How much carbon goes into the food we eat? Recently I've been beseiged by buy-local fanatics, claiming that if I eat Guatamalan raspberries, I'm killing the earth with the carbon needed to transport them. Interestingly, I've also been proffered this argument by people who are against major action on global warming; their argument is that I'm actually killing the earth by biking, because the food I eat consumes a great deal of carbon growing it and transporting it to my grocery store.
Now, color me sceptical about that latter, because despite what you might think, very few gas stations are sited atop natural gasoline springs; the gasoline has to be pumped out of the earth, refined, and then transported to your gas station. I would be very, very, very surprised if doing so consumed less energy than growing and transporting the single delicious Macintosh apple it takes to replenish the calories I expend biking 2 miles to work each day.
But this did cause me to try to figure out how much energy the various options consume, and frankly, the answer is, I have no clue. There are so many second, third, and eighth order effects that my brain is spinning. Oh, sure, you burn carbon transporting tomatoes from Chile . . . but the Chilean farmer who grew them probably consumes a lot less carbon than the tomato farm down the road. And don't ask the tomato farmer, either, because he doesn't know how much carbon goes into producing all of the various things he consumes in order to maintain his lifestyle as an American artisanal tomato farmer. Not only has no one done a good analysis of this subject; I don't think anyone could.
That's why if we're serious about cutting carbon dioxide emissions, we need a carbon tax, and not CAFE, or other sorts of piecemeal regulatory solutions.
Allow me to channel famous Austrian economist and libertarian hero Friedrich Hayek on the miracle of prices:
Fundamentally, in a system where the knowledge of the relevant facts is dispersed among many people, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different people in the same way as subjective values help the individual to coordinate the parts of his plan. It is worth contemplating for a moment a very simple and commonplace instance of the action of the price system to see what precisely it accomplishes. Assume that some where in the world a new opportunity for the use of some raw material, say tin, has arisen, or that one of the sources of supply of tin has been eliminated.All that the users of tin need to know is that some of the tin they used to consume is now more profitably employed elsewhere, and that in consequence they must economize tin. There is no need for the great majority of them even to know where the more urgent need has arisen, or in favor of what other needs they ought to husband the supply. If only some of them know directly of the new demand, and switch resources over to it, and if the people who are aware of the new gap thus created in turn fill it from still other sources, the effect will rapidly spread throughout the whole economic system and influence not only all the uses of tin but also those of its substitutes and the substitutes of these substitutes, the supply of all the things made of tin , and their substitutes, and 50 on; and all this without the great majority of those instrumental in bringing about these substitutions knowing anything at all about the original cause of these changes. The whole acts as one market, not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited in. individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap so that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. The mere fact that there is one price for any commodity--or rather that local prices are connected in a manner determined by the cost of transport, etc.--brings about the solution which (it is just conceptually possible) might have been arrived at by one single mind possessing all the information which is in fact dispersed among all the people involved in the process.
The marvel is that in a case like that of a scarcity of one raw material, without an order being issued, without more than perhaps a handful of people knowing the cause, tens of thousands of people whose identity could not be ascertained by months of investigation, are made to use the material or its products more sparingly; i.e., they move in the right direction.
The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on, and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they never know more than is reflected in the the price movement.
The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use (though he is still very far from having learned to make the best use of it) after he had stumbled upon it without understanding it. Through it not only a division of labor but also a coordinated utilization of resources based upon an equally divided knowledge has become possible. Its misfortune is the double one that it is not the product of human design and that the people guided by it usually do not know why they are made to do what they do.
I am convinced that if it were the result of deliberate human design, and if the people guided by the price changes understood that their decisions have significance far beyond their immediate aim, this mechanism would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind.
Piecemeal regulatory solutions--or even the goodwill efforts of people to minimize their carbon consumption--will often fail because there are simply too many things we cannot know about how much the people and producers who provide for us consume. There are so many side considerations--did you factor in transport? What about crop heating for colder climates? Who has the more efficient tractors?--that there is simply no way to gather the relevant knowlege.
This is why economists prefer prices to regulations. Raising the price of carbon tells us everything we need to know. We don't need to perform elaborate calculations to determine whether farmers in Guatamala are more or less carbon-efficient producers of raspberries for American markets. We need only tweak a single price--the price of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide--and every single other price will quickly change to give us all the information we want about carbon consumption. Indeed, we won't even need to think about carbon consumption, except insofar as we want to monitor its absolute level in order to check that we've gotten the price right.
In theory, one can achieve the same thing with a cap and trade system. Indeed, in theory, cap and trade and a correctly set carbon tax are politically indistinguishable. In practice, however, a cap and trade system only starts working when the cap is sufficiently stringent; before then, it's useless. A carbon tax, however, scales; it starts working at the first penny, in however small a way.
(It looks like it isn't working--and hence makes environmentalists complain--because in the short run, carbon usage is inelastic. However, as we've seen with the recent gas price runup, in the medium-to-long term it's much more elastic; it just takes time for people to start shopping for more efficient big ticket items like cars and appliances.)
In the American political environment, a carbon tax is therefore preferable, because it can start small and be ratcheted up. A cap and trade system has to start big--and big is, IMHO, going nowhere in the next few years.
Okay, the idea that biking to work is bad because the food is less carbon friendly than gasoline for a car is odd. If true this would suggests other optimal targets that might be more logical. For example, those people who drive to the gym (burning gas) and then pay money to exercise (burning food) should merely eat less to conserve carbon and avoid this activity.
Perhaps picketing gyms would be the correct response if, indeed, food is that carbon unfriendly.
