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Towards a productive libertarian approach on climate, energy and environmental issues

February 10th, 2010 No comments

[This is a work in progress and largely taken from previous posts, but readers might find some value in it in the meanwhile.]

1. Heated but vacuous climate wars

On environmental issues in general and climate in particular, find me someone (like George Will) ranting about “Malthusians” or “environazis” or somesuch, and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t understand – or refuses to acknowledge – the difference between:

(1) wealth-creating markets based on private property and/or voluntary interactions/contracts protected by law, and

(2) the tragedy of the commons situations that result when there are NO property rights (atmosphere, oceans), when the pressures of developed markets swamp indigenous hunter-gather community rules, in many cases where governments formally own and purport to manage “public” resources, and when governments absolve purportedly “private” actors from liability for harms to others (such as via grants of “limited liability“).

So what’s the deal? Here’s a perfect opportunity for skeptics to educate the supposedly market ignorant, but they refuse, preferring to focus instead on why concerned scientists must be wrong, how concerns by a broad swath of society about climate have become a matter of an irrational, deluded “religious” faith, or that those raising their concerns are “misanthropes” or worse.

Such pigheadedness is met by those on the left likewise see libertarians and small-government conservatives as deluded and/or deliberate pawns of evil Earth-destroying corporations.

Both sides, it seems, prefer to fight – and to see themselves as right and the “others” as evil – rather than to reason.

While we should not regret that we cannot really constrain human nature very well, at least libertarian and others who profess to love markets ought to be paying attention to the inadequate institutional framework that is not only poisoning the political atmosphere, but posing risks to important globally and regionally shared open-access commons like the atmosphere and oceans (which are probably are in much more immediate and grave threat than the climate). And they also ought to recognize that there are important economic interests that profit from the current flawed institutional framework and have quite deliberately encouraged the current culture war.

2. Why the reflexive libertarian disengagement?

I have on numerous occasions tried to point out, to posters on the Mises Blog who have addressed climate issues, the stunning unproductivity of the approach that they have taken — that of focussing on science and dismissing motivations and preferences, rather than exploring root causes and middle ground, and have continued to scratch my head at the obstinacy and apparent lack of vision.

The following seem to be the chief factors at work in the general libertarian resistance to any government action on climate change:

– Many libertarians, as CEI’s Chris Horner has stated,  see “global warming [as] the bottomless well of excuses for the relentless growth of Big Government.”  Even libertarians who agree that is AGW is a serious problem are worried, for good reason, that government approaches to climate change will be a train wreck – in other words, that the government “cure” will be worse than the problem.

– Libertarians have in general drifted quite far from environmentalists (though there remain many productive free-market environmentalists/conservationists). Even though libertarians and environmentalists still share a mistrust of big government, environmentalists, on the one hand, generally have come to believe that MORE government is the answer, despite all of the problems associated with the socialized ownership of resources and/or inefficient bureaucratic management (witness the crashing of many managed fisheries in the US), the manipulation of such management to benefit bureaucratic interests, special interests and insiders (wildfire fighting budgets, fossil fuel and hard rock mining, etc.) and the resultant and inescapable politicization of all disputes due to the absence of private markets. On the other hand, many libertarians  reflexively favor business over “concerned citizens”, while other libertarians see that government “solutions” themselves tend to snowball into costly problems that work in favor of big business and create pressures for more government intervention. Thus, libertarians often see environmentalists as simply another group fighting to expand government, and are hostile as a result.

– Libertarians are as subject to reflexive, partisan position-taking as any one else. Because they are reflexively opposed to government action, they find it easier to operate from a position of skepticism in trying to bat down AGW scientific and economic arguments (and to slam the motives of those arguing that AGW must be addressed by government) than to open-mindedly review the evidence or consider ways that libertarian aims can be advanced by using the pressure from “enviro” goals.

This reflexive hostility – at times quite startingly vehement – is a shame (but human), because it blunts the libertarian message in explaining what libertarians understand very well – that environmental problems arise when property rights over resources are not clearly defined or enforceable, and when governments (mis)manage resources, and that there are various private steps and changes in government policy that would undo the previous government actions that are at the root of environmentalists’ frustrations.The reflexive hostility is also a shame because it has the effect, in my mind rather clearly, of rendering libertarians largely blind to the ways that large energy, power and certain manufacturing corporations continue to benefit from (and invest heavily in maintaining) the existing regulatory structure, in ways that shift large costs and risks to unconsenting third parties.

– There are some libertarians and others who profess to love free markets at AEI, CEI, Cato, IER, Master Resource and similar institutions that are partly in pay of fossil fuel interests, and so find it in their personal interests to challenge both climate science and policy proposals that would impose costs on their funders.

