I read stuff like this and I think, no wonder we're getting nowhere selling lower carbon initiatives. Too much writing and blogging on the topic of global warming seems to consist of urban dwellers saying to everyone else "You're just going to have to accept the fact that your life is going to suck" in their best third-grade dragon-teacher voice, and then getting surprised and angry when the people they're talking to call them selfish, elitist loons.
Of course, a large portion of my blogging on the topic also consists of saying, "Well, I'm afraid your life is going to suck", and I should strive harder to avoid sounding like I'm happy as a clam that the rest of America has to lean into the strike zone and take one for the team. I'm not. I think that if the planet is warming up, you're going to have to give up driving so much, and I'm going to have to give up flying, and this is not fun. I like driving as much as you do. I . . . well, I hate flying, and would happily never do it again. But I like being places that aren't Washington DC.
I understand that people's desires for large houses in leafy suburbs are every bit as valid as my ardent desire to live near the peaceful hum of traffic. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a policy that effects everyone equally, and the painful job of being an adult is doing things we don't like because they're the morally right thing to do. Assuming arguendo that global warming is happening, and is anthropogenic, the right thing for our society to do is try to make our economy more efficient. Unless we can figure out a better way. But it isn't enough to say, "we ought to figure out a better way" and go back to making the icecaps melt, as so many libertarian think tanks do; until we actually do so, we should be striving for greater efficiency.
But having said all that, if I lived somewhere where long drives were mandatory, I'd be pretty hopping mad if a lot of city dwellers not only came along and told me I was going to have to use less gas, but did so without a trace of sympathy--indeed, spoke to me as if I really deserved to suffer for some unnamed environmental sins. It sucks. I feel your pain, as much as an urban dweller can, anyway. If I seem to be saying otherwise, it's not because I am gleefully wishing for your destruction, but rather because I'm trying to show you that the changes won't be quite as dreadful as you perhaps imagine--it is possible to live a happy and fulfilling life at higher densities. But I'm sorry you can't have your druthers.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Megan,
The really big houses aren't in leafy suburbs, since those new developments don't have trees yet, just sickly propped up saplings. It's older suburbs that are leafy.
I'm always somewhat skeptical when the something that needs to be done is something that affects "them" but has significantly less of an impact on "us".
Most of us know it is really urban heat islands that are causing global warming as the world has increasingly urbanized for centuries.
The pastoral suburbs and exurbs reduce global warming as residents plant trees and grasses where open farm fields, often denuded by the plow, once stood.
I'd be pretty hopping mad if a lot of city dwellers not only came along and told me I was going to have to use less gas, but did so without a trace of sympathy--indeed, spoke to me as if I really deserved to suffer for some unnamed environmental sins
Particularly if the sanctimonious city dweller likes to take vacations in Israel and Brazil. Like Ezra Klein.
Considering 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is due to natural water vapor, and that the percent of CO2 responsible is .117 percent, of which 3 percent is of the man made variety, doesn't it seem far fetched to attribute real responsibility to humans. To me this certainly suggests, that while there is in fact a very real and cumulative climate change occurring (as others have in the past) leaping to the conclusion that we bear the brunt of its source is a gross distortion of reality.
I know this information has not escaped intelligent minds in the vast public discourse of available data, and so I am curious as to how we can still rationalize the "better safe than sorry" mentality, especially being a community that is supposedly so aware of the far greater and immediate consequences of intentional economic stagnation, particularly for the third world.
But I'm sorry you can't have your druthers.
Really? Try to stop me.
As someone who live in option 3, I feel the burbinite's anger, your hunger, and my poverty.
Rural America -- the part that actually produces food -- might deserve a slight consideration in your speculation.
Fortunately, I knew people who got around with horse and buggies, my grandmother, a poor Arcadian, was proud as could be that she won a number of horse races riding bareback; perhaps her life's only shot at glamour. And I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty certain I'm one of the few regular posters you've got here capable of feeding people right now.
Part of the efficiency you suggest we should strive for might include raising chickens, dairy goats, and vegetables in those 'burbs -- though they'd have to be less leafy, sunlight would become a valuable commodity for energy and food growth. And community by community, drastic revision of zoning laws, planning board priorities, and association by-laws; generally with a goal to getting rid of most except the ones protecting water.
I think there is a good chance that a not insignificant portion of the population would prefer a slightly warmer planet to living at Megan's preferred population density.
As for me, the skiing is bad enough here in the mid-Atlantic and I'm hoping the predictions of a wetter colder winter are accurate.
Assuming arguendo that global warming is happening, and is anthropogenic, the right thing for our society to do is try to make our economy more efficient.
1: You left out a step: assuming that the global warming is a bad thing. Unless, of course, you're one of those religious zealots who believe that "mankind changing the planet" is always a "bad thing".
In which case we can have a discussion about you refraining from forcing your religious beliefs on the rest of us. :-)
2: I'm a capitalist. I'm a big fan of "making the economy more efficient". So let's get rid of all those subsidies for "green" technologies that make the economy less efficient (action A can be done economically, action B is only "economical" if it's subsidized. That means B is less efficient than A).
3: You asked a while back for proof the planet isn't warming. Will the BBC work for you?:
"Global temperatures for 2008 will be slightly cooler than last year"
Now, they go on to feed a song and dance about how this is really all just part of "global warming". But, the first rule of science is that it's falsifiable: it makes predictions, that can be tested, and found either true or false.
Exactly what are the testable, and tested predictions of the AGWers?
I've come to the conclusion that nothing substantial will be done by Americans to combat global climate change until something really dramatic happens, i.e., New York City going under water. By then it will be too late (probably already is). Such is human nature.
http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/427962
...the right thing for our society to do is try to make our economy more efficient...
This is true. It's also true that we should be trying to figure out how to get every child a pony. But in order to figure out the right level of investment we should take away from other goals to invest in these goals, we need a dollar-denominated estimate of the utility they represent.
The best attempt at an objective calculation of that utility we have is the Stern report. (I would argue that, when faced with having to pick values for debatable variables, Stern systematicly tended to pick values that produced high utilitiy, but at least he made a serious attempt.) That valuation corresponds to a gas tax of about 90 c/gal, less than the price of gas has fluxuated in the last year. So it would appear that (speaking a bit polemicly, here) the best answer we have for the appropriate level of investment toward this goal is: it's in the noise.
Why would that change anything, Szczech? New Orleans is *already* mostly below water, and yet we dried it out. Compared to that, what are a few levees along lower Manhattan? After all, most of that island is well above high tide.
Saying "get used to the fact that your life is going to suck" is very different from "get used to the fact that we are going to undertake active measures to MAKE your life suck".
As for global warming portion of the post: the key phrase here is "assuming arguendo" - which is usually used to say something like "even assuming everything you say is true, the proposed remedy is inappropriate".
It doesn't seem to be the intended use here, but it should be - even assuming that global warming is happening and anthropogenic, the cure may be worse than the disease and the rush to answer the calls of "somebody do something" and "won't somebody PLEASE think of the children" will potentially do more harm than good.
As has been pointed out at www.coyoteblog.com several times, this issue has crowded out every other environmental concern, sucking resources away from proven issues with known remedies.
Greg,
Vulgar Popperianism has to die. The claim is that the climate is warming, not that the weather is warming. The climate is the statistical structure of weather. Therefore, it is not possible to reason from a single year to the overall trend.
"Assuming arguendo that global warming is happening, and is anthropogenic, the right thing for our society to do is try to make our economy more efficient."
Yeah, but that is one Hell of a humongous assumption! How about some actual, you know ... proof, especially re the anthropogenic part?
And you are also making a second implied assumption: Namely that a slightly warmer planet would, on average, be a bad thing for the human race. Maybe it would, but once again, some *proof* would be nice.
Actually, to those of us in flyover country, the thought of New York, Los Angeles, and especially Washington DC sinking under the waves sounds less like a bug and more like a feature. (I live above 5000 feet; I can afford to gloat.)
How about a decade of no warming? How about over the next decade when scientists predict temperatures will stay the same? What's our baseline? The medieval warm period? Or the little ice age? Who picks our baseline?
Here's a thought to consider:
Global warming was blamed for 35,000 deaths in Europe's August 2003 heat wave. Cold, however, has caused 25,000 deaths a year recently in England and Wales— 47,000 in each winter from 1998 to 2000. In Europe, cold kills more than seven times as many as heat does. Worldwide, moderate warming will, on balance, save more lives than it will cost—by a 9-to-1 ratio in China and India. So, if substantially cutting carbon dioxide reverses warming, that will mean a large net loss of life globally.
This is from a Newsweek article by George Will. You can read the whole thing at http://www.newsweek.com/id/43352
I don't see this issue as being any different from any other choice one needs to make in life. I would like to live in a larger apartment, but since they're typically very expensive, I live in the one I do now. I'd also like to have a car in the city, but since traffic and parking are difficult, I don't. It's only because these are new pressures on suburbanites that they might seem out of proportion to what city dwellers have to deal with. Just the way it is.
