[Column] Global warming now a problem for economists

Jo Hong-seop, Environmental Reporter

The month of October was the hottest since figures for South Korea are available. Because of this hot, dry spell, forecasters are calling for a milder winter. Most are seeing this as a tangible effect of global warming.

Warnings about the effects of global warming generally come from scientists. Their predictions seem to have authority, but people doubt the pervasive power of global warming’s effects. Many are skeptical about our ability to predict what will happen several decades down the line.

But an economist recently assumed this job. Sir Nicholas Stern, former vice president of the World Bank, announced after a year of research in a report, "The Economics of Climate Change," that we are facing the "worst failure of markets" in world history as a result of global warming.

The report suggests two conclusions. One is that unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the other is that preventative measures are not as difficult as people think. The financial cost of preventing global warming will be just 1 percent of the world’s gross national product (GNP), but if we do nothing, the world will suffer losses of 20 percent of the world’s entire GNP, the report predicts.

Thus, trying to combat global warming is also a problem of balance, justice, and morality in addition to one of science. The climate’s change is asking us how we will live, and in what kind of society.

Means of transportation are the main source of emissions of greenhouse gases. An increasing number of advanced countries have imposed carbon emissions tax on auto fuel. Many countries also offer subsidies for owners of cars with higher efficiency and smaller engine displacement. The most desirable method, however, is to persuade people to use less means of transportation. One way is to lessen the distance between people’s places of work and their residences. The policy to establish nine new satellite cities in the Seoul metropolitan area, with the vehicles of commuters filling every street, is a very bad plan when seen through the lens of global warming.