In Britain this debate about buying local could have more serious consequences than harangues from friends. The Soil Association there is considering decertifying any organic produce that's freighted by plane, potentially very bad news for African farmers who rely on access to UK markets. A decision is due on the 25th. As you suggest, a well-run carbon tax would likely be a fairer alternative to penalizing farmers in developing countries while not pricing the CO2 of domestic farming whatsoever (and not distract from the meaning of "organic," which for most consumers simply involves the method of farming).
Doesn't this discussion strike anyone else as a bit screwy? I mean, we are, after all, a carbon-based life form, aren't we?
Unless you get the whole world signed on to a carbon tax -- see also "Kyoto" for an idea how well that initiative might work -- the only long-range effect of a carbon tax on food is to gurantee that foreign produce will have the price advantage, because produce created anywhere in the nation will face all of the increased energy costs associated with its agricultural operations, while the foreign produce will not.
Beyond that, I fail to see the advantage. Apples grown in New York will always cost less to New Yorkers than apples grown in Washington state, because the fuel costs for shipping Washington apples cross-country are higher regardless of whether the carbon tax exists, or not, unless somebody is getting subsidized.
However, apples with a carbon tax will be more expensive than apples without, the likely result being a general increase in the price of apples no matter where you get them -- which will impact the poor the most, and possibly reduce the consumption of apples. Somehow, neither of those outcomes seems very wise, unless we're trying to go back to the Luara Ingalls Wilder days, when your winter subsistence outside of major shipping routes primarily consisted of things like lard, salt pork, and a limited selection of canned goods.
Great post Megan. Great Hayek quote. I also loved the short yet comprehensive comparison between a tax and a cap and trade system. Prices indeed are the best policy tools we know off.
That does not mean that we can not tax the wrong thing (income tax for paying for diet related health care). Or in the case of agriculture - apply a 4th best policy like subsidies to promote the wrong thing like C02 emissions and unhealthy foods.
Livestock and industrial agriculture are inherently inefficient based on natural laws that cannot be broken. In contrast, long-term transport of food can, at least in theory, be fairly emission free. Transparent markets empower us to reach for what is possible to and accept what is not. And the wild together with invisible hand market have yet to reach its full potential for all citizens.
I realize it may be implicit in your post, but the flip side of having a carbon tax is that we get rid of all the command-and-control regulations. Stuff like setting energy standards for washing machines, and of course the CAFE requirements.
Set the carbon tax and then let the price system work.
I also keep posting this open discussion between WholeFoods CEO, John Mackey and Michael Pollen. Mackey rightly argues that compared to livestock and industrial agriculture - long-distance transport and transportation costs also are marginal problems.
It would be better if we all consumed less meat and milk and also buy organic. Only then does local or not enter the equation as an optimizer.
Bear in mind that 1calorie from livestock requires 5-10 times the amount of oil, deforestation, land, water, fertilizer, machines, pesticides than vegetable agriculture. If you add transportation of the harvest it comes down to a very small percentage of the overall resources (ab)used until then.
The farm bill must change to allow for more market economics and healthier children in the US.
anony-mouse
I hope you do not wait for the 3rld world to practice market economics and democracy? I hope that you do not wait for the 3rld world to take care of its children before we do so?
I would like to reiterate the point that anything we do in the US will penalize domestic products against imports. As you point out, we would not be able to accurately calculate the carbon footprint of imports and so we would have to either let them have a price advantage, negating the benefits of the carbon tax; attempt to caluculate the carbon footprint and apply an appropriate import tax, which would be impossible to do accurately; or just arbitrarily tax imports, which would also probably negate the benefits of a carbon tax.
The world economy is interlinked any attempt to reduce the production of CO2 will have to be global. A US-only effort won't make a difference.
EI
Hugo Pottisch wrote: I hope you do not wait for the 3rld world to practice market economics and democracy? I hope that you do not wait for the 3rld world to take care of its children before we do so?
Uhhhmmmmm...say what?
"It looks like it isn't working--and hence makes environmentalists complain--because in the short run, carbon usage is inelastic."
Can you point me to some actual environmentalists who complain about carbon taxes? And no, the Reapers don't count.
The Soil Association there is considering decertifying any organic produce that's freighted by plane, potentially very bad news for African farmers who rely on access to UK markets.
And the New Zealand lamb growers have struck back with their own numbers claiming it's carbon-cheaper to raise lambs on grass there and fly them to Britain than it is to raise them on feed locally.
I don't mean that environmentalists are against carbon taxes. I was referring specifically to the fact that a number of environmentalists are pushing cap and trade, or CAFE, rather than taxes, because the rising price of gasoline initially appeared not to be producing any changes in behaviour. However, over the longer term, usage is looking a lot more elastic.
anony-mouse writes:
However, apples with a carbon tax will be more expensive than apples without, the likely result being a general increase in the price of apples no matter where you get them -- which will impact the poor the most, and possibly reduce the consumption of apples.
1) Are you suggesting that all government policy decisions should take disproportionate impact on the poor into account?
2) As an example of the above, do you think the government should discourage automobile use by individuals because it creates such a large opportunity wall for people who are poor enough not to be able to particpate in the automobile based transportation system?
3) Just about everything impacts the poor the most, because they don't have the resources to put toward mitigating impacts from things outside their direct control. I think policy makers have to think about impact on the poor, but if you use it as a reason for inaction, you'll never do anything. Which maybe was your desired end state anyway.
It's all BS compared to the overwhelming ignorance that most of us have v. the world at large. These tax schemas, no matter the vector, impoverish the Economy. You are misusing Hayek's insight. Ol' F.A. was speaking of prices engendered by a 'Free Market', not those concocted by command and control hierarchies.
If you care to make any real difference, show people the consequences of their actions. Those that understand, and act, will change the prices that Hayek was referring to.
the rising price of gasoline initially appeared not to be producing any changes in behaviour.
