New at Reason

David Weigel | November 3, 2006

Ronald Bailey hauls out the trusty, Exxon-sponsored calculator and adds up the real costs of comporting with climate change reforms.

Comments

|11.3.06 @ 1:11AM|#

Post #1 ? =D

Anyway, haven't got a chance to read a whole lot of the Stern Report, but I do think that there is a lot a Libertarian plan could do to affordably mitigate climate change whilst getting alot the other Copenhagen Consensus stuff done. Here is my much abridged early draft of such an idea.

****
I don't like too many regulations, as the climate change future will require flexibility with which to adapt to the coming changes. Regulations get in the way.

The best start is to stop providing corporate welfare to the fossil fuel companies. In the U.S. this is peanuts at $15 billion a year in various monies and protections, but even doing away with that is an important signal to industry. Elsewhere, this would be harder, as fuels are often directly subsidized.

Next end subsidies and many regulations in the agricultural industries; not all, but these things prevent the freemarket development of biofuels. And the subsidies do hurt the development of other developing nations; and if they don't develop, we may likely get pulled into nasty expensive wars that would otherwise be avoided; this would be due to panic response to climate change s they did not/could not prepare for. On that note, helping to end corruption in foreign lands would help them be willing to prepare.

Third, don't require consumers/producers to be more efficient/use renewables etc.; but do require that our governments to be effectively carbon-neutral. We need is real leadership with a critical mass of demand and supply. The purchasing power of our governments can provide this.

Lastly, it is more or less the right of governments to control their borders. So simply require that all persons, products, and possibly services crossing borders be effectively carbon neutral via a carbon-tariff. This will boost local economies, at the expense of the global. But it will not destroy civilization.

All the above is not anti-capitalist at all, and provides a balanced solution to our near term climate issues. (it could use some improving though)
****

please help make it better. (and sorry about the Bolding accident earlier)

|11.3.06 @ 5:49AM|#

I posed this exact argument on yesterday's thread, so I took a close look at the numbers.

the A1 scenarios foresee stronger economic growth (3.5 percent per year), global economic integration, population peaking then falling to 7 billion, and a lot of technological progress. The result is global GDP of $550 billion and a per capita income of nearly $80,000 by 2100.

Aside from 'billion' being 'trillion', I am curious why this 2100 GDP is so low here. Running 3.5% for 94 years yields a multiplier of 25 or a global GDP of $1.14 quadrillion. Needless to say, this figure makes the point a little more dramatically...

Hunting back to where that A1 projection comes from, I see that it assumes only a 2.9% global GDP growth rate. (It also uses 1990 dollars.) No, I don't know why the Stern Report says it's 3.5%, nor why no authors of that report checked the math.

|11.3.06 @ 6:10AM|#

As a bit of an aside, the A1 scenario is astonishing in its pessimism.

On that table you see a 1950-1990 world GDP growth of 4.0% per year. Growth from 1990 to 2050 is predicted to be 3.6% per year. But growth from 1990 to 2100 is predicted to be only 2.9% per year. Do they know something about the Great War or Great Plague or Great Asteroid Impact of 2054 that we don't know about?

Looking for an explanation in the caption, you find the excuse that long term growth rates are predicted to be lower than those of 1950-1990 because they were lower for the OECD countries between 1850 and 1950 -- you know, when those very same countries beat the living daylights out of each other with two world wars and a protectionism-induced great depression.

In any event, as I noted yesterday, the lower the growth rate, the greater the cost to future humanity of losing 1% of GDP growth per year.

|11.3.06 @ 7:08AM|#

" Do they know something about the Great War or Great Plague or Great Asteroid Impact of 2054 that we don't know about?"

Well, the bears in the housing bubble blogs are talking about the Great Depression II starting in 2007-2008. Maybe they read those blogs.

|11.3.06 @ 7:34AM|#

I'd like to point out something that really roils me.

Ron Bailey in this article demonstrates that it is at least sometimes to not incur costs of mitigating climate change onto developing economies such as Bangladesh.

So the logical thing for such at risk nations is to not include onerous obligations in the next climate treaty.

Just like we do with the current Kyoto Treaty. Certain developing nations are not required to make expensive cuts.

