There is some very angry back and forth about the CBO's scoring of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill. Economically, I agree, the per-household costs seem to be small. Politically, they may be much larger than their economic cost, for two reasons: first, I'm not sure people are going to put any rebate in the same mental basket as the higher prices, and second, people aren't going to pay the costs on a per-household basis. Some households will suffer a lot, while others will be net beneficiaries. Matt, Ezra, Ryan and I are all probably among the net beneficiaries.
But the real question, I think, is whether the low cost is a feature or a bug. The only way a bill is going to have an impact is if it causes real financial pain to American households--enough to get them to change their behavior. Waxman-Markey obviously is not going to do that. And indeed, the projections of its effect on global warming are entirely negligible.
So the reason to get this mad about Waxman-Markey is either that you think it provides a framework for future action, or that you think it will persuade China and India to get on board. The latter is, I think, entirely wishful thinking on the part of American environmentalists. China is not going to let its citizens languish in subsistence farming because 30 years from now, some computer models say there will be some not-well-specified bad effects from high temperatures. Nor is India. Global warming isn't even high on the list of environmental concerns they'll want to attack as they get rich; local air pollution is far more pressing. Thinking that we're somehow going to lead them by example is like thinking that poor rural teens are going to buy electric cars because Ed Begley jr. has one.
No, I think the argument has to rest on the notion that Waxman-Markey gives us a framework to advance. And it might. But then again, Europe's much-vaunted system has had multiple spectacular failures, and the only reductions it has actually achieved seem to come largely from controversial offsets with large auditing problems.
I don't say this happily; I take climate change seriously. But I am a pessimist about the prospects for control; the coordination problems so far seem insurmountable. Unless Waxman-Markey serendipitously leads to the development of some clean technology that makes carbon obsolete, I'm pessimistic about how much it will accomplish.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Your economy is going to hell in a handcart and you plan to wallow in this non-problem. Loopy self-indulgence.
If it turns out to be a problem, it will take handcart and put it on the highway to hell with no brakes.
Loopy denial.
If it turns out to be a problem people will move inland.
Loop closed.
Loopy, indeed.
What about the people in Bali, Bangledesh? You think they'll be able to move inland? Just wondering.
What about the people in Bali, Bangledesh? You think they'll be able to move inland? Just wondering.
Yes, I do. They've done it before. For instance, there is an entire wing devoted to the study of Indian Underwater Archaeology, specifically at Mahabalipuram, where the 2004 Tsunami revealed structures that had been buried under sand and sea for centuries.
There are several examples of the ocean reclaiming the land throughout history. The nature of the earths climate is change, and with that change comes change to the landscape. The idea that this is something new and unprecedented is preposterous.
The only way to derive catastrophic climate change is to assume a massively positive feedback loop for which no evidence exists. The earth has been hotter, and had higher CO2 concentrations, than the first-order effects would put us to in the next century. If we don't look like Venus now, we won't then. And if the effects are a few degrees either way, it's not really a big deal - maybe the equivalent of moving from Boston to New York. There'll be upsides(polar latitudes becoming more livable, faster crop growth) and downsides(rising seas, equatorial latitudes becoming less livable), but even if the downsides outweigh the upsides, it doesn't imply catastrophe. The Al Gore "highway to hell" models are pretty much just politically-motivated garbage.
I'm pretty sure AGW is a broadly correct hypothesis, but it is hardly the end of all we hold dear.
Megan, agree
- as a European I want to keep the American dream, not see our ridiculous bureaucracy passed on to you.
Where are the Good Old American Values?
Deal with the Problem
Keep Life Simple
Work with -not against- Business and Consumers
1. Waxman-Markey made Very Simple:
Electricity generation (coal/gas) and transport (automobiles) cause nearly 80% of fossil fuel emissions (EPA data) - a focus on them alone reaches first phase 2020 reductions without elaborate expensive cap and trade solutions.
All other industry is only brought on board in second phase reduction 2020 as judged needed there and then.
Win-win for America: energy changes (incl grid restructuring) to electricity and transport, benefit Americans regardless of emission reductions
Cost to consumer is kept down by equity and long term loan finance, the latter fed/state guaranteed to keep down interest rates, with slow payback giving little affected consumer electricity bills or car costs.
Understanding Cap and Trade + why it is bad for America, see
http://ceolas.net/#cce5x
2. RE The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) costing
The assumption is that all energy efficiency legislation is GOOD for consumers.
WRONG.
Inefficient products need to have special advantages or noone would want them.
The fact is that efficiency regulation on a product sacrifices performance, construction and price features, and does not necessarily give the savings suggested anyway.
See
http://ceolas.net/#cc2x
onwards regarding efficiency regulation effect on buildings, lightbulbs, cars, dishwashers and other products
Peter in Dublin, Ireland
I hate the cap and trade idea because it hides the higher costs it passes on to consumers; which is precisely why politicians love it.
If Waxman and Markey and those that support the bill really beleive that raising the price of energy to reduce its usage is a great and necessary idea and one the American people support-- have the courage to propose a straightforward carbon tax.