I felt particularly struck by the commonness of a refrain we are hearing from various pundits who prefer to question the good will or sanity of environmentalists over the harder work of engaging in a good faith examination and discussion of the underlying institutional problem of ALL “environmental” disputes:  namely, a lack of property rights and/or a means to enforce them. 

3. The whys of climate concerns and calls for “clean” energy

I want to get started with a list of policy changes that I think libertarians can and should be championing in response to the climate policy proposals of others.

The incessant calls for – and criticism of – government climate change policies and government subsidies and mandates for “green/clean power” both ignore root causes and potential common ground.  As a result, both sides of the debate are largely talking past each other, one talking about why there is a pressing need for government policy to address climate change concerns, while the other is concerned chiefly about the likelihood of heavy-handed mis-regulation and wasted resources. This leaves the middle ground unexplored.

There are plenty of root causes for the calls for legislative and regulatory mandates in favor of climate policies and clean / green / renewable power, such as:

  • concerns about apparent ongoing climate change, warnings by scientific bodies and apprehensions of increasing risk as China, India and other developing economies rapidly scale up their CO2, methane and other emissions,
  • the political deals in favor of environmentally dirty coal and older power plants under the Clean Air Act,
  • the enduring role of the federal and state governments in owning vast coal and oil & gas fields and relying on the royalties (which it does not share with citizens, but go into the General Pork Pool, with a relatively meager cut to states),
  • the unwillingness of state courts, in the face of the political power of the energy and power industries, to protect persons and private property from pollution and environmental disruption created by federally-licensed energy development and power projects,
  • the deep involvement of the government in developing, encouraging and regulating nuclear power, and
  • the frustration of consumer demand for green energy, and the inefficient and inaccurate pricing and supply of electricity, resulting from the grant by states of public utility monopolies and the regulation of the pricing and investments by utilities, which greatly restricts the freedom of power markets, from the ability of consumers to choose their provider, to the freedom of utilities to determine what infrastructure to invest in, to even simple information as to the cost of power as it varies by time of day and season, and the amount of electricity that consumers use by time of day or appliance.

4. Is a small-government, libertarian climate/green agenda possible and desirable?

So what is a good libertarian to suggest? This seems rather straight-forward, once one doffs his partisan, do-battle-with-evil-green-fascist-commies armor and puts on his thinking cap.

From my earlier comment to Stephan Kinsella:

As Rob Bradley once reluctantly acknowledged to me, in the halcyon days before he banned me from the “free-market” Master Resource blog, “a free-market approach is not about “do nothing” but implementing a whole new energy approach to remove myriad regulation and subsidies that have built up over a century or more.” But unfortunately the wheels of this principled concern have never hit the ground at MR [my persistence in pointing this out it, and in questioning whether his blog was a front for fossil fuel interests, apparently earned me the boot].

As I have noted in a litany of posts at my blog, pro-freedom regulatory changes might include:

Other policy changes could also be put on the table, such as:

  • an insistence that government resource management be improved by requiring that half of all royalties from mineral and fossil fuel development be rebated to citizens (with a slice to the administering agency), and
  • reducing understandable NIMBY problems by (i) encouraging project planners to proactively compensate persons in affected areas and (ii) reducing fears of corporate abuses, by providing that corporate executives have personal liability for environmental torts (in recognition of the fact that the profound risk-shifting that limited liability corporations are capable of that often elicits strong public opposition and fuels regulatory pressure).

5. Other libertarian discussants

A fair number of libertarian commenters on climate appear to accept mainstream sciences, though there remain natural policy disagreements. Ron Bailey, science correspondence at Reason and Jonathan Adler, a resources law prof at Case Western, Lynne Kiesling at Knowledge Problem blog, and David Zetland, who blogs on water issues, come to mind.

I`m not the only one – other libertarian climate proposals are here:

  • Jonathan Adler at Case Western (2000); he has other useful commentary here, here,
  • Bruce Yandle, Professor Emeritus at Clemson University, Senior Fellow at PERC (the “free market” environmentalism think tank) and a respected thinker on common-law and free-market approaches to environmental problems, has in PERC’s Spring 2008 report specifically proposed a A No-Regrets Carbon Reduction Policy;
  • Iain Murray of CEI; and
  • Cato’s Jerry Taylor is a frequent commentator and Indur Goklany has advanced a specific climate change-targeted proposal.
  •  AEI’s Steven Hayward and Ken Green together have provided a number of detailed analyses (though with a distinct tendency to go lightly on fossil fuels).

