EE#11: A perfectly irrational conversation
HIV action offers inspiration for climate finance
For an incredibly emotive subject, climate policy types try to remain rational. Advocacy has focused on integrating climate action into current systems - think climate-related financial risk - and trying to maximise emissions reductions for the lowest cost.
Rationality makes sense on two fronts. The first is time. Net zero dates are rapidly approaching; reinventing our financial or political institutions could take decades. The second is that climate change has been a competitive arena. There’s bountiful evidence that scientists (including the venerable IPCC) self-censor so they can’t be attacked for sensationalism. The cost of net zero is one of the main attacks against action.
That rationality is embodied in economic reports. Take the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility, the most rational of economic actors. They couldn’t be clearer that the lowest cost transition is one with early and orderly action - allowing businesses and individuals to adapt and change over time. Delays cost money. They assume we have a massive problem and a restricted budget to deal with it.
But what if that’s not the case? What if we need something different?
I was re-reading an excellent NYT Interpreter Column by Amanda Taub recently on the politics of HIV aid. In the George Bush II era, HIV faced a not dissimilar problem to climate. Rational scientists and policy experts were trying to convince the American government to tackle the AIDS crisis in Africa. Health economists led the charge. While treatment drugs were effective they were expensive, prevention-based interventions like condoms were cheaper and could save more lives per dollar - even if those currently with the disease would die.
But! At the same time, the Bush Administration was under heavy and visible political lobbying. Bono was doing his thing but also was supported by right-wing evangelicals who could speak better to the Republican Party. The issue shifted, no longer was it about spending existing money in the most effective way, it became about getting more dollars total for AIDS interventions. Treatment, saving lives, made a far more compelling argument to do that.
From this Taub draws a lesson that sometimes politics is more important than economics (I would say in fact nearly all the time). Bush was able to launch PEPfAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) because his political constituencies were advocating for it, treatment was evident and therefore created a tangible political ‘win’, and it was simple to implement - it was a case of buying more drugs and getting them where they need to go. This also ended up reducing the cost of medicine by stimulating demand and created political bandwidth for a parallel prevention programme.
As a Public First report for the National Trust shows, one of the top public motivations for climate action is stopping climate-related impacts. Extreme heat, flooding, or shifting weather patterns are more salient than before - possibly because it’s worse, but also it’s well-covered in media. And worse, the public don’t think the UK is prepared.
The British public believe that the country will be affected in all manner of ways: 81% are expecting the UK will either be greatly or slightly affected by the destruction of nature caused by rapidly changing weather impacts, 82% are braced for health risks from heat waves and other unpredictable weather, and 76% think that insurance premiums will rise.
The British public are worried about how climate impacts will affect them personally: 79% are worried about the destruction of nature caused by rapidly changing weather impacts, 76% the health risks from heatwaves and unpredictable weather, and 58% the damage to historic monuments caused by changing weather.
Public First for National Trust, Making Climate Adaptation Matter
Could allocating significantly more to adaptation, preventing the current impacts of climate change buy permission for more mitigation? There are challenges:
Attribution: although attribution science is getting a lot better it is not perfect. The lack of certainty over cause could leave scientists cautious in advocacy, and leave a political vulnerability in spending in response. We have of course already had devastating events at home and abroad that have not inspired politicians to do more.
Cause: the causes of climate change are direct and ongoing. While zoonotic diseases like AIDS have risk factors (exacerbated by climate), they are in some ways random and inevitable. As we saw in Covid when a treatment was found willingness to tackle risk factors fell off. A big adaptation response could undermine the case for mitigation. This complexity is one reason we don’t have a net zero for adaptation.
Impact: AIDS treatments saved lives. Climate adaptation reduces impacts and thus avoids a negative outcome rather than delivering a positive one. Outcomes are distributed across the population, with few concentrated individual benefits.
Scale: because of the distributed causes the problem is more complex and distributed. Even adaptation as a response is highly variable covering things like huge new infrastructure, nature restoration, changing social practices or workers' rights. That means much more cash than $15 billion over five years that Bush allocated to AIDS (in a much worse fiscal environment). This scale also means political opposition is broader and deeper.
Despite this, we have to remember that climate advocates have already been enormously successful in increasing dollars, pounds and euros going towards climate action. Meanwhile, private businesses are putting their money into climate mitigation because of the success of the rational case - the status quo is a big risk.
As I argued in my first post, climate impacts are only going to get more salient. El Nino means more than just 2023 being the warmest year on record. It will mean holiday destinations on fire, British homes underwater, and an unbearable August in UK cities. Yet, adaptation is still mitigation’s, not even poorer younger brother, but long-lost distant cousin. We have yet to even have a conversation with the public about what adaptation is required let alone start financing it.
So yes let's keep that rational argument going where it makes sense. But when faced with a scary, visible and dangerous problem, as AIDS was in the 90s, let's lean into more than just facts.