That's fair enough, but if consumers and voters were a bit more adult about taxes it wouldn't be necessary to hide the costs.
Oh, I believe consumers and voters are plenty adult enough to know what is good for them. It is always amazing to me how elites think they know better than the common folks, and comments about "hiding" costs are just flat out condescending.
Normal people are not stupid. They can, if they so choose, generally become knowledgeable about any issue they deem important. Thing is, they don't actually do that very often. On most issues, the average person doesn't think they know very much, and in practice know even less. We, the people who will read about policy debates on an econoblog, are the freaks.
Common folks are much more likely to spend their free time educating themselves about NHL draft picks than about the effects of various legislative options for addressing global warming. They know that the problem is vague but scary, but they also know that they have to drive to work every day, and the latter problem is a lot less vague, and, in practice, a lot more scary. If you make it harder for them to do the latter, they won't like you very much, even if you tell them it'll address the former(not even getting into their expectation that politicians are lying).
That's not stupidity, but it is a pretty severe case of economy of attention, and it's one that post of the population suffers from. Yeah, they know there's a hidden tax - again, not stupid - but they won't think about it too much, and they won't get nearly as annoyed at the politicians who put it in place. Practical politics - I wish it didn't work that way, but it does.
" The only way a bill is going to have an impact is if it causes real financial pain to American households"
Pain? Well here is the thing. We could slap a $5 a gallon tax on gas and then refund the entire amount back to each taxpayer. So, we consume 390,000,000 gallons of gas per day x $5 x 365 = $711,000,000,000 / 175,000,000 tax payers = $4,700 per taxpayer.
Now, if you live close to work and drive a Mazda 5 you get more back than you pay in. If you live 2 hours from work and drive a F150 you pay through the nose.
If you live 2 hours from work and drive a F150 you pay through the nose.
As if you don't already.
And yet, people still do it. The only way to lower carbon emissions is by changing behaviour, and you don't do that with a flyswatter, you do it with a sledgehammer. I don't claim that the solution jmo3 proposed is optimal(it's clearly not) but it'd be a very effective way to change behaviour and lower emissions.
I think that we have too many examples of Government failing to "force behavioral changes" successfully. And the idea that our behavior as a nation is so horrible to begin with flies in the face of the statistics showing how the US stacks up in terms of CO2 production. Europe and Japan have tried several different carbon-trading schemes and they were all basically failures at living up to the standards they set. The US hasn't tried anything like carbon trading yet we have continued to improve emmissions from cars to the point now that todays new cars put out a fraction of the CO2 that they used to.
I am all for programs that reduce pollution (really, who isn't?), but these aren't anywhere near as draconian as what the Waxman-Markey bills being proposed. I understand that we can thanks CAFE standards for the lowering of CO2 ouputs in emmissions, but until we get serious about nuclear power, any attempts to repeat this process on a larger scale in terms of electricity production will raise costs on doing business across the board in every industry, at a time where raising costs for business is perhaps the STUPIDEST thing our government could possibly come up with.
Tman, stop it, please. It is important to use terms correctly.
CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 cannot be a pollutant, it is necessary for life. Support nuclear power because it is clean and does not pollute, you know real pollution like particulates, smog and acid rain. That is a good enough reason. You do not have to join the global warming hoax to support nuclear power.
Also, CAFE has not reduced CO2 emissions. Another canard. CAFE has caused people to drive more due to lower per mile costs. More CO2, not less. CAFE has also killed tens of thousands of people in car crashes in small cars. Additional fun fact, CO2 emissions from cars are due to the catalytic converter. Converts CO to CO2. Law of unintendend consequences strikes again.
The two questions I can never get an answered by the global warming Chicken Littles are: 1) if Artic ice melts (since it is floating) then won't sea levels drop? and 2) if the globe warms by 2degrees C in 100 years, won't that mean that Antartic and northern Greeenland will be at -10 degrees instead of -12 degrees? How is that going to melt the entire ice cap? When are they getting to 0 so the melting can begin? It's a big ocean and there just isn't enough ice where the temperature is gonna get to 0 to raise sea levels. Oh, well, let's just eliminate the use of electricity, so that we can go back to burning kerosene or firewood for light and heat.
If this entire global warming hoax were not so tragic, it would be truly ridiculous. OK, it is ridiculous even though it is tragic. Hope the libs know how to gather firewood and to start a fire.
Basil,
You are right in that CO2 isn't a pollutant per se. What I was referring to in regards to the CAFE standards was the reduction in smog and particles -which I believe to be a good thing- instead of what I wrote, which is that it lowers CO2. This is an important point and it does need to stand corrected.
The two questions I can never get an answered by the global warming Chicken Littles are: 1) if Artic ice melts (since it is floating) then won't sea levels drop?
No. 1 tonne of ice displaces 1 tonne of water. (Ask Archimedes for an explanation.) If the ice melts, it still is only one tonne of water. Put an ice cube in your drink and watch the water level, it doesn't change as the ice melts. This means it doesn't go up either.