Several libertarians recently urged constructive libertarian approaches to climate change:

There have been several open disputes, which indicate a shift from dismissal of science to a discussion of policy; the below exchanges of view are worthy of note:

  • The Cato Institute dedicated its entire August 2008 monthly issue of Cato Unbound, its online forum, to discussing policy responses to ongoing climate change.  The issue, entitled “Keeping Our Cool: What to Do about Global Warming“, contains essays from and several rounds of discussion between Jim Manzi, statistician and CEO of Applied Predictive Technologies, Cato Institute author Indur Goklany; climate scientist Joseph J. Romm, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress; and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, the co-founders of The Breakthrough Institute.  My extended comments are here.
  • Reason Foundation, posted an exchange on Climate Change and Property Rights June 12th, 2008 (involving Reason’s Shikha Dalmia, Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan H. Adler, and author Indur Goklany); discussed by Ron Bailey of ReasonOnline here; here`s my take.
  • Debate at Reason, October 2007, Ron Bailey, Science Correspondent at Reason, Fred L. Smith, Jr., President and Founder of CEI, and Lynne Kiesling, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Northwestern University, and former director of economic policy at the Reason Foundation.
  • Reason Foundation, Global Warming and Potential Policy Solutions September 7th, 2006 (Reason’s Shikha Dalmia, George Mason University Department of Economics Chair Don Boudreaux, and the International Policy Network’s Julian Morris).

 

Finally, I have collected here some Austrian-based papers on environmental issues that are worthy of note:

Environmental Markets?  Links to Austrians

Ones such paper is the following: Terry L. Anderson and J. Bishop Grewell, Property Rights Solutions for the Global Commons: Bottom-Up or Top-Down?

A libertarian immodestly summarizes a few modest climate policy proposals

November 3rd, 2009 No comments

[Folks, I hope you do a better job than I do at saving draft posts before they`re finalized; I just lost alot of work. This will necessarily be shorter.]

I have on numerous occasions tried to point out, to posters on the Mises
Blog who have addressed climate issues, the stunning unproductive approach. Rather than simply reiterating my criticisms, let me get started with a
list of policy changes that I think libertarians can and should be
championing in response to the climate policy proposals of others.

The incessant calls for – and criticism of –
government climate change policies and government subsidies and mandates for “green/clean power” both ignore root
causes and potential common ground.  As a result, both sides of the
debate are largely talking past each other, one talking about why there
is a pressing need for government policy to address climate change
concerns,
while the other is concerned chiefly about the likelihood of
heavy-handed mis-regulation and wasted resources. This leaves the
middle ground unexplored.

There are plenty of root causes for the calls for legislative
and regulatory mandates in favor of climate policies and clean / green / renewable power,
such as:

  • concerns about climate change,
  • the political deal in favor of dirty coal and older power plants under the Clean Air Act, 
  • the enduring role of the federal and state governments in owning
    vast coal and oil & gas fields and relying on the royalties, which it do not go to
    citizens but into the General Pork Pool, with an unhealthy cut to states), 
  • the unwillingness of state courts, in the face of the political
    power of the energy and power industries, to protect persons and private property from
    pollution and environmental disruption created by federally-licensed energy and power projects,
  • the deep involvement of the government in developing, encouraging and regulating nuclear power, and
  • the
    frustration of consumer demand for green energy, and the inefficient
    and inaccurate pricing and supply of electricity
    , resulting from the
    grant by states of public utility monopolies and the regulation of the pricing
    and investments by utilities, which greatly restricts the freedom of power
    markets, from the ability of consumers to choose their provider, to the
    freedom of utilities to determine what infrastructure to invest in, to
    even simple information as to the cost of power as it varies by time of day and season, and the amount of electricity that consumers use by time of day or appliance.

So what is a good libertarian to suggest? This seems rather straight-forward, once one doffs his partisan, do-battle-with-evil-green-fascist-commies armor and puts on his thinking cap.

From my earlier comment to Stephan Kinsella:

As Rob Bradley once reluctantly acknowledged to me, in the halcyon days before he banned me from the “free-market” Master Resource blog, “a
free-market approach is not about “do nothing” but implementing a whole
new energy approach to remove myriad regulation and subsidies that have
built up over a century or more.”
But unfortunately the wheels of this principled concern have never hit the ground at MR [my persistence in
pointing this out it, and in questioning whether his blog was a front for
fossil fuel interests, apparently earned me the boot
].

As I have noted in a litany of posts at my blog, pro-freedom regulatory changes might include:

  • accelerating cleaner power investments by eliminating corporate
    income taxes or allowing immediate depreciation of capital investment
    (which would make new investments more attractive),
  • eliminating antitrust immunity for public utility monopolies (to
    increase competition, allow consumer choice, peak pricing and “smart metering” that will
    rapidly push efficiency gains),
  • ending Clean Air Act handouts to the worst utilities (or otherwise
    unwinding burdensome regulations and moving to lighter and more
    common-law dependent approaches),
  • ending energy subsidies generally (including federal liability caps for nuclear power (and allowing states to license),
  • speeding economic growth and adaptation in the poorer countries
    most threatened by climate change by rolling back domestic agricultural
    corporate welfare programs
    (ethanol and sugar), and
  • if there is to be any type of carbon pricing at all, insisting that it is a per capita, fully-rebated carbon tax
    (puts the revenues in the hands of those with the best claim to it,
    eliminates regressive impact and price volatility, least new
    bureaucracy, most transparent, and least susceptible to pork).