What roils me is that this logic is used as an excuse by the rich nations e.g. U.S. and Australia to abandon the treaty, screaming, "It's not FAIR! If they aren't required to cut back why should we?!"

Uck.

|11.3.06 @ 7:38AM|#

Why are you surprised that, in the end, nations act in their own self-interest?

"Doing something about it" in the form of sacrfice is always a really cool idea, as long as someone else is doing the sacrificing and paying the bill.

thoreau|11.3.06 @ 9:20AM|#

I think we'd all be in a better position if, in the 1990's, free marketeers had spent more time talking about market-based solutions to environmental problems, and the ways that various subsidies, taxes, and regulations favor carbon-intensive technologies that a freer market might not favor. I think that it's best to inject market-based ideas into the debate as early as possible, and thereby change the terms of the debate.

We libertarians fancy ourselves to be experts on economics, so the word "opportunity cost" is worth tossing out here...

|11.3.06 @ 9:23AM|#

What's the big deal? If the warming trend continues or worsens, there's probably nothing we can do to stop it, other than coming up with some weather-control scheme. If decades of pollution are really a major cause of the current warming (which, of course, is still a question--the "major" part, that is), we've probably got the ball rolling too fast to stop it without slaughtering half the world's population or doing something else inhumanly drastic.

Me? I think we should just start building giant domes. Which would make everyone happy--no more "sprawl", less direct contact between "nature" and people, lots of room for urban planning in a dome, and cool togas and/or silver unitards for everyone! And, naturally, flying cars are a must with any mass dome-relocation scheme.

|11.3.06 @ 9:29AM|#

"not incur costs of mitigating climate change onto developing economies such as Bangladesh"

Except for the fact that they are the worst polluters per dollar GDP. China still runs steam locos, for dog's sake, at, what, 3% efficiency? No, it's the developing countries need to do something about it. N. America is already carbon-neutral (don't have reference, so take it FWIW), despite bigass SUVs.

Dan T.|11.3.06 @ 9:32AM|#

And finally, I still think it is an open question: is global warming worse than what governments might try to do about it?

Unless you think that anti-global warming initatives will actually cause the Earth to become totally uninhabitable more quickly, the answer is "yes".

|11.3.06 @ 9:42AM|#

Just asking, if many (most?) Americans don't want to go abroad slaying dictatorial regimes or genocidal regimes, what makes the greens think "we" will put American troops in harms way in order to force, say, Chad, into banning cooking fires or clear cutting jungle?

|11.3.06 @ 10:21AM|#

And the reason we should worry about developing low lying countries suffering from global warming is.....?

I could see if they were threatening us with atom bombs, but our congressional representatives should economically hurt citizens in the US for the benefit of citizens of nations that can't develope solutions to their own problems because....?

|11.3.06 @ 11:27AM|#

In my inbox this morning. Given Thoreau's comment about injecting ideas early in the debate...here's your chance.

"A Need for a Sea Change

The significance of the ocean's declining diversity on humanity has been
difficult to assess. In a series of meta-analyses, Worm et al. ... quantify how the loss of marine diversity on local, regional, and global scales has affected the functioning and stability of marine ecosystems, the flow of ecosystem services, and the rise of associated risks to humanity. Similar relationships occur between biodiversity change and ecosystem services at scales ranging from small square-meter plots to entire ocean basins; this finding implies that small-scale experiments can be used to predict large-scale ocean change. At current rates of diversity loss, this analysis indicates that there will be no more viable fish or invertebrate species available to fisheries by 2050. However, the results also show that the trends in loss of species are still reversible."

Re: "our congressional representatives should economically hurt citizens in the US for the benefit of citizens of nations that can't develope solutions to their own problems because....?"

It has something to do with the whole we-are-all-in-this-together thing. Your statement makes a couple of false assumptions, however. There is nothing about addressing global warming through changes in policy that needs to lead to economic harm. For some discussion go to

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid16.php

or

http://www.natcap.org/

|11.3.06 @ 11:31AM|#

Thanks mainstreamman.

|11.3.06 @ 11:38AM|#

Dan T writes, "Unless you think that anti-global warming initatives will actually cause the Earth to become totally uninhabitable more quickly, the answer is 'yes'."

Do you really think the global warming will cause anything even remotely close to making Earth "uninhabitable?"