2) if the globe warms by 2degrees C in 100 years, won't that mean that Antartic and northern Greeenland will be at -10 degrees instead of -12 degrees? How is that going to melt the entire ice cap? When are they getting to 0 so the melting can begin?
This only happens in childrens stories, Kevin Costner movies and the most stupid green propaganda. The whole icecap isn't going to melt with a 2 degree rise.
Ice is less dense than water. While the tonnage is (obviously) the same, the volume is different. When you do your ice in a glass experiment, the fluid level goes down when the ice melts.
Also, I still have not heard an explanation from the global warming crowd of how the ice melts if the temperture goes from -12 to -10. It's still gonna be ice.
Basil: 1) if Artic ice melts (since it is floating) then won't sea levels drop?
Ice is less dense than water; that's why ice cubes and icebergs stick up out of the water. Melt a floating piece of ice and the resulting water will fill the volume of ice that was below the waterline.
and 2) if the globe warms by 2degrees C in 100 years, won't that mean that Antartic and northern Greeenland will be at -10 degrees instead of -12 degrees? How is that going to melt the entire ice cap? When are they getting to 0 so the melting can begin?
Meltwater is coming off the icecaps at roughly the same rate as new snow adds to them. Turn up the heat and the rate of melting goes up.
"China is not going to let its citizens languish in subsistence farming because 30 years from now, some computer models say there will be some not-well-specified bad effects from high temperatures."
So why the hell should we?
Obviously the economy isn't nearly bad enough if people still care about silly non-problems like this one.
Because we're rich enough to have both, while China isn't.
And I suppose John Galt would know something about bad economies...
Spitting into the wind, that is all this is. The mechanisms driving global climate are immense and long term. To have any impact for good or bad will take an immense action on humanities part. No government (except maybe North Korea) on the face of the earth has the balls/power/commitment to take the requisite action to impact climate change. The reality is that even if you somehow got every human in the world to substantially reduce their carbon emissions it wouldn't be enough.
Long term the survival of humanity rests on technologies broad shoulders.
You vastly overestimate man's abilities and greatly underestimate the forces of nature and of the universe.
Of course the sun could go supernova or a giant asteroid could impact and there is nothing we could do about either. So is your answer to bury your head in the sand and wait for doomsday?
My answer is that we accelerate our technology innovation curve. Eventually we will even get to the point where we can colonize other worlds and then even if Earth is destroyed humanity will survive.
What's with the North Korea reference? A few scared old men hiding behind their well fed guards while the serfs get thinner and sicker every year and the entire country sinks back into the dark ages - that's your example of a government with courage, power and commitment? A government that keeps its people so poor that bicycles are beyond the reach of most? Perhaps you're saying that only North Korea has leaders desperate and delusional enough to fling nuclear weapons in all directions. I suppose you're right that this would "impact climate change".
North Korea has virtually eliminated freedom of thought. When Kim says jump the entire nation says how high. No other nation has the blind allegiance to their leadership's "vision". That was my point.
People generally follow orders when you have a gun to their head. They're a bunch of frightened, slowly starving hostages, held captive by leaders with no apparent vision other than to keep their power as long as they can, despite the fact that their current path is causing the entire country to self-destruct. If we're looking for a way to avoid a looming catastrophe, it seems odd to point towards a county that is steering towards one and knows it, yet won't change course.
I don't say this happily; I take climate change seriously. But I am a pessimist about the prospects for control; the coordination problems so far seem insurmountable.
Well, depends on when/to what extent said "control" materializes. I see little prospect of serious reductions in GHG emissions (over what we'd experience globally if no action were taken) over the next couple of decades. I do think we can achieve serious reductions in, say, six or seven decades. If we start now. I think that's vastly preferable to hoping that technology and mitigation strategies alone will do the trick, and that worst case scenarios aren't in the cards (AKA the Lomborg faith-based strategy).
To put it another way, rich world GHG reduction actions this decade aren't sufficient to get us on a path leading to where we need to be in 2090. But they are a prerequisite.
What, precisely, can we do now that'd lower GHG emissions in 2090? Besides lighting the world's oil wells and coal seams on fire, that is. Think of it like this - what would you have done in 1950 to lower greenhouse emissions in 2009? And remember, it had to be politically and economically feasible.
What, precisely, can we do now that'd lower GHG emissions in 2090?
Why, get started with a first step on that thousand mile journey to a carbon-free (or at least "carbon drastically reduced") global economy.
Now, as I made clear in my 2:35pm comment, I think at best what we're talking about in 2090 is far less GHG over what we'd experience globally if no action is taken. I don't think we're talking about net reductions over what we're spewing into the atmosphere in 2009. In other words, in a best case scenario, we're likely talking about, say, 2009's emissions + 15% (with carbon curbs) instead of, say, 2009's emissions + 130% (or whatever).
Net reductions over current GHG emissions, eventually trending toward zero output, will have to follow in the 22nd century. But the point is, the current science predicts lots of nasty -- and quite possibly catastrophic -- effects from a continued rise in GHG emissions. The more carbon-free an economy we can leave to our grandchildren living in 2090, the better off they'll be.
