On Sunday’s FastForward Radio, we talked a little about Bjorn Lomborg’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he makes the case that funds spent today on solutions to climate change would be more effective if spent directly on other problems such as poverty, hunger, and disease:

Whatever is spent on climate policies saving one person from hunger in 100 years could instead save 5,000 people today.

This same point is true, whether we look at flooding, heat waves, hurricanes, diseases or water shortages. Carbon cuts are an ineffective response. Direct policies — such as addressing hunger directly — do a lot more.

Taking Lomborg’s figures as being anywhere nearly correct, dealing with the future versus the present places us in a major moral dilemma. Do we help a few in the future or a great many today? This is an intriguing problem, and (unfortunately) on the show, we didn’t deal with it as effectively as I would have liked, instead allowing ourselves to be caught up in two major digressions.

1. Free Markets Vs. Central Planning

This is beside the point. Lomborg assumes a government solution either way — he’s talking, after all, about the most effective way to spend government funds — but one can assume a free market solution or a hybrid government / free market solution, and the problem is the same. Whether it’s government, business, NGOs, or whatever, the question is do we get the benefits now or look for benefits later?

What’s interesting about Lomborg’s analysis is that it flies in the face of the normal present good / future good dichotomy. Normally, we say we can save a few lives right now or many lives later. But in the case of the specific benefits of climate change spending, Lomborg argues, we get more benefits spending the money now directly on those problems than we would trying to solve them via climate change.

2. Adoption Rates of Technology

This arose primarily because I misstated one of Lomborg’s arguments. I made it seem that Lomborg was arguing that Germany should not spend money on solar energy now, but that they should wait until the technology is better and they can get more benefit from it. This led to protests that this is a circular argument — the technology will always be better in the future, so one should never buy it now.

In fact, Lomborg is saying something else. He doesn’t state a position as to when Germany should adopt solar energy — now or later — he just uses how much they are spending as a departure point to talk about how the money could be better spent. In this case, he argues that $150 billion is better spent on making renewable technologies better than deploying them now:

Amazing good could come from using Mr. Obama’s $150 billion primarily to invest in creating new technologies, rather than simply subsidizing existing ones.

Investing in existing inefficient technology (like current-day solar panels) costs a lot for little benefit. Germany, the leading consumer of solar panels, will end up spending $156 billion by 2035, yet only delay global warming by one hour by the end of the century.

If Mr. Obama invested instead in low-carbon research and development, the dollars would go far (researchers are relatively cheap), and the result — maybe by 2040 — will be better solar panels that are cheaper than fossil fuels.

Obama’s proposed $150 billion and Germany’s proposed $156 billion are different buckets of money (although they are roughly the same amount.) Lomborg is suggesting that we get more leverage spending on development now and deployment later. As an economist, my guess is that he would suggest an economic inflection point occurs when our development dollars have secured technologies that can be deployed roughly as efficiently as the technologies they are replacing.

On the program, Stephen noted that massive improvements in solar technology might come quite a bit sooner than Lomborg’s projection of 2040. He also described a somewhat different inflection point, when consumers — rather than governments — will be ready to make the switch:

The pragmatic public has little reason to adopt solar power until its cheaper than buying electricity off the grid. When it becomes cheaper to adopt solar than to use the grid – meaning the payback period for the equipment is reasonably short – the public will begin adopting solar. Even as solar continues to be improved.

Ray Kurzweil has called the point at which solar becomes cheaper than grid the Solar Singularity.

The difference between how the public looks at these problems and how larger institutions — corporations, NGOs, government agencies — is that as individual consumers, we are going to spend money on technology only when we think it’s a good buy. An early adopter might have bought an LCD or plasma TV just when those technologies became available, and pushed the market along for relatively late adopters like myself. But even the early adopter would make the purchase thinking he or she was getting a good deal for the money. Being first has a lot of value in and of itself.

However, how many consumers will pump money directly into television R&D? In that model, you don’t actually get a TV to use now, but you know that later there will be better TVs and you will be able to purchase and enjoy one of those. Would consumers ever be willing to divert entertainment dollars today for a better future tomorrow? Well, Brian Wang makes the intriguing argument that they should be willing to do just that:

People should consider diverting $100-150 per year in science fiction movies, DVD, books, toys and games towards actual scientific attempts at life extension and molecular nanotechnology. This does not include another average of $60-100 per person on cosmetic surgery, vitamins and dietary supplements. Why settle for imagination, illusion and fake procedures and invest in attempts at real solutions ?

Note: You can also just divert some money from this or other sources depending upon your personal priorities. ie. still buy science fiction but eat out less or buy less junk food which is bad for you anyways. Go to the movies less and rent the DVD and accumulate a fund for putting towards actual research. Recognize that in most cases vitamins do nothing and put those funds towards research that has the potential to make a big difference.

I think this is an excellent idea. And something we should think about is what are ways that we can make money spent on futuristic entertainment help to fund research to bring about a better future?

Still, I think that this is where institutions have the edge over individual consumers. On the program, I lamented something I called “institutional thinking,” which tends to view the future in a very limited and linear way. But the upside to institutions — and again, I’m thinking about government agencies, NGOs, and forward-looking corporations — is that they are perfectly willing to put funds into research now. They will spend money on direct research much more willingly than consumers will.

The real trick is to get both individuals and institutions focused on the kinds of disruptive, non-linear developments that can lead to massive positive change. Nanotechnology and biotechnology have the potential to do more to cut carbon emissions than any plans on any UN or other government agency drawing board. (Plus, these technologies offer the promise of reversing damage already done to the environment.) So what we need to see happen is for those developments to become part of everybody’s plans: consumers, government agencies, non-profits, corporations.

We need to strike a balance between funding research that will get us to those promising changes and funding relief to problems that currently exist. How that should play out for large institutions is the conundrum Lomborg faces us with, and the solution he offers is focusing on what will bring the largest overall benefit. Some of that will be future-directed, some will be in the here-and-now.

But as individuals, here’s a modest proposal: let’s make it a 50-50 split. If you donate $100 to Save the Children (or a similar organization), donate $100 to Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (or a similar organization.) And let’s all find a way to give twice what we’re currently giving.

That should be a start.