Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Cap & Trade: If I Can Change Just One Mind...
...I'm not sure it's worth it, but hey it's encouraging. AEI's Ken Green and I butted heads (politely) at last year's Heartland "denier" conference in NYC. Green acknowledged the caveats but, at that time, still thought the government should try to implement a revenue-neutral cap & trade program. He has now apparently retracted his earlier support (HT2 Rob Bradley):
What is interesting about Ken is that he is quite clearly still concerned about manmade climate change (just skim his article above). So he is living proof that someone can endorse the IPCC's science, but not its policy recommendations.
And by the way, Ken is not recommending a "do-nothing" approach:
I previously felt that a revenue-neutral carbon tax was a good idea, because it would be both effective and could even be economically beneficial. But three developments have caused me to retract my support. First, rising energy costs have already imposed a huge carbon tax with little GHG reduction. This suggests that the elasticity of energy use could be lower than prior estimates, meaning it would be a useless gesture. Second, as implementations of carbon taxes in Europe and Canada have demonstrated, governments simply cannot implement such tax systems without sucking up some of the revenue, and using the rest to benefit crony-capitalists and steer money to favored constituencies. And finally, because using biofuels such as ethanol would let people save on carbon taxes, demand for such fuels will grow, only compounding the environmental and nutritional mischief they cause.
What is interesting about Ken is that he is quite clearly still concerned about manmade climate change (just skim his article above). So he is living proof that someone can endorse the IPCC's science, but not its policy recommendations.
And by the way, Ken is not recommending a "do-nothing" approach:
Policymakers who really want to implement rational climate policy should be focused, here and elsewhere, on building resilience to climate variability by removing the kind of risk subsidies that lead people to put themselves in climatically sensitive areas, to build on flood plains, in storm tracks and so on. They should be focused on ending the kind of subsidized infrastructure programs that lead people to build giant cities in deserts dependent on far-away sources of seasonal snow. And they should put economic repairs first: only the surplus wealth of productive economies allows us to protect our environment, set aside natural resources, and tread more lightly on the Earth.
Comments:
Did Green ever claim that Bengalis aren't scarce?
Then his position was never as offensively ridiculous as yours.
Then his position was never as offensively ridiculous as yours.
The last paragraph quoted is awesome. On my send-to-all-green-friends list.
# posted by 
: October 28, 2008 at 4:54 PM
: October 28, 2008 at 4:54 PM
No no no, you have me as a socialist slavemaster ... for having the audacity to advocate a *different* price control on carbon emissions than you do.
We ever going to see any kind of retraction for the scarcity remarks you made?
(Btw, just posted a comic making fun of Paulson that you might like.)
We ever going to see any kind of retraction for the scarcity remarks you made?
(Btw, just posted a comic making fun of Paulson that you might like.)
I already gave as much of a retraction as I am going to. To repeat it here for newcomers: I said that if the price of fossil fuels show way up after the imposition of cap & trade, that wouldn't reflect real scarcity, but arbitrary government whims (or something like that).
Now I actually think that statement is true, because (a) I don't endorse the IPCC analysis and (b) even if I did, the "optimal carbon tax" is low.
However, in context, my statements could easily be construed as saying that even in principle, the idea of carbon emissions having anything to do with scarcity was crazy. And that is too strong, so my op ed was misleading on this point.
But again, Silas is mad that I didn't clarify that my remarks only pertained to this actual world, not an alternate world where driving your Hummer floods people. And hence he has called me a murderer ever since.
P.S. I am not exaggerating. The above is my actual understanding of Silas' vendetta against me.
Now I actually think that statement is true, because (a) I don't endorse the IPCC analysis and (b) even if I did, the "optimal carbon tax" is low.
However, in context, my statements could easily be construed as saying that even in principle, the idea of carbon emissions having anything to do with scarcity was crazy. And that is too strong, so my op ed was misleading on this point.
But again, Silas is mad that I didn't clarify that my remarks only pertained to this actual world, not an alternate world where driving your Hummer floods people. And hence he has called me a murderer ever since.
P.S. I am not exaggerating. The above is my actual understanding of Silas' vendetta against me.
Bob, you understanding is mistaken, which must have taken quite of bit of effort, given how many times I have explained this.
For the hundredth time: even if your op-ed had clarified that you were only talking about the real world (well, counterfactual world where entire scientific consensus isn't a fraud but otherwise has all the snags and snarls), that still wouldn't make you right.
How you can even make the comment you just did after having read the linked post, I can't imagine.
To clarify for anyone reading: Bob_Murphy claimed that if the IPCC were right, carbon taxes still wouldn't reflect scarcity. This is obviously false, for the reason explained in the link above. After months of questioning, Bob_Murphy finally revealed the definition of "doesn't reflect scarcity" he was using, which was "a free market wouldn't do it". A definition no one uses, in other words.
So any time I pointed out flaws in Bob_Murphy's scarcity argument, he would reply to a different point.