Your "Future Perfect" post title reminded me of a site that uses pictures to show how the world is moving towards the future perfect.
http://www.janchipchase.com/
Very interesting site.
Kind of hard to have this discussion when, as seen from the comments, lots of us are not able to accept the starting assumption that the problem of global warming is an accepted scientific fact. We will stop you from wrecking our economy over it, if we can. Better convince us first.
I tend to agree more with the responses than with Megan on this one, but assuming everything she wrote was correct, my question would be starting when?
The assumption would be immediately, but as I recall Megan has flown to be at several events recently, so clearly she doesn't see this as starting immediately -- unless she believes it's a moral imperative for suburbanites to drive less but not a moral imperative for urbanites (or just her)to stop flying.
But it was for work? She had to fly?
Doesn't really matter if you think this is a moral issue. If your employer asked you to eat a baby, you wouldn't. You'd quit or at least convince your employer to let you do your job without cannibalism.
When every single person who tells me not to drive abandons air travel, I might -- just might -- think they have true moral passion on the issue. I'll still think their analysis is incorrect, but at least I'll think they're consistent.
As things stand now, I can't think of a single "don't drive" voice that has actually forsaken all non-emergency travel personally.
"Assuming arguendo that global warming is happening, and is anthropogenic, the right thing for our society to do is try to make our economy more efficient. "
Why is it the right thing? Is the cost of shoring up seawalls greater than the gains from opening up the Northwest Passage? What about the gains from longer growing seasons? Show me a negative externality of global warming and I'll find you a positive one.
For what it's worth, I live in a town of 2,200 people where everyone except the public school teachers and a couple of dozen people employed in local retail/restaurants has to commute a minimum of fifteen milies. Before you ask those people to spend half their paycheck just to be able to get to work, why not put **your money** where your mouth is and buy them all Priuses?
We know that the earth has been warmer before, without human CO2 emissions. The medieval warming period was one. The Vikings had dairy farms in Greenland. The name wasn't just clever advertising. Two hundred years later those farms were gone.
The earth has been colder before. Major Henry Knox brought cannon captured British cannon from Fort Ticonderoga down the frozen Hudson river to General Washington at the siege of Boston. The Hudson river doesn't freeze over any more. The Little Ice Age ended in the mid 1800s.
The climate varies naturally. How do you pick out the effects humans cause when the timespan is longer than a human lifetime, and we don't have good records?
Our data is incomplete. The best value for our money right now would be to gather more data. Not more evidence, more data. We aren't doing that the way we should.
If the greens really want us to stop burning fossil fuels, they should directly fund research in solid state physics, electrochemistry, and manufacturing process improvement. They would rather lobby in Washington and hobnob with the rich and powerful. Oh, and lecture us on how we're all sinners.
Fortunately, there are many engineers who like the idea of free power from the sun and quiet, powerful electric cars. If they don't get too distracted chasing government subsidies we'll have working hardware right about the time we really need it.
Anyway, you cannot rearrange all the American cities west of the Alleghenies with a wave of the hand. We go to work with the infrastructure we have, not the infrastructure we want.
Rob Lyman quotes and writes: "But I'm sorry you can't have your druthers.
Really? Try to stop me."
Careful, Rob. Megan voted for Bush, so we know that if she ever becomes Energy Czar she'd be willing to waterboard anyone who gets in her way.
I'm not sure what she's getting at here, anyway. This country isn't going to be giving up driving to any appreciable degree any time soon, the minor recent drop due to fuel prices notwithstanding.
I think that if the planet is warming up, you're going to have to give up driving so much.
But that doesn't follow. It may only mean that I'll have to give up burning gasoline so much, but that's not the only way to make a car go.
And anyway, my commute is already more greenhouse-gas efficient than the densest urban dweller's -- I walk a few feet from the hallway into my office. Not only are there no fossil fuels burned in moving me back and forth, there is also no need to construct, heat and cool office space for me in addition to a house that would sit wastefully empty during the day. Doesn't a home-office (even in a leafy suburban neighborhood) beat a separate home and office in the city along with a twice-daily commute between the two?
Megan is all-in on the self-flagellating Culture War. Call it the War on Self.
Can't we discuss cliamte change policy without reference to red staters making charges of elitism? Is it really a crucial aspect of the discussion?
What brought on this bout of navelgazing from Megan, I wonder?
"Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a policy that effects everyone equally, and the painful job of being an adult is doing things we don't like because they're the morally right thing to do."
Screw that. The morally right thing to do is whatever I want to do. F$%# other people. Poor people can go f$%# themselves and die. With Ron Paul's giant tool.
The original Times op-ed writer was clearly ignorant in what he was writing. The fact that speed is ruled a factor in an accident does not mean that the speed was in excess of some absolute upper boundary limit. That the writer assumed this was so, and then went on to propose such a patently ridiculous solution around these assumptions merely shows he has little or no experience with suburban and rural driving.
Ryan Avent, meanwhile, clearly has some sort of giant chip on his shoulder, since he interpreted a set of valid criticisms of the article made on roughly the above basis to be some sort of gratuitous swipe at east coast urbanites. Then tried to fall back on the merits of density with a bunch of smarmy cracks about accident-prone westerners. I invite him to drive thirty minutes away from the Denver metro area in any generally-eastern direction and then explain what the speed limit is achieving, or where he intends to start planting trees so that there will even be one of those -- or for that matter, anything else -- available for him to smack his car into.
If I seem to be saying otherwise, it's not because I am gleefully wishing for your destruction, but rather because I'm trying to show you that the changes won't be quite as dreadful as you perhaps imagine--it is possible to live a happy and fulfilling life at higher densities.
I don't object to proponents of a higher-density, more transit-oriented lifestyle extolling what they consider to be the benefits of that lifestyle. I just don't think they'll be very successful at persuading others to come around to their view. I think most Americans are already perfectly capable of evaluating the costs and benefits of urban lifestyles vs. suburban/exurban ones. They don't choose the suburbs because they are ignorant of the (alleged) benefits of city life. They choose the suburbs because, all things considered, the suburbs are simply the better alternative for them.
I think Rob Lyman hits the nail on the head -- try to stop me from having my druthers. Welcome to a free society that isn't willing to grant you your assumptions. And even if you're right, why should anyone in the US lean into the strike zone when China and India are bound and determined to lose the game anyway?
The most efficient thing to do would be to develop solutions to the consequences of global warming as and if they arrive (dikes in New York, drilling rigs in the ice-free Arctic ocean, scuba diving tours of the lost islands of Atlantis -- I mean, the Maldives). Sacrificing the American economy on an environmental Pascal's Wager that will be made meaningless by the Third World anyway strikes me as one of the least efficient things we could do.
"I think that if the planet is warming up, you're going to have to give up driving so much, and I'm going to have to give up flying, and this is not fun."
I think you're half right. I think it'll be orders of magnitude easier to develop ground vehicle transportation that doesn't emit greenhouse gasses then it will be to significantly modify the geographical dispersion of our population. Airplanes, on the other hand, will likely be spewing out greenhouse gasses until long after I'm dead and buried.
Personally, I couldn't care less as to whether global warming is real or not. IMO, the risk of transferring trillions of dollars of wealth to unfriendly oil-producting countries poses a much larger threat than climate change.
Megan,
I think that if the planet is warming up, you're going to have to give up driving so much, and I'm going to have to give up flying, and this is not fun. I like driving as much as you do. I . . . well, I hate flying, and would happily never do it again. But I like being places that aren't Washington DC.
But why do you think that? Instead of giving up driving so much, why can't I replace my car with one that's cleaner and more fuel-efficient, to achieve the same environmental benefit? As a practical and political matter, I don't think austerity is going to work as a solution to global warming. The only real long-term answer is technology. Technology that allows people to maintain their existing lifestyles in ways that are more environmentally sustainable.
At the rate automobile engine and fuel technology is advancing, I don't see any serious reason why people should have to drive less in the interests of protecting the environment.
Making flying greener may be a bigger technological challenge, at least in the short-term. But in the long run technology is the answer to that also.
Another thing to consider, Megan: Maybe you like city-living so much because you're single? Try telling a family with four or five children to live in a city apartment and that they should enjoy it. And if everyone had to live in cities, it would probably discourage a lot of people from having more than two kids, which would cause our population to decline.
JD has it right. The advantages of being single or childless in the city are less commuting and better lifestyle. However, life changes with kids. The reason a lot of people I know don't live in the city is that you pay a lot in taxes and get services that SUCK, especially if you have kids. Notably, schools. Private school is approx $20K per kid per year, all post tax. Live in the county: taxes are lower, services better, and local taxes are deductable from Federal income taxes. Pretty clear difference. Then, a people who can leave the city, the city declines and you get a vicious cycle.
This is the market at work, in response to various taxes and incentives. Remove the government distortions on the market, and you will see a different result.