Other policy changes could also be put
on the table, such as an insistence that government resource management
be improved by requiring that half of all royalties be rebated to
citizens
(with a slice to the administering agency).

I`m not the only one – other libertarian climate proposals are here:

Several libertarians have recently been urging constructive libertarian approaches to climate change:

These discussions and exchanges of view are also worthy of note:

  • The Cato Institute has dedicated its entire August 2008 monthly issue of Cato Unbound, its online forum, to discussing policy responses to ongoing climate change.  The issue, entitled “Keeping Our Cool: What to Do about Global Warming“, contains essays from and several rounds of discussion between Cato Institute author Indur Goklany; climate scientist Joseph J. Romm, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress; and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, the co-founders of The Breakthrough Institute.  My extended comments are here.

  • Debate at Reason, October 2007, Ron Bailey, Science Correspondent at Reason, Fred L. Smith, Jr., President and Founder of
    CEI, and Lynne Kiesling, Senior Lecturer in Economics at
    Northwestern University, and former director of economic policy at the
    Reason Foundation.
  • Reason Foundation, Global Warming and Potential Policy Solutions September 7th, 2006 (Reason’s Shikha Dalmia, George Mason University Department of Economics
    Chair Don Boudreaux, and the International Policy Network’s
    Julian Morris)

Finally, I have collected here some Austrian-based papers on environmental issues that are worthy of note:

Environmental Markets?  Links to Austrians

One such paper is the following: Terry L. Anderson and J. Bishop Grewell, Property Rights Solutions for the Global Commons: Bottom-Up or Top-Down?

[update] Bob Murphy, Rob Bradley and the Austrian Road Not Taken on Climate by two fossil-fuels gunslingers

October 28th, 2009 No comments

[Update: I copy at bottom a follow-up exchange I had on Bob`s thread with another reader – radio silence from Bob.]

Bob Murphy has a new post up at his blog, “CBO Testimony Misleads on Cost of Cap-and-Trade“, that draws attention to a new blog post at the Institute of Energy Research that Bob says he “had a lot to do with”.

The IER post rightly criticizes some of the numbers that the Congressional Budget Office has released, but the IER is playing games itself.

I left the following note at Bob`s (now substantially goosed up for the benefit of readers):

TokyoTom said…

IER? Isn`t that the “free-market” blog that bans libertarians who are not on their pro-coal, pro-pollution wagon? [Oops, I confused this with Rob Bradley`s MasterResource blog; IER is different, in that IER is – much more clearly than MR – an active rent-seeking front for fossil fuel interests, which Exxon made clear last year when it publicly announced that it would no longer fund IER`s “unproductive”, climate-skeptic position.]

But while we`re on the subject, let`s not forget:

– Austrians` fundamental objections to cost-benefit analysis;


that the mining, transport and combustion of coal, in addition to whatever climate “cost” it
might have to various people whose preferences can`t be measured, have
very real and significant costs in terms of damage to persons and property;


that federal law authorizes this (via the “Clean Air Act”, surface mining laws and ownership of the TVA), and grandfathers the very worst
midwestern utilities, the oldest 10% of which (41 or so) are  estimated to be responsible for 43% of the
$62 billion in annual  damages (not including damages from harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, or climate change)(according
to the latest NAS report on the indirect costs of fossil fuels);

– that our federal government and states own most of the coal deposits and are otherwise addicted to the royalty revenues and complicit in turning a blind eye to damages;

– the future “costs” that the IER analysis refers to (in 2050) are not discounted to present value;


that alternative policies – such as

are never advanced, much less their costs weighed [that is, no attempt is ever made to engage opponents in good faith or to seek mutual gains by working to resolve underlying problems];

– the costs/consequences/risks and equities of “do-nothing” policies are hardly considered, and when so are heavily discounted;

– that deliberate “geo-engineering” holds no promise as a panacea, and itself is fraught with issues about statism, preferences, risks and liaibility;


the need for investment in infrastructure and change in laws to adapt
(and foster adaptation) to very real ongoing climate changes are never
discussed; and

– no one at IER ever seems to question the
unstated presumption that utilities and our transportation industries
have somehow homesteaded an ownership right over the global atmosphere – or the massive role that our federal government and states play as coal and other energy resource owners),
so that it`s perfectly okay to dismiss the preferences of those who
have concerns at home [those “religious” nuts like Exxon, and our Academies of Science] and those abroad in the least developed countries
that are most vulnerable to damages (much less to suggest how those
injured should be aided).

