By BRYCE WILKINSON*
Few could be surprised that global warming politics have become so fraught.
For populists, it is a "good guy/bad guy" story. Those Europeans who have just indulged in what the Economist described as "a record-breaking display of righteous indignation" at the expense of the United States illustrate this aspect.
Economists often see things differently. In the same issue, the Economist had no difficulty in forgiving the Americans for their understandable hostility to a policy which, it observed, made no sense in cost-benefit terms.
The targets for carbon dioxide emissions set at Kyoto always looked politically unattainable, being economically unsound and environmentally ineffectual.
The Economist noted at the time that the politicians who agreed to them got an immediate political benefit, knowing that the political costs would fall on later politicians when they asked their electorates to incur very real economic costs for inadequate benefits.
Global power politics apparently stood in the way of subsequent attempts to improve the policy through such measures as allowing for carbon sinks and moving away from rigid country targets through emissions trading.
Even an imposed global target for emissions is economically questionable.
The economists' prescription would once have been to impose a corrective tax on greenhouse gas emissions and a subsidy on absorbed gases. There would be no emission targets, but the level of the tax and the distribution of the tax proceeds could be comparably contentious.
The least divisive approach might be for countries wanting others to reduce lawful emissions of greenhouse gases to offer to compensate them for the costs of forgoing their legal rights to make such emissions.
Under such an approach, if reducing emissions is very costly, many poorer countries (including New Zealand) might decide that the money could be better spent on other priorities, such as reducing pollution from congested roads and ill-maintained water supply and waste disposal systems.
Perhaps countries such as New Zealand could benefit the peoples of low-lying countries more by offering them citizenship in the event of a rise in water levels than by trying to reduce emissions.
There are virtues in an approach that opens up a wider menu of options when the way ahead is blocked and acrimonious.
Interestingly, the Economist postulates that what is left of the Kyoto pact after Bonn will fail most spectacularly where it is now most celebrated - in Europe.
It predicts that the failure will result from the stresses between environmental politics and economic realities. It notes, for example, that the Europeans have just decided to continue with coal subsidies.
Amid the morass of unsavoury politics, uncertain science and a head-in-the-sand approach to economic realities, where do New Zealanders' interests lie?
As it happens, a plausible case can be made for New Zealanders benefiting significantly from projected global warming.
Gains could be made from greater plant growth from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and from reduced winter heating and illnesses.
City slickers, a high proportion of the population, could hope to bask more often in outdoor cafes on summer evenings.
It is far from clear that these gains would be fully offset by increased costs in air-conditioning, more summer-related illnesses, higher water levels, or greater climatic volatility.
It is sobering how little work has been done in New Zealand on the issue of the likely net benefits or costs to New Zealanders from projected climate change.
A recent report on the likely regional impact of climate change in New Zealand concluded that: "We are not in a position yet to estimate whether climate change might bring a net cost or benefit to New Zealand in the near future, and at what specific point the positive impacts could turn negative."
Space does not permit a full discussion of the contrast between this finding and the enthusiasm of some ministers for signing up New Zealand to Kyoto's targets.
But it would be futile to reduce emissions within New Zealand in the absence of effective global action. New Zealanders last wore hair shirts for an international enthusiasm in the early 1980s, when there was an OECD-wide initiative to reduce dependence on OPEC oil.
The "Think Big" projects were enormously costly. It would be truly bizarre for any New Zealand government to call for the hair shirts again.
* Dr Bryce Wilkinson is a director of Capital Economics in Wellington.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
United Nations Environment Program
World Meteorological Organisation
Framework Convention on Climate Change
Executive summary: Climate change impacts on NZ
IPCC Summary: Climate Change 2001