Or is simply a product of your "Center for Advanced Sarcasm?" ;-)

thoreau|11.3.06 @ 11:44AM|#

MSM-

Good post. FWIW, all sorts of points could be made about the danger of extrapolations, and ways that people might adjust between now and 2048, so that the specific prediction may well be inaccurate. However, after all that is said and done, the fact remains that a commons is under significant pressure, and maybe it's reasonable to discuss market-based approaches to resources rather than simply deny that this resource is under pressure.

I don't have any ideas at this stage, having not thought much about the economics of commons for some time, but I know there are good ideas out there, ideas that I need to refresh myself on when I get the chance.

|11.3.06 @ 11:58AM|#

Dr.T.

I agree with everything you say. Of course the specifics of this prediction will be inaccurate to a degree, butt what I hope the reaction to this study isn't, is a knee-jerk let-us-figure-out-how-this-is-not-a-problem so that we can ignore it.

I like seafood.
I plan on living well past 2050, so I hope that we can figure out a way for my last meal to involve scallops, dungeness crab, and a nice piece of fish.

|11.3.06 @ 12:02PM|#

And as for market solutions to the problem of over fishing... here is a group trying to provide information for consumers...

http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_regional.aspx

"Our Seafood Watch regional guides contain the latest information on sustainable seafood choices available in different regions of the U.S. Our "Best Choices" are abundant, well managed and fished or farmed in environmentally friendly ways. Seafood to "Avoid" are overfished and/or fished or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment."

thoreau|11.3.06 @ 12:09PM|#

Well, one solution would be to eat more sharks, since sharks eat smaller fish.

I volunteer to help eat some of those sharks.

Seriously, this is a classic tragedy of the commons situation. Much has been said about those situations, some of it quite insightful, and right now I can't remember any of it. But I think that's a good place to start.

|11.3.06 @ 12:24PM|#

Seriously, this is a classic tragedy of the commons situation. Much has been said about those situations, some of it quite insightful, and right now I can't remember any of it. But I think that's a good place to start.

Three words: Own er ship.

The solution to overfishing is to privatize fisheries, even if they are migrating fisheries.

But I assume that MainstreamMan's divinely sent e-mail isn't about overfishing, but about something unmentioned yet much more dramatic that causes "loss of marine diversity."

If the problem is simple overfishing, the whole thing fails the homo idioticus test. Just as no one harpooned the last whale, no one is going to catch the last fish.

|11.3.06 @ 12:33PM|#

Actually regarding fisheries, libertarians have done a lot intellectual leg work on how to start solving the problem of overfishing. Take a look at the Property Environment Research Center site on this topic at URL: http://www.perc.org/topics.php?topic=9

I also have had a peculiar ongoing interest in fisheries problems ("peculiar" because I can't stand to eat the finny little ocean denizens) and have reported on it a number of times. See for instance "Pick Your Poissons" at URL: http://www.reasonmag.com/news/show/36839.html

and "Reef Madness" at URL: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_5_33/ai_78575543

thoreau|11.3.06 @ 12:44PM|#

Ron-

That's what I figured. Although I still think that eating some sharks might help as well. I promise to do my fair share on that front. I'm not a chicken-shark.

|11.3.06 @ 7:48PM|#

"MainstreamMan's divinely sent e-mail isn't about overfishing, but about something unmentioned yet much more dramatic that causes "loss of marine diversity."

The divine sender is some fringe :^) journal called "Science." I get abstract alerts. I haven't had time to read the article yet to determine if over-fishing is the main issue. Loss of diversity (and its impact on species we fish) is the primary danger being examined in relation to human economies. Fishing is certainly the main economic factor involved.

|11.3.06 @ 7:52PM|#

"The solution to overfishing is to privatize fisheries, even if they are migrating fisheries."

That sounds nice as a platitude. I would want to hear the details. Particularly how you work out the issues of ownership in international waters. I think another approach (that could be combined with your suggestion) is to look at the "fair trade" movement that certifies fish as coming from sustainable sources, utilizing appropriate practices, etc... Fair Trade protocols are typically monitored by private certifiers of some sort.

|11.3.06 @ 7:53PM|#

Of course, there is no reason that certification could not be done by an international organization set up by international treaties between governments.

|11.3.06 @ 8:48PM|#

The divine sender is some fringe :^) journal called "Science."