Now Bob, you may disagree with my reasoning in the scarcity post I linked (though I suspect any disagreement would take the form of defending a *different* position), but you are flat-out wrong to say that my criticism was simply that you didn't specify you were referring to the "real-world" level of CO2 tax that would result. (Not surprisingly, this isn't the first time you tried to collapse several of my arguments into one weaker one on this very topic.)
And of course, the hypothetical world you referred to (with realistic politicians and a correct IPCC) *is* a world in which driving a Hummer -- indeed, any fossil-fueled vehicle -- floods people. More specifically, it makes you morally culpable for a quotal share of the resultant flooding.
****
P.S. A lot of you readers are going to love this: in debating related points on this issue over email, Bob finally revealed his true colors when he claimed that there's no moral difference between having your home permanently flooded because of someone else's use of the atmosphere as a waste dump, and having slightly reduced profits because evil governments talked about stopping you from doing that very flooding. Wow.
For the hundredth time: even if your op-ed had clarified that you were only talking about the real world (well, counterfactual world where entire scientific consensus isn't a fraud but otherwise has all the snags and snarls), that still wouldn't make you right.
How you can even make the comment you just did after having read the linked post, I can't imagine.
To clarify for anyone reading: Bob_Murphy claimed that if the IPCC were right, carbon taxes still wouldn't reflect scarcity. This is obviously false, for the reason explained in the link above. After months of questioning, Bob_Murphy finally revealed the definition of "doesn't reflect scarcity" he was using, which was "a free market wouldn't do it". A definition no one uses, in other words.
So any time I pointed out flaws in Bob_Murphy's scarcity argument, he would reply to a different point.
Now Bob, you may disagree with my reasoning in the scarcity post I linked (though I suspect any disagreement would take the form of defending a *different* position), but you are flat-out wrong to say that my criticism was simply that you didn't specify you were referring to the "real-world" level of CO2 tax that would result. (Not surprisingly, this isn't the first time you tried to collapse several of my arguments into one weaker one on this very topic.)
And of course, the hypothetical world you referred to (with realistic politicians and a correct IPCC) *is* a world in which driving a Hummer -- indeed, any fossil-fueled vehicle -- floods people. More specifically, it makes you morally culpable for a quotal share of the resultant flooding.
****
P.S. A lot of you readers are going to love this: in debating related points on this issue over email, Bob finally revealed his true colors when he claimed that there's no moral difference between having your home permanently flooded because of someone else's use of the atmosphere as a waste dump, and having slightly reduced profits because evil governments talked about stopping you from doing that very flooding. Wow.
Bob, did you ever say this on your post at Mises?
However, in context, my statements could easily be construed as saying that even in principle, the idea of carbon emissions having anything to do with scarcity was crazy. And that is too strong, so my op ed was misleading on this point.
If not, why not? Isn`t that clearly where it belongs?
However, in context, my statements could easily be construed as saying that even in principle, the idea of carbon emissions having anything to do with scarcity was crazy. And that is too strong, so my op ed was misleading on this point.
If not, why not? Isn`t that clearly where it belongs?
I`ve had several conversations with Ken and consider him basically a good guy, but he`s always been at most only a half-hearted supporter of any action on climate change.
Of course I share his deregulatory agenda, but:
- enviros are not enamored with ethanol and would be happy to trade off ethanol supports (which they recognize as damaging and unwarranted anyway) for carbon taxes or cap and trade;
- it`s not clear to me that Green ever supported cap/trade as opposed to carbon taxes;
- Green`s change of course to me seems to be in part fallacious, as to my knowledge his assertion that "Al and the folks at the UN use assumptions to pump up the estimates of how much a given quantity of greenhouse gas will increase heat retention. Those assumptions have been shown to be spurious on both theoretical and empirical grounds" is unsupportable. Increasing strands of evidence point to a long-term climate sensitivity of 3 degrees C, as I note on my last blog post: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/default.aspx
- Further, Green ignores the risks of NOT acting, which Jim Manzi recently spent so much time discussing at Cato: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/08/31/jim-manzi-cato-climate-progressives.aspx
Regards,
Tom
Of course I share his deregulatory agenda, but:
- enviros are not enamored with ethanol and would be happy to trade off ethanol supports (which they recognize as damaging and unwarranted anyway) for carbon taxes or cap and trade;
- it`s not clear to me that Green ever supported cap/trade as opposed to carbon taxes;
- Green`s change of course to me seems to be in part fallacious, as to my knowledge his assertion that "Al and the folks at the UN use assumptions to pump up the estimates of how much a given quantity of greenhouse gas will increase heat retention. Those assumptions have been shown to be spurious on both theoretical and empirical grounds" is unsupportable. Increasing strands of evidence point to a long-term climate sensitivity of 3 degrees C, as I note on my last blog post: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/default.aspx
- Further, Green ignores the risks of NOT acting, which Jim Manzi recently spent so much time discussing at Cato: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/08/31/jim-manzi-cato-climate-progressives.aspx
Regards,
Tom
Bob, as a service to LVMI blog readers I've cross-posted your above concession (that your "op ed was misleading on this point") to your related LVMI blog post.
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