Rhinocrisy

The IPCC released its third working-group report on climate change Friday, on “Mitigation of Climate Change”. You can read it here.

A number of people quoted the White House response on the subject, as voiced by James Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Quoth Connaughton:

And so you see ranges - you know, GDP ranges as high as 3 percent to achieve certain scenarios - well, that would, of course, cause a global recession, so that is something that we probably want to avoid.

Connaughton, here, is referring to the strongest stabilization scenario, of 445-535 ppm CO₂ equivalent. In this scenario, the projected reduction in GDP by 2030 from the expected baseline is 3%. That is, if GDP grows X between now and 2030, in the mitigation scenario it would only grow by 0.97X. That’s not so bad, and it’s certainly not a recession. The per-annum reduction in growth rates is 0.12%. Small beans. So what is Connaughton talking about? One suspects he (or whoever summarized it for him) simply misread the document and interpreted it as a nightmare scenario, 3% total decrease in GDP, which, of course, would be a recession.

His strange interpretation seems to have confused others as well. A reporter follows up:

Q So to follow up, you’re saying that the 445 to 535, which specifically mentions a range of GDP reduction greater than 3 percent [wrong, actually, it’s less than 3 percent - ed] - that is what you’re saying is something that it would cause a global recession and something we’d probably avoid - that scenario with the 445 to 535 stabilization level?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: That’s an accurate description of that scenario. Again, I want to differentiate between what is happening, what will happen and these various scenarios for what might happen. And certainly there is no leader in the world that is going to be pursuing a strategy that would drive their economies into a deep recession. I think the leaders of the world are focused on strategies that grow economies, that pay for these technologies that make the solution possible.

Q I guess I’m just trying to translate that. In other words, you’re not aiming for that 445 level there - you’re more aiming toward the other level?

MODERATOR: We’ll take another question at this point. Thank you so much. Next question, please.

This seems a bad way to formulate policy.

Other good jokes include this bit taken from the summary:

Improved vehicle efficiency measures, leading to fuel savings, in many cases have net benefits (at least for light-duty vehicles), but the market potential is much lower than the economic potential due to the influence of other consumer considerations,
such as performance and size. There is not enough information to assess the mitigation potential for heavy-duty vehicles. Market forces alone, including rising fuel costs, are therefore not expected to lead to significant emission reductions.

It seems probable that previous editions of this sentence read “due to the fucking Americans” instead.