There won't be any changes in behavior as long as supply is constant (you still need to drive the same miles to work regardless how expensive gas is, or you don't work). Only a physical shortage would cause that kind of behavior change; gas is still plentiful, just more expensive. What WILL happen is people will demand higher wages to offset the increased cost of living. That's wage inflation, which I know economists hate.
I'm sure prices ultimately do cause behavior changes. When your current vehicle finally breaks down and you are forced to buy a new one, you will probably (given the usual considerations and assumptions) buy one that is more economical. Vehicles are big-ticket items and everyone doesn't just run out and buy a Prius when gas hits $4/gal. Unfortunately, if while we're waiting for the "long-term elasticity" to reduce people's usage, we happen to pass a point of no return climatically, what then coach?
The point environmentally is to reduce usage NOW, not later after the pain of high prices slowly forces changes decades from now, at which time it may be too late.
OTOH, liberalrob, CAFE standards and other such things can actually reduce the effectiveness of carbon taxes and other measures. Really, a carbon tax is the best way to go.
librob,
how appropos.
all based on poll results and spurious science.
Tax people into oblivion or the ecology will kill us all.
Need any more fear to go with that script?
"There won't be any changes in behavior as long as supply is constant (you still need to drive the same miles to work regardless how expensive gas is, or you don't work)."
Just a few alternatives to "not working" including riding mass transit, carpooling, moving closer to work, telecomuting, arranging longer work days with shorter work weeks and riding a bike.
I'm with MEH. This paragraph of Megan's is just beautifully put:
But somehow she misses that exactly the same uncertainty applies to setting the "right" level of carbon tax, too.
Just a few alternatives to "not working" including riding mass transit, carpooling, moving closer to work, telecomuting, arranging longer work days with shorter work weeks and riding a bike.
Yes, people *could* do those things, but the point is that empirically they don't. Paying a few more dollars a week for gas and then a few more is generally preferred to selling your house and buying a new one. (Don't blame me -- I ride a bicycle, but I did when gas was $1.25, also.)
But somehow she misses that exactly the same uncertainty applies to setting the "right" level of carbon tax, too.
Umm, no it doesn't. In one case you're specifying a total and letting the market sort out the details. In the other, you need to specify every detail *and* the total.
"Just a few alternatives to "not working" including riding mass transit, carpooling, moving closer to work, telecomuting, arranging longer work days with shorter work weeks and riding a bike.
Yes, people *could* do those things, but the point is that empirically they don't. Paying a few more dollars a week for gas and then a few more is generally preferred to selling your house and buying a new one."
People don't do these things because the price of gasoline is still cheap compared to the benefits it provides. As long as the increases in the price of gasoline involve only "paying a few more dollars a week" no one should expect major changes in consumer behaviors. If one were to impose a significant carbon tax, however, then there are many things consumers could do short of buying new cars or homes to significantly reduce their gasoline consumption.
BP Beckley wrote: 1) Are you suggesting that all government policy decisions should take disproportionate impact on the poor into account?
Why is it always "all or nothing", I wonder?
We're not talking about raising the price on smokes or booze here, or even cars. Food is a very basic necessity. This is widely recognized in the US, and in general you will find little or no sales tax on non-restaurant/vending food sales.
But in Megan's post, we have a casual proposal for a tax that will raise the prices on all food, and worse, unequally -- items that require the greatest amount of shipping (i.e., distance or frequency of shipments) will suffer the most. That basically puts the greatest squeeze on year-round fresh produce and dairy products, the two products of a modern society that have most contributed to improving human health and well-being.
And yes, the poor will suffer first -- and keep in mind that by "suffer", I refer to basic necessities here, not cars or other items from a different debate. Which is why I don't think this position is being thought about very carefully, by Megan or (evidently) yourself.
People still drive in Germany, 50% of the population if I remember correctly. They pay nearly $4 per gallon in tax.
Some take public transit because it is available to them. So yes, New York, Chicago, San Francisco will see a rise in tranist. Everywhere else? We can't exactly invest massive amounts of resources to build rail systems in all of our cities (care to calculate the carbon emssions from that?). Not too mention 20 years after the rail is complete (environmental impact studies anyone?) we'll have already passed the mythical "tipping point".
Germans have chosen to invent smaller, lighter cars and drive smog pollution ridden diesel cause its cheaper.
Your o-so-simple attempts to fix the problem will have a variety of unintended consequences that will invariably create new problems.
Not to suggest we do nothing, but my concern and focus would be on actual pollutants, not C02. You know the pollution that causes the LA valley to look like a hell pit everytime you cross over into San Bernadino. The stuff that gives kids environmentally induced asthma and other breathing problems.
That's the real crime. The fact that really nasty pollutants are being glossed over as people fuss about little old C02....
Megan,
I think you've noted this before but you've never given an answer. Even if your tax succeeds beyond its wildest dreams and reduces oil consumption in the US by 50%, what will happen to that oil?
Will it sit unsold in shipping containers? Or will the price come down globally and you'll see India and China using even more gas, completely offsetting whatever gain you hopped to buy...err..tax.
If you're concerned about having the right attitude and "doing something" then I suppose you've won, but if you're actually concerned for the environment you've accomplished nothing as far as c02 goes, and made millions even more impoverished.
I have a friend that has worked for ExxonMobile for 20+ years as a software engineer for oil/gas development. He swears the reason for the high prices is because India and China are driving more. Most economists agree this is the main driving factor - increase demand.
That's the real crime. The fact that really nasty pollutants are being glossed over as people fuss about little old C02...
