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Corporations uber Alles: Conveniently inconsistent on "abstractions" like "the environment", Austrians overlook their preference for "corporations" over individuals,& their lack of interest in problem-solving

May 16th, 2010 No comments

I have already criticized Lew Rockwell’s May 5, 2010 piece, “Feel Sorry for BP?”; and commented on a response that I received from Stephan Kinsella; I’d like here to  focus on a curious inconsistency.

1. I note that Lew Rockwell asserted that: (emphasis added)

The abstraction called the “ecosystem” — which never seems to include mankind or civilization — has done far less for us than the oil industry, and the factories, planes, trains, and automobiles it fuels.”

and

the environmentalists went nuts yet again, using the occasion to flail a private corporation and wail about the plight of the “ecosystem,” which somehow managed to survive and thrive after the Exxon debacle.”

While I questioned whether Lew really intended to assert that resources like air, that we use freely from the atmosphere are “far less” important to us than the oil-derived energy we use and disagreed with his facts about the continuing effect s of the Exxon Valdez spill), I agreed with him that the “ecosystem” is an abstraction that may often be unhelpful (emphasis added):

Austrians understand that focussing on the “ecosystem” is often an unhelpful abstraction and distraction from the fact that there are competing and conflicting interests held by people in resources that are not effectively owned or managed. The Austrian focus is on how to enable those with conflicting desires to coordinate their planning …

This perspective was neatly summarized by Roy Cordato, who said (emphasis added)

“by placing environmental problems within the context of personal and interpersonal plan formulation, we discover that they are not about the environment per se but about the resolution of human conflict.”

“The “social cost” approach to environmental economics has led to the “dehumanization” of issues related to the environment [where] [p]ollution or “tragedy of the commons” problems are not problems because of the damage that some people may or may not be inflicting on others, but because they create what amounts to disembodied harms. A problem occurs because some goods are “overproduced” while other goods are “underproduced.” In its more extreme form this has led to a separation of the concepts of costs and harm from human beings completely, substituting notions such as “costs to the environment,” and damage to the ecosystem.”

“pollution problems …  create an interpersonal conflict over the use of means and therefore obstruct efficient plan formulation and execution. Pollution is therefore not about harming the environment but about human conflict over the use of physical resources.”

“Humans cannot harm the environment. Instead, they can change the environment in such a way that it harms others who might be planning to use it for conflicting purposes.”

Even while I agree with Cordato about he focus on plan formation, concepts such as “ecosystems” and the “environment” may still be useful, and are often simply short-hand for resources “in the commons”, that is, resources that people value but are either unowned, partially-owned, commonly-/community-owned or government-owned. Some readers may recall that Elinor Ostrom the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics last year, is a political scientist in the Austrian tradition who has devoted her career to studying human management of common resources? Lew himself expressly recognized the usefulness of “environment” in this case:

in a world in which government owns vast swaths, and the oceans are considered the commons of everyone? It becomes extremely difficult to assess damages to the environment at all.

2. Despite Lew’s focus on the abstraction of the “ecosystem”, it was curious that Lew (a) asserted that BP is by far the leading victim” (my emphasis)  and that “The incident is a tragedy for BP and all the subcontractors involved while (b) severely castigating what I referred to in my post as “those nasty enviros” and their nature-loving, misanthropic motives. Lew’s words:

torrents of environmental hysteria.

the environmentalists went nuts yet again

he environmentalists, with their fear mongering and hatred of modern life [are happy about the disaster]

The environmentalists are thrilled because they get yet another chance to wail and moan about the plight of their beloved marshes and other allegedly sensitive land

The main advantage to the environmentalists is their propaganda victory in having yet another chance to rail against the evils of oil producers and ocean drilling. If they have their way, oil prices would be double or triple, there would never be another refinery built, and all development of the oceans would stop in the name of “protecting” things that do human beings not one bit of good.

But as I noted in my response, Lew fails to follow the Austrian insight that the focus should be on human plan formation and conflict resolution. What does he mean by the abstract term “environmentalists” – just who are they and what do they want, and how can Austrians provide advice on how to enable parties with conflicting goals and preferences to resolve their conflicts? In the case of the BP oil spill, there is very ;little room between the “environmentalists” and ordinary Gulf coast resident. In any case, as I noted previously,
Surely any clear-thinking Austrian can see that, just as Austrians hate our modern kleptocratic, incompetent and moral-hazard-enabling government, many enviros are relatively well-off people who dislike how “modern life” seems to take for granted the way government-ordered “capitalism” enables a systemic shifting of risks from manufacturers to those downwind and downstream, and to all who enjoy what remains of commons or government-owned property.
The Austrian focus is on how to enable those with conflicting desires to coordinate their planning, not to engage in some muddle-headed balancing of collective “utility” that says one powerful group of users is “right”, so other claimants should be scoffed at and chased away.
Lew, of course, is entitled to his own preferences, but it is fairly clear that his purposes are NOT to aid conflict resolution, but to bash one group of people whose preferences regarding common and government-owned resources conflict with those of another group whose interests he favors.
3.  And so I arrive at my principal point:  In pushing his preferences, Lew has not only failed to help any of us understand who “environmentalists” are and what they want, but he has also fail to identify just who  “BP” is, that we are supposed to feel so sorry for.
“BP” is corporation – a legal entity created by the state – and is not itself any one person, but a complex organization of very many people. Sure, we should feel sorry for the families  those who lost their lives (employees of contractors) – but they receive only passing mention from Lew. Who is left to feel sorry for –  BP’s highly paid executives, who like those of Halliburton and Transocean, are busy trying to find someone else to blame for the blowout, failed shutoff valve, lack of response preparation, and resultant enormous and continuing spill (that even now – with the complicity of the Administration) – they continue to low ball by orders of magnitude)? Other employees, some of whose routine has been interrupted by the damage control efforts, but remain gainfully employed? Or are we to feel sorry for the mass of shareholders, whose dividends might be cut, but not by the full amount of losses that others will suffer? Employees who feel some psychic pain at the blow to their company’s reputation (direct or indirect moral suasion from those injured or who feel enough stake in the matter to be upset)?
Lew refers to the government viewing “every capitalist producer as a bird to be plucked” – but none of BP’s shareholders is a capitalist producer. Someone may be plucked by government from time to time, but this time, pray-tell who is plucking whom?  Sure, Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, can make unsavory boasts like the government plans to keep “its boot on BP’s neck” but as BP HAS no neck, a little specificity as to whom the government may be oppressing would be helpful in weighing Lew’s arguments.
Without any specificity of whom we are to see as they “biggest victim”, it seems that Lew’s complaint amounts to little more than sympathy for executives and shareholders under our current system of statist corporations, firms that exploit government and then whine about the groups of citizens who inevitably feel they have to seek redress from government. If this is the defense that Lew intends, then it is one I’d be grateful to see him elucidate more carefully, in response to my reply to Stephan Kinsella. I think Sheldon Richman and Kevin Carson would also be grateful.
While corporations are composed of people, they themselves are not people. Accordingly, while I certainly agree with Lew that “there is every reason to express great sadness for what has happened”, Lew is ALSO right that “the idea that BP should be hated and denounced is preposterous” – because BP is just a thing, a legal fiction, and not any particular person. For that reason, the very idea that BP is the “leading victim” or that we should “feel sorry for BP” is, as Lew says, preposterous.
4. In this context, let me note my ongoing strong disagreement with Stephan Kinsella about the state grant of limited liability to shareholders. Stephan seems to think that the grant is irrelevant (despite the fact that it is one of the chief reasons why investors choose the corporate form) since, under the system of large public corporations that has arisen as a result, it would be unfair to ascribe any liability to shareholders who did not personally direct any action that damages others. (This, is of course, besides the point – the grant itself is cannot be justified on libertarian grounds, and it clearly affects choices of corporate form and subsequent corporate behavior and oversight dynamics.)  I agree with Stephan that it is crucial that libertarians not lose their focus on individuals when examining any organization – but note that the slippage in focus from individuals to large, impersonal organizations where personal responsibility is extremely difficult to locate is precisely one of the salient consequences of the state grant of limited liability corporate status.
I also note that despite Stephan’s insistence that only managers and employees who caused damage to third persons or their property should have any liability (and individual shareholders carry no burden of responsibility without any direct involvement in particular decisions), Stephan too falls easily into defending an impersonal”BP” while bashing the perennially undefined “enviros“, whom he sees generally as “cancer on the earth … anti-human, anti-industrialist sickos [who] are the real enemies of humanity.”  Is it too hard to expect some consistency in focus on individuals, both in and out of corporations, instead of a lumping of groups into “good” and “evil”?
5. Let me make a final reference to Cordato, who states (emphasis added):
“The Austrian focus is on how to enable those with conflicting desires to coordinate their planning …”
“Under … Austrian approaches to welfare economics, therefore, the solution to pollution problems, defined as a conflict over the use of resources, is to be found in either clearly defining or more diligently enforcing property rights.”
“This is not to suggest that the clear definition of property rights is an easily achievable goal in all situations. It is not. But, while the Austrian approach to solving pollution problems may face implementation problems at the margin, i.e., with certain “tough cases,” defining and enforcing property rights already stands as the fundamental way in which interpersonal conflicts of all kinds are avoided or dealt with. This approach is clearly operational as it has been in operation, to one extent or another, throughout human history. The challenge for Austrians is to explain how we apply the theory in certain tough cases, not to explain, in reality, how it can be applied at all.”
In the case of the BP spill or other “environmental” issues, are either Lew Rockwell or Stephan Kinsella remotely interested finding ways to solve interpersonal conflicts over common resources or resources with poorly defined property rights? Or are they simply engaged in a reflexive tribal defense of “corporations” against malevolent, grasping citizens – the so-called “enviro-fascists”?
And am I the only one who thinks it is no small disgrace that so many Austrians prefer “smashing watermelons” to hard work, and is left wondering – if we must use terms like “misanthrope” – just who the misanthropes are?
Scratch that last thought – clearly peppering one’s speech with fulminations about the evil intentions or actions of other is not an effective approach to discourse, trust-building or problem-solving. This misanthrope refuses to further cloud his own mind or to impair his feeble powers of persuasion.

