BradA, why do you think that world crops haven't yet started to fail. I suggest that you look at the current Australian wheat crop. Surely the writing is already on the wall.

Mirko, if we don't worry about climate change, your starving people in the overpopulated third world will continue to suffer in geometric proportions.

Some of you people need to get your heads around reality.

Bagaric says

"...gross distortion in our ethical priorities is so acute that it can’t simply be explained as a judgment problem; something that will be corrected as we become more enlightened. It is deeper than that.

It highlights the overwhelmingly self-interested nature of the human species, which is exactly the reason that, if climate warning projections are right, we so managed to mess up the planet."

Is this what it's all about? Self-Interest? If so, then, Mr Bagaric, I suggest you have a look at that old the Club of Rome Report, "Limits to Growth". Or more pertinently, its update, available at their website. That should help you understand what appens when environmental problems compound, like interest in the bank.

And if you are interested in further examining "self-interrest", try reading "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", and/or visit the Author Perkins' website. Who is it putting money in the bank at the expense of developing nations, and how might their behaviour be explained?

One of the larger issues seems to me to be:

how do we direct market activities, theoretically driven by popular self-interest, toward globally sustainable outcomes?

I have yet to meet a greenie who is interested in unethical investment - eg forest clearing in Indonesia, or bigtime power schemes for smalltime national economies, or land mines, or nuclear weapons, etc. Same is true of many who would never call themselves Green. Few people are so selfish and careless as to cause harm to others, if they can avoid doing so.

I'd dearly love to see you write about ethical investment - perhaps your readers could benefit from your insights in this area. Perhaps you could be more influential toward the sort of changes which would benefit our global environment.

Cheers,

While your comments regarding the attitude of the rich world to the poor world are quite accurate as far as generalisations go, your linking of this to concerns over global warming is spurious to say the least.

As for using abortion rates in Australia as evidence for a lack of concern for people in developing countries, a more irrelevant argument is hard to imagine. What about Australia's miserly and self-serving "aid" programme or its demonisation of asylum seekers, to name but two examples?

"Will sea-levels go up 18cm, 43cm or even 59cm? Is it going to get 1.1C hotter or up to 6.4C? For the perspective of net human flourishing the answer is close to immaterial."

Actually the answer is very material for the 100s of millions of people living in low-lying underdeveloped countries (the most obvious of which is Bangladesh) and indeed to every person who lacks the financial resources to adapt to the changing environmental conditions resulting from climate change.

"And finally, it’s time to consign the spurious Green mantra that people in developing nations will also benefit from curbing global warning into the non-recycling bin. In the 90 seconds that it took you to read this article 30 of them have just died. In the same time, the sea-levels haven’t risen a milli-fraction."

Are you seriously proposing this as an argument?

The green movement is not motivated by self interest, it is motivated by narcissism. This bunch of, generally, underperforming plodders have such a perverted sense of self worth that any goal short of complete planet salvation is beneath them.

It is the classic cop out of the mediocre who are too far off-task to achieve the kind of results that provide the affirmation rewards of ordinary men and women. So they rationalise it all to justify their failure on the basis that they are focussed on much bigger goals.

So a small contribution to improving the lot of mankind, or saving a life, or even lifting the spirits of the depressed, is not good enough for them. They have a whole planet to save. They have a desperate need to save a planet, any planet will do, even when it doesn't need saving. But save it they must, lest they sink back into a primordial sludge of their own making.

This article makes some very good points. From the point of view of the world’s poor, a deteriorating environment may well be worth trading off for the benefits of higher economic output – secure and adequate food supplies, better health, and the chance of an education. But we in the rich countries would prefer a safe and stable environment even at the cost some of economic benefits.

Rather than presenting this as an either/or policy question or moral imperative, maybe some self-interested economics will help. As well as cutting our own emissions, if we in West are serious about encouraging the poor to cut emissions and preserve the environment we should pay them to do it. And we certainly should not link our trade or aid programs to moralistic cajoling through environmental conditions or strings.

Our moral obligation to help the world’s poor should be treated as a separate imperative to our desire to address global warming.

Just how we actually help to achieve a reduction in global poverty is another matter. Mirko seems to assume it’s as simple as raising our aid budget, but the evidence suggests it’s not that simple. William Easterly’s book (http://www.amazon.com/Elusive-Quest-Growth-Economists-Misadventures/dp/026205065X) provides a fascinating if depressing catalogue of the failures of successive Western efforts to address poverty in developing countries.

Mirko, I agree that the green movement per se has had a huge problem with focusing on the issues that really matter, instead of on symptomatic issues, reactive issues or parts of the big-picture in isolation of the rest.

Of course, the underlying issue that the green movement should have been putting the vast majority of its energy into right from earliest times is population growth.

If they’d done this, they would have had the best chance of resolving world poverty, massive environmental destruction and the magnitude of greenhouse gas emissions, to mention just a few.

But instead, the greens (and all of society) have pretty much turned a blind eye to this overwhelming issue….and continue to do so.