Professor David Henderson, der frühere Chefökonom der OECD, hat einen lesenswerten Beitrag zur internationalen Klimapolitik geschrieben, der in der aktuellen Ausgabe der Fachzeitschrift World Economics erschienen ist. Eine PDF-Version kann über diese Seite abgerufen werden.

Für Journalisten: David Henderson steht für weitere Informationen und Interviews zur Verfügung. Anfragen leite ich gerne an ihn weiter.

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Governments and Climate Change Issues: The Case for Rethinking

David Henderson

ABSTRACT

Governments, and in particular the governments of the OECD member countries, are mishandling climate change issues. Both the basis and the content of official policies are open to serious question. Too much reliance is placed on the established process of review and inquiry which is conducted through the agency of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This process, which is wrongly taken to be objective and authoritative, has been made the point of departure for over-presumptive conclusions which are biased towards alarm, in the mistaken belief that ‘the science’ is ‘settled’. Rather than pursuing as a matter of urgency ambitious and costly targets for drastic further curbing of CO2 emissions, governments should take prompt steps to ensure that they and their citizens are more fully and more objectively informed and advised. This implies both improving the IPCC process and going beyond it. As to the content of policy, it is not the case that the choice now lies between two extremes, of no action and the immediate adoption of much stronger measures to curb emissions. The orientation of policies should be made more evolutionary and less presumptive, with actual policy measures focusing more on carbon taxes rather than the present and prospective array of costly and intrusive regulatory initiatives. 

CONTENTS

1 A flawed process

2 The situation of today
  A 15-year official consensus
  Further initiatives

3 Parallel assessments [: the Stern Review and AR4]
  Two messages or one?
  A heightened milieu consensus

4 Unwarranted trust [: the IPCC role and process]
  Process and actors
  Policy commitment
  Errors, omissions and bias
  The influence of global salvationism
  Unreliable defence witnesses
  Monopoly, consensus and overpresumptive conclusions

5 Stengthening the basis of policy
  Official action
  Unofficial channels

6 The orientation and focus of policy
  Point of departure: a less presumptive approach
  Policy focus: a less intrusive menu

  Annex: Anathema 2007
  On the trail of misrepresentation
  Scenting corruption
  Tilting the balance
  Scientists in glass houses
  Misreporting AR4