 

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Risk-shifting, BP and those nasty enviros; or, why does Lew Rockwell feel sorry for BP?

May 9th, 2010 No comments

[I that note my subsequent BP posts can be found here]

I refer to Lew Rockwell‘s May 5, 2010 piece, “Feel Sorry for BP?”

http://mises.org/daily/4331

Lew, I largely agree with your criticism of government but some of your piece is simply confused.

1. “It should be obvious that BP is by far the leading victim, but I’ve yet to see a single expression of sadness for the company and its losses.”

BP is the leading “victim”? Victim of what/who? Sure, they’re a target (1) for all manner of evil people whose livelihoods or enjoyment of their property or common property are directly or indirectly affected by the spill, (2) for evil enviro groups (relatively well-off citizens who profess to care about how well/poorly government manages the use of “common resources” by resource extraction industries), and (3) for evil governments and politicians looking to enhance their own authority/careers. But these are all a consequence of the accident, and not a cause of it. Has BP been defrauded, tricked or strong-armed into drilling anywhere? Is BP the “victim” of its own choices?

Even if one concedes that some criticisms of BP will be unfair, how can BP possibly be cast as the LEADING victim – as opposed to all of the others whose livelihoods or property are drastically affected by this incident, which they had no control over whatsoever?

2. “The incident is a tragedy for BP and all the subcontractors involved. It will probably wreck the company”

The incident will certainly be costly for the firms involved, but the firms will survive the death of employees, and there is certainly very little risk indeed that BP will be “wrecked” by the spill. Far from it; it is unlikely that BP will even bear the principal costs of cleanup efforts, much less the economic damages to third parties that federal law apparently caps at $75 million.

Have you not heard of “INSURANCE”? A little thinking (and Googling) would tell you that BP (and its subcontractors) has plenty of it. To the extent BP is NOT insured, it has ample capability to self-insure, unlike all of the fishermen, oystermen and those in the tourist industry who are feeling significant impacts. Insurers will bear the primary burdemn, not BP.

3. “we might ask who is happy about the disaster: 1. the environmentalists, with their fear mongering and hatred of modern life”

Sorry, but this is perverse: enviros might feel that they have been proven right – and you might be annoyed that they can make such a claim – but they certainly aren’t “happy” with any of the loss of life, damage to property or livelihoods of the little guy (or of bigger property owners), or to a more pristine marine environment that they value.

“Hatred of modern life”? Surely any clear-thinking Austrian can see that, just as Austrians hate our modern kleptocratic, incompetent and moral-hazard-enabling government, many enviros are relatively well-off people who dislike how “modern life” seems to take for granted the way government-ordered “capitalism” enables a systemic shifting of risks from manufacturers to those downwind and downstream, and to all who enjoy what remains of commons or government-owned property.

Haven’t Walter Block, Roy Cordato, Murray Rothbard and others written about this? Or do “good” Austrians these days simply hate government, but love big corporations and banks, and the way government enables them to shift risks to the rest of us?

Your projection of happiness at damages to common resources/private property and hatred of modern life is especially perverse, given your own explicit recognition that government ownership/mismanagement of commons, and setting of limits on liability, both skew the incentives BP faces to avoid damage, and limit the ability of others (resource users and evil enviros) to directly protect or negotiate their own interests. Why is the negative role played by government any reason to bash others who use or care about the “commons”?

We have seen Austrians – sympathetic to the costs to real people in the rest of the economy – rightly call for an end to a fiat currency, central banking and to moral-hazard-enabling deposit insurance and oversight of banks. In an April 9 post by Kevin Dowd on the financial crisis, we even had a call “to remove limited liability: we should abolish the limited-liability statutes and give the bankers the strongest possible incentives to look after our money properly” – but Dowd’s comments simply echoed in the Sounds of Silence. Why do you and others refuse to look at the risk-shifting and moral hazard that is implicit in the very grant of a limited liability corporate charter – not only in banking, but in oil exploration and other parts of the economy?

http://bit.ly/atelEr

4. “The abstraction called the “ecosystem” — which never seems to include mankind or civilization — has done far less for us than the oil industry, and the factories, planes, trains, and automobiles it fuels.”

Frankly, this is nonsense. Austrians understand that focussing on the “ecosystem” is often an unhelpful abstraction and distraction from the fact that there are competing and conflicting interests held by people in resources that are not effectively owned or managed. The Austrian focus is on how to enable those with conflicting desires to coordinate their planning, not to engage in some muddle-headed balancing of collective “utility” that says one powerful group of users is “right”, so other claimants should be scoffed at and chased away.

And the “ecosystem” is what gives us air to breathe, water, food and a host of other things. Do you really mean to say these are relatively unimportant?

5. “the environmentalists went nuts yet again, using the occasion to flail a private corporation and wail about the plight of the “ecosystem,” which somehow managed to survive and thrive after the Exxon debacle.”

Seems to me your “facts” about the damage done by Exxon Valdez to the “environment” – including the small segments used by by man – and recovery/compensation are basically counterfactual:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill

http://www.alternet.org/environment/22260

Further, it seems you don’t have any real clue as to the escalating damage that man is doing to our shared ocean “commons”. These two TED talks might help open your eyes:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/sylvia_earle_s_ted_prize_wish_to_protect_our_oceans.html

6. Finally, like BP, you have understated the degree of the oil leakage; BP initially estimated 1000 bpd, but later agreed with estimates by others that the leak is at least about 25,000 bpd, with risks of an even larger blowout.

Here’s to hoping for greater insight and more productive engagement from LvMI.

A lurking hater of mankind 😉

TokyoTom

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Stop the nuclear industry bailout

March 3rd, 2010 No comments

And now a public service market  announcement (with the captioned title) from your friendly local mankind-hating envirofascist, courtesy of Dave Schwab of Green Change, who is apparently the author of the following missive that found its way into my email inbox:

Dear Tokyo,

President Obama has proposed a whopping $54 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of new nuclear power plants.

What does that mean? If the costly new nuclear plants aren’t finished, then taxpayers cover the huge financial loss.

If they are built, then we’re stuck with power plants that generate
overpriced electricity and create deadly radioactive waste that will
remain toxic for thousands of years.

Either way, the nuclear industry wins, and we lose.

Tell President Obama to stop the nuclear power boondoggle.

Nuclear power creates deadly radioactive waste, from the mining process
onwards.   It’s got a scary history: think Chernobyl and Three Mile
Island.

Just recently, a nuclear plant in Vermont was ordered shut down after
radioactive tritium, which is linked to cancer, leaked from the plant
into local water supplies.

Nuclear power is so financially risky that even Wall Street won’t bet
on it.  It’s a public health and financial disaster waiting to happen.

Instead, our government should promote energy efficiency and a
decentralized power system based on safe, clean, renewable energy.

Tell President Obama today: don’t risk our future with nuclear power subsidies!

Peace,

Dave Schwab

Online organizer
Green Change

Note that I strongly disagree that nuclear power presents serious health risks; it seems to me that the health hazards and risks from nuclear power activities are orders of magnitude less than those presented by coal and other fossil fuels. Nuclear “waste” has been well-managed, and is waste only because the government has stopped industry from re-using it as fuel in breeder reactors. So while I understand the “scary” nuclear power theme (a consequence of the massive and counterproductive role of government in developing and testing nuclear weapons), I think it is counterproductive.

I am in favor of nuclear power (though NOT in favor of subsidies), and believe we’d see alot more if coal was full-costed (it receives federal and state subsidies via licenses to mine, pollute the air and pollute land and water with wastes). I’ve blogged more on nuclear power here. As Cato’s Jerry Taylor put it: Nuclear power is “solar power for conservatives” and needs “a policy of tough love”.

However, I do feel strongly that we ought to encourage energy efficiency – by removing public utility power monopolies.

We ought likewise to eliminate subsidies for other types of power production, and instead let free markets and consumer and investor choice work their wonders.

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?

Historic Times: A libertarian view on what liberal Larry Lessig has missed regarding our broken, corrupt government

February 10th, 2010 No comments

I won’t reprise the essay referred to in my preceding post, by which Lawrence Lessig presents his view of our current problems (much of which I agree with, including his conclusion that the “conservative” Roberts Supreme Court five-Justice bloc has acted with considerable activism in overturning centuries of law-making, in a manner that cannot be seen as consistent with any “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution, and that fruits and prospects of such activism are likely to frustrate further legislative attempts at fixes).

While I agree with Lessig’s call for a movement for the Several States to convene a Constitutional Convention, let me note that his analysis certainly has some serious short-comings and blind spots. In my view:

(1) Lessig completely
misses the real root of corruption, which is the grant by states to corporation owners of legal entity status in which owners had no liability for acts of the corporation (unless they specifically directed such acts), which grant was initially jealously guarded and carefully
restricted.
The trickle from this hole in the dike became a flood,
as wealthy investors – eager to fund risky businesses that might give
them great profits while shifting risks to unconsenting third parties –
pressured state lawmakers for a snowballing liberalization – which saw the removal of limits on corporate purposes, corporate life, and corporate ability to own other corporations. As I have discussed repeatedly, the result of the multiplication of
activities, power and negative impacts of limited liability corporations (including their
successful pressuring of courts to eliminate common law tort doctrines that once strongly
protected the rights of property owners, in favor of a social utility balancing) has been a corresponding rise
in demands by citizens that law-makers act to constrain corporate activities, which in turn has produced a steadily escalation in the fight over the wheel of government.

