Reducing Carbon Emissions to Save Underdeveloped Nations

Activists and academics who want to fight climate change sometimes argue we must decrease carbon emissions in order to help underdeveloped nations. Industrialized nations produce disproportionate amounts of carbon and also reap most of its benefits, while underdeveloped nations feel the most negative impact from extreme weather events. If we actually ask people around the world to rank their top policy priorities, we find that the people of the world have a different opinion on how best to help poor nations. Bjorn Lomborg, in his book False Alarm, cites data collected by a global United Nations survey asking 9.7 million of people to rank order their top policy priorities. The top five priorities were Education, Health, Jobs, No corruption, and Nutrition. “Action on climate change” was ranked 16th overall, right behind “phone and internet”. It turns out that climate change is a much bigger deal for richer nations than for people in the poorest nations. Lomborg states “People in rich countries, having much better education, health, and nutrition, tend to be more afraid of climate change, but even for Europeans climate rises only to the tenth-highest concern. For the world’s poorest, climate is robustly last.” Program evaluators who specialize in participatory research methods should be aware of the potential disconnect between what the academics want and what the people they claim to fight for want.

Reference

Bjorn Lomborg (2021). False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. Basic Books.