I could understand opposition to government-imposed c02 curbs if we risked a decline in living standards. But we don't. All we face on that score is a modestly slower increase. It's simply reckless to gamble that the bulk of the climate science community is wrong. Ask yourself which is more risky: ignoring their recommendations (in the event they're correct) and risking a less habitable planet in 2090, or accepting their recommendations (in the event they're wrong) and risking a smaller increase in living standards? It seems to me not only is taking action the common sense choice, it's also the conservative choice.
It doesn't matter whether you're giving them the full increase then taking some away or if you're just making it grow more slowly - they will be worse off.
Furthermore, it's easy for us to talk about how we don't mind paying a bit for the planet to be healthier, and that's reasonable enough - a healthy environment is a luxury good, and we're rich enough as a society to afford some luxuries. What do you say to the Chinese peasants who want to live at our level? "Sorry, you can't use that much carbon, we got here first. Don't worry, it isn't actually making you worse off, it'll just take you another couple generations to get a car, air conditioning, and proper medical care - no big deal, right?" isn't going to cut it.
Furthermore, you really didn't address my point about how we can make a serious improvement to 2090-era carbon emissions. All I got from your post is the airy small-steps, culture-of-conservation stuff with no real plan on how to fix anything. It's nice to talk about gradual reductions as part of an overarching plan, but in practice, that doesn't really work. It's all well and good to draw a graph that curves the right way, but that's not policy, that's wishful thinking.
Alsadius:
What do you say to the Chinese peasants who want to live at our level? "Sorry, you can't use that much carbon, we got here first. Don't worry, it isn't actually making you worse off...
I don't think you say anything to Chinese peasants. You say what you need to say to Chinese leadership. Moreover, nobody seriously thinks the Chinese are likely to embark upon serious carbon curbs this year, or next year, or the year after that. But at some point in the not-too-distant-future -- say by the early 2020s or so (or, another 10-15 years) then, yes, the developed world will have to tell (a much richer than now) China that it must adopt a credible climate change policy. Thus the rich world -- in order to have sufficient negotiating credibility by this time -- needs to have its own house in order with respect to climate change. And of course China will be much richer by then, and so the "but we're poor" argument will carry less weight. Finally the Chinese, not being stupid, are well aware their country is very much in the cross hairs of climate change; and so the balance of self-interest for Beijing (again, China's per capita GDP will be likely to have more than doubled by the early 2020s) will have begun to more clearly shift toward taking action with respect to climate change.
Furthermore, you really didn't address my point about how we can make a serious improvement to 2090-era carbon emissions.
No idea what you mean here. Obviously implementing policies that curb GHG emissions is what gets us to "a serious improvement" eighty years' hence. And because making such herculean changes is going to require time, the quicker we get started the better.
Jasper, how do you seriously intend to tell China that they "have to" do anything? This isn't 1820, they're a nuclear-armed world power. China is not going to impoverish themselves because we're afraid of a hot summer or two. For that matter, it'd be criminal to ask them to - mass poverty is a far worse issue than global warming, and a far larger danger to human health. Moral leadership is not going to be sufficient to make a developing nation ruled by a brutal dictatorship eschew economic growth. When they're as rich as we are, they might have the same concerns about the future of the environment, but it won't happen before that, and that won't be the case by 2020.
As for the 2090 bit, it's in response to your original comment: "To put it another way, rich world GHG reduction actions this decade aren't sufficient to get us on a path leading to where we need to be in 2090. But they are a prerequisite."
This isn't a plan, this is a wish. Until there's a plan, I'm going to regard arguments like "It's an important first step" as political nonsense.
None of these schemes will work because:
1) The US is not producing even a majority of the greenhouse gasses. So, our efforts will only create a decrease in the market value of greenhouse emitting fuels...which will increase their use worldwide.
2) Increases in greenhouse gas production is directly connected to population. So if you want to get serious about decreasing output in the short-term (next 100 years), the only workable solution is genocide.
3) According to ice core samples, greenhouse gas increase is connected to global warming in the exact same way that me putting on my bathing suit and going to the beach is connected to the advent of Summer...it is the opposite of what the fanatics claim.
4) The global warming models assume the Earth has an infinitely thick atmosphere (which we don't). Change that assumption, and temperatures rise for a bit and then fall and then rise and then fall (ala the history of climate change on this planet).
5) Global temperatures began rising again in the 1970s, but they've been going down since the late 90s, so where's the trend? Oh yeah, I forgot, the temperatures are warmer now than the were at the end of the last Little Ice Age in the 1800s. Big surprise.
But why should activists allow facts to get in the way of a political agenda?
I'm not a global warming junkie, but your logic here sucks.
1) Yeah, second-order effect will sap most of the improvements, but it'll still be a net improvement.
2) Non sequitur. Yes, genocide would lower GHG production, but you have presented no evidence that it's the only way.
3) Agreed.