(2) As a
result of this oversight, Lessig fails to consider (i) whether the
states can provide any check on corporate influence via their power to
condition the grant of incorporation/foreign corporation status
(short
of a Constitutional Amendment eliminating corporate “personhood” for
civi rights purposes), instead suggesting that Congress might insist
that corporations engaged in interstate commerce be federally
incorporated and limited and (ii) whether states and federal
governments might regulate BETTER by easing the regulation of
partnerships, similar associations and corporation that have unlimited
liability
, and whose owners have direct incentives to make sure
their executives do not engage the business in activities that generate
a significant risk of liaibilty to others

(3)
Lessig ignores that the reason corporations and labor pour money into buying
favor in Washington is because the federal government is too busy
selling favors
, and such investments pay off – particularly where a
single party gains monopoly control over the pork spigots. Lessig seems blind to considerations of federalism and limited
government, in favor of the premise that anything the people in Congress assembled want to do is okay
, as long wealthy corporations aren’t able to spend money on swaying the election of Congresscritters or buying votes, and if retired Congresscritters are not allowed to pasture too close to Congress..

(4)  As a result, Lessig
fails whether rent-seeking can be checked in part by restoring the once vital
check and balance provided by a vibrant role of states under the
originally envisioned federal system
. For the purposes of restoring power to states, various conservatives have recently been suggesting (i) a reinvigoration of the moribund Tenth Amendment,
which states that non-delegated powers are reserved to the states and
the people (the Supreme Court assisted the federal government in
killing this part of the Bill of Rights via expansive interpretations
of the authority of Congress under the general welfare clause, the
Commerce Clause and the 14th Amendment) and (ii) repeal the requirement of direct elections of Senators under the 17th Amendment, which is argued to have better enabled election pandering and influence by corporations and by national parties.

(5) Finally, Lessig misses that the real reason why the conservative block on the
Roberts Court struck down limits on direct corporate spending
on
political campaigns
(speech is wide open; direct donations to campaigns remain limited, but
will eventually fall on the corporations=persons doctrine) is that the Supreme Court had gradually allowed a two-part corporate speech structure to grow, with speech by “media” corporations being unlimited
(“freedom of the press” getting a separate mention in the First
Amendment), but political speech by other corporations being heavily
regulated
by Congress.

This very imbalanced structure was long resented
by the right, due to the perception that the dull, corporate,
conglomerate”MSM” had been “captured” by ideological enemies on the
left. Resentments began to run the other way with the establishment of
FOX and various corporate-funded “thinktank” groups by the right (which seems heavily invested in the idea #CorpSpeak without, apparently, making any examination of the premises that inanimate legal fictions much different from other human associations have rights to speak and influence to government), but the Roberts court felt that the influence of the “liberal” corporate media was still too strong, and decided simply to do its best to bring down the entire edifice of “media speech” versus #CorpSpeak distinctions.
The Roberts Court appears to have been too timid or incurious to
address the fundamental problems relating to speech by inanimate
institutions with far greater power and far less community check than
individuals, and so blinked at that opportunity, instead opting for
the far lesser but still extremely activist step of taking a demolition
ball to legal restrictions on competition in the flow of ideas from corporations
.

For the curious reader, I note again my preceding posts on  corporate “free speech”.

Those who want to get further stirred up might want to give another
listen to the new music video Anthem of what our Founding Fathers said
to King George:  It’s Too Late to Apologize.

Public Service Announcement: Google, GE, NRDC and The Climate Group call for real-time information technologies to cut emissions

December 19th, 2009 No comments

I copy below an interesting press release with the title noted above, regarding the “smart metering” of power consumption.

I have blogged previously on Google`s efforts to speed the introduction of Smart Meters.

Perhaps we will also see a little more focus on the negative role that our widespread public utility monopolies have played in inflating energy costs and dampening conservation, competitive pricing and green options, and greater interest in market freedom in the power sector?

Not simply greater information, but freer markets is what we need. This would accomplish more than more “green” mandates. Other libertarian ideas are here. As my favorite free-market blogger, Rob Bradley, once said so well: “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.”

December 15, 2009

“Citizens need better access to information about how they use energy –
and they need the tools to use less.” 

Today,
Google, GE, The Climate Group, and NRDC, supported by a broad group of
companies and organizations, called on governments across the world to
support citizens’ access to real-time information on home energy consumption. (Read the statement)

In homes, technology that makes energy consumption visible in the home
can help people save not only carbon but electricity costs.   Our recent case studies at www.smart2020.org
show that some homeowners were able to save 40 per cent on their
electricity bills from better understanding their patterns of energy
consumption.

The statement says “The bottom line is: We can’t solve climate change
if people are in the dark about how they use energy in their own homes.
Citizens need better access to information about how they use energy –
and they need the tools to use less.” 

By empowering citizens with information and tools for
managing energy, national and sub-national governments, businesses and
organizations around the world can harness the power of hundreds of
millions to fight climate change and save consumers millions of dollars
in the process.

Specifically, all countries should ensure that their citizens have access to basic information including:

  • Near real-time or real-time home energy consumption
  • Pricing and pricing plans
  • Carbon intensity, including source and carbon content of electricity

Today’s
call for supporting citizens’ access to information can be achieved
with technologies that exist today which can be rapidly deployed. To
get there, countries can provide incentives for energy monitoring
equipment and set rules for consumer access to information. They can
also enact stronger energy efficiency standards, as well as provide
financial incentives and variable energy pricing plans.

Dan Reicher, Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives, Google, said:  “By providing people with real-time home energy information we can make
a major down payment on tackling climate change while saving money and
creating exciting new industries and jobs.”

Steve Fludder, VP of GE’s ecomagination, said: “This is not future technology that were talking about. We can do this now.”

Molly Webb, Director of Strategic Engagement, The Climate Group
said: “Just as user-generated content drove Web 2.0, then
user-generated energy information and ‘the internet of things is our
future. With a strong global agreement to tackle climate change, ICT
infrastructure will be a key enabler in the short term of carbon
efficiency on a global scale.”

The statement comes after yesterday’s launch of SMART 2020: Pathways to Scale
which called for energy information for all. This information can be
used across the wider economy by citizens and businesses to enable a
range of innovations in services around energy and fuel efficiency. The
Climate Group is tracking these initiatives with measurable results on www.smart2020.org.

Read the statement here.

Categories: climate change, GE, Google, monopoly, power Tags:

Elinor Ostrom: Another Nobel Laureate jumps the climate shark (Proceed at Own Risk)

December 18th, 2009 No comments

On December 16, Spiegel Online ran the following interview with Elinor Ostrom, whose 2009 Nobel prize in economics (shared with Oliver Williamson), was widely applauded by Austrian economists (and whose work I have referred to any number of time previously).

Der Spiegel asked some good questions, and Ostrom provided interesting responses, though thoughtful readers of course are left asking for more.

I`ve tweaked the formatting, added my own emphasis, and interspersed a few bracketed comments of my own:

 

Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom

‘Climate Rules Set from the Top Are Not Enough`

The world is gathered in Copenhagen in an
effort to reach an agreement to slow global warming. Elinor Ostrom,
winner of this year’s Nobel prize for economics, spoke with SPIEGEL
ONLINE about shared ownership, local action and why we can’t sit around
waiting for politicians to act.

 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Copenhagen summit is about setting new
global rules for how we treat the Earth. But are people willing to
change their personal lives
accordingly?

Elinor Ostrom: Under the right circumstances, people are willing
to accept additional efforts and costs. It all depends on trust in the
fact that others will also act.
Humans have the capacity to engage and
see that their own long-term future is harmed if they don’t change
their lifestyles. Under the right circumstances they understand: It’s
not me against you. It’s all of us against ourselves, if we don’t act.
So trust really is the most important resource.

[The multi-decade, global trust-building exercise has made a great deal of progress, despite being hampered by gamesmanship, domestic rent-seeking, partisan mistrust, legitimate worries about abuse of government, and the difficulty we all face in actually agreeing there might be a problem (as opposed to a big scam/mass delusion).]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How can we generate enough trust so that we all act in concert?

Ostrom: Rules set from the top are not enough. Successful
communities often have a few common design principles —
monitoring and
sanctioning of the participants, for example. They also have conflict
resolution mechanisms
in place and the people have some authority to
make their own rules
. Under those circumstances humans can develop some
trust in each other — faith that if they take a costly action that
benefits everybody in the long run, others will also invest.

[Yes, but does “community”-level action scale? How do we make a “community” with billions of people we have little interaction with? Is Ostrom suggesting we need more global-level “grassroots” community-building, in addition to leader-level trust-building?]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why is it less effective if governments establish strict rules from the top down?

Ostrom: Because people will not identify with it. My research
has shown that forests managed by local communities are in a far better
state than state-run parks, where locals feel left out and officials
can be bribed.
Let us imagine, we live in a village and have all agreed
that none of us is going to be in the forest on Saturday or Sunday, so
that we can give the forest time to recreate. If I then see you in the
forest when you’re not supposed to be, I will probably yell at you. If
only the state is in charge, I will just walk on past.

