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.
“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.
It seems the JEL consensus is that this is an exceptionally bad book
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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/
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:
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.
“Let people do what they think is right even if I think it is screwy (extreme cat/dog care).”
Fine, but then that eliminates government interventions to combat gloabal warming (or most anything), since that, by definition, takes away resources from individuals who would have used them for their own screwy ends, rather than global warming.
Once you say that governments should do something about X, then you are in the realm of technocratic cost/benefit analysis, because maybe Y is a better choice. And maybe the political system will give you enough for both X and Y, but if not, I would say that conscience dictates triage.
And no matter what, Banerjee and Duflo, by ignoring important research that could be used to support a contention they apparently don’t like, did the readers of JEL a disservice in their reviews.
BTW, I’m totally on board with killing the manned Mars mission. That’s just stupid. On the other hand, inexpensive little remote sensing missions (to nail down “solar variance” for instance) make sense to me.
“Hey, man, quite burdening us with priorities and stuff. The Mars stuff is cool, and it’s my right to like stuff that I choose to like, so the government should just take everybody’s money and not use analysis to rank or prioritize the options, because that’s just a plot to distract us from our urgent need for the Mars station.”
Heh. Your attempted parody has too much truth.
Such is life in a democracy.
Were these polled Americans made aware of the ability to greatly prevent AIDS in Africa for a relatively modest cost and asked to prioritize that relative to global warming?
You may certainly lobby the citizens in (y)our democracy for where you think our efforts should go … but I’m not sure that The One True Cause would really sell that well.
There is plenty of “aid to the middle class” that we (you and I) might agree needs cutting, but that doesn’t mean we’d carry the day.
And in that environment, as a I say, I view this all-or-nothing GW vs Africa thing as a canard.
That is an admirable attempt to read my text through your blinkers!
Why is it just African Aid versus Global Warming?
If African Aid is your priority, and you are arguing for allocations in a democracy, why not also say that African Aid is more important than the National Ballet? Or than Corn Ethanol? Or the Mar Mission?
Shouldn’t you be able to name a raft of things you’d want us tax payers to de-fund so that we can increase African Aid?
(If you only have GW on your list you look like a joker with a canard.)
Nice, erudite, reasonable discussion here, guys. There is intelligent life on earth.
Very thought provoking.
Cheers,
Bob Murphy
Very nice article! Thanks for this!
Eevery succsess is based on continious efforts . It is not possibel be done over nigh .
Is it realistic ?
We can’t just fix global warming. We have to repent of our sins, and change our lives, with massive changes in our economies & governments. Jeez, it really is a religion & the perfect plan to enact global statism.
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