In other words, those defending the
status quo seem to have abandoned any Austrian training (or to have no
familiarity with its concern for problem-solving and awareness that
[as Block points out] common law protection of private property rights was hijacked a century
ago, with massive pollution and rent-seeking problems being the result
).

Someone
ought to post a few of these thoughts over at IER; Rob Bradley somehow
finds comments of this type over fundamental principles to be “ad hominem” arguments [of the kind that very quickly tested his patience and got me banned, without any word to his co-bloggers, who found my comments worthy of considered response].

Sure, we should fight over policy, but let`s not ignore principles or put our heads in the sand.

October 28, 2009 10:10 AM

*  From the NAS report:

Coal accounts for about half the electricity produced in the U.S.  In
2005 the total annual external damages from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen
oxides, and particulate matter created by burning coal at 406
coal-fired power plants, which produce 95 percent of the nation’s
coal-generated electricity, were about $62 billion; these nonclimate
damages average about 3.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour (kwh)
of energy
produced.  A relatively small number of plants — 10 percent of the total number — accounted for 43 percent of the damages.  By 2030, nonclimate damages are estimated to fall to 1.7 cents per kwh.

[update:

Supporters of cap and trade always turn to the
argument that opponents are burying their heads in the sand. It’s not
true. This legislation won’t do anything to help the environment. It is
merely a front so that the administration and the Democrats can say
they did “something.” We don’t need legislation that is going to cost
every single American household and won’t even be able to achieve its
stated goals. Write your Congressmen at
http://dontcapandtradeourjobs.net/?tr15.

[A], you`re missing my higher -level poinht, which is that IER is
rather apparently UNINTERESTED in engaging productively or on a
principled basis on this issue; rather, they are simply sniping (though
they make excellent points) at the cap-and-traders).

Though,
of course, from the view of those financing them, this form of
engagement may very well be “productive”, if it delays any action that
will lower returns to coal, rail or utility investors.

What`s
regrettable is that this obfuscation, which has been going on for
decades, is what is likely to saddle us with extremely costly, porky
and ineffective “climate change” policies.

Solar vs. deserts; or how "public" ownership of resources produces zero-sum political fights over preferences

September 1st, 2008 No comments

Ron Bailey, Science Correspondent of Reason Online, reported recently “how some environmental
groups are fighting the development of utility-scale solar power in the
Mojave Desert.”

As I have posted elsewhere on the role our government plays in compounding our disputes over differing preferences, I copy my comments on Bailey’s thread here:

TokyoTom | August 18, 2008, 6:34am | #

The
real problem with many of these environmental fights is that either
governments own the resources or the economic actor is highly
regulated.
With the deserts privatized and freer markets, we’d see
solar if it made economic sense (including the costs of paying off
nimby-ists).

While we are unlike to see complete privatization of state or federal
lands, we’d see greater citizen enthusiasm if the states and the feds
would be so kind as to rebate a hefty chuck of the land-use royatly
payments to us (with a cut to the related bureacrats
to incentivize
them to get good rates and to make sure proceeds are actually
collected; citizens and public prosecutors would be similarly
ncentivized).

It is the lack of sufficient revenue sharing by a greedy federal
government that has led state governors to block further OCS leasing,
and has given enviros no incentives to agree on ANWR drilling
(as I
note in the linked blog post).

Likewise, a rebated carbon tax would be a million times better than the
ethanol mandates, renewable mandates, the Warner Lieberman pork and the
Pickes’ ad blitz for solar hand-outs. The problem is a government that
wants to have a finger in every pie – citizens ought to be insisting on
a direct cut, instead of letting politicians direct all of the spoils

(which is the REAL cause of the constant deadlock).

(emphasis added)

Categories: AGW, ANWR, federal land, OCS, royalties, solar Tags:

Open letter response to Gore’s "Alliance for Climate Protection" proposed 10-year transition to "clean" power

August 6th, 2008 No comments

I received the following email today from Cathy Zoi, who is the CEO of Al Gore’s “Alliance for Climate Protection” and sent back the response I note further below;

Dear Tokyo,

Last week, Exxon Mobil announced record profits — at the same time that the rest of us were paying record high prices at the gas pump.

It doesn’t need to be this way. Our energy prices don’t need to be this high.

If we repower America and generate 100% of our electricity from clean sources within ten years, we can bring our energy costs down.

A lot of people are surprised when they find out how quickly we can make this transition. We’ve built a fun quiz to help show the way. How well do you know America’s energy? ou might find the answers surprising.

We can start relying on fuels that are free and abundant right here at home. Fuels like the sun and wind. Once our electricity grid is based on clean sources, we can plug in our cars, use those free energy sources, and stop paying through the nose to the oil companies.