4) I'm not a climatologist, but I'm sure that this one's false. For starters, an infinitely thick atmosphere would be black, so absorption spectra and densities sort of fade to insignificance. Furthermore, I've heard many comments about modeling of atmospheric layers in the climate models - the "pixels" for the model tend to be about 10x10x1 km, from half-remembered readings. That sort of model is not conductive to infinitely thick atmospheres, mostly because it'd then require infinite memory to simulate. This sounds like a crazy eighth-hand rumor, because it cannot be accurate.
5) 1998 was an abnormal peak. Exclude that from the data, and we seem to have plateaued at the highest level in recorded history, not gone down. Of course, that sounds far worse than it is, given the small differences we're talking here, but it's only a decrease when you cherry-pick your starting point. Still, your broader point that it's stopped going up is a valid one.
Alsadius,
1) I don't believe it will be a net improvement for the reason I gave. It will be a net wash.
2) Yes, genocide is not the only way. IF we turned the civilized world into North Korea (black from space), and IF we could ensure that our new primitive society did not discover fire either. Maybe. My evidence is that the greenest of the green in America are not carbon neutral without playing accounting games by paying people to plant trees on the other side of the planet or don't take into account the carbon expended to develop and build their materials and appliances they use every day. It would be impossible to play those games if everyone had to be carbon neutral.
4) You have fallen into the mistake (that many climatologist modelers have) of treating a model like the real thing. Obviously, in reality, an infinitely thick universe would be different from our world in many ways. Modelers don't take account of all features of a real planetary climate.
http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basic+Greenhouse+Equations+Totally+Wrong/article10973.htm
5) Cherry-picking the starting point is what global warming hysteriacs do. They start measuring temperature rise since the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid 1800s. (Christmas became popular in America at that time, which is why Christmas cards still presume we'll be buried in snow on December 25th.) If the last 150 years is not what you mean by "recorded history" then you'll have to explain it. I think we might be very marginally warmer than the 1940s when the temperatures began to drop, but this is definitely not the warmest based on ice core samples and fossil evidence, nor, say, evidence of the last 1000 years.
1) Rebound effects are not 100%. Depending on what you're doing, they're maybe 60-70%, tops. A decrease in aggregate demand will still lower the net amount consumed, under any reasonable assumptions you care to make. That decrease will be maybe a third of what the politicians claim it is, but it will exist.
2) False dichotomy. There's a whole lot of middle ground between the Land of the SUV and North Korea. Look at the savings that could be derived simply from going from the current coal-centric power production to a French-style 80% nuclear model. The capital costs would be high, and it can't happen overnight(even if the government got out of the way), but it'd lower American CO2 emissions by some 10-20% on its own, and it wouldn't lower anyone's standard of living a damn except for people in the coal industry.
4) No, I'm pretty sure I'm treating it like a model - talking about memory requirements for simulations is not exactly something that the real Earth has to contend with. As for the details of what you're talking about, I'd have to read the paper in question, but I can't imagine that a field of science this large has been making such a flagrant mistake in a meaningful way(as opposed to a simplifying assumption that does not materially change the outcome) for so long. Even with all the innate biases of anti-industrial thought, research dollars being dependent on catering to the orthodoxy, and all the other fun stuff, mistakes like that simply do not happen in the hard sciences.
5) Everyone cherry-picks. The alarmists pick the end of the Little Ice Age and call it the "pre-industrial baseline", the deniers pick 1998 and call it "(about) a decade ago". The real data is complex, and any summary will naturally be incomplete, but it's amusing to see how convenient the assorted baselines all are for the argument being raised by the person picking the baseline. For the fuller information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.svg for the 1000-year proxy data and the instrumental data respectively. Since we can't take a thermometer back 1000 years, the data is naturally sketchy, but it seems we've gotten warmer than the Medieval Warm Period recently, by somewhere around half a degree.
Alsadius,
I think we reached the end on these points except for one: You still have not addressed the fact that *no one* is carbon neutral. Not even those who really, really try to be.
Human's supposedly account for a good deal less than 5% of the greenhouse gasses produced on the planet. The vast majority are produced by the oceans and volcanoes. So the whole argument for human-caused global warming is that we marginally tip the balance over "right amount". If humans always represent an increase in greenhouse gasses, either through cars or what they eat or what they manufacture and, yes, through the production of energy to do those things (and let's not forget *breathing*), we will always have the "greenhouse gas" specter hanging over us.
Yes, nuclear energy could help, but they are not entirely green either since you have to produce materials to build and maintain nuclear plants. Finally, the expense, hysteria, and problems with weaponized proliferation ensure that it will never happen --certainly not worldwide-- and that I'm not sure it ought to happen...definitely not if the government has to subsidize it.
"Alsadius said: [80% nuclear power plants would] lower American CO2 emissions by some 10-20% on its own, and it wouldn't lower anyone's standard of living a damn except for people in the coal industry"
Spoken like someone who does not live in a coal town. But, of course, it would also increase everyone's energy costs. And there's also those other problems I mentioned above. Also, it won't happen on its own. The concomitant Cap-and-Trade (to make nuclear energy competitive) will ensure that the cost of everything will increase regardless of whether you get your energy from nuclear or not.