Little old C02? Take your blinders off. The continued increase of atmospheric C02 could exert cataclysmic effects. It may even end civilization. It might not have that effect, either. Nobody is sure. But, while not unanimous, the consensus among the overwhelming majority of climate scientists is that human beings face a real and very dangerous threat. Now, the thing is, doing something about it will cost people in rich countries very little. The numbers I've seen suggest developing world economies will realize something like 95% of the economic growth they would otherwise enjoy under a C02 reduction regime. Given all this, not doing something about C02 is reckless and inconsiderate toward future generations. I mean, who wouldn't be willing to settle for a 75" screen instead of an 84" model in the year 2055 if that were all it cost to save Greenland?
To answer your original question, it depends on how fast you ride and a great deal on what you eat, but I've seen an average figure of 7 oil calories per food calorie. If you ride at a modest pace, I'll guess you'll make 100 watts and average 13 mph. Assuming 20% muscle efficiency, that's 124 mpg.
Hugo Pottisch says
When it comes to cattle you could not be more wrong..
There is no form of food production that is more sustainable, efficient, and environmentally friendly then cattle grazing on grass.
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You also need to learn about cause and effect
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Natural habitat is converted from environmentally friendly cattle grazing to less environmentally friendly crop production because farming can produce more income. Government subsidies for crop production greatly increase the economic advantage crop production has.
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These subsidies lead to surplus grain production and cheap grain. Cattle feedlots provide a use for the surplus grain and turn it into something useful. If it weren't for feedlots the US government would have to pay more to the subsidized grain farmers or the excess grain would be disposed of in less beneficial ways or the grain would simply rot in storage.
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Folks interested in and knowledgeable about environmental sustainability make ending farm subsidies their primary effort.
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Folks interested in animal rights use the bad farming practices caused by ag subsidies to focus attention on ending animal agriculture. Unfortunately, this does not change the subsidies that drive ecologically destructive farming practices.
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So the ecologically destructive farming practices continue.
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But they probably feel good about what they are doing even if it does not help solve the environmental problems they are supposed to be concerned about.
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oh well
Raising the price of carbon tells us everything we need to know. We don't need to perform elaborate calculations to determine whether farmers in Guatamala are more or less carbon-efficient producers of raspberries for American markets.
Except that we in the U.S. can't raise the price of carbon for Guatemalan farmers. So we would have to impose a 'carbon tariff' on imported Guatemalan raspberries. How big a tariff? Presumably one scaled to the carbon their emissions. And how much do they emit? You're right back to calculating the carbon-efficiency of Guatemalan raspberry farmers, aren't you?
> the single delicious Macintosh apple it takes to replenish
> the calories I expend biking 2 miles to work each day.
A Macintosh is an Apple; a McIntosh is an apple.
I hope you don't really eat your computer every day.
There's another use of the price mechanism to reduce oil use that is easier to implement than Megan's plan. It's called Let's Increase Oil Demand Until There's An Equilibrium Price Far Higher Than The Current One, Then Act Surprised When Production Falls, As The Geologists Have Been Predicting For A While.
How can an apple use up more carbon than oil?
First, there's energy density. An apple is very low density in terms of calories (hence why it's "healthier" than a french fry). Lots of the weight and volume comes from water and fiber. Gasoline has a very high energy density, unrefined oil has a high energy density. Things that explode are VERY efficient in terms of calorie transportation, things that burn are efficient, things that are mostly water just aren't.
Then there's the method of transport. Pipelines and tanker ships are very efficient means of transport. Perishable food has to use much less eficient means of transport and there are substantial losses along the way. Gasoline doesn't rot in a few days of transit. It can sit happily in appropriate storage for an essentially indefinite period. Apples, er, not so much. A plane or truck can only carry a certain small volume/weight, while an oil tanker is a really unthinkably large method of shipment (at least at the individual consumption level) and a pipeline moves beyond massive quantities at as close to ideal efficiency as can be achieved by engineers. The "last mile" for gasoline is by truck, but it's a very small part of the overall trip and energy desnity helps there too.
Finally, there's so much carbon that goes into making the food. Synthetic fertilisers, fuel for farm equipment, all the inputs to get the farm workers to eb able to do their jobs... Lots more intermediaries are involved in making food while very few people are involved in the ongoing process of obtaining and shipping gasoline.
There's another approach: Invade middle east countries one by one to keep the price of oil high.
G.W.Bush is a the greatest environmentalist in the world.
(Now is there any political group that can live with that analysis?)
It's true that any price we put on carbon emissions inside the U.S. will put domestic emitters at a price disadvantage with respect to other countries, but what else is new? China and other third-world countries already have lots of price advantages, like the cost of unskilled labor. Factory owners have to compare the costs and benefits of
(A) running the current factory,
(B) replacing it with an updated/upgraded domestic factory, or
(C) replacing it with a foreign factory.
Raising the cost of carbon emissions pushes people from choosing (A) toward choosing (B) or (C). We don't want push everyone to (C), so we don't want the tax to be too high, but at a lower level we can make some progress without too much risk.
A cap-and-trade system can work if it has a soft cap: i.e. if the government has a standing offer to sell emissions permits at some reasonable price, to put a ceiling on the price. Similarly, the government should put a floor under the price with a standing offer to buy any permits offered at some low price. Over time the ceiling and floor could be raised. Yes, this makes a cap-and-trade system more like a tax system.
Bill,
Every company that chooses C will offset some of the benefits of companies choosing B. If you set the tax too low, too many companies will choose A. If you set it too high, too many will choose C. How do you calculate the tax? I guess you would have to guess and then watch what happens... then adjust and hope companies respond. This could take a long time to get right and still would have only marginal benefits.
Any suggestion that ignores China and India is only going to have a marginal effect. If AGW is really the problem that the alarmists say, then we need to make dramatic, worldwide reductions in CO2 production. Even massively crippling the US economy will still only make a marginal difference.
EI
You know the pollution that causes the LA valley to look like a hell pit everytime you cross over into San Bernadino.
But sam, how will you get all those movie stars to stop talking so much?
