people that are infected with HIV or AIDS because mother nature isnt going to care wether or not you are infected.
Posted by: Melvintose at Jan 29, 2008 11:24:41 PM
My biggest issue with the Copenhagen Consensus, at least as it is defined in "Cool It":
It's comparing an abstract idea, like fixing hunger, to a concrete program to solve a problem(Kyoto). Once you let politicians get their grubby hands all over some noble goal, the program as a whole tends to look a lot less effecient than it originally did on paper.
Posted by: Robert Olson at Jan 30, 2008 1:10:16 AM
There was an article in the most recent issue of The Economist (The Starvelings) where it was suggested that the marginal dollar saves more lives if it is used to fight malnutrition instead of AIDS/HIV.
The question is, what would money do for global warming? Giving money to charities, no matter what they do, won't stop the chinese from opening up new coalmines.
Posted by: Tiedemies at Jan 30, 2008 1:12:35 AM
Just to get a fix, are there any estimates what amount of money would be likely to reduce aids to non-epidemic scale?
For example, would dozens of billions of dollars spend on research have a change of finding a 'cure to the epidemic', such as a vaccin or a treatment that at least makes HIV noncontagious, even if it doesn't cure the patient?
Or, if that's not likely, how much can we do with existing therapy? I think current 'third-world' therapy costs several hundreds of dollars per patient per year, which would be in the order of 10 billion per year for all HIV infected people. However, I have no idea if making this available to everyone would eventually end the epidemic, even if we could find everyone.
Is there anyone who knows if these treatment limit the transmission of HIV enough to end the epidemic if everyone was treated? And the best treatment available in the developed world, would they be good enough? I think these cost tens of thousands of dollars, but is this mainly sunk reasearch cost or marginal cost to produce the ccoktails?
Posted by: GreatZamfir at Jan 30, 2008 4:45:02 AM
"It's comparing an abstract idea, like fixing hunger, to a concrete program to solve a problem(Kyoto)."
That sentence should probably read: "It's comparing an abstract idea, like fixing hunger, to a concrete program of making people believe they are solving a problem(Kyoto)."
Posted by: Erik at Jan 30, 2008 6:20:53 AM
It's a straw man to suggest that any one program or treaty, and especially any $100 offset, "solves" global warming.
No one kicking in $100, or downsizing their car, pretends they have solved global warming once and for all, for the entire planet.
All we do with or small actions is tip things a little. We can, in our small way, be part of the solution and less of the problem.
We humans have messy social movements, and surely the move to global consensus, to the point where china does buy in and reduce their coal consumption will take a little time. It will take time in the best case scenario.
Should we really be afraid to do the little things?
Posted by: odograph at Jan 30, 2008 7:59:06 AM
Tiedemies:
"The question is, what would money do for global warming? Giving money to charities, no matter what they do, won't stop the chinese from opening up new coalmines."
Retiring EU emissions trading scheme credits through an organisation such as the Pure Trust (ww.puretrust.org.uk) might fit your requirements. Removing ETS credits from the EU's scheme increases the demand for CER's (Certified Emissions Reductions) from outside the EU - and a lot of them are coming from China at the moment.
Posted by: Pat Gillett at Jan 30, 2008 9:50:03 AM
Again, thanks to Emily Oster, we have a much better and well-specified "business plan" for reducing HIV-AIDs than we do for combatting global warming. So I'm really mystified as to why these JEL reviewers had such a problem with the Copenhagen Consensus, and equally mystified as to why most of the other commenters here are not getting that.
Posted by: Keith at Jan 30, 2008 11:46:03 AM
Keith, are you making the argument that the greater share of giving should go to medicine, and the minority to longer term environmental questions?
I ask because it seems like you are making the stone wall argument, that is [whatever I can think of] is the reason we should do nothing about global warming [or similar broad issues, like fishery decline].
[My ratio of medical to global warming aid was about 10:1 last year. Fishery decline scored in the middle, which might be reasonable given the short term impacts on the world's poor.]
Posted by: odograph at Jan 30, 2008 11:59:09 AM
Odo, I gotta be honest here, I think you are either not reading my posts very carefully or you're being deliberately obtuse. The JEL critics, and some commenters here, are choosing to be abysmally ignorant of very cost-effective ways of fighting AIDs, and that seemingly deliberate ignorance appears to be motivated by animus towards Lomborg.
I'm making the argument that, in preventing AIDS by treating other STDs, we have a very specific approach that is relatively easy to implement and that promises high returns. When it comes to global warming, we're not sure what to do, and we have no way of guaranteeing that any action that we can take ourselves will actually make much of a difference on net, because we don't know hot to bring China and India into the fold. These problems may be worth tackling, but the JEL critiques reflect some serious ignorance on the part of their authors, because the authors inaccurately claim that we don't have cost-effective ways of preventing AIDs in Africa. It seems cheap and callous to ignore a social investment that could save African lives at the rate of $4 a life-year because you think Lomborg doesn't take global warming seriously enough.