[Now she`s talking; libertarians and a host of others almost completely reject even climate “science” out of a reflexive but understandable concern that climate “policy” is or will be sufficiently corrupt as to vitiate any intended/purported gains. The same is true with many on environmentalists and others on the left, who feel that powerful corporate insiders will make climate policy ineffective.]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In your research, you focused on local and
regional levels. What makes you think that your solutions would work
for the entire planet as well?

Ostrom: Indeed, the global scale is a challenge. Building that
kind of knowledge between the different parties is tricky. We need our
global leaders to take some of the decisions on a very big level.
Here
at the summit, those guys are talking to each other and gaining some
trust because they meet face to face. But then they go home — and
that’s when the real action starts.

[It`s tricky, but much progress has been made; even Sen. Robert “Coal” Byrd is signalling that coal states need to change, and China abd India both concede change is needed – though naturally they make an equity argument that they have a right to catch up with out per capita CO2 emissons (which are four times theirs).]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Can money help to build trust between developing nations and industrialized nations?

Ostrom: Maybe, and it is hard to see a climate deal without
serious financial commitments.
But at the same time, I am very worried
and nervous about corruption. If we pour money into a country in which
the corruption level is very high, we would be kidding ourselves not to
think that some of it will end up in the wrong pockets.
At first, a lot
of the proposals on the table sound great. But four to six years later,
you have a lot of politicians who have money in Swiss bank accounts.
What we need are tight rules and controls to ensure that the billions
that might be put on the table here are used correctly.

[Ostrom is absolutely right, if understated – perhaps most “development” aid has been disastrous. Still, it might make sense for some aid money to go to climate adaptation projects, and to allow offsets for preserving tropical forests – if the money goes to indigenous peoples, and not corrupt governments.]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In other words, an anti-corruption task force
like the one that exists in Indonesia — might be the best
environmental protection agency?

Ostrom: Absolutely! If you look at the role corruption plays in
giving away forests to big corporations and in looking away if forest
protection rules are broken, you will see that bribery is one of the
main contributors to environmental destruction.

[A fruitful focus by libertarians and conservatives might be on simply helping to bolster law and order – including the property rights of locals – in developing nations.]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is it possible to save the climate with a single treaty?

Ostrom: One treaty will not solve the problem entirely. This is
why I propose a so-called polycentric approach to tackling climate
change. We need all levels of human society to work on this to be
effective in the long run. Cities, villages, communities and networks
of people have been neglected as players.

[I`m not sure I agree with Otrom here; there has been plenty of action on climate on individual, local, corporate and state levels, thanks in no small part to the stifling of climate policy at federal levels under the GWB/Cheney administrations. While such “thousand points of light” efforts may be bolstering mutual trust at various levels around the world, federal and international policy coordination is still needed, fraught with rent-seeking problems though it may be, ]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What happens if there is no agreement?

Ostrom: We need to get away from the idea that there is only one
solution on the global scale. There are many, many levels in between.
So we need to take action on smaller levels. If the politicians do not
agree in Copenhagen, I would like to embarrass the hell out of them
by
getting some agreements going where people are doing something —
essentially saying: “We are tired of waiting for you.” The city of
Freiburg is a very good place to see what that actually means.

[Politicians don`t embarrasss so easily; rather they see opportunities to jump on and use band wagons to bolster their own careers and to steer favors to rent-seekers.]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why Freiburg of all places?

Ostrom: I spend quite a bit of time in Germany and I’m very
impressed by some of the local action I see. Local action cannot do it
fully, but just think about all the bicycle-paths that they have built
there. That is a case where the action of individuals is reducing
emissions. At the same time it is a very healthy thing. On Sundays
everybody is going to the woods and has a good time on their bikes —
and not in their cars. It’s good for your health and for the
environment. So everyone should ask himself: Why don’t I bike to work
and leave the damn car at home or get rid of it entirely?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Still, such a decentralized approach sounds
painfully slow. We need rapid action if we wish to limit global warming
to 2 degrees Celsius.

Ostrom: If we sit here and twiddle our thumbs and wait for these
guys up there to make a decision — that is what I would call painfully
slow. Should we just blame the politicians? I am not saying that we can
solve it entirely, but we can make significant steps. To some extent we
can challenge them. Everyone can contact foolish politicians like some
US Congressmen who oppose climate change action by e-mail or phone and
let them know that they are acting irresponsibly.

[Unfortunately, Ostrom doesn`t address how we figure out how to trust our own government, and how to mitigate/manage the problem of rent-seeking. But I`ve tried to note the types of policies that libertarians cand – and should – support here. Some Austrians might even want to consider the root cause of rampant renk-seeking and fights over the wheel – the corporate risk-shifting juggernaut that has its genesis in the grant of limited liability]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why is the US so reluctant to fight climate change?

Ostrom: In the economic emergency we are experiencing, some
people think that we cannot afford it. I think it is the other way
around, if we don’t act now we will run into even greater economic
problems in the future. And of course we still have the bad legacy of
our previous president, George W. Bush.
For eight years, the White
House didn’t consider the issue to be important. We did not have
American leaders who understood that there is a scientific foundation.
Obama has a much higher chance of understanding the science. But even
for him it is just damn tough.

[It`s  even more complicated, obviously. The Bush administrtion actually DID work on building trust with China and India, supported the IPCC science process, etc. But they were also rather naked catering to coal and other fossil feul interests, while making political hay by labelling all concerned scare-mongering socialists. Not only is it extremely difficult to coordinate this issue globally, it`s also difficult politicaly to tell Americans that fossil-fuel-based energy is underpriced, to seek to undo public utility monopolies, or to address the favors to dirty coal in the Clean Air Act, or to streamline nuclear power licensing.]

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Worries about climate change have slowly
resulted in people seeing the Earth’s atmosphere as a common good that
we all must protect. Where is the next challenge?

Ostrom: The oceans! They are being threatened to an ever greater
degree. It is a disaster, a very difficult situation. The fish
resources are overexploited and waste, including CO2, is dumped in huge
quantities into the ocean. The law of the sea has not been effective at
all. A lot of fishing ships act like roving bandits. That’s why better
ocean governance is one of the top priorities for safeguarding the
future.

Interview conducted by Christoph Seidler and Christian Schwägerl

I would be remiss if I did not point out that Ostrom recently elucidated her views on climate policy in much greater length in a paper that she prepared at the behest of the World Bank. Yes, Ostrom`s trying to give the Beast indigestion – from the Inside. 

Here`s the extract of her paper,  “A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change”:

Abstract: This paper
proposes an alternative approach to addressing the complex problems of
climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The author, who won
the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, argues that single policies
adopted only at a global scale are unlikely to generate sufficient
trust among citizens and firms so that collective action can take place
in a comprehensive and transparent manner that will effectively reduce
global warming. Furthermore, simply recommending a single governmental
unit to solve global collective action problems is inherently weak
because of free-rider problems. For example, the Carbon Development
Mechanism (CDM) can be ‘gamed’ in ways that hike up prices of natural
resources and in some cases can lead to further natural resource
exploitation. Some flaws are also noticeable in the Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries
(REDD) program. Both the CDM and REDD are vulnerable to the free-rider
problem. As an alternative, the paper proposes a polycentric approach
at various levels with active oversight of local, regional, and
national stakeholders. Efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas
emissions are a classic collective action problem that is best
addressed at multiple scales and levels.
Given the slowness and
conflict involved in achieving a global solution to climate change,
recognizing the potential for building a more effective way of reducing
green house gas emissions at multiple levels is an important step
forward. A polycentric approach has the main advantage of encouraging
experimental efforts at multiple levels, leading to the development of
methods for assessing the benefits and costs of particular strategies
adopted in one type of ecosystem and compared to results obtained in
other ecosystems. Building a strong commitment to find ways of reducing
individual emissions is an important element for coping with this
problem, and having others also take responsibility can be more
effectively undertaken in small- to medium-scale governance units that
are linked together through information networks and monitoring at all
levels. This paper was prepared as a background paper for the 2010
World Development Report on Climate Change
.

I left this earlier comment on the paper at the blog of libertarian-leaning water economist David Zetland:

TokyoTom
said…

David, I saw this elsewhere and read through this,but count me
unimpressed. It`s basically a recounting of what we already know – that
there are formidable barriers to reaching coordinated global decisions
on climate policies, that local, regional and efforts are proceeding
and will be needed in any event, both in mitigation and adaptation.

Nothing about whether local, regional and national efforts scale to the size of the problem.

For climate fever, take two open-air atom bombs & call me in the morning; "serious" libertarian suggestions from Kinsella & Reisman!?

November 4th, 2009 No comments

First, George Reisman, and now, Stephan Kinsella.  I have asked two of our leading lights whether they and libertarians are striving for a self-satisfied irrelevancy on climate issue, or wish to be taken seriously, and they both, with self-professed seriousness, announced that we should, in Stephan`s words, “investigate nuclear winter as a way to offset alleged global warming“.

I`m afraid these proposals leave me a bit stunned. On first blush – nay, lengthy consideration – such proposals can not in the least be considered libertarian, or something libertarians could countenance. This is the way to libertarian relevancy, and to take both the challenge of statist climate change proposals and libertarianism itself seriously? 

I don`t get it – is this obvious sarcasm or straightforward mockery of climate concerns, an inside joke, from which suspected “watermelons” are excluded, or am I just not on the right sober, libertarian wave-length?

And am I the only one who notices and is jarred by the cognitive dissonance in these messages from our leading lights? You know – puny man can`t possibly be affecting the climate, but if so, it`s something we can easily fix with a little “geo-engineering” (even if we have to use the state), so let`s just let our little ongoing and uncontrolled world-wide climate geo-engineering experiment continue?

