This article is part of Climate Solutions, a special report on our commitment to making a difference. New York Times Climate Forward meeting and Climate Week NYC.
For Esther Duflo, an alarming sign of how wealthy countries will deal with the climate change crisis, and its impact on poorer countries, was evident in the world’s reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Regarding Covid, the pressure on developed countries has been that if we don’t vaccinate in India, they will come back and hurt us,” Duflo, a leading development economist, said in a recent video interview. rice field. “Still, we haven’t been able to do it.” A global vaccine rollout has made her increasingly pessimistic about the potential for global cooperation on climate, she said. .
Dr. Duflo, 49, has spent his life studying the impact of economic and social policies on the poor. Born in France, she was the youngest person to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019. She co-founded and co-directed the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT. world.
She has been pivotal in promoting the use of randomized controlled trials to identify development policies and programs that work, and supports a similar approach to climate change initiatives.
Dr. Duflo will speak at: New York Times Climate Forward Tuesday’s meeting on the relationship between inequality and climate change.
She spoke about why inequality makes the fight against climate change “a hellish political problem.”
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
How will climate change affect global inequality?
Rich countries and their consumers are largely responsible for the emissions that lead to climate change, but the costs will be borne mainly by citizens of poor countries. I think it could really undermine a good chunk of the progress we’ve made in the last 30 years. We have already seen floods in Pakistan, Bangladesh will be submerged and parts of India may become uncultivable.
Has the global response to the pandemic eroded confidence in rich and poor countries working together to address climate change?
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Covid seemed to be a relatively easy problem to tackle and failed the test, which dented confidence. , they could help their citizens. But that didn’t happen, so wealthy countries spent about 24% of their GDP [gross domestic product] Fiscal stimulus only allowed poor countries to spend 2%. With a much smaller GDP, helping poor countries spend the same percentage of their GDP would have been a bucket drop for rich countries.
The second thing that didn’t happen was the rapid distribution of the vaccine around the world. Instead, wealthy countries bought all the doses themselves.So complex things like climate change, including new production methods, technology transfer, solutions that need to be invented, and longer time horizons. Given that, what are the chances of success?
With climate change, it’s not obvious for people in rich countries to help themselves by helping poor countries.
Many see an inherent contradiction between the goals of combating climate change and promoting development. This is because economic growth has traditionally meant increased consumption and increased carbon emissions. does it look like that?
I think there is some tension, especially if developing countries want to exactly emulate the model we followed. , which increases emissions. But one thing that eases this tension is concern about India’s own quality of life, as CO2 emissions create other pollution problems that kill people. This helps sell the argument that it is better to grow in a way that maintains relatively clean air and low emissions.
Your approach of using randomized controlled trials to test the effectiveness of development initiatives is now widely accepted. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, is there time for this approach?
Well, what are the alternatives? It’s about doing all sorts of things that don’t work. For example, one of France’s responses to climate change is to weatherproof its houses. [for instance, with better insulation]However, a study conducted in the United States on the government’s weathering program showed that it had essentially no effect. So before you spend all your climate budget on insulating your home, you might want to know if it works.
When I started working on randomized poverty assessments 25 years ago, people said, “Oh, we don’t have time, we have to move on.” But how much time have we wasted spending money on something that doesn’t work? So does the climate.
Of all the research you’ve seen so far about the intersection of climate change and development, is there anything that really surprises you?
What I think should really surprise and worry people is the gap between engineering estimates of how promising a technology is for mitigation and how well it actually works. And those gaps are really huge.Unfortunately, most carbon credits are [permits allowing the emission of greenhouse gases] Sold or distributed based on engineering assumptions, not actual evidence-based assumptions. And these mitigation estimates are usually well off and far too optimistic.
Is enough attention being paid to mitigating the impacts of climate change on poor citizens in developed countries?
I think one of the big mistakes in our thinking about climate is that we have decoupled efforts to reduce climate change from efforts to reduce inequalities. The two are closely related. Because the more you consume, the more you emit, and it’s the very wealthy that can lead to a very large reduction in emissions. However, since the two are separate, there is often conflict between the two.
So how can governments convince low-income people that climate action won’t cost them?
That is the rhetorical battle that must be fought. I think the Inflation Reduction Act passed in the US goes a long way in that direction by de-emphasizing the way people basically tax gasoline, a carbon tax that they see as a way of life. And instead, we will shift to investing in renewable energy, infrastructure and public transport, creating jobs while helping people transition to a more respectful lifestyle.
What are the implications of the belief that technology will save us from having to tell voters that they need to make nasty changes?
The bad news is that behavioral adjustments will be required. Luckily, coordinating your behavior isn’t all that difficult. Humans are creatures of habit, and when we start a new habit, we quickly get used to it. We can change and it doesn’t have to be painful.