In the end, clarity about costs and benefits is the enemy of Waxman Markey. It is hard to get around the conclusion that it can not be justified rationally based on the avoidance of climate change damages.Now, he and I disagree in various ways about the appropriate numbers to use in such an analysis. I think emission reductions are likely to be cheaper and easier to attain, particularly as time goes on, and I think there are very good reasons to suspect that the IPCC estimates understate the likely effects and cost of warming. But rather than quibble with his numbers, I'm simply going to concede that on a pure cost-benefit analysis, W-M is difficult to justify. I also think that a simple cost-benefit analysis of the bill misses far too much to be useful in isolation.
The first trouble-spot is one Manzi acknowledges. It is difficult to justify the bill because it imposes costs on the current American electorate, and the current electorate will barely suffer at all from the effects of climate change. If you think that current taxpayers ought to be concerned only with the benefits of the bill to themselves relative to costs they'll have to pay, then you probably should not support it. But of course, you shouldn't think that; it's a pretty deplorable outlook.
There are obviously some serious moral issues involved in bequeathing to future generations a much less hospitable climate and the resulting geopolitical chaos. More offensive still is the burden we impose on other nations. Americans are carbon gluttons. Our per capita emissions are twice those of most developed nations, four to five times greater than those in large emerging markets, and 20 to 100 to 1,000 times larger than those in places like sub-Saharan Africa. But our emissions don't stop at our border. Rather, because of our temperate location, we will be spared many of the most severe consequences of warming to come this century, which will instead be focused overwhelmingly on poor countries. This is illiberal and immoral. We don't have the right to invade whomever we please for the sake of a few percentage points of GDP growth, and we don't have the right to conclude that since this generation needn't worry about warming there's no need to change our behavior.
Another tricky but important consideration is that whatever version of W-M passes is extremely unlikely to be the final word in climate policy. Obviously, there is no responsible way to build the potential for future emendations into a current cost-benefit analysis. Still, this should be taken into consideration. The record of environmental regulation in this country is one of steady revisitation and improvement of rules. It is also inconceivable that Congress would not address any serious and unexpected economic issues that may arise; if low-income households are getting hammered, legislators will face significant pressure to make some changes.
The question that many greens have been grappling with is whether it is better to pass an imperfect bill now under the expectation that it will be improved later, or to continue building the constituency for a better bill, to be passed at some future point. This isn't an easy matter to resolve. But given the history of environmental rules, and the difficulty the Congress has had passing any carbon pricing bill at all, it seems clear to me that we should seize the opportunity to pass what's passable, and clean the bill up over time. Manzi would say that he'd prefer no bill to a perfect one, I think, but as I mentioned above, that's not a very sound approach to the issue.
Another knock on W-M is its effect on potential international negotiations. Manzi says we're giving away our trump card by preemptively limiting emissions. This is a little nuts. Recall, for starters, that an American emits five times more carbon than a Chinese person. Recall, also, that we've been emitting in this fashion for decades, during which period China has been very poor, and therefore not much of a contributor to climate change. If I were China, I'd be reluctant to even talk to America before they had a law on the table.
But the broader point is this -- people who are very serious about diplomacy have concluded that we stand a better shot at an agreement with emerging markets with a law in place than we do without one. Given that we've had a few bites at the apple without a law and haven't managed to secure major concessions from China, I see no reason to dispute their conclusion.
The bottom line is that it is never comfortable to disturb an existing economic order for the sake of others' welfare, but it occasionally must be done. This is one of those times. We should work to make the regulatory process as efficient and painless as possible, but we should also understand the political constraints that apply and recognize that the ideal policy is unattainable. If there were a compelling and achievable policy alternative to the passage and steady improvement of a carbon pricing regime, then we'd all leap for it. Sadly, there isn't.
To be clear, the thrust of your diplomacy argument is that initial concessions are required to get other nations to the table? At which point we'll then negotiate further emissions reductions on our side to correspond to reductions from China, India, etc.?
I ask because that argument, while certainly plausible, requires additional costs to the U.S. economy and taxpayers beyond what Waxman-Markey imposes. Which means that the "benefit" of W-M is based on addtional future costs that W-M proponents haven't generally been acknowledging. I don't see how one can fault Manzi for omitting benefits from his cost-benefit analysis that correspond to future costs that aren't included in the W-M package.
Its delporable for current taxpayers to be concerned only with the benefits to themselves because the costs are borne by future generations? (Or, in the phrasing of a man who had no children: "in the long run we'll all be dead.")
Waxman-Markey makes the current generation feel better about itself, but hands less net wealth (and the fun, health and material comforts that entails) to future generations. Isn't that selfish? Shouldn't we suck it up and be bad people so we can transfer more wealth that will help mitigate the speculative harm.