The people who will ostensibly be harmed by global warming are the coastal-dwelling folk who are threatened by rising sea levels. I'm not one of them. My response to their request that I drive less is to offer a counter suggestion: move somewhere else.
Megan,
I live in a middle market city. Most rental housing exists a good distance from both the downtown business area (puny) and the large office parks in the populated west end (vast). Even if I move to the more densely populated downtown where rentals are more available, I'll still have a 15 minute commute to work, along which bikers dare rush-hour traffic at their mortal peril and sidewalks mock pedestrians too old to care about a sippy cup.
Such middle-market cities simply don't have the existing infrastructure, or funding initiative to invest in the same, to support a large scale development of a functional public transport system.
I'm resigned to the bitter pills ahead but I just do not see how such car-intensive middle-market cities can survive.
Personally I'm less bothered by the attitude with which the message is conveyed (although that often doesn't help) than the fact that the speaker usually doesn't have the first clue what she is talking about, and instead of having an actual argument for why the life-sucky-making measures are necessary (or even helpful), thinks she gets to assume it "arguendo" and everyone else should just nod.
If we all stop buying cars, then I guess life is really going to suck for the millions of people who build them, sell them, repair them, accessorize them, collection parking fees on them, etc. So what are those people going to do - become paid bloggers at the Atlantic (well, I understand Sullvian will be creating a spot soon)? Funny how the Dems talk about the awfulness of the hollowing out of American industry, yet promote economic and environmental policies that are designed to accelerate that very process.
I grew up in the 'burbs and I want my kids to have the same opportunities to play in the yard, play street hockey and ride their bikes that I did. I like living in the city now - it is a lot of fun when you are young and without kids, but it's not where I want to raise the next generation. As a child of the upper west side, maybe Megan can't appreciate those things that she never had?
It seems curious to me that people who wish to impose costs simply have not presented specific items to spend money on besides abatement. Given the coal fired energy projections for India and China...
Anyway, are there actual and specific and time sensitive projects that will be appropriate to undertake to deal with probable nasty results of AGW?
Without such, I find the debate noisy and tedious. I've found myself agreeing regularly with Bjorn Lomborg. Abatement for abatement's sake is rather like digging holes for employment's sake.
Wasn't the article Megan was referring to here about speeding and a proposal to hard-wire cars so they can't go faster than 75 mph in order to reduce speeding-related traffic fatalities? This discussion seems to be about only marginally related topics.
But since we're topic-drifting:
"And even if you're right, why should anyone in the US lean into the strike zone when China and India are bound and determined to lose the game anyway?"
I think this argument is completely wrong, but I also find it very, very difficult to win an argument about why it's completely wrong. Here's my approach. The night before last I was at a diplomatic thing and met the head of a Vietnamese civil-society organization (yes, I too blanch at the vagueness of the term) who was just organizing a conference on climate change and civil society. Vague vague. Anyway, I said, "Vietnam is going to suffer heavily from climate change, but what can Vietnam really do about it? The big outputs are all coming from China, the US, Europe. Even if Vietnam cut its C02 output 90% it wouldn't make much of a difference." He said, "That's not the point. We have to honor our treaty commitments. That is what creates the expectation on others' parts that they will honor their commitments too."
This is coming from Vietnam -- a country whose fundamental profile is exactly the same as China (massive carbon consumer, fast-growing economy, poor). How much is Vietnam really going to deliver on CO2 emissions reductions? Not much at first, and each step will be kicking and scratching. But if there's money and diplomatic pressure in it, they will change fast, and they see that process of participating in international agreements as part of the group formation which gives them leverage to protect themselves against others' emissions. It's simply not true that countries like this don't respond to international pressure.
Brooksfoe - feel free to be a martyr on your own time, but please leave me out of it.
I've posted this before, but one testable prediction of the IPCC is the 2C/century warming trend. And that trend is disproven at the 95% confidence level. Details here. More interesting statistics at Lucia's Blackboard, so look around.
Ryan Avent has exactly the right response to both this post and the previous one.
"I grew up in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina...Like every other kid in a smallish city, I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license. Like many other kids, I drove my first car into the ground and my parents nuts in the process. ...So look, I’m no eastern elite, and I know what it’s like out in real, red, car-dependent America. Spare me your lectures.
"But you know what else? It’s absurd that I even feel the need to pull this all out to defend ideas that are entirely defensible on the merits. It’s absurd that anyone should be expected to take care when arguing about policy lest they offend the delicate sensibilities of ma and pa small town. I know those people, and they’re grown ups, and I believe they can handle the truth. When I’m talking to my dad about funding for rail, I don’t take care to make sure I’m not coming across as excessively elitist. I make my argument and he tells me what he thinks.
"So if you think that a speed limit is a dumb idea, please say so, but spare me your line about how eastern elites don’t get real America. If I make an argument about the social costs of excessive driving and you read into that some elitist disdain for the lives of “real” people, grow up. I’m so sick of this idea that one has to earn the right to make legitimate arguments by having some kind of authentic American life."
This election year has been particularly annoying. THe one thing that is going to make a difference, a rise in the price of carbon based fuels, happens and both parties fall all over themselves to explain how they're going to reverse it. It disgusts me in spite of the fact I think AGW fears are overblown.
Those politicians tripping over each other is the proof that we will do nothing.
Holdfast - then pardon me while I sue you for driving a car, emitting CO2 and destroying the value of my beachfront property. We call these "negative externalities", you may want to look up the term.
Two things that are always neglected when discussing urban density.
1. The carbon emissions and environmental impact of abandoning all of the existing housing stock that is not dense and replacing it with more dense housing.
2. The considerable resistance within existing urban areas to increasing density. The link below is an example of this.
http://stopashbyhighrise.org/
It might make sense to tax carbon to internalize the cost of its negative externalities, but proponents of higher land-use densities and more public transportation may find such a policy counterproductive to their goals. Many transit vehicles emit more carbon per passenger-mile of transportation than passenger cars, and a carbon tax may increase the cost of transit more than it increases the cost of driving. I think the primary effect of such a tax on surface transportation would probably be to accelerate the transition to cleaner cars (trucks, SUVs, etc.), rather than induce a mode switch from cars to transit.
All these comments and none have provided any evidence for the existence of God, er, AGW. Yet the few faithful here repeat that He, er, it is real.
Since I'm agnostic by nature, no one has yet shown me any convincing evidence. I see no reason to take any action on the basis of such weak evidence.
And my carbon footprint surely pales in comparison of nearly every commenter here. Yet I also don't argue that others should take actions on the faith of the true believers who insist that failure to act correctly will result in eternal immolation. Nor do I share the view that unbelievers and apostates should receive particular retribution.
As for the "vulgar Popperian" view, anyone who believes that we have, within just a few decades, come to fully identify, understand, and definitively model the hundreds (probably) of variables at work in weather and climate should make outdoor plans based solely on the forecast for the date five days out. Of course, true believers will probably not challenge their own beliefs in such a manner. As beliefs, these are not open to argument or falsification. Lack of and contrary evidence only ever serves to confirm faith, after which the believer can pride himself on the depth of his devotion.
Oh, and in some circles, you're at least not ostracized for singing from the same hymnal. =)
Brooksfoe - What an awesome attitute - perhaps I too can put your life under a microscope to see what sort of "negative externalities" you generate that I may find to be causes for some suits of my own? Why don't we all just do that - sue each other into the ground until only the John Edwards' of the world have any money? And why do you have beachfront property - you must be RICH - perhaps we should re-distribute some of your wealth for the greater good - maybe some of the illegal immigrants cluttering up my neighborhood could be moved into your living room? Maybe I think that the way yous use your beach is causing erosion of the shoreline, I better regulate it.
Megan, as an economist, aren't you obliged to take data into account when reviewing another economist's theory?
For example, if one of your colleagues said, "We are about to enter an era of hyperinflation unless we take drastic measures right now," wouldn't you check to see if the facts supported his theory before you endorsed his stance?
Have you made any attempt to find out if the planet actually is getting warmer? Because, see, the data say that Earth is cooling.
My guess is that you've never looked at the facts, and that you've taken the position you have based solely on newspaper articles written by people who believe that if Al Gore got the Nobel Peace Prize, he must ipso facto be right.
No. First off, it matters not a whit if global warming is anthropogenic or not. If it is happening, then it should concern people. If it isn't, then it should not. The only difference in the two scenarios is that if it is anthropogenic then the means may be different -- i.e., taxing different things.
Second, as many others have already pointed out: only if 'making our economy more efficient' is the lowest-cost means of preventing damages, is it the right thing to do. If there is some other lower cost way of dealing with global warming, then it should be our choice.
Third, 'making our economy more efficient' is part of what capitalism does. It does not need a politician to tell it to, because of X or Y. It does so regardless of politics, because efficiency is profitable.