I don't no what your personal opinions are on the proper policies to deal with global warming, but it frustrating to me how the advocates of government solutions consistently under-estimate the true costs of doing anything meaningful. There seems to be an unending supply of *easy* solutions that no one will notice...if you are well-off enough.
If people really want the planet to be cleaner, the number one solution is to increase economic growth and prosperity so people can afford the expensive, energy-devouring solutions.
I haven't looked at the numbers recently, but I'm pretty sure coal plants cost about the same as nuclear per unit electricity. They also have a lot fewer negative externalities - even if you discount global warming, the conventional pollutants created by coal-fired power plants are impressive, and something genuinely to be avoided when feasible. The problem with nuclear power is political, not economic.
I hate the cap and trade idea because it hides the higher costs it passes on to consumers; which is precisely why politicians love it.
market karma:
Although if forced to choose I'd probably opt for a straight carbon tax myself, I'm not sure you've thought through your argument. A well designed cap/trade system works just like a tax, by explicitly pricing C02 and incorporating it into the costs of goods and services. If Joe Consumer has the choice of two otherwise identical products, one costing $1,200, and the other (produced with more energy) costing $1,400, the greater carbon impact of the more expensive good will hardly be "hidden." It should make no difference if said consumer never reads a newspaper, and has no idea that the government is now forcing CO2 emissions to be paid for. He'll get all the information he *needs* via the price tag.
A Congress-designed cap & trade system works "just like a tax". However, that is because it is not simply "cap & trade".
Under "cap & trade", an initial emissions cap is set, preferably at the current emissions rate, unlike the EU approach. The cap is the ratcheted down by a fixed percentage each year over the period until the desired reductions are achieved. For W-M, the emissions cap would be reduced by 2 percentage points per year over 41 years to achieve the ~83% reduction.
Under "cap & trade", those required to reduce emissions may trade emissions allowances among themselves, allowing those for whom the reductions are easier or cheaper to reduce or cease emissions early in the process and then sell their surplus allowances to those for whom reductions are more difficult or more expensive.
Notice that, in pure "cap & trade", the market prices carbon transactions between buyers and sellers.
When government decides to sell or auction allowances, an additional cost is added to the process. However, this additional cost has no direct role in emissions reductions, though it would likely achieve some reductions as the result of the price increases caused by the allowance price set by government.
Auctioning of credits is mostly an equity issue, not a GHG-reduction issue. It's the only way to remove political pull from the allocation process.
Auctioning emissions allowances is a way of generating a "much needed" revenue stream for the federal government. The rest is window dressing.
Well yeah, that's obviously part of it too. But do you really want some bureaucrat handing out billions of dollars of credits to whoever they feel like on the basis of whatever justification that they care to invent? It is genuinely the fairest way to do it, even if it is also a convenient way to hike taxes.
Unless Waxman-Markey serendipitously leads to the development of some clean technology that makes carbon obsolete
Gush, you mean like nuclear power?
I will stop believing that Anthropogenic global warming concerns are a fraud when, and only when, the people who claim to believe in AGW start acting like they actually believe it.
Step 1 of that demonstration will be a crash program to get a lot of nuclear power plants built in the US.
Until then, it's just religious zealotry and anti-capitalist BS masquerading as a real concern.
"The only way a bill is going to have an impact is if it causes real financial pain to American households--enough to get them to change their behavior."
I don't agree with this premise. The idea behind Waxman-Markey is to make carbon emissions expensive, then redistribute to those with the lower carbon footprint. If you are better than average, you will get money distributed to you. Overall, poor people have lower carbon footprints because they can't afford to consume so much. It's politically popular because, as other commenters point out, it hides the ball from the public. Though inefficient and likely to be gamed by special interests (like giving away emissions credits rather than auction as a fundraiser and to set the market rate), enviro groups have gotten behind it because they think it's the only way to get something.
I'd love to see a straight forward carbon tax or at least a 100% auctioned cap and trade, but the depressing reality is that Congress sucks no matter who is in charge. So we get opaque legislation that can be gamed by lobbyists serving their clients.
"Overall, poor people have lower carbon footprints because they can't afford to consume so much."
I don't understand the relevance of this statement.
Poor a less efficient consumers. Their incomes are more dependent on fuel consumpion. Often they are pure consumers.
Poor may be less efficient, but they consume sufficiently less so that they have a much smaller footprint per capita. For example, a poorly insulated 700 sqft apartment with few windows uses much less energy than an energy star certified McMansion. On a sqft basis, the McMansion is more energy efficient, but it's so big that total energy costs are much greater, and that's before you consider all that goes into building such a home.
My unclear point was that behavior can change for the better even if the net cost to American households is zero by using the redistributive aspect of the climate bills being considered. The lower income families are likely to make money (i.e. not experience real financial pain) while being encouraged to do better by increasing efficiency so that stay on the net positive side of the redistribution curve based on carbon footprint.