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your view, this debate is completely moot. There will be no carbon tax and there will be no cap and trade in the US. We will burn all the oil and gas we can, and we will increasingly use more coal for electricity. If peak oil is upon us, then we will, at least, start burning less of that.
If the planet is getting warmer because of this, then we will have to learn to adapt to it.
Carbon tax is the way to go, but not CO2 emmission as implied by most. An actual tax on carbon. Being the most common element and most commonly consumed for all goods and services, it's a natural choice for taxing.
Tax actual carbon. Estimate the carbon actually in materials purchased and in goods sold. The balance gets taxed. It's about as close as you can get to an actual consumption tax.
"Beyond that, I fail to see the advantage. Apples grown in New York will always cost less to New Yorkers than apples grown in Washington state, because the fuel costs for shipping Washington apples cross-country are higher regardless of whether the carbon tax exists, or not, unless somebody is getting subsidized."
Or if it just costs less to grow apples in Washington state - which it might be, due to differences in weather, soil, or the cost of land or labor. That's what economists call "comparative advantage". Some things are just better done in certain places - you can't mine iron ore on a sandy beach (even though there is some iron content and it's a lot easier to scoop up sand than to blast hard taconite rocks loose from a mountain), there are only a few places in the USA where cherry trees will produce a plentiful crop, and an electricity-hungry aluminum smelter costs less to run if it's near a source of plentiful cheap electricity such as Niagara Falls. Other things could be done anywhere, but the specialized knowledge and equipment are concentrated in one place. In all of these cases, given reasonable shipping costs, it costs less to make each product in the most advantageous place for it and and then trade the products to other places than to try to make each area self-sufficient.
Prices signal such comparative advantage. You can tell if the advantage is steep enough to justify long-distance shipping by whether the price + shipping costs is less than the price of producing the product across the street. Unlike governments, this price system is self-correcting; buying at the lowest price is in your best interest, and businessmen who ignore their best interests will eventually lose in competition to wiser businessmen, and in losing their positions or businesses, lose the capability of misdirecting resources...
Of course, there sometimes are external costs that don't get figured into prices. A carbon tax is a way of correcting for the external costs of burning fossil carbon; it raises prices depending on how much carbon is used in producing and transporting the product. It's hard to tell what the tax rate should be, but setting a cap and trade system to the right level is even more difficult - and cap and trade becomes a subsidy to old and inefficient enterprises, paid for by new enterprises, while a tax spreads the load equally.
Yes, there is a big problem with a carbon tax within the USA, just as there is with cap and trade just within the EU or just within a limited group of first-world nations. Either way, without somehow extending it to the rest of the world, it becomes a costly way of making the practitioners feel good about themselves, while exporting part of their carbon generation to foreign lands. But there is a natural way of extending a carbon tax - if you can't persuade other countries to levy the same tax upon themselves, you can tax goods and services imported from them. There's going to be some guesswork in deciding the appropriate tax level, but that's true of setting any tax rate to meet any particular goal...
I'm still stuck on the fact that there are actually people who would profess that riding one's bike requires that a person consume enough extra calories to offset (in terms of food production/transportation etc.)the benefit that the bike rider has created by not driving a petroleum burning vehicle. Seriously?
Do people who drive cars... uh.. not eat? Or do they really eat so much less than people who bike or walk? *heavy skepticism*
How could anyone possibly take that seriously?
Its true that your average bear doesn't have a good concept of the precise amount of carbon generated by various farming and transportation processes, but what you save when you don't drive is a lot more transparent.
j'adore mon velo wrote: Do people who drive cars... uh.. not eat? Or do they really eat so much less than people who bike or walk? *heavy skepticism* How could anyone possibly take that seriously?
Uhm...the "anyone" in question also ride bikes?
A little healthy exercise is a good thing, but it does boost your metabolism and cause greater amounts of eating. Granted, most people who use a bike for a morning work commute probably don't cause the kind of tissue stress that would result in a huge boost in food consumption, but that doesn't mean it can be ignored. Transportation consumes additional energy, regardless of whether that energy is obtained from a fossil fuel or a food store.
MEH: all based on poll results and spurious science.
Oh no, quite wrong. It's all based on my irrefutable and impressive gut.
PaulD: Just a few alternatives to "not working" including riding mass transit, carpooling, moving closer to work, telecomuting, arranging longer work days with shorter work weeks and riding a bike.
We've had those options for years now. How are those working out so far?
Mass transit is inconvenient or nonexistent in most cities. Carpooling sounds great until you actually try it (no, I'm not getting up at 4AM just so I can carpool with you because that's when you go in to work). Moving closer to work is quite often impossible (I live closer to work than most of my coworkers, and I'm 10 miles away). I work at an Internet-based company and telecommuting is not an option. Neither is my company willing to modify my work schedule, and I can't simply order them to change. Riding a bike 10 miles in Dallas rush hour traffic is simply not an option for a 320-pound 40-year-old in 100-degree Texas summers.
These tired nostrums of how easy it would be to just change our lifestyle and work patterns are simply ill-considered. Easy to say, not so easy to do.
If the planet is getting warmer because of this, then we will have to learn to adapt to it.
Unfortunately most of the adaptation will take the form of a lot of people getting dead, if the scientists gloomier predictions come true. But at least I probably won't be around to see it.
I tend to agree, based on what I’ve read mitigation rather than prevention would probably be the most efficient course of action. Most of the “damage” being attributed to AGW in the Stern Report was due to demographic changes (e.g. more people living on the costs so more potential property damage, injuries and deaths due to greater exposure to hurricanes and rising sea levels) rather than to changes in the environment (e.g. more and stronger hurricanes or rising sea levels). Add to that the fact that our descendents will probably be much richer and have much more advanced technology than we do and future mitigation (should the problem arise) becomes cheaper still.