But back to dealing with AGW: the best estimates I have seen, is that "do nothing" is by far and away the lowest cost method for dealing with global warming. It also has the wonderful property of being easy to achieve, politically. Not to mention morally acceptable from a libertarian POV.
Nothing to do here. Move along.
Megan, this post shows you buying into the progressive worldview. Not only are you pushing the ideas that AGW is real and should be addressed, but you are also pushing the more fundamental idea that politics is the best way to go about addressing it. Gack. Most people hate politics. Just leave us alone, and we'll do fine.
Again: most normal people? We hate politics. The idea of asking anyone, politicians or otherwise, for permission to do anything rubs us exactly wrong. The idea of hammering out consensus in a committee? Horror. The idea of working day and night to maybe, possibly, make some tiny change for the better, is even worse. What a fucking waste of time!! Write your Congressman! Please, no. Leave us alone.
Look, I don't care about actually "sacrificing", by which you mean 'paying a little more at the pump'. What I do mind is being asked to care about the possibility of someone dying in a typhoon 100 years from now. I can consider the notion abstractly, but I feel no emotion about it whatsoever. I don't want to care about that; I've got plenty of more immediate concerns. You -- you're paid to blog about this crap. I'm just a guy with a job and a family. I just want prices to reflect actual costs, more or less, so I can get on with buying things that I value above their money price and economizing on the stuff I think is too much. Possible unjust externalities that I am .0000000001% responsible for, perpetrated against people whose grandparents are not yet born, do not interest me very much. If their grandparents want to be concerned, that's more reasonable. Let them move away from the coast (or just choose not to have children).
And I also mind that you are, with such wonderfully clueless aloofness, "trying to show [me] that the changes won't be quite as dreadful as [I] imagine." No, thanks. Although I can imagine quite a lot, I don't imagine these nearly imperceptible changes will be at all wrenching, to me or anyone else. What you are likely to show me is much more wrenching: you and the progressives, imposing stiff taxes on me, and spending them on things having nothing to do with global warming. And you'll show me yourself, walking to and fro in a city with wretched schools to your small apartment with your fashionable friends with no kids anywhere in sight. If I did live like that, it would be wrenching. But why should I? I have the responsibility to my family not to.
Let me put that another way. I, like other parents, won't live in most places in my fair city because it would consign my kids to unacceptably bad public schools. I'm not rich enough to afford private schools around here. Yet you want me to live in the city, like you do, so I can walk everywhere. (Nevermind that my job is in the burbs, too. It could be forced to move, too.)
I think perhaps we can agree that fixing the schools in Baltimore would be easier than fixing global warming. These schools are, after all, purely a human construct. They do not require invariant solar flux. They are fully within the USA; Chinese pedagogy does not affect them. No international agreement needs to be signed and respected to fix them.
So, fix the schools here first, and then maybe I'll credit you with being able to deal with global warming. Certainly, I'd be more willing to live in the inner city in that case. If you can't do the easy stuff, why should I give you any credence when you claim you have a plan for the hard stuff? Or when you don't even have a plan, but just talk about how I'm going to have to sacrifice?
Assuming arguendo that global warming is happening, and is anthropogenic,
You lost me.
brooksfoe quoteth Avent: "I grew up in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina...Like every other kid in a smallish city, I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license. Like many other kids, I drove my first car into the ground and my parents nuts in the process. ...So look, I’m no eastern elite, and I know what it’s like out in real, red, car-dependent America. Spare me your lectures."
Whaaa? THAT is his counterpoint? He "understands" rural/suburban car culture because he grew up in a "smallish city" in the eastern half of North Carolina, a state that is effectively part of the dense east coast megalopolis, and divided up by portions of no less than EIGHT highways in the Interstate Highway system?
*boggle*
Call it a hunch, brooksfoe, but I suspect you would have no patience whatsoever for this type of logic if it took the form of "I know what it's like to be low income, why back when I was in college I..."
If those beating the AGW drum had even the slightest belief in their hypothesis, they would be unequivocally for more nuclear power and the recycling of spent fuel. I'm thankful that Obama has at least expressed some tentative moves in this direction given the long history of Democratic opposition to nuclear power. American refusal to recycle spent fuel has accomplished nothing of any value, and if proliferation of American fuel was truly a risk someone would have stolen a nuclear missile by now. AGW proponents rigorously avoid those proven solutions which would allow us to move away from fossil fuels in favor of maintaining a worldview which demands more taxes and regulation.
Most of the sacrifices called for by the AGW crowd are accomplish nothing, even if we assume AGW is true.
I don't think you quite understand the level of animus, no outright Malice that such discussions--let alone policies--will bring.
When I read the phrase, "But I'm sorry you can't have your druthers." my first thought was to drop an F bomb in the comments sections. I don't use that word, and think less of people who do. But there it was, without a moment’s reflection.
My gut response is that people like me are essentially at war with people who hold that opinion. I mean our differences of opinion are irreconcilable and that we have no common ground on this issue. It is zero sum. Civility doesn’t enter into it. We’re going have to fight over this.
Anyone who presumes to rule me for the Greater Good—which is exactly what this policy amounts to. Arguing that it's true, and that the government Must fix this, doesn't change that—is someone who causes me to welcome global warming out of the spiteful hope that it will drown coastal cities and force the inhabitants to make costly moves farther inland.
You might say that that statement is conclusive evidence that people like me aren’t serious about the issue. I’m saying it’s no longer an issue of who’s right. It’s an issue of who’s politically stronger.
Government policy will never fix global warming. When people and business have natural (not government imposed) financial incentives to combat global warming and it’s effects, they will do so decisively.
Let me put it another way. I don’t have a problem with people who disagree with me. I don’t have a problem with people who hate me and use unpleasant invective against me. People are entitled to think and feel what they want. I don’t think I know everything, and I’m not so arrogant that I feel absolute confidence that the other guy is wrong. I’m not bothered by being told I’m wrong, or a complete idiot.
But when someone gives me orders… I’m no longer above the fray. To any such, I say without a trace of mutual respect, “F*&@ you pal.”
I beg your pardon. But, when it comes right down to it, I just want to say it again. Your lot can give ordering me around a shot. Maybe you’ll manage. But you’ll have to beat the rest of us first.
"I understand that people's desires for large houses in leafy suburbs are every bit as valid as my ardent desire to live near the peaceful hum of traffic."
Megan, you too are going to have to give up something. If people begin to drive less, then your beloved "peaceful hum of traffic" will slowly die away.
A larger problem here is that Megan, and people like her, thinks she gets to slap the phrase "negative externality" on anything she doesn't like without actually taking the trouble to calculate or even estimate the effect (or even the sign) of that externality. Which, in her case, I wouldn't trust her to do accurately in the first place.
The phrase "X is a negative externality" as written by Megan McArdle should be parsed as follows: "I, Megan McArdle, don't like it when people do X and think they should be taxed for it". The same applies to a large percentage of others who have taken to using the phrase.
And that, not 'elitist attitude' by itself but rather an unjustified, baseless elitist attitude, gets closer to the truth of why these discussions bother me.
"He "understands" rural/suburban car culture because he grew up in a "smallish city" in the eastern half of North Carolina"
aMouse, the point he's making is who the fuck cares where he grew up? Maybe he grew up in a ten-mile-high stratospheric tower with a population of ten million where people get around in maglev capsules driven by solar wind. Who cares where I grew up? Who cares where you grew up? People who drive cars too much burn too much damn fuel, emit too much CO2, make the US economy too vulnerable to oil price shocks, and make our planet too warm, ultimately drowning New Orleans, Florida and Ho Chi Minh City and turning productive land to desert. Also, they generate too much traffic, require too much public subsidy for roads and parking lots, and so on. This remains true even if the person making the argument is actually a Turing machine.
The main point is about the sinister logic of insisting that people first prove they are regular Americans before they are allowed to make an argument. And that's what the political discourse has increasingly been doing since the Palin pick plunged us back into the culture wars. I know people from Nebraska and Oklahoma who agree with Ryan Avent and disagree with you, so where you come from is really neither here nor there. It's not like the "nigger" issue where you only get to say it if you're black; you get to argue for more public transit even if you ride the subway, just as you get to argue against higher gas taxes even if you drive a car.
Doesn't the "Well, I'm afraid your life is going to suck" conclusion apply even more strongly to places like China and India and, yes, brooksfoe, Vietnam, than to rural America? To really slow down or stop the global warming that we're assuming arguendo, wouldn't we have to ask people already living in poverty to give up much of their chance at growth in return?
I'd give more weight to the calls from relatively privileged people for lifestyle sacrifice from relatively underpriveleged people if, listening to people like brooksfoe talk, I didn't get the feeling that the "process of participating in international agreements as part of the group formation" is in itself the goal here, not preventing environmental catastrophe.
Left out of this discussion is the possibility of shifting to a transportation technology that does not pour massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. That's a lot more doable than uprooting tens of millions of people and cramming them into cities. Yes, there would still have to be adjustments mase since such a technology is apt to be more expnensive than fossil fuels, but still it would be cheaper than the alternatives.