On the day Exxon announced its record profits, I testified before the U.S. Congress. I explained that there are no technical or material impediments to achieving the goal of 100% clean electricity within ten years. The only thing missing is political will. And that’s why the We Campaign exists — to build support for solutions that can revitalize our economy and solve the climate crisis.

The average score of people who’ve taken the quiz is 63% Can you beat that? .

Sincerely,

Cathy Zoi
CEO
www.wecansolveit.org

My response?  As follows:

 

Cathy, I took the quiz and got 100%.  I’ve also blogged on Al Gore’s recent proposal – the important goal of which I fully support – here:
 
 
However, I think that you are making a mistake to not supporting more nuclear power, which has by far the least environmental footprint of our currently available energy options, including solar and wind.  Why aren’t you guys taking the bull by the horns and educating American consumers about nuclear power?  You could really build a cross-party coalition if you did.
 
Furthermore, the focuses on oil company profits, gas pump prices and energy independence are needless distractions.  They not only tacitly support the chief basis for our ruinous War on Terror, but actually add to pressure to produce more environmentally costly coal and to open ANWR and more of the OCS.  Why don’t you, too, stop pandering to uninformed voters and play things more straight?
 
Sincerely,
 
Tom

 

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

Paul Krugman: "The only way we’re going to get action … is if those who stand in the way of action come to be perceived as not just wrong but immoral."

August 1st, 2008 2 comments

Paul Krugman reaches the above conclusion in his August 1 New York Time op-ed, which asks “Can This Planet Be Saved?”, while discussing the latest work by economists on the cost-benefit analsys of taking action to mitigate potential climate risks – this time by Harvard`s Marty Weitzman, whose work I have discussed several times before).

The op-ed certainly shows the frustration of Krugman, who was one of more than 2500 Nobel Laureate and other economists who in 1997 signed  the “Economists’ Statement on Climate Change” that  acknowledged the conclusions of the preceding IPCC report (that man was having a discernable influence on climate), asserted the economic feasibility of greenhouse gas reductions without harming the American economy, and recommended market-based policies.  Key parts of the op-ed are the following:

What’s at stake in that fight [over environmental policy], above all, is the question of whether we’ll take action against climate change before it’s utterly too late.

It’s true that scientists don’t know exactly how much world temperatures will rise if we persist with business as usual. But that uncertainty is actually what makes action so urgent. While there’s a chance that we’ll act against global warming only to find that the danger was overstated, there’s also a chance that we’ll fail to act only to find that the results of inaction were catastrophic. Which risk would you rather run?

Martin Weitzman, a Harvard economist who has been driving much of the recent high-level debate, offers some sobering numbers. Surveying a wide range of climate models, he argues that, over all, they suggest about a 5 percent chance that world temperatures will eventually rise by more than 10 degrees Celsius (that is, world temperatures will rise by 18 degrees Fahrenheit). As Mr. Weitzman points out, that’s enough to “effectively destroy planet Earth as we know it.” It’s sheer irresponsibility not to do whatever we can to eliminate that threat.

Now for the bad news: sheer irresponsibility may be a winning political strategy.

Mr. McCain’s claim that opponents of offshore drilling are responsible for high gas prices is ridiculous — and to their credit, major news organizations have pointed this out. Yet Mr. McCain’s gambit seems nonetheless to be working: public support for ending restrictions on drilling has risen sharply, with roughly half of voters saying that increased offshore drilling would reduce gas prices within a year.

Hence my concern: if a completely bogus claim that environmental protection is raising energy prices can get this much political traction, what are the chances of getting serious action against global warming? After all, a cap-and-trade system would in effect be a tax on carbon (though Mr. McCain apparently doesn’t know that), and really would raise energy prices.

The only way we’re going to get action, I’d suggest, is if those who stand in the way of action come to be perceived as not just wrong but immoral. Incidentally, that’s why I was disappointed with Barack Obama’s response to Mr. McCain’s energy posturing — that it was “the same old politics.” Mr. Obama was dismissive when he should have been outraged.

(emphasis added)

I think that Krugman has a legitimate concern about pandering to voters on energy prices, even as Krugman`s a bit too close to the political struggle to acknowledge that environmental policies of course affect energy prices, and that “sheer irresponsibility” has been a winning political strategy for as long as – well, for as long as there have been politicians.

As I have noted elsewhere, there is an extremely wide array of opinion that carbon taxes would be the most effective and least damaging approach, and, if rebated or applied to reduce taxes on income or labor, would find long-term political support, yet politicians refuse to mention them, but instead present us with monstrous giveaways like those included in the Warner-Lieberman bill (which McCain`s bill resembles).  Heck, even Exxon, AEI, RAND and the American Council for Capital Formation have come out in favor of carbon taxes! 