So no, Megan’s proposal to cripple the United State economy with a carbon tax that will lead to higher energy transportation, and food costs not to mention lead to further outsourcing of US industry to countries that won’t go along with this idea and gladly buy up the oil we won’t be using doesn’t appeal to me at all.
Of course, putting "carbon tariffs" on imports requires some way of figuring out how much carbon is used in their production. If they are set wrong, then they won't be accomplishing what they are supposed to accomplish.
Regardless, they'll drive prices up for the US and encourage foreign companies to sell less to the US. And they won't have any affect on foreign-foreign trade and foreign domestic trade.
EI
liberalrob wrote: Riding a bike 10 miles in Dallas rush hour traffic is simply not an option for a 320-pound 40-year-old in 100-degree Texas summers.
Actually, in those circumstances, that should be the first option...
"Granted, most people who use a bike for a morning work commute probably don't cause the kind of tissue stress that would result in a huge boost in food consumption, but that doesn't mean it can be ignored. Transportation consumes additional energy, regardless of whether that energy is obtained from a fossil fuel or a food store."
i'm sorry, but the notion that the amount of carbon expended by burning fossil fuels is comparable to the amount of carbon expended by bicycling or walking and the food needed to sustain such activities is ludicrous.
granted i'm not pulling from nay statistics here, but based on personal and anecdotal evidence, people who engage in moderate exercise are not consuming volumes more food than those whose sole means of transportation is vehicular (at times i'd venture to say it's less...). If the concern for the carbon output of exercisers "can't be ignored," then what is a better option? immobility?
Actually, in those circumstances, that should be the first option...
Ha ha, very funny.
You can approximate the energy use required to bring you food by looking at the price. Every component of the costs which go into the price ends up as energy consumption. First, of course, is the direct cost of energy consumption to transport the item. Then there's the energy cost to make the transport vehicles, which is capitalized, and which is factored into the transport cost. The various distributors along the way charge for their direct energy costs, as well as the enerrgy cost of building the distribution centers, etc. All the employee wages can be considered energy costs, as the employees will spend money on energy, and on things which require energy to produce. The farmer's compensation covers energy costs for planting, irrigating, and harvesting, and transport to the first distributor, and wages for the labor required. All these costs can be considered energy costs, as well.
Thus whatever is cheaper in the grocery store takes less energy to produce. (Solar energy in agricultural products is free, and not accounted for.) Unless some significant part of the energy required in one stage of the system is provided by nuclear power or hydro power, the carbon costs are similar for all the energy inputs which add to the price. So if Chilean grapes are cheaper than California grapes, buy them - they took less carbon to produce.
I think sam hit it on the head (as did Thorley, later) - no carbon tax is going to reduce oil consumption, unless some world dictatorship forces it on everyone... a solution I think radically worse on all levels than no carbon tax at all.
As long as some states (China? India?) are either not taxing or are cheating, and in any case, so long as the tax is not so high that it makes people prefer Anything Rather Than Oil, all the oil pumped will be used.
And, of course, until prices drop precipitously, there'll be no reason at all to pump less, because it'll still make rather more money than not pumping it.
Net effect on carbon use: Roughly zero.
(Not to mention, a la Thorley, the ruinous effects on the economies of any state foolish enough to implement such a tax, compared to the benefits which are slight and nearly notional even based on the IPCC model that I wouldn't trust as a doorstop.
See Lomborg on the wisdom of spending money (or destroying wealth with carbon taxes) on "preventing" that rather than on amelioration of misery in other means, and I can't even fathom the calculus involved, unless on resorts to Gaia-worship, rather than effects on human beings.
Then again, I've been consistent and open in my opposition to a carbon tax as useless and based on exceedingly flimsy assumptions, so my thinking it's a poor solution is no surprise, is it?)
Anthony: Not quite; some things are more expensive because they're just kinda hard to grow (or at very least take a long time to get from planting to production, and the existing supply is insufficient for demand at a low price, demand being trend or cycle-based.)
Thorly, I agree with you on all points in your last comment except this:
"So no, Megan’s proposal to cripple the United State economy with a carbon tax that will lead to higher energy transportation, and food costs not to mention lead to further outsourcing of US industry to countries that won’t go along with this idea and gladly buy up the oil we won’t be using doesn’t appeal to me at all.
I always assume that a carbon tax means a shift of tax policy. At the start the tax should be offset by tax cuts in other areas leaving us with as close as possible to our current tax mix. The carbon tax then allows us to modify our behavior to lower our taxes. Shouldn't hurt the economy. As for globably unfair, the national situation would be the same now: the effective tax rate of the nations determines the advantage of imports/exports. I couldn't care less about CO2 emmissions and see the lower energy prices for the developing world as a plus.
"all the oil pumped will be used."
I always thought that part of the point of a carbon tax was to make marginal oil ventures unprofitable and thus reduce the volume of oil pumped. Given that a lot of the most environmentally unfriendly oil is in Canada (tar sands), this might be easy to suppress as a source.
Carbon released will eventually be used to build biomass and so the rate of use is as important as the total amount consumed.
Or at least this is how I understand the argument (but few people could be less of an expert on carbon taxes than me so a silly error could have crept in).
"PaulD: Just a few alternatives to "not working" including riding mass transit, carpooling, moving closer to work, telecommuting, arranging longer work days with shorter work weeks and riding a bike.
We've had those options for years now. How are those working out so far?"
People respond to price incentives that are presented to them. So given current gasoline prices and the trade-offs involved with alternatives, most people choose a very inefficient method of getting to work (i.e. they drive to work by themselves in a car). If price incentives change (i.e. the price of gasoline continues to increase) more people will choose to use more energy efficient means to commute. I think this is self-evident and I also think we are already seeing it happen.