That's another point. We know for certain that Waxman-Markey will hurt the economy and punish the unborn with less wealth. On the other hand, climate forecasting is uncertain, in its infancy and remains hypothetical. Only Chapter 9 of the IPCC report analyzes whether human produced carbon affects global climate. The great body of the IPCC report concerns mitigation and effect, not proof, and is authored with the instruction to assume the truth of Chapter 9, but if Chapter 9's 44 authors are wrong, the entire thing crumbles. (take a look at Chapter 9 and ask yourself, “really, you established a global climate history by limited proxy?”)
Those 44 authors were selected by 2 coordinators, who are accused of selecting only advocates of their position (and many related parties) and excluding similarly qualified but unrelated or skeptical scientists. The accusation might be false and arise from animosity, but do you really want 2 gatekeepers deciding something so big? That process seems fishy, and to build the entire IPPC on it, and the entire Waxman-Markey economic retardation bill on it is unwise. The U.S. should assemble its own team of scientists, 1 from each state’s university and a group from the major private universities to examine Chapter 9. That seems prudent.
American emits five times more carbon than a Chinese person
But they have 4 times as many people.
Great stuff. It would also be interesting to analyze what the world looks like if the temperature goes up a bit. Some parts of the world, Canada, Russia, northern Europe, the northern part of the USA, the southern part of South America might actually be more pleasant.
I haven't analyzed it closely but my guess is that there are some scenarios where some global warming is a net plus on a world wide scale.
The carbon offsets approach presents huge opportunities for corruption (which makes it very attractive to the politicians proposing this approach). A tax on gasoline would be much less corrupt.
To your first assertion,
Temperature doesn't change in isolation, precipitation changes as well. Counter-intuitively, most of the simulations suggest that the precipitation over most of the world's current breadbasket regions drops dramatically(The American mid-west is the prime example), rendering them incapable of producing large amounts of food. And since topsoil is only slowly formed over hundreds of years, very few new food producing regions would be created.
At the same time, ocean acidification will likely cause collapse in global fish populations, which make up a significant portion of our food.
Also, rising temperatures lead to more intense hurricanes and storms. This seems trivial at first, but sheer wind force is proportional to the CUBE wind speed, so doubling windspeed causes the stress on buildings to increase by a factor of 8.
Taken altogether, I can't see anyway global warming could end up as a net positive. I find it even debatable that there are individual countries like Russia that would benefit,since fishing is a rather important industry in countries like Canada and Russia.
For your second point,
I don't believe that th W&M proposal allows carbon offsets. The process is pretty simple, the treasury auctions off(or gives away) a certain number of carbon credits. At the end of the year, a company that produces X tons of carbon needs to get X amount of carbon credits. The credits get traded on the local market.
A gasoline tax wouldn't be very efficient, because over half of our CO2 emissions are produced from coal power plants. The marginal cost of decreasing CO2 emissions from coal is much lower than doing it from gasoline.
The beauty of a Cap'n'Trade scheme, is that by Coase's theorem, the credits will end up being used by whomever has the best use of carbon. We will, in effect, maximize GDP for a given level of carbon output.
Before we increase the cost of energy for Americans with cap-and-trade and also enrich a new class of financial traders, I believe it's imperative that the United States establishes a non-political, scientific commission to review all facts and evidence surrounding global warming. Currently, we are relying upon a political organization, the United Nations, for their assessment of global warming. This is not good for America. The stakes are too huge.
I am a Democrat. For the past 20 years I believed global warming was caused by CO2. Now I'm not so sure, after taking an objective look at the wellspring of man-made global warming theory, the United Nations' Climate Change 2007 report. Whereas the report should have considered all possible global warming culprits then narrow the field, it instead removed from consideration the possibility that natural forces might drive global warming. It is little wonder that the report pinned the blame on CO2 when in their own words (p. 95), "The topics have been chosen for...assessing...risks of human-induced climate change." The fix was in. It was politics not science. The mission statement should have read, "Topics have been chosen for assessing risks of human-induced and NATURE-INDUCED climate change." Remember, the UN developed in Kyoto Protocol. They have a vested interest in demonizing CO2. For further discussion of the report see
http://energyplanusa.com/ipcc_reports_dont_pass_smell_test.htm
Here at America’s Power, we know not everyone is following what’s happening in Washington, but right now there’s a hotly debated bill in Congress called Waxman-Markey that deals with the issue of climate change.
We need a climate plan that’s affordable and effective. Americans should support a plan that:
• Achieves emissions reductions
• Creates jobs
• Preserves fuel diversity as a means of promoting greater energy independence
• Protects consumers against unnecessarily
high energy costs
We support a federal plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the Waxman-Markey bill needs to do more to guarantee that consumers are protected from unnecessary increases in energy costs. Because without these changes the bill is not affordable – and therefore, not effective.
To find out more about America’s Power’s stance on Waxman-Markey, watch our video. http://www.sn.im/balenergy