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Please cite
as:

Fearnside, P.M. 1998.  The value of human life in global
warming impacts. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
3(1): 83-85.

ISSN:  1381-2386

Copyright:
Springer

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is available at http://www.springerlink.com:

THE
VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE IN GLOBAL WARMING IMPACTS

Philip
M. Fearnside

National
Institute for Research

in
the Amazon (INPA)

Caixa
Postal 478

69011-970
Manaus, Amazonas

BRAZIL

Tel:
+55 (92) 643-1822

Fax:
+55 (92) 236-3822

e-mail:
[email-masked]

22
Oct. 1997

ABSTRACT:

A recent article in Mitigation
and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change by Fankhauser and Tol makes monetary
estimates of potential global warming damages that assign higher value to each
life lost in wealthy countries as opposed to poor ones.  Regardless of how much sense such a
procedure may make to GDP-oriented economists, it is morally unacceptable to
most of the world and needlessly damages efforts to build support for any
global warming mitigation and adaptation strategies that may be proposed.  A better solution would be to use a
money value of zero for human life losses and report separately the monetary
and human life costs of warming (and benefits of mitigation).

KEYWORDS:
VALUATION, ETHICS, STATISTICAL LIFE, ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF GLOBAL WARMING

No subject could be as
fundamental, nor as controversial, as the value attributed to human life in calculating
the impacts of global warming (and the benefits of mitigating it).  Although prominent in the discussions of
activist groups (e.g., Third World Resurgence, 1994), this subject has
received little treatment in the professional literature.  A perception that those who work
professionally with climate mitigation and adaptation value the lives of rich
people more than those of poor people is extremely damaging to the whole
enterprise of mobilizing support for measures to contain global warming.  The recent article in Mitigation and
Adaptation Strategies for Global Change by Fankhauser and Tol (1997)
requires comment in this regard.

Fankhauser and Tol
(1997: 400) state that "the value people assign to a lower mortality risk
may rise as per capita income grows."
One is strongly reminded of the famous televised remark by General
William Westmoreland, then U.S. military commander in Vietnam, that
"they" [Vietnamese] don't feel pain on losing their loved ones like
"we" [Americans] do.  The
notion that global warming impacts should be calculated assigning greater value
to lives lost in rich countries has been rejected as morally unacceptable by
many analysts, including this author (e.g. Fearnside, 1997).

The perception that
global warming impact calculations contain a bias against the poor stems from a
1992 working paper by the first author of the recent article.  In that calculation, lives lost in
wealthy countries were counted at a value ten times that used for lives lost in
the poorest countries (Fankhauser, 1992: 14).  The values per life were derived from
what people spend on insurance, a measure that ultimately rests on the ability
of people to pay to avoid risks--that is, on how much money they have.  Although Fankhauser (1992: note 22)
appended a footnote explaining that poor people's lives are really just as
valuable as rich people's lives, the numerical calculations followed through to
the end using the 10:1 ratio.

The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 3 (Mitigation and Adaptation)
analysis reviews various means of valuating human lives (Pearce et al.,
1996: 196-197).  The bottom line of
1.5-2.0% loss of world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (2-9% of GDP in developing
countries) for total impacts of doubling the pre-industrial CO2
concentration presented in the conclusions (Pearce et al., 1996: 218),
however, is based on "available studies" that virtually all have
wealth-based valuation of human life.
Most emphasis is given to Fankhauser's (1995) estimate, which gives 11
times more weight to each life lost in the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries as compared to the non-OECD
[i.e., poor] countries (see Pearce et al., 1996: 197).  In the present case (Fankhauser and Tol,
1997), which builds on the IPCC analysis, the numbers also reflect the
"wealthist" bias of the original sources.

In addition, the
"value adjustment" alluded to in the abstract (p. 385) is explained
(p. 398) as a probable increase in intangible damages "because of the impact
of per capita income on valuation."
The implication is that future refinements of damage evaluation
calculations will contain higher numbers for mortality costs because the per
capita income of the people dying will be greater.  The source of Fankhauser and Tol's
optimism regarding the direction of change of the per capita income of the
victims is not stated, and seems incongruous with the recent trends towards
much larger numbers and percentages of poor people in the world.  That the authors' predictions about
"a new generation of improved estimates" (p. 399) stress increased
value per death based on future increases in per capita income implies that
each death among the rich will add more to the global warming damage total than
each death among the poor.

It is important to make
clear that, irrespective of what individual researchers may think about the
matter, the value assigned to human life is a parameter that reflects ethical
values that are not decided by researchers.  The content of various international
agreements, including the United Nations charter, as well as the teachings of
the world's major religions, all point to equality as a universal guiding
principle.  This needs to be
incorporated in an explicit and consistent manner into both numerical
calculations and verbal discussions of the subject.  The importance of equality is so basic
that, rather than commit the injustice of differential valuation based on
wealth, it would be better to use a value of zero for lost lives in monetary
calculations, and simply state the monetary and human life costs separately.

Using Fankhauser's
(1995) estimates for the impact of a jump to double the pre-industrial CO2
concentration with the world (including its population size) as it is today,
the result would be loss of US$ 221 billion (in 1990 prices) annually,
exclusive of human life losses, plus loss of 138,000 lives per year (115,000 of
which would be in non-OECD countries).
The world's population can be expected to have grown substantially
before pre-industrial CO2 doubles in approximately 2070, assuming
the atmosphere follows the IPCC Second Assessment Report's business-as-usual
(IS92a) scenario (Schimel et al., 1996: 83).  The real costs, especially in lost
lives, would therefore be much higher than these already astronomical numbers
suggest.

References

Fankhauser,
S.: 1992, Global warming damage costs: Some monetary estimates. Centre for
Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERG) Working Paper GEC
92-29. London, University College and Norwich, University of East Anglia.

Fankhauser,
S.: 1995, Valuing Climate Change--The Economics of the Greenhouse.
London, EarthScan.

Fankhauser,
S. and Tol, R.S.J.: 1997, 'The social costs of climate change: The IPCC Second
Assessment Report and beyond', Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for
Global Change 1: 385-403.

Fearnside,
P.M.: 1997, 'Environmental services as a strategy for sustainable development
in rural Amazonia', Ecological Economics 20(1): 53-70.

Pearce,
D.W., Cline, W.R., Achanta, A.N., Fankhauser, S., Pachauri, R.K., Tol, R.S.J.
and Velinga, P.: 1996, 'The social costs of climate change: Greenhouse damage
and the benefits of control', in Bruce, J.P., Lee, H. and Haites, E.F. (eds.), Climate
Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimensions--Contributions of Working Group III
to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 179-224.

Schimel,
D. and 75 others: 1996, 'Radiative forcing of climate change', Climate
Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change--Contribution of Working Group I to
the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 65-131.

Third
World Resurgence: 1994, 'World
climate body colonised by OECD economists', Third World Resurgence 49:
2-3.