I live in a mid-western city and usually take the bus to work, more because I am frugal than because I am green. Ten years ago when gasoline was much less expensive, the bus I rode was mostly empty. Now it is almost always full. If the price of gasoline continues to increase, I think the bus company will need to add additional buses to my route.
Ten years ago I did not know anyone who telecommuted. Now I know many people who work from their homes at least one day a week and a few who work full-time from their homes.
At current prices, Americans use energy very inefficiently. I can think of a million-and-one relatively small adjustments that I could make that taken together would significantly cut back on my energy consumption. I haven't adopted such changes yet because energy costs are low compared to the convenience energy consumption provides.
Price, question partially answered.
I live 35-50mins from work in traffic. I get about 26.6 mpg in my mazda, the vaste majority driving to work in traffic. I spend way more money on food than on gas.
But, the question now is, if there was a practical, safe way for me to bike the 18 miles to work, would my food bill go up more than the $35 a week a spend on gas? Maybe not (probably not), but, doing it every day, it's probably close (the route is likely to be longer than the 18 miles and won't be flat too).
Of course, the infascructure to provide me a way to bike it probably costs a whole lot more. And I would only be doing it for about 1/3-1/2 of the year (weather and daylight are limiting. I don't see myself biking 1.5 hours twice a day in the dark.).
That said, if someone wants to build a bike free-way for me, I'm all for it.
Aaron, I don’t doubt your sincerity (nor that of Megan, Greg, or any of the more “right-leaning” supporters of a carbon tax) on this point but I just don’t agree with this assumption based on everything we’ve seen of “temporary” taxes such as the phone tax used to finance the Spanish American War or the death tax or other economic controls that were supposed to be in place just long enough to deal with the Great Depression. Once it’s there, it’s just another revenue stream for the government and any tax cuts can always be undone (or worse) by a subsequent Congress and administration. Particularly when those future Congresses and administrations are dealing with shortfalls in Medicare and Social Security.
Add to that the fact that the overwhelming majority of supporters of a carbon tax are decidedly not free-market supporters and I would bet every dime I could beg, borrow or steal that any carbon tax would ultimately wind up being in addition to the current tax burden or worse.
Maybe next year I'll track my gas dollars and milage and food dollars and biking milage.
Thorley, I completely agree. That is the nature of government. I couldn't support a carbon tax without permanent offsetting tax cuts.
Okay, as a bike and bus commuter, here's my contribution to the wasteful biking theory.
First, I'll assume that food purchased from a fast food outlet is going to represent far more carbon waste than the groceries that usually make up my lunch.
If I drive, I have the option of stopping at all manner of fast food outlets for breakfast or lunch.
When I ride my bike and especially when I ride the bus, I have fewer. I may hit an on-route bakery once or twice a week, but maybe, with less mobility, I'll eat less fast food, be healthier and save the environment.
There's already a significant tax on oil - the members of OPEC have agreed to sell oil at a significantly higher price than it costs to produce. Other producers set their prices to match OPEC prices, and keep the price of oil high - significantly higher than the price would be if there were private property rights and a free world market in oil production.
There is some fungibility between coal and oil, but I haven't yet seen a car which runs on coal.
We could get the effect of a higher carbon tax by persuading the large producers in OPEC to raise the price of oil even further - some electric power production might switch to coal, but vehicle use would be harder-pressed to do so. Or, as suggested above, we could damage the capacity of yet another oil-producing nation to produce or export its oil, and let market forces do their thing.
Just a comment on the theme that some mentioneds that ultimately nothing will happen at any meaningful level (as far as AGW is concerned).
That's probably true, but what worries me is that some demagoguing politician will succeed in getting some ridiculous tax passed. An extra 40cents on gas or something past off as "just a mere" 1% payroll tax.
None of these things will do anything meaningful to fight the problem but it will certainly pay for a lot of neat government programs.
I don't doubt the sincerity of a lot of AGW proponents, but I down the sencerity of virtually every politician calling for a financial solution that does not correspondingly decrease taxes equivilantly in other areas. They are simply after more money and this is another way to grab it.
tps12 wrote: The ideal tariff would be one that convinces other countries to adopt the same carbon tax as the US so as to avoid paying the tariff.
Or, to merely launch a set of punitive countertarriffs and start a good-old-fashioned trade war. The arguments would go something along the lines of, "we're smaller and much poorer than you, a carbon tax would cause local economic impact of [insert the same arguments recapped in this thread], and frankly, you just suck!"
Shoot, we could undo the past twenty years of globalization and free trade in about two. And every country could then go back to producing as much of their needs locally or regionally as possible, at higher prices and greater inefficiencies due to lack of comparative advantage in climate, land, or infrastructure...
Wait, wasn't the point to reduce carbon output? That won't work.
A biker could cause higher carbon emissions than a driver ... if they towed a Toyota to work behind them each day. Accelerating and decelerating a half ton, and keeping a heavy cam shaft rotating constantly even while a vehicle is stopped, are very inefficient. Bicycles, on the otherhand, are engineering marvels. They are more efficient than a human without a bicycle. Biking isn't just faster than walking, it is actually more efficient despite carrying the extra mass of the bike with you on the trip.
In any argument like this, you must keep in mind replacement. Growing the apple pulls carbon out of the air, so you ignore the energy the apple itself provides when doing the carbon calculation, and only count the energy needed to transport the apple, advertise the apple, fertilise the apple tree etc. Since, as noted, the gasoline also gets transported and advertised, the apple wins hands down.
Njorl, the carbon in an apple isn't just from the air. I doubt most of it is.
"Growing the apple pulls carbon out of the air"
A yes, but what if you eat an apple while drilling for oil? An apple a day keeps AGW away...
It sure does feel like Al Gore has won when we're actually debating the global consequences of growing apples....