It really seems like the JEL critics and commenters here are having a hard time admitting that we have a very viable solution to the African AIDS crisis, mainly because they don't want to admit that Lomborg might have a point, that there are higher-valued uses of global efforts than combatting global warming. That's unfortunate, to say the least. Maybe combatting global warming is a good thing, but it clearly isn't the best thing. Assuming we obtain less than the socially optimal amount of resources to deal with global problems, then "ignoring" global warming may be a second-best solution.
Posted by: Keith at Jan 30, 2008 3:23:01 PM
Maybe I read you incorrectly, but I read this as a way to distract the eye from every problem but one (and I worry that distraction is the goal).
If you are really making an argument for the One True Charity you obviously must fight very hard for your study and supporting evidence.
Moderate people, who spread their efforts around, and perhaps even change priorities from year to year, are going to be less interested in that One True argument.
"Maybe combatting global warming is a good thing, but it clearly isn't the best thing. Assuming we obtain less than the socially optimal amount of resources to deal with global problems, then 'ignoring' global warming may be a second-best solution."
Can I give anything to the local soup kitchen, or is it also damned by a comparison to African aid?
Oh, my Public Radio station just made a pledge drive ... I often blow them off but now I've got a good reason, right?
Posted by: odograph at Jan 30, 2008 4:24:24 PM
Yes, HIV was #1 and micronutrients was #2. GlobalWarming was #15-17.
Here are some links
http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/z2004-05-28-CopenhagenConsensusLive
http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/CopenhagenConsensus
It looks like they're doing it again this year.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/
Posted by: Bill Seitz at Jan 30, 2008 4:51:49 PM
"but I read this as a way to distract the eye from every problem but one ."
Yes, prioritization is a total plot, and makes no sense, because every program whose benefits outweigh its costs are always completely funded, so we shouldn't rank priorities and actually determine the best use of public funds.
In the past, you haven't seemed like someone who is dumb enough to confuse prioritization/ranking with lexicographic preferences, in the form on the "one true" charity. I mean, are you really so limited as to confuse "first priority" with "only priority"? I'm thinking your apparent IQ drop in this case has a lot to do with your emotional attachment to the issue.
Emily Oster, in a famous article in a top economics journal, showed how we can comabt AIDS in Africa and save lives at $4 a day. For reasons I'd love for them to explain, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo ignored this when they made their claims about combatting AIDS in Africa. It looks to me like they ignored important work in their own field in order to make (incorrect) critiques of Lomborg. Frankly, I think they chose social approval at the expense of doing a thorough job in their reviews.
In reality, the argument on the uncertainty of outcomes favors Lomborg's rankings, because we have a strategy for combatting AIDS in Africa that has a much greater certainty of actually having the desired effect than our strategies to combat global warming.
"Can I give anything to the local soup kitchen, or is it also damned by a comparison to African aid?"
It depends, do you buy the ethical libertarian argument that you can do what you please with your money, or are you ethically compelled by cost/benefit analysis?
In my case, when it comes to how you spend your own dollars, I say blow it anyway you like to. When it comes to dollars confiscated from taxpayers, I think cost-benefit analysis is compelling.
Posted by: Keith at Jan 30, 2008 7:27:48 PM
FWIW, I like the fact that people vary, and that the large number (more than 80%?) of Americans who give to charity do spread it around:
Eighty-three percent of American adults say they have contributed to a charity during the past 12 months [2006], although their average donations fell to $1,220 from $1,352 in 2005, according to a new Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Personal Finance Poll.Donors were most likely to give to religious charities (35 percent), followed by groups that seek to curb hunger (34 percent) and organizations that deal with health issues (31 percent). They were much less likely to contribute to disaster-relief charities in 2006 (27 percent) than in 2005 (49 percent) — a decline the pollsters attributed to the shift of attention away from Hurricane Katrina victims.
From another page I understand that environmental type giving only accounts for 5% or so.
Speaking really of "uncertainty," I think "diversity" is the answer. Let people do what they think is right even if I think it is screwy (extreme cat/dog care).
We, as a species, have a better chance if our individuals try everything. Heck, "try everything" is the hidden mechanism of the market. It doesn't need the best idea, it just needs a lot of ideas.
And so I think this One True Charity thing is wrong on two levels. It is wrong to think any one .... dare I say "priesthood?" ... decide where efficiency lies.
And it is unlikely they'd be right if they were given that power.
Posted by: odograph at Jan 30, 2008 7:42:48 PM