I am unconvinced that the "big city folks" really want the rest of us to move into the cities.
I believe they are quaking in their boots about the possibility they might have to move to the "burbs" to avoid the rising seas and live among the "rubes". Horrors!
If I seem to be saying otherwise, it's not because I am gleefully wishing for your destruction, but rather because I'm trying to show you that the changes won't be quite as dreadful as you perhaps imagine--it is possible to live a happy and fulfilling life at higher densities. But I'm sorry you can't have your druthers.
What an astonishingly arrogant thing to write, even coming from one who grew up in Manhattan and now lives in DC. Trade my leafy suburb for the filth, stench, NOISE, traffic jams and soul crushing crowds of NYC? Make me.
No discussion on this topic is complete without James Lileks' glorious fisking of Andrew Sullivan: you have to scroll down, but it Is. So. Worth. It.
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/04/0404/041904.html
The whole discussion of moving into cities and giving up cars may be sort of a distraction if you really want to talk about reducing CO2 emissions. The EPA and EIA differ somewhat on which sector accounts for more CO2 emissions, the transportation sector or electricity generation. But from this graph here: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/co2_human.html it seems that electricity generation beats the transportation sector or at least gives it a run for its money.
I am a skeptic because I'm not clear on why we picked 1950 as the perfect climate for all time on the globe (see my comment above on which baseline to use and who picks it), and because I fear that we oversimplify our planet's climate mechanisms and think we can use carbon emissions as some sort of global thermostat to control what is a massively complicated set of interrelated systems. But, to focus on taking away the cars of surbubanites and rural folks and talking about how their lives will suck misses the point somewhat. Generating electricity by means other than fossil fuels (or using FF with carbon sequestration)is as important, if not more important than controlling carbon emissions from the transportation sector.
It's easier to control emissions from relatively few stationary sources than from a massive fleet of cars and trucks with an average fleet turnover of 15 years.
So perhaps we don't need Kulture Klash War Part Deux in order to talk about this.
But I will contribute this nugget to the KKWII -- I don't own a car and live in a one bedroom apartment. I don't do this for carbon reasons. I just really can't afford much more. If one more celebrity lectures me about how I should adjust my lifestyle to save the planet and pats herself on the back because she "went green" and bought her new spawn organic cotton baby booties in an interview in her 10,000 square foot air conditioned mansion mansion, I may indeed go completely postal. I can be reasonable in debating and discussing this stuff, but I'm afraid I lose all ability to do that when people like Jessica Alba or Laurie David open their yaps.
I think it would make much more sense to get slower drivers off the roads (subsidize cab and delivery services), but it's probably less feasible than speedlimits.
"I'm thankful that Obama has at least expressed some tentative moves in this direction given the long history of Democratic opposition to nuclear power."
What tentative moves?
I also think the speedlimit may be a bad idea anyway. They aren't very enforcible in many areas, many people will drive for the conditions anyway, but some will obey the speedlimit despite the conditions and cause the conditions to deteriorate. Is safety worth the stress and fuel?
"...I'm trying to show you that the changes won't be quite as dreadful as you perhaps imagine..."
The potential changes certainly appear far less "dreadful" when they are discussed individually (and then only partially), in isolation from all of the other potential changes which would be required to actually stop the accumulation of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, on the assumption (in the hope?) that the increase in global temperature would therefore be stopped as well.
The ambient CO2 concentration has been increasing since ~1750. Therefore, stopping the increase would require retuning to pre-1750 emission levels globally, or a reduction of global annual CO2 emissions of ~99.95%. Reversing the historic increase and returning to the ~1750 "ideal" is a whole other matter.
That means no more coal, oil, natural gas, propane, etc. consumption anywhere on the globe; or, ~99.95% permanent sequestration. The closest thing to this "solution" I have seen so far is the "half solution" proposed by IEA in June, 2008 at an estimated cost of ~$45 trillion by 2050. Assuming, arguendo, that the IEA chose the lowest cost approaches for their "half-solution", the cost of the whole solution would likely exceed $100 trillion globally.
This suggests to me that we might be wise to apply the "precautionary principle" to the application of the "precautionary principle" to dealing with possible AGW.
One key factor to note here is that the US, which currently represents ~18% of global annual CO2 emissions, does not have the capacity to stop the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. A second key factor to note here is that, even if the US were to reduce its annual CO2 emissions to zero by 2020, that would be insufficient to offset the projected growth in China's annual CO2 emissions over the same period.
Arguendo, now that the globe is cooling again, we may wish to apply the "precautionary principle" and avoid reducing CO2 emissions so as not to contribute to the depth of the coming cooling period. Who wudda' thunk it!
That's a breathtaking vista of nonsense to behold. There's nothing more to it than rushing past all evidence and concluding something at an unknown timescale which with near 99 percent certainty will not come to pass. The disingenuous nature of such "arguments" -- a euphemistic way of describing the intellectual con job -- should make the AGW alarmists who demand immediate action at any cost blush in shame.
Every intelligent adult should be equally skeptical, but few are informed of the exact year of climatic Paradise we are supposed to be striving for.
What I want to know is, what ever happened to Jane Galt? Remember her? She would have approached this discussion with observations about the role of incentives, prices as signaling mechanisms, and Pigouvian taxes to compensate for externalities. She would have observed that there are a myriad possible solutions to climate change, including cleaner fuels, telecommuting, high-density living, and yes, even just letting it happen and mitigating the damage along the way. She would have recognized that having some know-it-all in Washington pick one of them (that just happened to coincide with her preferred lifestyle--O, fortunate day!) is exactly the wrong thing to do. She would, in short, have said exactly the opposite of what Megan said in this post.
What ever happened to that Jane Galt character, anyhow? We could use someone like her around here.
MarkG,
http://longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm
The graph linked above would suggest that 1950 was little different from today, or 1850, or 1350, or 900 for that matter.
The graph also suggests that we have been "hunting" around Paradise for several millennia, assuming that ~57oF is approximately Paradise. I certainly prefer it to 1600.
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
Megan, I feel bad. You asked us to assume the Global Warming Hypothesis for the sake of argument, and I'm trying, I really am. But it's hard. Here goes:
Assume that the climate is nearing the Tipping Point, and every day brings us closer to tremendous disaster. What should we do?
I don't think explaining to poor Americans is going to do it. We need to do the same explaining to the People's Republic of China. We're sorry, but you have to cut back your industrial development right away. We really sympathize.
Good luck. We would need to force them to cooperate, and nothing much less than world empire is going to do it. Not saying not to do that; if it's needed to save the world from total destruction, I guess we'd have to.
Alternative: Forget about carbon footprint; nothing we do is going to make a difference fast enough. Instead, heavy investment in alternatives. Take away regulatory barriers to nuclear power; we want as much power as possible produced through nuclear rather than burning carbon. Multiple billion dollar prizes for inexpensive space access, so that we can begin space solar power. Once we really get that going, power is going to become much cheaper than it is today, and we can sell it to China too. Cheap enough, and oil will go back to being the basis of the plastics industry and nothing more.
Oh, dear - I'm sorry. I was trying to be good, but I'm not really following Megan's issue the way she presented it. I really can't see how to set it up in a way that makes sense to me.
Let me try it with a different issue: taxes. There I think the analogy works. Lots of us middle-income people are plenty sick of gajillionaires who are in favor of high taxes, since our society has an obligation to take care of those who do not or can not pay taxes. Of course, higher taxes don't make much difference to a gajillionaire, but sure do to the rest of us.
[yes, I'm posting anonymously]
I think that a lot of city slickers omit a major complicating factor: they've managed to make cities difficult places to raise children. From housing regulations which discourage 3+ bedroom condominiums/houses to poor schools (and no vouchers), parents are often forced to move to the suburbs and accept longer commutes so that they can raise the future taxpayers of this country.
The fact is that the middle class folks who want to raise children are being driven out of the city and then sneered at by the wealthy elites (who can afford urban mansions and private schools) and childless urbanites for not doing enough. That doesn't play well, and never will. Ultimately it is yet another version of Megan's prior post about condescending behavior.
Whatever respect I had for Megan is pretty much gone. The points have already been made above. Megan has revealed herself to be an authoritarian, uninformed whackjob. I am more disappointed than anything else. I actually like some of the things she writes. But anyone who writes something as idiotic as the above post is just not a serious person.
To really slow down or stop the global warming that we're assuming arguendo, wouldn't we have to ask people already living in poverty to give up much of their chance at growth in return?
No. At the moment, everyone in Vietnam drives gasoline-powered motorbikes. There is no earthly reason why they shouldn't drive electric-powered motorbikes. Everyone in most major Chinese cities (Kunming, especially) drives electric-powered motorbikes, because they've banned gas-powered motorbikes in cities. Banning gasoline-powered motorbikes would reduce air pollution in Hanoi and HCMC by probably 50-60%. It won't happen soon because...well, because the Vietnamese suck. I'm not going to go into why it won't happen, it's too complicated. But if there were hard and fast fiscal reasons why they couldn't continue using gasoline-powered motorbikes, they would switch, and the switch would cost them almost nothing.