Readers` help appreciated!

I copy below relevant passages, both from Dr. Reisman and from Stephan (emphasis added).

1.  George Reisman: Global Warming: Environmentalism’s Threat of Hell on Earth  March 16, 2007 (emphasis added):

In contrast to the policy of the environmentalists, there are rational
ways of cooling the earth if that is what should actually be necessary,
ways that would take advantage of the vast energy base of the modern
world and of the still greater energy base that can be present in the
future if it is not aborted by the kind of policies urged by the
environmentalists.

Ironically, the core principle of one such method has been put
forward by voices within the environmental movement itself, though not
at all for this purpose. Years ago, back in the days of the Cold War,
many environmentalists raised the specter of a “nuclear winter.”
According to them, a large-scale atomic war could be expected to
release so much particulate matter into the atmosphere as to block out
sunlight and cause weather so severely cold that crops would not be
able to grow. …

Certainly, there is no case to be made for an atomic war. But there is a case for considering the possible detonation, on
uninhabited land north of 70° latitude, say, of a limited number of
hydrogen bombs. The detonation of these bombs would operate in the same
manner as described above, but the effect would be a belt of particles
starting at a latitude of 70° instead of 30°. The presence of those
particles would serve to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching most of
the Arctic’s surface. The effect would be to maintain the frigid
climate of the region and to prevent the further melting of its ice or,
if necessary, to increase the amount of its ice. Moreover, the process
could be conducted starting on a relatively small scale, and then
proceed slowly. This would allow essential empirical observations to be
made and also allow the process to be stopped at any time before it
went too far.

This is certainly something that should be seriously considered by
everyone who is concerned with global warming and who also desires to
preserve modern industrial civilization and retain and increase its
amenities. If there really is any possibility of global warming so
great as to cause major disturbances, this kind of solution should be
studied and perfected. Atomic testing should be resumed for the purpose
of empirically testing its feasibility.

2.  Stephan Kinsella & TokyoTom, Physicist Howard Hayden’s one-letter disproof of global warming claims  October 29, 2009

Stephan Kinsella October 30, 2009 10:03 AM

If there were really global warming why not just use “nuclear winter”
to cool things down?
You don’t see the envirotards advocating that! 🙂 (see Greenpeace to advocate nuking the earth?)

 

TokyoTom November 3, 2009 4:01 AM

Austrians know very well that resource battles very often become
politicized as soon as government steps in; are “misanthropes” and
“rotten watermelons” responsible for the state grant of public utility
monopolies, the lack of court enforcement of common law rights to
protect property from state-licensed corporation that led to massive
pollution problems, the massive state role in the development of
nuclear weapons (that you & George Reisman mock-seriously suggest
the federal govt ought to start using again in the open atmosphere) ….

 

Stephan Kinsella November 3, 2009 8:00 AM

I don’t remember Reisman’s proposal, but I never said the feds should do it. I’m an anarchist, remember?

 

3.  Stephan Kinsella & TokyoTom, In which I applaud another balanced, productive post by Dr. Reisman, and draw attention to a post by Lew Rockwell on the need for more power competition (Apr 23 2009)

 

# Friday, April 24, 2009 2:27 PM
by
Stephan Kinsella

The
left yabbers about nuclear winter caused by nuclear bombs. This implies
nukes can be used to cool things down. The left yabbers about global
warming. Why is it unreasonable to investigate whether nuclear bombs
could not be used to cool things down and offset global warming? Which
one of these two contentions are you watermelons not serious about?

# Friday, April 24, 2009 9:45 PM
by
TokyoTom

Stephan,
I was just talking about the frumious bandersnatch and in walks the
yabberwocky!  Such coincidences are to be celebrated!

But surely you`re not serious about open air nuke tests to combat
climate change, but Reisman was, and on the LVMI main pages.  His
discussion was not the type of facetious one you throw out to dodge
addressing it.  You disappoint me.

What the left yabbers about is worth mocking, but anyone worth his
salt as a libertarian would do like Lew and spend a little time
acknowledging that preferences for green power, etc. are perfectly
fine, explaining that the reason for their frustration is public
utility regulation that stifles competition and protects utilities, and
suggesting approaches that would foster consumer goals while advancing
liberty.

But it`s so much funner to be like George, right?

What would Ludwig von Mises have said?  mises.org/…/draft.aspx (quoting Reisman`s translation)

 

# Sunday, April 26, 2009 2:25 PM
by
Stephan Kinsella

Tom,
it’s time to drop your sarcasm and just be direct and clear. I am
serious–why not investigate nuclear winter as a way to offset alleged
global warming?

As for all the fulminating against global warming… are you aware
that we are in an interglacial period, probably somewhere near the
middle? The earth is bound to start cooling and heading towards another
ice age before long. If global warming is real, it will only delay
this–which is good. In any event, suppose we impoverish ourselves to
slightly decrease the warming for a few decades, until natural cooling
starts anyway. Why do this.

 

# Friday, May 08, 2009 7:54 PM
by
TokyoTom

Stephan,
thanks for your comment, but I`ve been preoccupied.  However, it`s hard
to believe that you want Dr. Reisman`s suggested testing of atom bombs
in the Arctic to be taken seriously from ANY perspective, much less a
libertarian one.  There are obvious issues about the role of
government, consent and compensation of those facing fallout risks, the
problem of interfering with Arctic ecosystems and access to resources
that are coming available as a result of thawing, potential releases of
methane by the explosions themselves, plus small things like
international treaties as crf notes.

Are you suggesting that I`m “fulminating” about “global warming”?
 I`ve just been trying to steer the discussion from fulminations by
Reisman (and fawning worshippers) towards actual libertarian principles
and productive engagement.

“are you aware that we are in an interglacial period … Why do this”?

I don`t agree with your suppositions, but at least they provide a start for conversation.  

My reading indicates that climatologists agree that the Milankovich
cycles are in a unique period of overlap and, given the forcings that
we have already made (starting millenia ago with albedo changes/methane
releases resulting from agriculture), this interglacial is expected to
last for another 50,000 years, and that man`s activity is by far the
largest climate forcing variable – and we`re only heading north.  This
involves heavy pollution and will be accompanied by other large costs
to private and shared assets, including drastic changes in ocean
chemistry and ecosystems.

Mises, Yandle and others recognize that societies invested in
establishing informal and formal private and communal property rights
systems in order to tame tragedy of the commons problems and lead to
more efficient plan formation; IMHO it`s time for us to start managing
our atmosphere and oceans, instead of allowing those who profit from
exploiting these resources (a wealthy class of investors and
executives) to continue to do so while playing a rent-seekers` and
spoilers`s game that allows them to continue to shift costs to the rest
of us.

A focus on this will also help to shift down the environmental
Kuznets curve and improve the protection of private health and property
in China and elsewhere.

 

4. Greenpeace to advocate nuking the earth?

Scientist publishes ‘escape route’ from global warming
reports the emergency plan to save the world from global warming, by
altering the chemical makeup of Earth’s upper atmosphere. Professor
Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on the hole in
the ozone layer, believes that political attempts to limit man-made
greenhouse gases are so pitiful that a radical contingency plan is
needed. … he says that an “escape route” is needed if global warming
begins to run out of control. … Professor Crutzen has proposed a method
of artificially cooling the global climate by releasing particles of
sulphur in the upper atmosphere, which would reflect sunlight and heat
back into space.”

Hey, if that doesn’t work, why not use the phenomenon of nuclear winter to cool things down? You know, explode a few nukes, kick up dust, cool things down. Any takers? Greenpeace? Earth First?

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?

The Road Not Taken IV: My other hysterical comments on climate science & how Austrians hamstring themselves

November 2nd, 2009 2 comments

In my initial post, on how Austrians strive for a self-comforting irrelevancy on climate change, I copied my chief comment to Stephan Kinsella.

I copy below my other posts and some of the remarks I was responding to on Stephan`s thread, including the one that I was unable to post – for some reason I am trying to figure out (but that Stephan tells me was not a result of moderation by him; I note my full apology, as stated in my update to my preceding post):

  • TokyoTom

    fundamentalist: “I love the responses from the GW hysteria crowd.
    They have nothing to offer but ad hominem attacks and appeals to
    authority.”

    Am I excluded from the “hysteria” crowd, Roger? Because if I`m in,
    you seem to have entirely missed my post, and my point, as to the
    consistency of your arguments with Austrian principles and the
    effectiveness of approaches like yours in dealing with the rest of the
    world – including all of the deluded and others who are engaged in bad
    faith.

    Published: October 30, 2009 9:44 AM

  • Stephan Kinsella
    [Note: this is the comment to which I responded with the remarks copied on my preceding post]

    “Tokyo” asked me to respond to his post but it’s so rambling I am
    not sure what to respond to. To me this is very simple. I think we are
    in an interglacial period. It’s going to start getting cooler
    eventually, unless by then we have enough technology and freedom (no
    offense, Tokyo) to stop it. If there is global warming maybe it can
    delay the coming ice age by a few centuries.

    If there were really global warming why not just use “nuclear
    winter” to cool things down? You don’t see the envirotards advocating that! 🙂 (see Greenpeace to advocate nuking the earth?)

    In any event as I see it there are several issues. Is it warming?
    Can we know it? Do we know it? Are we causing it? Can we stop it?
    Should we stop it?