Krugman explores Weitzman a little more closely in a July 29 blog post at the New York Times.  That post, and the further discussions it links to, is well worth exploring.  However, one can see Krugman`s train of thought at the very end, where he asks:

The question is, can we mobilize people to make modest sacrifices to protect against low-probability catastrophes in the distant future?

He`s obviously decided over the past few days that the way to mobilize people is to let his dander fly.  While I believe that a little more sophistication is needed, I would note that Gene Callahan, at least, has argued that swinging a moral club is an appropriate weapon, even for libertarians.  I applaud Krugman for letting not only McCain but also Obama feeling some of his lash.

I note that there are some commentators already wringing their hands over Krugman`s moralizing, but they very curiously fail to comment on the very real rent-seeking (and climate risk-shifting) and PR manipulation by fossil fuel interests that lies at the core of the policy deadlock.

 

PS:  Some of my thoughts on the current policy deadlock are as follows:

– many fossil fuel firms want to be compensated – in the form of new pork for gigantic and iffy “clean coal” projects – for budging from their current free ride on our common atmosphere;

– fossil fuel interests, including their customer chain, have great political pull in both parties (for example, nobody is yet willing to let American car manufacturers suffer their deserved fate, and Byrd and Rockefeller have alotof pull);

– financial firms – other than insurers – all looking for a cap and trade scheme, so they can profit from carbon trading;

– many firms who see opportunities in new technologies are busy fighting for advantage in the draft legislation; 

– not least, politicans are looking for legislation that promises the greatest flow of pork and campaign contributions, and have little interest in being open or hoinest with taxpayers;

– Democrats have little stomach for leadership – at least until the American people finish hanging the Republican party over its disastrous foreign policy and obvious corruption;

– there are considerable opportunities for policies that improve our tax system and regulation of energy resources and infrastructure.  I look for Republicans to start offering them after they have completely squandered their turn at the wheel of state, and are locked again into minority status in Congress.

 

 

[Update: Comments added] Iain Murray: Another libertarian makes climate policy proposals!

June 17th, 2008 No comments

Thank goodness!  Another libertarian/conservative (see my previous posts on Bruce Yandle and Gene Callahan, and see Jon Adler`s 2000 piece) wants to seize the day and promote useful policies in the face of popular/legislative concerns over climate change.

This time, it’s Iain Murray, the CEI policy analyst, polemicist and sharp-tongued scourge of enviros (his book, The Really Inconvenient Truths, and ongoing “Planet Gore” posts at NRO blame enviros for many problems).

While Iain helpfully spells out on his blog a number of areas where deregulation is needed, he also surprising provides quite an extensive (and expensive) list of statist, big-government initiatives.  The statist agenda Murray suggests is certainly worth considering, but where have all the true libertarians – the ones who think that government is best ignored, and not redirected – gone?

Iain’s proposals come from a longer blog post, as part of a dialog with Roger Pielke, Jr.  who has recently made some policy proposals of his own.  Here are Iain`s proposal`s, with a thought or two from me in brackets (and some formatting tweaks to enhance readability):

 

Here’s what I think a global warming policy acceptable to most conservatives would comprise of.

Title I: Technology & Mitigation

a) Remove regulatory barriers to innovation and deployment

– remove barriers to new or upgraded facilities that would reduce emissions eg New Source Review

– remove regulatory performance standards that act as a barrier to developing better performance

– remove barriers to developing & introducing biotechnology that could significantly increase food supplies in the developing world and create greater yield per acre in the US, allowing cropland to return to nature

– remove barriers to developing & introducing nanotechnology

[Um, Iain, could you be a little more clear about what barriers you specifically have in mind, so we can examine them more closely and help push on them?  Are these different from allowing accelerated or immediate depreciation, or lowering capital gains taxes?]

b) Reform and expand federal energy R&D program (this would form and should be sold as a major part of the “mitigation effort” of the program)

– replace current federal grant system with a program based on prizes, thereby removing political patronage, obviating the “picking winners” problem and removing what amount to subsidies to established energy firms

[I`m with Iain on this, and it deserves to be said more loudly and with as much support as possible.  We need a spotlight on our Congresscritters and regulators if we want to have any hope of controlling the wasteful, great pork machine.]

– expand energy R&D to $6-7 billion, paid for by budget cuts elsewhere (eg by privatizing Amtrak) and use “matching funds” program to begin to attract private money

[How is this consistent with Iain`s previous point?  Sure, his proposal is careful to offset new programs with cuts from others, but how likely is that?  In any event, why should the government be choosing what energy technologies to favor?]

c) Institute geo-engineering research program separate from energy R&D and climate science research program. Concentrate climate research in areas of improving predictive capacity of models.