As for cars, Vietnam is in the peculiar situation of being a country where mass car ownership is not physically possible, due to population density. It's like the whole country is Manhattan. This means they are going to run up against the physical limits of a car-based society within a few years, and start building subways and rail. (Massive inflows of Japanese development aid and Japanese train enthusiasm are also influential.) If I recall right, the urban-planning standard is that 20% of a city's area should be road space. In Ho Chi Minh City, that ratio is about 4%. Already, in Hanoi, most of the people I know who own cars never use them -- they take their motorbikes. You can't get anywhere in a car, the streets are too narrow and traffic is too complicated. And there's nowhere to park.
But where will electricity come from, to power all those electric motorbikes? Serious question. Inevitably, there will be a lot of new gas-fired and coal-fired power plants built in the next 10 years. But there will also be a nuclear plant or two by 2015, and there are 1600 miles of coastline for offshore wind turbines. A major German wind turbine producer has just built its Asian regional factory in Danang and is looking towards implementing lots of wind in Vietnam. There's lots of new hydropower coming on line. There's massive unexploited solar potential in the south and center -- it's a tropical country for chrissakes. In sum, Vietnam's economy is growing by leaps and bounds, and if they satisfied their power/transit needs in clean ways, they'd be preparing themselves to keep that growth going as fossil fuels become less viable.
Ed, it's a little difficult for me to believe that chart.
"Global temperature chart was complied by Climatologist Cliff Harris that combined the following resources:
"Climate and the Affairs of Men" by Dr. Iben Browing.
"Climate...The Key to Understanding Business Cycles...The Raymond H. Wheeler Papers. By Michael Zahorchak
Weather Science Foundation Papers in Crystal Lake, Illinois."
Browing died in 1991. The other book was published in 1983. So I'm pretty curious as to how Mr. Harris was able to get the data from 1991 to "now" using just those two sources.
I have read Ms McArdle's writings for a while now, since there are sometimes gems to be found. However, posts like this one really are fluff that provide further tender to inflame partisanship. Maybe entertaining, but hardly substantive.
My biggest problem: ironically, the theme of this post is to complain about the lack of substantive writing about global warming, in that "urban dwellers" lecture suburbanites about their bad habits, and about how everything in the future will "suck."
So as not to merely be a complainer: The best point in the rambling post was: "But it isn't enough to say, 'we ought to figure out a better way' ... until we actually do so, we should be striving for greater efficiency." Indeed. The single greatest factor influencing people's choices and behavior is the price of energy. Suburbs have sprawled further and further from urban centers because cheap energy has allowed it. This summer has made more than a few suburbanites consider getting a smaller vehicle, making their home more efficient, etc. It would be relevant to evaluate the policy choices that cause distortions in energy prices, which can remove natural incentives to be efficient.
The post, while pointing out that people want "large houses in leafy suburbs," presumes to further the meme that urban dwellers wish to impose their enlightened world view upon suburban and rural outsiders. Please. I do realize that the previous post entitled "Coastal privilege" received over 300 comments, but it is not productive to frame national policy issues as cultural tugs-of-war. A responsible discussion involves a review of the policy choices and their economic impacts. Any discussion about how our current way of life ought to change should acknowledge that we have our current way of life through a set of deliberate policy choices that have favored airplanes over rail travel, automobiles over streetcars, and roads over subways-- all using vast amounts of public money. Given Ms McArdle's efficiency argument, it is highly relevant to debate how those vast amounts of public money will be spent in the future, and whether we want to continue to subsidize an inefficient way of life. Perhaps we do-- however, let's not pretend it is some sort of urban vs. rural conflict in order to drum up page hits.
Ms McArdle: This latest string of writing reminds me of a highly capable high school student who writes the absolute minimum number of pages required simply to get a grade. Maybe The Atlantic requires a minimum number of postings per week, I don't know. But, I do know that there are plenty of outlets where I can find this typical media detritus without the pretense of deep analysis. You can do better than this.
Tel,
Cliff Harris is still alive. There are four primary sources of recent data. I regret that you have difficulty believing the chart because Harris references only the sources representing the historical reconstructions.
I suspect if you were to beat the historical reconstruction portion of the graph with a hockey stick, you could make the "beaten" graph look like a hockey stick, if that more closely matches your preconceived notions.
I will admit that I have difficulty when I read pieces that refer to the output of GISS as "data", rather than as a number set which allegedly represents what the data would have looked like if it had been collected from properly sited, properly maintained and properly calibrated sensors.
I'd feel better about smug elitists telling everyone they'll have to sacrifice if there was any evidence that sacrificing would do any good. To show that sacrificing will help, they'll need to show that:
1. There is a problem - this one may be true.
2. Our behavior is causing it - this one is in serious doubt.
3. The US unilaterally cutting back will make a difference - this one is just not true, even the global warming alarmists agree (at least the worst case models agree).
I really have no plan to make a bunch of sacrifices as a symbolic gesture. The models that show the most warming and the worst flooding, etc... also show that no amount of US carbon output reduction will make a significant difference. So I see no reason to make a bunch of sacrifices and then STILL suffer the consequences as China and India make no changes (or massively increase their carbon output).
Maybe by NOT crippling our economy with draconian anti-carbon regulations, we will have enough prosperity that we might develop new ways to combat the problem through technology.
Four primary sources, two of whom are listed and decades old, and one of whom (the "Weather Science Foundation Papers") has no publication date and (apparently) no google-able references other than this graph, and the following site, with "Harris-Mann Climatology" in the banner:
http://www.longrangeweather.com/Long-Range-Weather-Trends.htm
"The information on this website shows weather and historical trends from approximately 600 B.C. to the present day. Much of this data was put together by the Weather Science Foundation in Illinois back in the early to mid 1970s. At one time, over 60 people were employed to gather worldwide data.
Unfortunately, funding for this project evaporated and the Weather Science Foundation shut down its operation. However, some of this unique information was given to Climatologist Cliff Harris. By an agreement, Cliff did not use or publish any of this information for 30 years."
Riiiiight.
The real danger is the loss of our Constitutional freedoms if environmentalists succeed in frightening Americans into allowing implementation of a scheme regulating Carbon Dioxide emissions, all in the name of controlling or reducing Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Every human activity uses energy and emits Carbon Dioxide in one form, or another, and would therefore be regulated by the Federal Government under such a system. No human activity would be immune from being either influenced, regulated, or controlled by the Federal Government.
The mileage you could drive per year would be capped. The amount of electricity used in your home would be regulated. Where you are able to live and work will be regulated by imposing limits on land use and development to force increased population density in the name of lower emissions. Where your children go to school will be dictated by Federal government limits. The type of vehicle you are able to buy and choose to drive will be subject to Federal regulation, regardless of your particular needs and wants. New small businesses will be subject to a slew of environmental hurdles and regulations making it nearly impossible to get started and severely impacting the economic growth of the nation.
Even the food you are able to consume will be regulated by emission limits imposed on ranchers and farmers and the distance of transport of farm goods to market. So called luxury items not essential to everyday living, such as recreational travel, boating, fishing, hunting, hot air ballooning, general aviation, car racing, sporting events, etc. would be severely impacted by imposed "fair share" emission limits.
Political corruption will be even more common place as Congressmen and Federal Regulators are influenced and wined and dined by lobbyists and special interests to make exceptions and grant favors on emission rules and tax penalties. Make no mistake about it, this political power grab is the real reason behind the rush to judgment on AGW. The reason behind the many scary movies depicting imminent disasters. This all must be put in place before evidence to the contrary on the inevitability and severity of AGW might surface.
In other words, the Federal Government will be in complete control of everything through the indirect control of energy consumption, not unlike the total and complete government control of everything in the old Soviet Union.
Leonard nailed it:
"So, fix the schools here first, and then maybe I'll credit you with being able to deal with global warming. Certainly, I'd be more willing to live in the inner city in that case. If you can't do the easy stuff, why should I give you any credence when you claim you have a plan for the hard stuff? Or when you don't even have a plan, but just talk about how I'm going to have to sacrifice?"
I could write more about that, but I'm too damn angry, probably because I grew up in urban Los Angeles and this passage hammers on way too many hot-buttons in my lifetime memories for me to write temperately about them.
Ms. McArdle, you really have no business at all telling other people how to live their lives. Do yourself a favor; do us all a favor. Knock it off.
aMouse, the point he's making is who the #!HAMSTER%& cares where he grew up? Maybe he grew up in a ten-mile-high stratospheric tower with a population of ten million where people get around in maglev capsules driven by solar wind. Who cares where I grew up? Who cares where you grew up?