    It seem to me we do not know that it’s warming; if it is, it’s
    probably not caused by Man; and if it is, there’s probably nothing we
    can do to stop it except effectively destroy mankind; there’s no reason
    to stop it since it won’t even be all bad, and in fact would be overall
    good. I do not trust the envirotards, who hate industrialism and love
    the state, and seek anything to stop capitalism and to give the state
    an excuse to increase regulations and taxes; why anyone thinks these
    watermelons really know what the temperature will be in 10, 100, 1000
    years, when we can’t even get accurate weather forecasts a week out, is
    beyond me.

    That said, I’ll take the watermelons seriously when they start
    advocating nuclear power. Until then, they reveal themselves to be
    anti-industry, anti-man, techo-illiterates. (See Green nukes; Nuclear spring?.)

    Published: October 30, 2009 10:03 AM

  • TokyoTom

    [my prior version ran off without my permission; this is a re-draft]

    It seems like I can lead a horse to water, but I can`t make him think,

    We all have our own maps of reality and our own calculus as to what
    government policies are desirable and when, but as for me, the status
    quo needs changing, and the desire of a wide range of people – be they
    deluded, evil, conniving or whatnot – to do something on the climate
    front seems like a great opportunity to get freedom-enhancing measures
    on the table and to achieve some of MY preferences, chiefly because
    they help to advance the professed green agenda. [To clarify, I didn`t mean that I want to advance “the green agenda”, but that the pro-freedom policy suggestions I have raised should be attainable because greens and others might see that they also serve THEIR agendas.]

    I see no reason to sit at home or simply scoff or fling poo from the
    sidelines, and let what I see as a bad situation get worse. There`s
    very little in that for practically anyone here – except of course
    those who like coal pollution, public utilities, corporate income
    taxes, big ag corporate welfare, political fights over government-owned
    resources, energy subsidies and over-regulation, etc. (and those folks
    aren`t sitting at home, believe me).

    I can keep on questioning everyone`s sanity or bona fides, or I can
    argue strongly for BETTER policies, that advance shared aims.

    Does Austrian thinking simply lack a practical political arm, other
    than those few who have signed up to support special interests?

    Ramblin` Tom

    Published: October 30, 2009 11:51 AM

  • TokyoTom

    Stephan, if I may, I am appalled and offended by your shallow and
    fundamentally dishonest engagement here. That there are a string of
    others who have preceded you in this regard is no excuse.

    You: (i) post without significant comment a one-page letter from a
    scientist – as if the letter itself is vindication, victory or a
    roadmap for how we should seek to engage the views and preferences of
    others,

    (ii) refuse to answer my straightforward questions (both above and
    at my cross-linked post, which you visited) on how we engage others in
    the very active ongoing political debate, in a manner that actually
    defends and advances our policy agenda, and (putting aside the
    insulting and disingenuous “Tokyo asked me to respond” and “it’s so
    rambling I am not sure what to respond to”); and

    (iii) then proceed to present your own view of the science, the
    motives and sanity “watermelons” (as if they`re running the show), a
    few helpful, free-market libertarian “solutions”, like open-air
    explosion of nuclear weapons to bring about a “nuclear winter” effect!

    And my attempt to bring your focus back to the question of how we
    actually deal with others in the POLITICAL bargaining that is, after
    all, underway is met with silence – other than your faithful report
    back from your trusty climate physicist expert policy guru friend about
    …. science (all being essentially irrelevant to my question, not
    merely the cute little folksy demonstration about how the troubling
    melting and thinning of Antarctic ice sheets actually now underway
    simply CAN`T be occurring, but also a further failure to address the
    very rapid ocean acidification our CO2 emissions are producing)!

    Maybe it`s me, but I find this type of insincere and shallow
    engagement on such a serious issue to be a shameful discredit to the
    Mises Blog (even if it does cater to those who prefer to think that the
    big to do about climate – which may very well result in a mass of
    ill-considered, costly and counterproductive
    legislation – is really groundless and so can simply be ignored, aside from a bit of internal fulminations here).

    If you are not actually interested in discussing policy on a serious issue, then consider refraining from posting on it.

    Maybe it`s not my position to expect better, but I do.

    Sincerely,

    Tom

    Roy Cordato (linked at my name) said this:

    “The starting point for all Austrian welfare economics is the goal
    seeking individual and the ability of actors to formulate and execute
    plans within the context of their goals. … [S]ocial welfare or
    efficiency problems arise because of interpersonal conflict. [C] that
    similarly cannot be resolved by the market process, gives rise to
    catallactic inefficiency by preventing useful information from being
    captured by prices.”

    “Environmental problems are brought to light as striking at the
    heart of the efficiency problem as typically seen by Austrians, that
    is, they generate human conflict and disrupt inter- and intra-personal
    plan formulation and execution.”

    “The focus of the Austrian approach to environmental economics is
    conflict resolution. The purpose of focusing on issues related to
    property rights is to describe the source of the conflict and to
    identify possible ways of resolving it.”

    “If a pollution problem exists then its solution must be found in
    either a clearer definition of property rights to the relevant
    resources or in the stricter enforcement of rights that already exist.
    This has been the approach taken to environmental problems by nearly
    all Austrians who have addressed these kinds of issues (see Mises 1998;
    Rothbard 1982; Lewin 1982; Cordato 1997). This shifts the perspective
    on pollution from one of “market failure” where the free market is seen
    as failing to generate an efficient outcome, to legal failure where the
    market process is prevented from proceeding efficiently because the
    necessary institutional framework, clearly defined and enforced
    property rights, is not in place.”

    Published: October 31, 2009 1:00 PM

  • TokyoTom

    Bala:

    “Did rising temperatures cause an increase in atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration”.

    This is a great, basic question; I`d love to answer it (actually, I
    already did, though a bit indirectly), but you see, I`m one of the
    nasty obfuscating members of the socialist hysterical crowd, so I
    really should defer to others here who have better ideological and
    scientific stature here (and who hate ad hominems and love reason),
    such as fundamentalist, or perhaps even our confident lead poster,
    Stephan Kinsella (who has nothing to offer on the question of how
    libertarians should engage with others on the political front), or even
    our humble physicist climate system authority, Dr. Hayden.

    Gentlemen, take it away.

    Published: October 31, 2009 11:31 AM

  • TokyoTom

    I`m sorry I don`t have time now to respond in more detail to those
    who have commented in response to mine, but let me note that not one of
    you has troubled to actually respond to my challenge, which was based
    on Austrian concepts of conflict resolution, understanding of
    rent-seeking embedded in the status quo, and the recognition that the
    present debate on climate, energy and environmental issues presents
    opportunities to actually advance an Austrian agenda.

    In my view, we can either try to improve our lot, by seeking items
    such as those I laid out previously or condemn ourselves to irrelevancy
    by standing by and letting the big boys and the Baptists in their
    coalition hammer out something worse from our Congresscritters.

    For this, the correctness of our own views of climate science
    matters little – nothing, in fact, unless we are willing to DO
    something about it, by engaging with OTHERS who have DIFFERENT views.

    For those who have too much trouble remembering the legal/regulatory changes that I suggested, here they are:

    [pro-freedom regulatory changes might include:

    * accelerating cleaner power investments by eliminating corporate
    income taxes or allowing immediate amortization of capital investment,
    * eliminating antitrust immunity for public utility monopolies (to
    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).]

    Many others come to mind.

    Well, what`s it going to be? Relevancy, or a tribal exercise in disengaged and smug self-satisfaction?

    Published: October 31, 2009 12:37 PM

  • TokyoTom

    1. Christopher and mpolzkill:

    Thanks for the favor of your comments.

    I was asking if Austrians never seek to practically engage others on
    questions of policy; the first of you brings up Ron Paul, but one man
    is not a policy, nor are his sole efforts a policy program; the other
    of you suggests succession from the U, which is hardly an effort at
    pragmatic engagement with anybody over a particular issue. (BTW, here
    is Ron Paul`s climate program.)

    I can see some engagement by libertarians on this issue, but such
    seeds either (i) die when they fall on the rocky ground of the Mises
    Blog or (ii) represent work by people paid to criticize one side of the
    debate, and consistently ignore problems with the definitely
    non-libertarian status quo.

    Why libertarians do not see any opportunity here for a positive
    agenda? Do they prefer to be taken as implicit supporters of the
    government interventions that underlie most enviros` complaints?

    2. fundamentalist:

    “I don’t see anyone doing that except the GW hysterical crowd.
    Honest scientists like Hayden try to present evidence and reason so
    that we can have a real debate, and the hysterical crowd flings poo
    from the sidelines.”

    Thanks for your direct comment (even as you lace it and others with
    ad homs), but can`t you see you also are missing my point? Are you NOT
    interested in trying to cut deals that would, say:

    * accelerate cleaner power investments by eliminating corporate
    income taxes or allowing immediate amortization of capital investment,
    * eliminate antitrust immunity for public utility monopolies (to allow
    consumer choice, peak pricing and “smart metering” that will rapidly
    push efficiency gains),
    * end Clean Air Act handouts to the worst utilities (or otherwise
    unwinding burdensome regulations and moving to lighter and more
    common-law dependent approaches),
    * end energy subsidies generally (including federal liability caps for nuclear power (and allowing states to license),
    * speed economic growth and adaptation in the poorer countries most
    threatened by climate change by rolling back domestic agricultural
    corporate welfare programs (ethanol and sugar),
    * insist that government resource management be improved by requiring that half of all royalties be rebated to citizens,
    * end federal subsidies to development on barrier islands, etc. or
    * improve adaptability by deregulating and privatizing roads and other “public” infrastructure?

    Or is it more productive to NOT deal with those whom you hate, and
    stand by while special interests cut deals that widen and deepen the
    federal trough?