It seems I got a similar article thrown in my driveway this morning. The top of the front page of the newspaper blares the headline "Report: Global fisheries in peril" sublined by "But there is time to stop collapse by mid-century."

It does seem that overfishing is the culprit. The article's conclusion is something like saying that if fingernail biting trends continue at current rates you will chew your arm off by next Thursday.

The mere fact that Mr Bailey can cite examples of sustainable fisheries in his articles would seem to utterly belie the ridiculous conclusion that there will be no fisheries in 2050. Not only will the currently sustainable fisheries still be present under current trends, but they will also serve as models for other troubled fisheries to follow.

|11.3.06 @ 9:01PM|#

I would want to hear the details. Particularly how you work out the issues of ownership in international waters.

How do you work out the issues of ownership of a steamship in international waters? Its owners are its owners. All you ask in international waters is that people of all nations respect that.

Mr Bailey's articles cited above give some examples of how to define property rights over fisheries. Let me take a free form shot of my own here...

Have treaties charter an international commission that defines fishery properties and recognizes the current fishers of those fisheries. The commission puts together a mechanism whereby an entity can buy out the current fishers.

Note that you don't need to auction off the oceans of the whole world at once. As individual fisheries collapse as this Science article predicts, fishers will get out or accept a lower price for their claim. Once the market clears, the fishery is in private hands and the fishery can be managed by those hands through the course of its recovery and its continued sustainable use.

Let the Coase theorem be the guide. Let the commission merely ease the transaction costs.

Mark Bahner|11.4.06 @ 8:59AM|#

I've got a *real* solution to the problems of (wild) fisheries:

Plant more fish.

Why don't farmers run out of corn, wheat, barley, and cotton? After all, they harvest the vast majority of it each year. The answer of course is that they plant seeds.

Come up with a way that fish can be incredibly inexpensively biomarked, much as cattle are branded on the open range. Then, when fishing boats bring in their hauls of fish, they pay some commission (some fraction of their catch's value) to the people who "planted" the fish in the first place. (Of course, even fisherpersons should be allowed to do planting. That would allow those who aren't good at catching to still maintain a business related to the sea...they'd become planters rather than catchers.)

Ze problem eees solfed.

(Of course, I know nothing about bioengineering, so I'll leave the actual mechanics of inexpensively biomarking fish to the bioengineers.) (Just let me share in the Nobel Prize when it's won.)

thoreau|11.4.06 @ 9:36AM|#

Mark, that is actually quite clever. I'm not sure if it's feasible, but it's quite clever.

Enforcement? Probably by spot checks of fish wholesalers, and if they find somebody selling fish without paying royalties the wholesaler pays a fine (in addition to royalties owed) divided between the planter and the private inspection agency.

If free marketeers had started thinking creatively in the early 1990's, instead of insisting that the addition of a heat-absorbing substance to the atmosphere can't cause the atmosphere to heat up, who knows where the debate would be today? (Yes, I know, the science is a bit more complicated than that, but that's the gist, and I think it's good to add creative market-based ideas to a debate as early as possible.)

|11.4.06 @ 11:43AM|#

"The article's conclusion is something like saying that if fingernail biting trends continue at current rates you will chew your arm off by next Thursday."

Not really. You need to read the actual study and not the summary by some journalist who doesn't understand it.

|11.4.06 @ 11:44AM|#

"Come up with a way that fish can be incredibly inexpensively biomarked, "

There are many methods employed to this end by biologist studying migration and what not. Usually just an embedded chip or a simple tag.

Mark Bahner|11.4.06 @ 3:55PM|#

I wrote, "Come up with a way that fish can be incredibly inexpensively biomarked, "

MainstreammMan responded, "There are many methods employed to this end by biologist studying migration and what not. Usually just an embedded chip or a simple tag."

I doubt those are anywhere near as cheap as I'm intending. I'm talking about something so cheap that one could release them in fingerlings or even fish *eggs* and still have them economically feasible.

For example, insert a gene that makes a fish's skin reflect with a certain hue when hit with ultraviolet, infrared, or visible light. Maybe one releaser has a "brand" that glows pink, the other blue, green, whatever.