Seriously, Liberal Rob, you might try it all the same.
A couple of years ago, I was a 290 lb, 34 year old cycling to work (30 miles round trip). 1-2 days a week at the start, but up to 4-5 days within about a month. It goes without saying that I saved money (though my tire expenses went through the roof), and I felt better (during the ride and otherwise) almost immediately. Looking better took a bit more time, but it happened.
What I didn't expect was the change in my mood. My coworkers could tell, even before seeing me, if I had ridden that morning, simply due to the fact that I was speaking more loudly and enthusiastically. Showing up to work after a workout made a huge difference in my attitude towards work and my productivity, compared to showing up after sitting in traffic and listening to Howard Stern.
Granted, it wasn't in Dallas heat, but it WAS in Los Angeles heat, which can be at least unpleasant in the summer. And the rush hour traffic was plenty bad, as I rode through a pretty industrial area with factories, refineries, the LA Harbor, and a ludicrous number of semi trucks. I gave it up when daylight saving time ended, out of necessity (I didn't have discretion as to my hours).
So even if the other poster was being flippant, he's right. It IS imperative in your situation, and it probably is possible too.
I would love to bike to work, but simply don't feel safe (and don't know how to manage the clothing change issue). I'd be safer wandering around the sunni triangle with Khomeini T-Shirt on yelling obscenities about peoples mothers and vandelizing property.
I was only flippant about the likelihood of getting good paths built and enough people to use them to make them worthwile.
I seriously support building them even if people might not use them enough, eventually they will. If I had money, I'd contribute cash. I think if there is one thing the goverment should do, it's build roads. Providing people with physical security and means to move about and interact with eachother should be the governments priority. Possibly it's only function.
I'm just too cynical I guess.
LA doesn't compare to Dallas. The humidity in Dallas is near 100% most of the time. Still ridable, just don't ride hard.
"I work at an Internet-based company and telecommuting is not an option." Liberalrob, that's a total non sequitur. I'd expect an internet-based company to have a few jobs that really require physical presence (one sys-admin physically present to deal with hardware breakdowns, a receptionist, janitors, and security guards) but everything else could be done remotely - unless management just can't figure out how to manage without watching you...
"Njorl, the carbon in an apple isn't just from the air. I doubt most of it is." Aaron, where else would an apple tree get carbon except from photosynthesis of CO2 + H2O to sugar and oxygen?
"I work at an Internet-based company and telecommuting is not an option." Liberalrob, that's a total non sequitur. I'd expect an internet-based company to have a few jobs that really require physical presence (one sys-admin physically present to deal with hardware breakdowns, a receptionist, janitors, and security guards) but everything else could be done remotely - unless management just can't figure out how to manage without watching you...
Not only is management uncomfortable with not being able to reassure themselves that I'm actually working and not sitting in my recliner watching The View (as opposed to posting on Megan's blog from the office), but they have just taken steps to eliminate our means of connecting from home (as our new firewall product which we are testing on ourselves does not currently support VPN).
My previous employer, which was much larger, had a similar reluctance to allowing work from home. While lip service is paid to the notion of the mobile workforce, my experience has been that management culture is loath to allow it at their workplace.
Seriously, Liberal Rob, you might try it all the same.
I would either be run over or keel over from heat stroke, in short order. No thanks.
Soil and fertilizer. Most carbon is in the earth.
Cute experiment
3g plant, 1.25g comes from soil. Most the rest is from water, then air.
Can't find a good break down of what percentage of plant matter is from water, soil, and air anywhere. Definitly would like to see. It looks like most non-water tree mass is from air. I'm suprised this isn't easier to find.
I love how people are saying "it's unpossible". The major source of carbon emissions comes from what is necessary to grow the apple. The apple serves a carbon sink. It does however need some sort of fertilizer, some sort of pest control, some sort of attention, some irrigation, harvesting, sorting, transport, storage...
All of these things create carbon emissions (or their equivalent, such as methane), even if the farmer was using stone age techniques (only human and animal power, no refrigeration, organic everything...). Driving your SUV gets competitive to ahead because it's a repository of all sorts of activity long, long ago and has very few current sources of carbon outputs. Farming has lots of little (and not so little) sources, many hidden from first glance, that sum up to quite a bit.
Saying "I don't believe you, there's no chance in hell" simply means that you are innumerate, unfamiliar with science and engineering, and should have no further input into any discussion that relies on any sort of technical knowledge or understanding. The appropriate response is rather "are you sure? how did you get that result? what about x,y, and z?". The result may be incorrect but following the scientific method is moral, important AND useful. Honest scientists and engineers know how screwy models can be and how easy it is to miss or flub a variable.Going into global warming "heresy is evil, my IPCC is theh perfect truth you heathen" mode is less than helpful.
Is it your position that the IPCC is composed of dishonest scientists and engineers, then?
There is a consensus that there is global warming.
There is a consensus that there is a human component to global warming. My gut is part of this consensus.
My gut also tells me that there would be less global warming if that human component was reduced.
I don't need to know much more than that to make my decision.
If Bjorn Lomborg is right then I've advocated wasting some money (on things that are probably good for us to do anyway). If he's wrong then he's advocated the possibly preventable deaths of millions (or billions). The decision seems pretty easy to me.
Despite my uncertainty about the actual extent of that human action is warming the planet, combined with my uncertainties about how much the planet will warm in the future, how much a CO2 tax will effect that, and what the actual results of warming will be - I might support a carbon tax - If and perhaps only if -
1 - It did not result in a net tax increase. I don't want a larger part of the economy to be controlled by the government. If you have a carbon tax than you have to cut other taxes, preferably combined with an overall reform and simplification.
2 - It was not the first of a new wave of target taxes designed to influence behavior
But how is there anyway to be sure or even just confident that either one of these would be the case?