    TT

    Published: November 1, 2009 2:21 AM

  • TokyoTom

    Allow me to outline here a few responses to the arguments raised by
    Dr. Hayden, even as I do not pretend to be an expert (and, to be
    pedantic, even though they are largely irrelevant to the question of
    whether Austrians wish to take advantage of the opportunity presented
    by the many scientists and others who have differing views, to roll
    back alot of costly, counterproductive and unfair regulation).

    1. Models: Dr. Hayden disingenuously casts aside what modern physics
    tells us about how God plays dice with the universe (via random,
    unpredictible behavior throughout the universe), and the limits of
    human knowledge (including the ability to measure all inputs affecting
    climate, including all of our own), and essentially asks us to wait
    until our knowledge is perfect, and our ability to capture and
    number-crunch all information relevant to the Earth`s climate
    (including changing solar and cosmic ray inputs and ocean behavior)
    before any of us, or our imperfect governments, can take any action on
    climate.

    Physical and practical impossibility aside, is this how any human or
    any human organization structures its decisions? Narrowly, Dr. Hayden
    is of course right that “the science is not settled”, but so what?

    2. Was there a tipping point 300 million years ago (or whenever it was when CO2 levels reached 8000 ppm) ?
    Dr. Hayden plays with language, suggesting that a “tipping point” means
    something irreversible over hundreds of millions of years, when it`s
    very clear that there have in the past been numerous abrupt changes in
    climate (some taking place in as little as a few years, with a general
    return to prior values sometimes taking very long periods of time) and
    that scientists today are talking about tipping points that may be reached in human lifetimes.
    Will we lose all mountain glaciers? Will the Arctic become ice-free in
    winter? Will thawing release sufficient methane from tundras and seabed
    clathrates to push the climate even more forcibly than CO2? Are we set
    to lose glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, regardless of what we do?
    Will we dry out the Amazon basin, and interrupt the Asian monsoon?
    There is plenty of concern and evidence that these things are real
    possibilities.

    3. “Global-warming alarmists tell us that the rising CO2 concentration is (A) anthropogenic and (B) leading to global warming.”

    But you never tell us whether you, too, Dr. Hayden, are an
    “alarmist”. Further down you acknowledge that “Nobody doubts that CO2
    has some greenhouse effect” admitting (B) (though not that it may be
    the chief factor), but as far as (A) goes, you only acknowledge that
    “CO2 concentration is increasing”. Care to make yourself an alarmist by
    admitting what cannot be denied – that man is responsible for rising
    CO2 concentrations? Or you prefer play with laymen`s ignorance by
    irresponsibly suggesting that rising CO2 is now due to warming oceans
    and not man`s activities?

    – “CO2 concentration has risen and fallen in the past with no help from mankind.”

    Yes, but what relevance is this now, when man is undeniably not simply “helping” but clearly responsible?

    – “The present rise began in the 1700s, long before humans could have made a meaningful contribution.”

    So? Does the fact that CO2 fluctuates naturally do to things other
    than man`s activities mean humans` massive releases of CO2 have NOT
    made a “meaningful contribution”? It`s very clear that the Industrial Revolution caused a dramatic rise in CO2. Surely you don`t disagree?

    – “Alarmists have failed to ask, let alone answer, what the CO2
    level would be today if we had never burned any fuels. They simply
    assume that it would be the “pre-industrial” value.”

    “Alarmists” of course is simply an unhelpful ad hom; and as for the rest, concerned scientists and laymen clearly note how CO2 has fluctuated prior to the Industrial Revolution.

    There undoubtedly many clueless laymen, just as there are some
    clueless scientists, so your sweeping statement may be narrowly
    accurate.

    But in the big picture, it is clear that man has had a drastic
    impact on CO2 levels – so what, precisely, is your point, except to
    confuse the issue?

    – “The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as water warms, and
    increases as water cools. The warming of the earth since the Little Ice
    Age has thus caused the oceans to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.”

    Sure, but this doesn`t mean man hasn`t been the dominant contributor to atmospheric CO2.

    Further, of course, warming oceans CEASED to release CO2 at the
    point that atmospheric CO2 started to make the oceans more acidic.

    – “The historical record shows that climate changes precede CO2
    changes. How, then, can one conclude that CO2 is responsible for the
    current warming?”

    The lag in the historical record BEFORE man simply shows that CO2,
    which has an acknowledged warming effect, was a warming reinforcer and
    not an initiator. This does NOT, of course, suggest that massive CO2
    releases by man magically have NO effect.

    4. Assuming that we ARE changing climate, is that a bad thing?

    – “A warmer world is a better world.” Maybe, but are there NO costs,
    losses or damages in moving to one? And do those people and communities
    who bear these costs or kinda like things as they are have any choice,
    much less defendable property rights?

    – “The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the biosphere, as
    numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. … Those huge
    dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land
    is not productive enough. CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.”

    I see; this is not a question of fossil fuel interests homesteading
    the sky (or being given license by govt) and so being entitled to shift
    risks and costs on us, but them beneficiently bestowing gifts on
    mankind – or dinosaurs, as Dr. Hayden may prefer! Wonderful gifts that
    cannot be returned for centuries or millenia! Yippee!

    [This is only scratching the surface of the letter, but I`m afraid I need to run for now.]

    Published: November 1, 2009 4:51 AM

  • TokyoTom [Note: my original post contained some bolding that went haywire and bolded most of the post; I`ve fixed that.]

    Okay, here`s a few more unconsidered thoughts to show how hysterical
    I am, am hooked on religion, hate mankind, [want to] return us to the Middle Ages
    and otherwise take over the world:

    – “Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.”

    Sure, for If only it were so simple. The increase in AVERAGE global
    temps that we`ve experienced so far has meant little warming of the
    oceans (a vast thermal sink), and has shown up at higher latitudes,
    where we have seen a very marked warming and ongoing thawing, a shift
    of tropic zones away from the equator, disruption of rainfall patterns
    and stress on tropical ecosystems; all of this is considered to be just
    the beginning of a wide range of climate effects that have not yet been
    fully manifested for GHG and albedo changes so far,. much less to
    further increases in GHGs.

    – “CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.”

    It IS a “pure and simple” plant food, but your rhetoric implies much
    more – essentially that CO2 is NOTHING BUT plant food, and large
    releases of it have no effect on climate. And this, as you well know,
    is NOT a “pure and simple” matter.

    – “CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition.”

    You mean not by your reasonable definition, or under
    historical standards. But what IS “pollution”, but a social construct
    to describe the outputs of human activity that some of us have found to
    be damaging to our persons, property or other things that we value?
    Were CFCs released by refrigeration equipment “pollution” before we
    discovered that they damage the ozone layer?

    Scientists may be qualified to measure particular outputs and their
    consequences, but otherwise have no special insights into what others
    value.

    – “A warmer world begets more precipitation.”

    Sure, as warmer air generally holds more water – which in turn has a
    warming effect, let`s not forget. But as for the water itself, climate
    change leads to more severe rain events in some places but to droughts
    in others. And let`s not forget that a warmer world means that mountain
    snows don`t last until spring and summer as they once did, leaving
    streams and forests drier, and adversely affecting agriculture that
    relies on such water.

    – “All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient
    between the poles and the equator. Necessarily, this would mean fewer
    and less violent storms.”

    Not so fast; this doesn`t hold for rain events or tornadoes.
    Further, independent paths of research indicate that while the North
    Atlantic may end up with fewer hurricanes, warming is likely to make them more intense.

    – How, pray, will a putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice
    and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the warming alarmists?

    First, note again the Dr.`s use of a strawman; no one is expect an
    imminent melt of “ALL” the ice. But significant melting and thinning of
    coastal ice IS occurring, and not merely on the West Antactic
    peninsula, which the good Dr. would realize if he`d trouble himself to
    compare his simple mental model, of reality with FACTS. As previously
    noted, coast ice sheets are plugs that slow the flow of glaciers from
    the interior. As these plugs are removed, the glaciers flow more
    quickly, via that exotic phenomenon we call “gravity”. I`ve already
    addressed this above, with links.

    – “If the waters around it warm up, they create more precipitation.”

    Yes, but does the new precipitation balance the ice being melted?
    Actual, detailed observations tell us that, despite your absolute
    certainty, that we are seeing increasing net mass losses far inland,
    not merely in Greenland but also in Antarctica. Your religious-like
    faith in your own superior understanding doesn`t make the facts go away.

    – “The ocean’s pH is not rising. It is falling, ever so slightly.
    Obviously your respondent has not the faintest clue as to how pH is
    defined. (BTW, the oceans are basic, not acidic.)”

    Yes, the good Dr. catches my mistake – pH is falling rather
    remarkably (from basic towards acidic) – but he too hastily skates past
    the main point, which is that this is due to increased atmospheric
    levels of CO2, which prove that the oceans are NOT actually releasing
    CO2 (or they`d be becoming more basic).

