Ordinary Gweilo

Simon Patkin is at it again.  Today’s Sunday Morning Post includes a letter from him entitled “Don’t be fooled by alarmists on global warming”.  He is responding to Christine Loh’s column (Global warming won’t wait – subscription required) on Thursday which referred to the Stern Review. 

The time she has seized on a report saying that global warming could cost 20 per cent of gross domestic product.  Note the emphasis on the word could – environmentalists use “could” to turn a claim into a certainty.

Except that this is what she actually wrote: 

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a report commissioned by the British government, was published on Monday. It notes the urgent need for the world to bring down greenhouse-gas emissions, because climate change will impede growth and development.

But it will take significant reductions to stabilise gas emissions even at 1990 levels. As the Stern Review notes, the actions of countries, cities, companies and individuals will be critical.

Sir Nicholas Stern, the principal investigator of the review, is a noted economist. He made it clear that the emission of greenhouse gases imposes a cost on others that is not borne by the emitter. Without intervention by policy, the emitters do not consider that cost in their decision-making.

Sir Nicholas highlights the need for a broad economic view in reducing emissions. Policymakers need to look at the economics of growth and development, industry, innovation and technological change, the international economy, public finance, the environment and so forth.

Mr Tsang should ask the government’s chief economist to digest the Stern Review, and to give him and senior officials a briefing on how the Hong Kong administration can be at the forefront of climate issues. Assuming Mr Tsang will serve a second term as chief executive, he needs to have a clear view of how Hong Kong can adapt its policies to further reduce greenhouse emissions.

This will require the government to develop an energy policy, something it has been reluctant to do. What Hong Kong has are a number of policy areas involving energy. But the government does not have a comprehensive energy policy that focuses on achieving efficiency, conservation, environmental protection, public health and energy security.

Nowhere does Christine Loh repeat the figure of 20% mentioned by Simon Patkin.  Instead she is making the point that the Hong Kong government needs to to take note of climate change and to have an energy policy that takes this into account. 

Simon then moves on from attacking Christine Loh for something she didn’t write to fiction of a different kind:

Michael Crichton’s novel State of Play gives an excellent analysis of the environmentalists’ attempt to deceive us over global warming.  But I wonder if he will be treated by the environmentalist left the same way the religious right treated Dan Brown and his novel The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown?  Michael Crichton?  Get me outta here.