Brooksfoe, no possibly course of action comes without tradeoffs, and what we are talking about here are extraordinarily broad policy prescriptions with a highly disproportionate impact in who they effect, and how. Obviously, people who are in line to take the short end of that stick will necessarily want to see if the person proposing they do so has the necessary life experience to fairly and wisely assess and appreciate the disruption that will entail. At that point, where you grew up and what kind of lessons it taught or failed to teach you about population, geography, demography, logistics, etc. are relevant talking points.
Or, put it another way: If I were to sit in my comfortable living room in the US and start yammering about some international policy prescriptions that might significantly impact lifestyle choice and economic development in Vietnam, and insist that "it couldn't be as bad as all that" based on my experiences in reading about Vietnam, examining the land in Google Earth, and having eaten at a local restaurant, is that another one of those "Eh, who the &*GERBIL(@ cares where you grew up" moments, or might you have some choice words of correction based on having actually lived and worked there?
Good heavens. What happened to the comments around here?
I have as many votes, and more ammunition than you do, so I'm not exactly worried. I already took one for the team (remember the draft?) It's your turn now kids.
I am starting to wonder if this is Megan's ovaries talking. Think about who Megan is. She is an educated, single, ubran elite woman in her late 30s. The urban lifestyle is great when you are under 30. As you get older, it really starts to suck. When you are in your mid 30s or older, you really have nothing in common with the 25 year olds that drive that culture. Worse yet, by that most of your friends have gotten married and or had kids and just live a different lifestyle than you do. It only gets worse as you get older.
I am sure Megan was quite a catch in her 20s and there were lots of nice men who were dying to move her to a nice big house in a leafy suburb and have one and one half children. But, sadly that ship has probably sailed. Most of the men her age are either already married or looking for someone younger.
So here you have Megan looking around at her increasingly dissatisfying life and then out at her counterparts who got married and moved to the suburbs and seem happy. They seem to be headed for a happy old age of children and a few grandchildren listening to them and taking care of them even though they are old and excentric. What does Megan have to look forward to? Being the nice old lady with five cats whom the younger people in her building always say an awkward hello to in the elevator.
So Megan looks around at this and thinks; they will get theirs. Their lifestyle is not sustainable. Life and going to suck and those people can't have their druthers and live like that.
That is a lot of speculation I know. But there is just something weirdly personal about Megan's posts lately. First is was the evil suburbanites running down innocent pedestrians in her neighborhood. Then it was the coastal elite looking down on those from the country and now this. Megan is generally serious and anything but a crank on these things. But on the city versus suburban divide, she has absolutely lost her mind.
Megan - Too much writing and blogging on the topic of global warming seems to consist of urban dwellers saying to everyone else "You're just going to have to accept the fact that your life is going to suck" in their best third-grade dragon-teacher voice, and then getting surprised and angry when the people they're talking to call them selfish, elitist loons.
But dear Matt Yglesias is gone. You should have hit that elitist city-dwelling silver spoon guy while he was still around and lecturing everyone on what a decent life we could all have if we only took up bike-riding for the 30 mile commute into Chicago in February. Or how Matt would say that American lives would have to suck until bike-riding and miracle high tech solved everything, other than for elites and poor black people who deserve to have less sucky lives.
============================
Mixner - The only real long-term answer is technology. Technology that allows people to maintain their existing lifestyles in ways that are more environmentally sustainable.
All significant human crises that had mass dieoffs and civilizational collapse had at their root too many people and inadequate technology to address the disease, weather pattern shift causing permanent drought, collapse of fertility in overfarmed, eroded land with no nearby "virgin land" to go to.
The people at the time, as Black Death raged or China lost 1/3rd of its people in mass famine as a cool period blocked rain, or Mesopotamia collapsed on rising salinity blocking crop growth all desperately tried to find "exciting, high tech" solutions. Most failed. The Green Revolution was a rare success. As was the use of fossil fuel to creat modern fertilizers and global transport to save much of overpopulated Africa and lands like Bangladesh from mass dieoffs in living memory.
There are no guarantees technology will bail us out. We may have to reduce human population down to 1.5 or 2 billion, numbers that may be sustainable given resource constraints and present technology.
The world went from 100 million people in 1750 to 1.5 billion in 1900, 2.6 billion in 1950, 6 billion in 2000, and projects 9 billion in 2050. More or less, in 2050, because it is hard to predict when the dieoffs start if "miracle technology" fails to materialize.
We certainly cannot accept 2 billion refugees in advanced nations and it may be suicidal to Western Civ to even accept a fraction of that number. Only 7 countries remain as major food exporters, down from 20 after the green revolution was established.
brooksfoe: Where are the poor Vietnamese masses going to get the batteries and electricity for the "electric powered bikes" you demand they use?
You do realise, further, that those cost a lot more than gas powered ones, yes?
Back to square one, "keep the poor down to salve rich first-world consciences".
Megan said: I think that if the planet is warming up, you're going to have to give up driving so much, and I'm going to have to give up flying, and this is not fun.
Well, that assumes that the reason for any warming (which seems to have been put on hold for a decade now, hasn't it?) is CO2 emissions, an assumption that increasingly doesn't seem to hold.
Assumptions about CO2's effects seem to have been greatly overstated; the IPCC itself (and most other estimates, evidently), suggest a forcing effect of 3 degrees C per doubling of CO2 level, including indirect feedback mechanisms, not just direct greenhouse effect.
Too bad the CO2 level has only increased by 35% (1/3 of a doubling, for those playing at home) since the start of the Industrial Age, isn't it?
Even if we grant that all of that increase is due to human activity, which is plausible if not certain, that does not explain global warming as being caused by CO2.
It is a huge pile of bullshit, to use the plainest Anglo-Saxon terms.
"Only 7 countries remain as major food exporters, down from 20 after the green revolution was established."
That has nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with socialism and bad government policy. It is not global warmning that is starving the people of Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of Africa, to starve. No question mankind's love affair with socialism has caused and continues to cause mass die offs. It killed more than the black death did last century and promises to kill more this century. The global warming religion is just its newest variant.
"I am starting to wonder if this is Megan's ovaries talking."
Good God, John. Leave Megan's miraculous talking ovaries out of it. If you don't have a decent argument to make, give the rest of a us a break and shut it. The "your jus jellus" argument is best suited to boards discussing the relative merits of the music of the Jonas Brothers.
Your last paragraph has a valid point to make but you ruined it by trying to paint Megan as some sort of urban Miss Havisham. Reducing women to their reproductive organs is really insulting. It's as insulting as when some women accuse men of thinking with their penises all the time.
M,
You are correct. I should not have said ovaries. That was over the top. It has nothing to do with her being a woman. I apologize for that.
I do, however, stand by my speculation that maybe as she is getting older the city life is getting less and less satisfying and perhaps that is why she has gone on a "someday you evil suburbanites will get yours" bender that she seems to have been on lately.
Neil, at 12;20, left out something very important.
After all these enumerated regulations take hold,
the people will start demanding action against those in other nations who haven't gone as far with this program. Eventually, some politicians will be happy to send armies (or missiles) across
borders to force them to comply. I think I'm more inclined to let my great grandchildren have no option to live in Florida than thinking that Future America and its Green Allies have embarked on a war to kill off billions of people.
creech,
way to see through the Curtain.
These faith-based AGW Believers are fellow-travelers of the Eugenics (see: Magaret Sanger/Planned Parenthood for starters) movement.
The biggest problem of this GHG-induced AGW-believing Death Cult is that they have nothing but scary stories and flawed models to Flog the unconvinced (by Science) with.
Point out to them that the Martian Ice Caps are retreating, or that 1998 was the 'warmest' recent year--for starters--and their only response is to smear the speaker.
AGW is a Grand Hoax, foisted upon the unsuspecting, to Control whomever, wherever, however they choose.
They are, Truly, 'Watermelons'.
Leftist tripe usually comes cloaked in science. Marxism was always sold as science.
Lucas,
"This latest string of writing reminds me of a highly capable high school student who writes the absolute minimum number of pages required simply to get a grade. Maybe The Atlantic requires a minimum number of postings per week, I don't know. But, I do know that there are plenty of outlets where I can find this typical media detritus without the pretense of deep analysis. You can do better than this."
Well said.
Using population density as a proxy for resources used traveling is problematic. I've commuted to work from suburban density in a small town, a mid-sized town, and a ring suburb of a major city and the resources spent commuting in the last case were about 5x the others. If you look at state by state commute lengths, population density correlates positively with commute length, since large cities are inevitably surrounded by ring suburbs.