[Is Iain implying that the problem is so urgent that geo-engineering is going to be required, and that government should do it?  And why should government, rather than the private sector, be working on improving the predictive capability of models?]

d) Abolish all subsidies to energy companies, reducing emissions quickly without introducing carbon tax

[It would be nice if Iain could clarify what subsidies he has have in mind.  And if the government should do ANYTHING other than deregulate, I have have a hard time understanging why CEI does not simply come out in favor of fully-rebated carbon taxes, like AEI and others]

e) Repeal corn ethanol program in its entirety as likely to increase GHG emissions and contributing to increased hunger; redirect subsidies to new energy R&D program

f) Abolish barriers to sugar ethanol imports

[I agree on the above two]

 

Title II: Adaptation

a) Institute Adaptation Fund/Program to be based on successful AIDS/communicable disease aid program to fund worthwhile “no regrets” adaptation efforts in developing world; increase contribution to malaria control in the disease project.

[Um, how much money are we talking here, Iain?  Are you conceding that the West somehowhas an obligation to help developing countries – which are expected to bear the brunt of climate change costs, even as they are least prepared to adapt?  Or is providing such help in our self-interest?  And what gives you any confidence that such development assistance will actually make any difference, and not be wasted or siphoned off by elites?]

b) Institute domestic adaptation research program to assess feasibility of projects to stem effects of sea level rise etc

[Why is this a task for government?  Do we think government will handle these programs better than the Army Corps of Engineers handles levees and other moral-hazard generating boodoggles?]

c) Abolish “moral hazard” federal programs like coastal flood insurance etc that create incentives to live in/develop vulnerable areas

[Fine, but see b)]

d) Free up transportation market

– reform Air Traffic Control system to allow ‘free flight’ and ‘green landings,’ saving up to 25% of airline emissions

– remove regulatory barriers to highway construction to reduce congestion and associated “wasted” emissions

[Not sure what barriers you`re referring to, Iain.  How about getting the government out of the road-building and owning businesses completely, and letting private firms build, own and operate them, including levying market-clearing fees that will speed traffic and manage capacity?]

– reform zoning regulations to reduce barriers to telecommuting

[Huh?]

– reduce barriers to construction of heavy rail infrastructure to allow more shipping by rail and reduce highway congestion

[What barriers?  If we simply stopped public subsidies to highway construction we`d likely see great rail demand, but what “barriers” are there that we need government to do anything about?  There are lots of underused rights-of-way already, aren`t there?]

e) Free up electricity market

– remove regulatory barriers to new construction of nuclear plants; allow reprocessing or open Yucca Mountain

[Perhaps we should start by removing the insurance subsidy for nuclear power?  Eliminating the NRC isn`t going to happen, so you need to be more specific.  And why should citizens be paying for permanent waste storage, instead of the utlities?]

– eliminate local and national monopoly franchises

– remove barriers to distributed generation such as microturbines

[I agree on the above two]

f) Free up domestic energy exploration

– End restrictions in ANWR and OCS as an energy security measure

[The key is to end politicized control, not to run roughshod over conservationists.  If we are serious about ANWR, we ought to simply cede it to the Sierra Club or The Nature Conservancy.  They would certainly pump from it AND protect it, and use the revenues to support more important conservation projects.   As for the OCS, exploration is limited only because states don`t want to bear the burden of pollution risks with a slim share of revenues.  With more generous revenue sharing, more OCS development will occur.]

– Allow exploitation of Rocky Mountains gas reserves etc as viable competitor to coal

[This is already happening, at the expense of ranchers and other rights owners, with inadequate compensation for damages. Developers should bear all risks of environmental claims.]

Title III: Resiliency

a) Set up Global Resiliency body to incorporate/replace Millennium Challenge Corporation and concentrate on spreading property rights, rule of law etc around world. Utilize Hernando de Soto’s expertise in setting this up. Particular responsibilities should include encouraging institutional reforms on disease, food supplies, water supplies, coastal defense and biodiversity.

[Kinda thin on justification, detail and burden-sharing Iain.  What grounds do you have for thinking that ANY state-directed “development” programs will not be hijacked by elites or mismanaged by bureacrats?  Are you becoming a soft-hearted enviro/liberal?]

b) Create a Global Free Trade Area by a provision allowing GFTA members free access to US markets on the condition that they reciprocate to the US and other GFTA members. USTR would certify. GFTA membership would be granted on the basis of an objective analysis of the country’s commitment to free trade (eg Heritage Index). Tspotlighthis will enprogramscousomehow hasboondogglesrage trade liberalization and tutilitieshereby resiliency.

c) Expand Asia-Pacific Partnership to encourage and facilitate technology transfer to developing world.

[Kinda thin on justification, detail and burden-sharing Iain.  What grounds do you have for thinking that ANY state-directed “development” programs will not be hijacked by elites or mismanaged by bureaucrats?  Are you becoming bureaucratsa soft-hearted enviro/liberal?]