He's suggesting that it's a disguised welfare program, in addition to(instead of?) being a GHG policy. For that matter, he's right.
The Global Warming agenda fails so completely as a science it is stunning to read this thread and consider the hand wringing by those who favor carbon legislation. You believers cannot reconcile the following facts yet you leap at the prospect of government control of every facet of the industrial economy. Enslave yourself if you wish but I would rather not ride in your boat.
(1) Global Warming climate models have failed. They have not and do not work except to be used as propaganda tools for the Global Warming alarmist agenda.
(2) It is impossible to prove Global Warming theory and it is impossible to prove anything man is doing is having an impact on global climate. How does one run a controlled experiment when the entity being controlled is the global environment? The political action to fix Global Warming is an invitation for mischief since there is no way to measure the impact of the action. This issue is especially complexing since geoclimate changes take place over tens of thousands of years. To create a C02 policy based on 10, 20 or even 100 years of suspect data is utter foolishness.
(3) Even if one accepts Global Warming theory and its erroneous models the impact of human engineering is negligible. It is as if response to a flooding river was to give each town resident a thimble and have them all start bailing water. The cost / benefit ratio is all cost and no benefit and belies common sense.
Megan makes a really important point, here: In order to affect CO2 emissions, taxes or cap and trade have to hurt.
That means that effective steps to decrease CO2 emissions will be politically expensive. It may be possible to evade some measure of responsibility for higher prices by doing cap and trade, but the voters will be pretty clear that, over the last few years, their lives have gotten worse. And they're likely to vote accordingly.
IMO, the only way to really address this is to develop better technology, at the same time that we put the infrastructure in place to let us decrease CO2 emissions when we can do that without guaranteeing that the party in power loses the next election in a landslide.
Hey albatross,
How about politicians address real societal issues and stop wasting their time and our nations' wealth trying to invent solutions to problems that do not exist?
The cap and trade schemes focused on the demand side are not effective because its to easy to cheat by shifting energy intensive production (and jobs) to nations that haven't signed on.
If you want to avoid cheating the focus should be on producers.
For example, look at oil production. There already is a cartel which limits oil production. If OPEC could be convinced to first permanently cap their production at current levels then to slowly reduce production oil consumption would begin to fall. (crude oil production in non-OPEC nations has been slowly falling since 2003)
Convincing OPEC to boost their profits should be much easier than convincing a large number of nation to voluntarily make sacrifices.
They tried that in the 1970s. The result was an initial boon to the producers followed by a long, slow crash as additional oil resources came online in non-OPEC countries, since it was now profitable and/or desirable to discover those sources and bring them online. OPEC members then began covertly bucking the prisoner's dillemma since the situation appeared to be slipping from their control anyway. In the long run, OPEC lost ground, and has stepped much more carefully since then.
If our goal is to get binding agreements with Inda and China, it seems hight counter-intuitive that Waxman-Markey will help.
If we are already cutting-back oun carbon output, what does China gain by forming an agreement? Isn't the prospect of controlling CO2 output our best barganing chip?
Maybe we can impose cap and trade costs on imports from India and China and get a good old fashioned trade war going? That ought to crush consumption nicely and bring CO2 emissions back into line.
It'd work. Who's up for bankrupting most of the world's biggest economies in the name of GHG reduction, though?
/me pointedly looks away from Al Gore
Both C&T and a Carbon Tax result in higher energy prices to the consumer --but C&T buries it whereas a Carbon Tax makes it transparent.
This is the reason I hate Cap and Trade-- the inferred message is that we cant sell our environmental policy on its merits, so we have to have to somehow sneak it past the average American.
Two comments above seem to acknowledge that.
"to let us decrease CO2 emissions when we can do that without guaranteeing that the party in power loses the next election in a landslide."
and
"but if consumers and voters were a bit more adult about taxes it wouldn't be necessary to hide the costs"
Again -- if a majority of Americans really beleived that this was an important issue to deal with -- you shouldnt have to "hide the costs" from them or worry about being booted out of power.
The nominal intent of cap & trade is not to hide anything from the consumers; it is to set the limit and let the consumers themselves decide what to prioritize. Initially, Ceasar auctions the permits and gets his due once and only once, reducing his incentive to continually meddle with the system beyond the necessary role of an impartial market regulator. Meanwhile, the market can actively sort out the most efficient use of the permits by the usual pricing mechanism, and those who sell permits gain money to invest in better uses, instead of having everyone pay out arbitrary tarriffs.
Taxes are a blunt instrument that is subject to special interest lobbying on one hand and government corruption on the other, theoretically without limit since both entities have a perverse incentive to continually weaken the system. A market approach makes it very clear what permits are available and what they will cost, and the reason cap & trade is being given so much stage time is that the US did a very good job with it in reducing sulfur dioxide emissions.
