CrusaderFrank
Diamond Member
- May 20, 2009
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Numerous sites claim that Edenhofer had inadvertently given away the secret of the Paris Climate Accord. Unforunately, Edenhofer made this statement in 2010 and the Paris meeting didn't take place till 2015. A spokesperson for Edenhofer said the quote was used “to imply that Prof. Edenhofer ‘admits’ that there is some kind of ‘hidden agenda’ behind climate policy.“ The spokesperson added: “Of course, this is not what he was saying. These quotes are taken out of context to be misused. The devaluation of fossil fuel reserves of course leads in a way to wealth redistribution — but this is rather a consequence of the necessity to stop using fossil fuels, and not the actual goal of climate policy.”
When we are discussing the need to limit climate change by limiting the emission of greenhouse gasses, we are, inescapably, talking altering the economic value of natural resources, and thus, altering the world’s distribution of wealth.
A policy to limit carbon emissions (via tax, via cap and trade, or even via shaming in the media) will reduce the value of owning a coal deposit or an oil well. And in the presence of a continued demand for energy, will increase the value of other assets, like a high plateau suitable for wind farms, or a great river suitable for hydropower, or a deposit of pitchblende from which one can refine fuel for a reactor.
Most people don’t think as deeply on these matters as Edenhoffer. (It is, after all, his job to think deeply on these matters.) And Americans in particular have for many years associated the phrase “redistribution of wealth” with active schemes to tax the wealthy in order to provide economic support to the poor. In the context of the quote, though, it’s clear that Edenhoffer is not discussing transfer payments at all, but rather the fact that climate policy alters the value of national assets world wide.
Technology does the same thing - Saudi Arabia was a kingdom (or set of kingdoms ) of less than three million people living principally in a subsistence economy until the discovery of oil in 1938 and the systematic exploitation of that oil in the 1940s. Today, thanks to the value of oil, Saudi Arabia has one of the highest per capita GDP figures in the world and a population of 23 million (28 million if you include foreign guest workers.).
If the planet decides we can no longer afford to burn oil, Saudi Arabia won’t go back entirely to its pre-1930 economy. But it would lose a lot of its present economic position.
Here’s the context of Edenhofer’s comments (emphasis mine) :
He said it!!
"But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy..." Ottmar Edenhofer, IPCC