Cities and their ring suburbs depend on each other. Commuters from the ring suburbs are necessary to sustain the business density of the city. If the cost of commuting goes up, the businesses are at least as likely to move to the suburbs as the commuters are to move to the city. The former seems more likely since if you look at where businesses are building sites these days, most of them aren't going into high density areas. Without the business density, the incentives of living in the city disappear and people move out in a self-reenforcing pattern. This pattern has already played itself out in various midwestern cities where the business density of the city declined due to an economic shift away from manufacturing. Urban density advocates pat themselves on the back for living in a high density area but don't understand that their lifestyle is dependent on the fact that there are people who are willing to spend 45 min in traffic to get downtown every day.
anybody mention how much could be saved if everyone who could work from home, DID? Or if the workweek went to 4-10 instead of 5-8?
There is a lot of easy fixes that could be put in place to affect how many resources are used by people. All it takes is a little thought. Individually these things will take very little to do, UNLIKE having everybody move, or making mass transit where it cannot really work.
Our 5 day workweeks are an artifact of the industrial revolution, our all going TO work as well. These things are not hardwired in our brains nor are they impossible to change...
and yet they would be dirt cheap and easily reversible. Do we know warming is what we think it is? No. Modelling ISN'T FACT. If warming is happening it likely wont be certain for 50years. Not wasting what doesn't need to be wasted? Makes sense. So? Stop. It isn't rocket science.
It's just that all the big thinkers around feel that it wont work if there isn't MORE government to make sure it does. More Laws. More red-tape. Don't really give a damn what coastal elites think, because this is a common sense issue.
So instead of wasting time and money to explain to us how we should feel bad, come up with the multi-layer attack on how to begin the beginning.
You can have my druthers when you pry them from my cold dead hands.
The world went from 100 million people in 1750 to 1.5 billion in 1900, 2.6 billion in 1950, 6 billion in 2000, and projects 9 billion in 2050. More or less, in 2050, because it is hard to predict when the dieoffs start if "miracle technology" fails to materialize.
We certainly cannot accept 2 billion refugees in advanced nations and it may be suicidal to Western Civ to even accept a fraction of that number. Only 7 countries remain as major food exporters, down from 20 after the green revolution was established.
Posted by chris ford | September 10, 2008 1:59 PM
Chris,
Allow me to be impolitic, but you're, Malthusian-inspired take, is FOS.
You should ask yourself why it is you think that "Fossil-fuel"-derived Fertilizers are the Only answer to increased Yields..Maybe you should, actually, have a grasp of the subject matter that you, so, take for granted on your way to spelling doom n' gloom for Humanity.
Personally, I think you're a shallow fuck willing to forego research for fear that you may excise yourself from your comfortable clique'.
Please, do me a favor, prove me wrong.
P.S. MEH, above, is me, my ownself.
You do realise, further, that [electric motorbikes] cost a lot more than gas powered ones, yes? -- Sigivald
No. Electric motorbikes currently cost less. But they're lower-powered. That doesn't make much difference to how fast you can get around in the city, due to density and traffic, but it makes a difference to rural motorists, which is why gas-powered bikes are banned in cities in China, not in the countryside. But the difference in price is even starker after you add in the high price of fuel, which is why sales of electric motorbikes have skyrocketed in Vietnam since July (when the government scrapped fuel subsidies) even without a ban or pollution tax on gas-powered bikes.
Since most electricity in Vietnam is hydropower, switching from gas to electric bikes makes a big impact on CO2 emissions. But I admit that will shift -- there are some big new dams coming on line, but probably even more gas- and coal-fired plants. Hopefully they start to get the nukes up and running within a decade or so and start to build some serious wind/solar and take obvious conservation measures like maybe insulating their houses, which nobody in Vietnam currently does.
"Assuming arguendo that global warming is happening, and is anthropogenic"
A risk management frame would work so much better here. As it would have with Iraq...
In between making bizarre and crazy remarks about ovaries, John says: "Leftist tripe usually comes cloaked in science. Marxism was always sold as science. "
This reminds me of wingnut trash science like creationism and the bullshit social Darwinism of the right, but there I go again, offering an educated opinion.
John made what I thought was a sincere apology for his remarks about ovaries. If everyone held your bizarre and crazy remarks against you MLJ, no one would pay any attention to you at all, no? You make good points and I disagree with at least 75% of them. Make it a good discussion.
If we're all trying to discuss an issue that will affect us and our grandchildren's grandchildren, can we try to be civil?
If you can't defend your skepticism about AGW (that's anthropogenic global warming) or your steadfast belief in its truth without resorting to calling into question your opponents' motives, character, or fitness to draw oxygen, perhaps you had better sit this one out.
(No. No one appointed me hall monitor. I just thing this subject is too important to be debated with "no, you're a poopy!" "no, YOU'RE a poopy.")
Megan, this is a great, empathetic post.
As libertarians (who value uncoerced human choice) and believers in science and technology (who think that some zero-sum games can be turned positive-sum, if we're smart enough to innovate) we should be looking for win-win solutions.
Fortunately, we can reduce emissions on a large scale TODAY.
Say it with me now, people:
[To the tune of "Let's Go Yankees"]
NU-clear POW-er, (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)
A little late to the party, but Greg @ September 9 is patently incorrect:
The pastoral suburbs and exurbs reduce global warming as residents plant trees and grasses where open farm fields, often denuded by the plow, once stood.
No. Fields raise albedo, cooling the surface. Large lawns lower albedo, warming the surface. Roofs and concrete/asphalt contribute negatively to the UHI. All well-understood.
Best,
D
I'll happily give up my "wide open spaces" (such as they are) as soon as city dwellers all agree that 10 pm is the correct hour to turn down the damn stereos and televisions and let people who need sleep, well, sleep. Oh, and also as soon as the apartment-hive dwellers agree not to engage in loud, cursing arguments or extremely enthusiastic lovemaking, both of which can be heard in adjoining (and even not-so-adjoining) units.
Oh, and I guess I can count on "boom cars" being banned under the new environmental mandates? Well, that's a plus.
One big reason I choose to live in a low-density setting is that all the times I ever lived in a city (or even in an apartment complex), there was at least one idiot who insisted on playing his stereo at "11" at 2 in the morning. Or some jerk who liked to run a leaf-blower for four hours on a Sunday afternoon. And talking to the people usually got a shrug, a "sucks to be you, then" and continued IF NOT INCREASED noise pollution.
Sometimes I think city dwellers underestimate the fact that some of us are driven nuts by noise. If I had to live somewhere where it was noisy all the time, I'd probably commit suicide. (Of course, then it could be argued to be good for the planet - one less person consuming food and producing CO2!)
ricki: Good to know someone feels the same way I do.
"I'm trying to show you that the changes won't be quite as dreadful as you perhaps imagine--it is possible to live a happy and fulfilling life at higher densities."
I'm sorry, Megan, but if you look at our large urban areas it is abundantly clear that they are moribund and unsustainable. Crime, corruption, failed school systems, a paucity of jobs, pollution concentrated into a small area, the heat island effect, and all the fuel that has to be burned bringing food and other resources that the city needs to survive. The next century will see decline of urban areas similar to what happened at the end of the Western Roman Empire. The Romans' cities were primarily administrative in function rather than productive and so were dependent upon the transport of vital supplies from rural areas from all over the empire.
Too much writing and blogging on the topic of global warming seems to consist of urban dwellers saying to everyone else "You're just going to have to accept the fact that your life is going to suck" in their best third-grade dragon-teacher voice
Yeah, and it's especially annoying when the lecture comes from somebody who "lives in a 11,400-square-foot mansion, whose carbon footprint may be visible from orbit", as is so often the case.
Megan,
"I think that if the planet is warming up, you're going to have to give up driving so much, and I'm going to have to give up flying, and this is not fun."
This is only the case if the cars being driven run on oil and gasoline, rather than electricity derived from alternative sources.
If we are talking about the future, we need to be aware of what the future will actually look like. I won't get into the global warming skepticism, whatever its merits, and simply look at the future of energy production. I'm always amazed at how uneducated most economists are about technology, and how rapidly technology is developing - particularly in energy production. For example, ten years ago, people (myself included) wrote off solar power as hopelessly idealistic and without a prayer of becoming cost-effective. Now we have at least a dozen new solar technologies, each one of which can (and at least one or more will) utterly revolutionize energy production around the world. To say nothing of advances in wind, geothermal, and other alternative energy technologies. These are no longer fantasies, they are quickly becoming realities, and economists looking at long-term projections of the future state of the world need to take them into account.
The truth is, the future actually looks very bright. One can't say exactly when and how these new forms of energy production will kick in big time, but it won't be very far in the future. The AGW debate will become moot, because we won't be using carbon-based fuels much anymore. Energy will actually become extremely cheap, plentiful, and widely available, especially in third world countries. People's lives will not suck. They will continue to get much better not only in strictly economic terms, but also in quality of life terms. The problem with such scenarios is that gloom and doom sells much better than sunshine and happiness. Economists for some reason innately distrust positive thinking, even when the history of the last few centuries shows unabashed progress on the technological and quality of life front. The problem is, economics professionals tend not to have any real interest in the very technologies that drive industry, which makes them very bad prognosticators of how industry and economies will perform in the long term.