I am constantly amazed at the way that the Global Warming supporters show models and data that indicate that any uniliateral US action will have essentially no effect (the same models and data that indicate a catastrophe is coming) but still expect the US to take unilateral action that will decrease our standard of living and productivity and wealth, knowing that it will have essentially no effect. The theory being that eventually other people will be inspired by our example, I guess... given that China and India have a ways to go before they catch up to us, I seriously doubt either will follow our example. China is building dirty coal plants as fast as they can.
I am guessing that this is really about guilt for some. Some people just can't handle being wealthy without feeling guilty about it and wanting to punish themselves. I just wish they'd include me out of their collective self-flagellation.
EI,
I don't always agree with you but I think this is a great point. I have been slowly coming to the conclusion that we should be focusing on making our society more robust against potential climate change, rather than using our far too short lever to make sacrifice with little upside.
Most of the "guilty" are that way only because of the "guilt cheerleaders" in the White House, the Congress, the "Left Tributary Media" and the environmental "churches". They can't be "turned off", but they can be ignored.
When you discover that you are digging yourself into a hole, the first thing to do is STOP DIGGING.
The logical first step in controlling global carbon emissions is to stop the increases in the annual emissions rate. The major increases are occurring in the developing countries.
The logical second step is then to begin reducing current emissions globally. That means that W-M might be a logical national effort as part of a global effort to reduce existing emissions rates.
The third step, if necessary, would be to begin removing carbon from the atmosphere. However, that step only makes sense after global annual carbon emissions have been reduced to zero.
Also, don't forget that, according to UN FAO, ~18% of annual GHG emissions are caused by domesticated animals. Megan has a head start on reducing these emissions already.
I think the situation is kind of like bailing water out of a leaky boat--a good idea in general, but pointless if other passengers are poking new holes in the hull.
All of this assumes that CO2 is actually a problem. It may be, but I would rather be certain before potentially wasting untold billions on it.
Yes, I know--lots of people are certain about this. They may turn out to be correct in what they believe, but their certainty (given all we know and don't yet know) is misplaced.
My estimate of the investments required to actually reduce carbon emissions under W-M is ~$700 billion (one TARP )per year through 2050, or a total of ~$30 trillion.
With apologies to the late Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen: "A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money."
When I ask what the ideal global temperature range should be, I have been told that is a silly question as Man has been able to adapt over time. The conclusions that I draw from that response is (1) the AGW folks do not have any kind of valid answer and (2) it is likely the possibility of rapid climate change that they are attempting to address, not climate change itself. So...
We are getting set to tax our way - at least in the US - to some sort of global reduction in CO2 levels to prevent a rapid change in global temperatures. This will prevent (from what I've been told) massive famine and the total destruction of coastal cities.
I'm uncertain as to how the melting of ice (which has a greater volume than liquid water) will result in sea levels rising enough to flood NYC, LA, London, Hong Kong, etc.
I'm also a little confused about the purported impact that GW has had (or will have) on global climatic activity (storms, drought, etc.). Originally, scientists claimed that GW would result in more and more intense tropical storms. About 2 years later (this would be in 2007/2008 if I recall correctly), scientists then claimed that GW would actually reduce the intensity and possibly the frequency of tropical storms by "cutting off the top" of developing hurricanes. Both studies appear credible, both were "peer reviewed"...hmmmm.....
The one thing that Man has at it's disposal is the ability to reason. Man has developed some pretty incredible technologies; as it relates to power generation, we have nuclear, wind, geothermal, solar, etc. However, in the US at least, people continually use NIMBY as a way to thwart installation of these technologies. Apparently nobody wants to put a nuclear power plant in their backyard although that would go a long way towards reducing CO2 emissions. The Kennedy's screamed bloody murder when people wanted to erect an offshore wind farm within sight of the Kennedy Compound. Environmentalists (I know, illogical isn't it) scream that wind farms can only be erected in locales where they won't threaten birds - particularly raptors. It would appear that the "free market" has the ability to resolve many of our problems, however, "we" refuse to permit those technologies to be implemented.
If we are going to help cut CO2 emissions and one big way is to use less energy, maybe most C&T proponents are thinking about this incorrectly. The existing power grid loses about 40% - 50% of transmitted power through "leakage". Maybe the Obama Stimulus should be altered to pour a couple hundred billion $ into restructuring our power grid (rather than the rather paltry amount specified in the Stimulus bill). What we have is pretty big, it would generate "green" jobs, it would enable the attachment of alternative energy sources...AND moving from a 50% leakage rate to a 20% leakage rate would effectively decrease electric generation needs by 30%. I would think that most people would agree that our powergrid is pretty vital and is worth spending some bucks on - hey, almost everyone's happy.
White Rabbit,
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/diagram5.html
Generation losses total ~67% of the energy consumed to generate electric power. Transmission losses are ~1% of net power generated; distribution losses are ~8% of net power generated. EIA has no category for "leakage".
Stabilizing atmospheric carbon concentrations would require reducing annual anthropogenic carbon emission by 99.95% globally. Waxman-Markey, even if adopted globally, would not accomplish that reduction.
Also, UN FAO estimates that ~18% of annual GHG emissions are the result of domesticated animal husbandry. That's got to go too to "save the globe".