    I provided links in this last year here:
    http://blog.mises.org/archives/007931.asp#c192563

    Here`s more:
    http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/06/our-dying-oceans/
    http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:y_W6vseUrykJ:www.tos.org/oceanography/issues/issue_archive/issue_pdfs/20_2/20.2_caldeira.pdf+caldeira+ocean+ph&hl=en&gl=jp&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgEEoFLf7xd9QTyol2TYYmXKPxXFqMq5Nr1IPdGd_yEbV3zIxPi-4Rmhb6d-IQ-r4BPwBqzyhF6GZQw_ka1Eh3Ynn0lYlP7p974IYMHIdLMVE90nWJ81GHAfcdTrUJTNk7W8Man&sig=AFQjCNGg6Idq6GQ5gyrddlXRD8R98NQ_dQ

    From the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK) :

    “Until recently, it was believed that the oceans contained so much
    disolved carbonate and bicarbonate ions that any extra would have
    little effect. In fact this absorbtion was generally acknowledged a
    valuable process in protecting the planet from the worst effects of
    rising temperatures and climate change. However, in 2003 a paper was
    published in Nature (vol 425) which suggested that the increases in
    atmospheric CO2, occurring over the last 200 years, has actually
    increased the acidity of the oceans by 0.1 of a pH unit.The pH scale is logarithmic and this change represents a 30% increase in the concentration of H+ ions.

    “However, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have been
    higher during previous times in Earths history and these high CO2
    periods didn’t cause ocean pH to change. The difference now is that the
    rate at which CO2 concentrations are increasing, is 100 times greater
    than the natural fluctuations seen over recent millennia. Consequently,
    the processes that ultimately balance the carbon cycle are unable to
    react quickly enough and ocean pH is affected. About half of all
    released CO2 is absorbed by the oceans but even if we stop all
    emmissions today, the CO2 already in the atmosphere has been predicted
    to decrease ocean pH by a further 0.5 unit.”

    From
    Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification”>Wikipedia:

    “Dissolving CO2 in seawater also increases the hydrogen ion (H+)
    concentration in the ocean, and thus decreases ocean pH. Caldeira and
    Wickett (2003)[1] placed the rate and magnitude of modern ocean
    acidification changes in the context of probable historical changes
    during the last 300 million years.

    Since the industrial revolution began, it is estimated that
    surface ocean pH has dropped by slightly less than 0.1 units (on the
    logarithmic scale of pH; approximately a 25% increase in H+), and it is
    estimated that it will drop by a further 0.3 to 0.5 units by 2100 as
    the oceans absorb more anthropogenic CO2.[1][2][9] These changes are
    predicted to continue rapidly as the oceans take up more anthropogenic
    CO2 from the atmosphere, the degree of change to ocean chemistry, for
    example ocean pH, will depend on the mitigation and emissions pathways
    society takes.[10] Note that, although the ocean is acidifying, its pH
    is still greater than 7 (that of neutral water), so the ocean could
    also be described as becoming less basic.”

    “The term global warming has given way to the term climate
    change, because the former is not supported by the data. The latter
    term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical attributions. If
    it warms up, that’s climate change. If it cools down, ditto. Any change
    whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof of climate change.”

    Wonderful observation, except for the fact that IT`S WRONG; the
    change instead being deliberately led by Republicans; leading
    Republican pollster/ spinmeister Frank Luntz in 2002 pushed Republicans
    to move the public discussion away from “global warming” to “climate
    change”, because, as Luntz wrote,

    “’Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming.’
    … While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it,
    climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional
    challenge”.

    Of course there IS the inconvenient fact that “climate change” is
    actually more accurate than simple “global warming”, but who cares
    about accuracy anyway, right Dr.?

    – “the earth has handily survived many millions of years when CO2
    levels were MUCH higher than at present, without passing the dreaded
    tipping point.”

    I already addressed above the point that while the Dr. seems to
    what to recreate the Cretaceous, the better for dinosaurs, most of us
    seem rather to like the Earth that we actually inherited and that the
    rest of current Creation is adapted for. He is obviously a physicist
    and not a biologist, and doesn`t seem to give any thought to the
    rapidity of the scale at which we are conducting our little
    terraforming experiment, and te challenges the pace of those changes
    are posing to ecosystems.

    – “To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists
    have relied on a pathetic version of science in which computer models
    take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs
    are believed to be able to predict the future climate. It would be a
    travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.”

    To put it bluntly, this is largely rubbish; there is a tremendous
    and growing amount of climate change DATA. You just make it your habit
    not to let facts get in the way of your own opinions. I would be a
    travesty if we continue to countenance posts such as yours, questions
    of relevance to Austrian purposes aside.

    – “I don’t do politics”

    Fine; I can see why that would not be your forte. But what`s very
    puzzling is that you seem to think that climate science IS your forte,
    when all you`ve show is a shocking level of arrogant ignorance.

    – “I don’t pretend to be an economic theorist.”

    And on a blog dedicated to Austrian economists, just why, one
    wonders, do the “giants” in our Mises world keep filling the Blog pages
    with post such as this, which are, on their very face, IRRELEVANT, to
    the question of how Austrians wish to address the preferences of other,
    the misuses of government and the management of unowned common
    resources.

    – “he only difference between the Republicans and the Democrats
    is, in practical terms, their rhetoric. I don’t pretend to be an
    economic theorist.

    – “But the notion that we can run an industrialized giant on
    chicken manure and sunbeams doesn’t even pass the giggle test. Except
    in Washington.”

    At long last, you say something something intelligible. Except
    Washington spends trillions on nonsense at the drop of a hat, if you
    haven`t noticed recent events.

    Published: November 1, 2009 10:02 AM

  • TokyoTom

    Sorry if I`ve been a bit intemperate; that I`m rushed doesn`t excuse it.

    Dr. Hayden, you are entirely welcome to your own opinion and your
    own mental map of reality, but not to your own facts. As to your
    opinion and mental map, they are by your own admittance uninformed as
    to matters of economics and political science, but I must confess that
    I find your understanding of climate science to be seriously wanting.

    Given these, I fail to see what you offer here, other than a
    convenient, if very thin, cover for others here who don`t want to
    think, or to fight to make the world (or our own government) better.

    Sincerely,

    Tom

    Published: November 1, 2009 10:11 AM

  • TokyoTom

    Bala, I appreciate your polite persistence; I`m sorry I haven`t responded yet, but I`ll get to you.

    Please note that my time is both limited and my own (though indeed
    others have claims on it), and I have no obligation to spend any of it
    responding to your importunings regarding climate science, which are
    now shading into impertinence.

    Feel free to draw whatever conclusions you wish, but a fair reader might note that:

    – my priorities may (unsurprisingly) differ from yours,
    – my chief points (and Austrian principles as to how to engage with others) have nothing to do with climate science per se,
    – I explicitly make no pretense of being a scientist or climate expert, and
    – in any case, there is no simple course to understanding reality; we
    are all forced to make decisions as to how much energy to devote to
    puzzling things out on our own (and overcoming what we know of our own
    subconscious cognitive filters) versus outsourcing this effort to
    others (by accepting things without deliberation, “on faith” as it
    were).

    Others who have been around longer will know that I`ve also devoted
    what they might consider an unreasonable amount of my time over the
    past few years, “hysterical” trying to help others work through climate
    science (and policy) issues.

    TT

    Published: November 1, 2009 8:46 PM

  • TokyoTom

    mpolzkill:

    – “Tom, believing you live in a Republic with 300,000,000 people is a delusion which heads off all actual pragmatism.”

    This is not a delusion I have, but in any case it`s not at all clear
    that this or any other delusion “heads off all actual pragmatism”.

    – “Until there is actual representation, everything said by we
    proles is literally hot air (unless it’s happens to coincide with
    whatever benefits the regime).”

    I use “our government” simply as shorthand for what you call “the
    regime”, but perhaps may be more accurately described as a multicentric
    mess.

    In any case, the painstaking efforts of LVMI to grow the Mises
    website, and the welcome reception of and contribution to those efforts
    by everyone here – yourself included – belies both your near-nihilistic
    cynicism and your conclusion, as to virtually every topic discussed
    here. Words are deeds, though they be more or less frivolous, weighty,
    insightful or consequential.

    If the other Mises bloggers agreed with you as to the possible
    efficacy of their words, either generally or on this particular topic,
    they simply wouldn`t bother to post.

    However, I share your concern about efficiacy, which is why I
    criticize posts such these (whether by Stephan, George Reisman, Sean
    Corrigan, Walter Block, or Jeffrey Tucker), which are, by and large,
    more of a circle jerk than an effort to engage.

    – “thank you for being respectful”

    My pleasure, but you hardly need to thank me; this is a community, after all.

    – “even though you mistakenly think I’m a nut.

    In this case, it is you who are mistaken (not that you ARE a nut, but that you think I think you are).

    Tom

    Published: November 1, 2009 9:35 PM

 

This is last version of the comment that I tried to post several times:

method fan:

[my first attempt apparently failed to post, so apologies if this shows up twice]

– “You are insofar wrong, that not only this “data” is analysed but it is also used to “predict” the future of reality by using it in simulations!”

You miss my criticism of Dr. Hayden`s refusal to examine facts about ongoing melting in Antarctica, but of course I do NOT disagree with you that current and paleo data can be used to “predict” the future.

But of course a scientific understanding of the world, and information – in this case, both about the past and current trends of climate inputs – certainly can give us useful information about what the future may hold in store for us.

“There is no sound experimental proof that human activity-emitted carbon dioxide is the cause for some sort of global warming.”

Nicely phrased; there of course plenty of experimental proof that carbon dioxide is an atmospheric warming agent, but no experimental proof that it is “the” cause for any global warming.

While we are now running such a global experiment – one that started centuries ago and will not be played out for centuries hence and is, for all intents and purposes irreversible – and thus cannot, in the Popperian sense, even be considered an “experiment”.

Whether our ramping up of the experiment is prudent or principled are entirely different questions, and properly the subject of much discussion.

– “These guesses remind one of the idea that rain dances are the cause for rain.”

I`m tempted to make a comeback, but surely you realize your flip comparison is entirely inapropos.

Here`s hoping for more sincere discourse.

TT