Then, as the fish are pulled from the storage bin on a ship, they go down a conveyor at 300 fish per minute, under a light that counts how many fish are each hue, and sends a check to the "planters" for the appropriate amount.

Let's say a fisherperson grosses $300,000 per year for a single boat. He or she might then pay $10,000 to the "planters."

What would be even better is if the biomarker could be adjusted so that people who released fingerlings would get more money than people who just released eggs.

Any bioengineers reading this...work out the details. And I've dropped my demands when you get the Nobel Prize...just give me a mention, right before you mention your parents or spouse. ;-)

|11.4.06 @ 4:05PM|#

"The article's conclusion is something like saying that if fingernail biting trends continue at current rates you will chew your arm off by next Thursday."

From the article:

"We recognize limitations in each of our data sources, particularly the inherent problem of inferring causality from correlation in the largerscale studies. The strength of these results rests on the consistent agreement of theory, experiments, and observations across widely different scales and ecosystems. Our analysis may provide a wider context for the interpretation of local biodiversity experiments that produced diverging and controversial outcomes (1, 3, 24). It suggests that very general patterns emerge on progressively larger scales. High-diversity systems consistently provided more services with less variability, which has economic and policy implications. First, there is no dichotomy between biodiversity conservation and long-term economic development; they must be viewed as interdependent societal goals. Second, there was no evidence for redundancy at high levels of diversity; the improvement of services was continuous on a log-linear scale (Fig. 3). Third, the buffering impact of species diversity on the resistance and recovery of ecosystem services generates insurance value that must be incorporated into future economic valuations and management decisions. By restoring marine biodiversity through sustainable fisheries management, pollution control, maintenance of essential habitats, and the creation of marine reserves, we can invest in the productivity and reliability of the goods and services that the ocean provides to humanity. Our analyses suggest that business as usual would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality, and ecosystem stability, affecting current and future generations."

Mark Bahner|11.4.06 @ 4:11PM|#

"If free marketeers had started thinking creatively in the early 1990's, instead of insisting that the addition of a heat-absorbing substance to the atmosphere can't cause the atmosphere to heat up, who knows where the debate would be today?"

I've already given a solution to the energy problem and global warming "problem." My solution isn't strictly libertarian (unless Bill Gates will set aside $10 billion of his money). I've proposed that the U.S. government set aside $10 billion of its money for energy technology prizes. Maybe $5 billion for (non-tokamak) fusion, $3 billion for photovoltaics, $1 billion for advanced batteries, and $1 billion for methane hydrates.

The federal government could actually make this whole thing revenue-neutral by stopping all it's current funding of energy research. For example, the U.S. federal government will spend approximately the $4 billion that I'm proposing to offer on non-tokamak fusion prizes on the ITER --International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor--over the next decade).

http://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/energy/index.html

|11.4.06 @ 4:12PM|#

"I doubt those are anywhere near as cheap as I'm intending. "

A couple cent chip put beneath the skin could provide instant accounting as it passed by a radio chip reader. Would get rid of a lot of the problems inherent in using skin hue, genetic engineering (paragenetic effects, phenotypic variation, etc...) Not that it would work with eggs...

|11.4.06 @ 4:20PM|#

You would even get credit for feeding other fish to the extent that the chips were in the bellies of larger fish...

Hmmm...

Mark Bahner|11.4.06 @ 8:11PM|#

"A couple cent chip put beneath the skin could provide instant accounting as it passed by a radio chip reader. Would get rid of a lot of the problems inherent in using skin hue, genetic engineering (paragenetic effects, phenotypic variation, etc...) Not that it would work with eggs..."

Yeah, a couple cents per fish might work. That would encourage people to release juveniles, which seems better to me than just eggs. (When I go to Home Depot, I buy the little flowers, not the seeds.)

"You would even get credit for feeding other fish to the extent that the chips were in the bellies of larger fish..."

Actually, I've thought about that. It would indeed make sense to reward people for releasing fish at all trophic levels. If people just release top-of-the-foodchain fish, those fish will get mighty hungry. So shrink the chip small enough that people and animals could even eat it without hurting themselves, and I'd go with that.

thoreau|11.4.06 @ 8:42PM|#

You need to read the actual study and not the summary by some journalist who doesn't understand it.

The same could be said of so many studies discussed in so many threads on so many blogs.