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TPA Report: The Cost of Copenhagen
A new report by the TaxPayers’ Alliance entitled: The Cost of Copenhagen conservatively estimates the Copenhagen Summit will cost £130 million.
Key Findings
* A conservative estimate of the total cost of Copenhagen is £130 million ($215 million, €143 million).
* This estimate is based on the Danish government budget and the costs to participating governments of sending 15,000 delegates – including flights, accommodation, food, conferencing facilities and salaries paid to delegates while they are at the conference. It is a conservative estimate as it leaves out costs such as the need for supporting work by staff in the home countries.
Matthew Sinclair, Research Director at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:
“The politicians and bureaucrats going to Copenhagen seem to think that it’s unlikely that they’ll reach a deal and they know that even if they can get something signed, an increasingly sceptical public aren’t going to accept ever more expensive climate change policies. This means that a huge amount of money is going to be spent on the summit, and thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted to get there, just to give the delegates a good photo opportunity. Politicians need to stop this expensive jamboree and instead focus domestically on bringing down the ruinous cost to ordinary families of green taxes and regulations.”
December 8th, 2009 at 6:07 am
Statements like this really undermine support for the admirable notions of economics, capitalism, investment, mathematics, etc. — by suggesting that there is nothing of value that will result.
Surely you understand that policies that prevent loss of private property to storm damage, safeguard productivity of land from drought, etc., will measure in the many billions in even the most superficial, common sense analysis.
The Copenhagen conference may have the highest return-on-investment of any human activity if it is allowed to succeed.
December 8th, 2009 at 6:21 am
Which part of “there is no greenhouse gas signal in disaster losses” don’t you understand?
Any Copenhagen Treaty will bypass democracy and is mainly about UN global governance and taxation – nothing to do with climate. There is no return on an ‘investment’ in Canutian weather control.
December 8th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Is this directed to/at my comment? “Which part of “there is no greenhouse gas signal in disaster losses” don’t you understand?”
There was no reference to that phrase in this article or in the linked material. (It apparently does occur elsewhere, in one article where you report on a study of recent floods in Europe, which is far from comprehensive or compelling.)
No professional investor would ignore the importance of diversification of a portfolio of investments, or of purchasing insurance. Was that not studied, and if so, why? The only suitable answer is that one must *assume* *perfect* knowledge of the future, which is of course absurd.
Are you advocating that everyone abandon insurance, portfolio diversification, physical plant modernization, etc., and submit to the government mandating that society shall not invest so as to protect against a range of threats to its future?
With such perfect knowledge and guaranteed knowledge of future returns on investment, I should hope you enjoy the company of the only other sage in recent memory that promised such certainty: Bernie Madoff.
December 8th, 2009 at 7:01 am
I’m referring to published literature on normalized disaster losses – there is no ghg signal. Pielke Jr is well published in this area and his 2007 paper was recently replicated e.g. “assuming a direct greenhouse gas-tropical cyclone link, reducing greenhouse gas emissions such that they have no effect addresses a maximum of only 4% of the increased losses in 2050, under the assumptions of the study. Obviously therefore, damage from tropical cyclones is primarily an issue of adaptation to climate, not mitigation.” Attempting to manipulate atmospheric CO2 isn’t an insurance policy, it’s a hugely expensive folly that is doomed to fail.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Haven’t you been reading about Climategate? There are a lot of people now questioning the certainty of “published literature” by scientists, seeing how they might cherry pick their information and methods. Well, it would be foolish to put your blood and treasure in the hands someone who says there is only one side to the story. Don’t be fooled: we need to insure against risks, and climate change is a big risk that does not go away simply because of some article.
Oddly, you seem to be giving an irrational level of confidence (i.e. 100%) to certain published studies, with no justification for why these are 100% true, or evidence that others may be 0% correct. This would seem to be quite unwise.
Obviously, the chance of GHGs causing a damaging level of climate change is not 0%, or 100%. So, is it 1%, 10%, or 50% or 99%? Because it is impossible for anyone to know precisely, it seems imperative for society to act on the potential risk. That is what we must and will do, thank goodness. And all citizens would be wise to run from any that say they know the future with perfect certainty.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
I publicise studies that tend to be ignored by the mainstream media in favour of alarmism – the aim being to provide some sadly lacking balance. All studies have flaws. We have to base climate/energy policy policy on uncertainty, but we can’t live our lives on the basis of an unproven, unlikely computer modelled catastrophe driven by an essential gas. The human race moves forward by creating wealth, economic growth and technological innovation – that is how to deal with the challenges of energy and adaptation to our ever changing climate – not by reverting back to the stone age.
December 10th, 2009 at 6:03 am
[...] the Copenhagen gravy train rolls on (Cost over $300 million dollars) a Siberian blast is about to hit Europe, with Copenhagen about to drop to minus 15. In the USA a [...]