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Ron Bailey
Here is the story, via Megan McArdle; an excerpt:
“On global warming, the problem is ideologically I suspect it did cause me to …discount evidence which cut against the way I wanted it to be in that case. My justification to my self would be that I had seen [the environmentalists] be so wrong so many times before, why should I trust them this time?” he says.
But when the science appeared irrefutable, Bailey changed.
It is important to distinguish two claims. The first is that a revenue-neutral carbon tax is, in expected value terms, a good idea. If nothing else, we cannot emit accelerating rates of carbon forever. The second and more dubious claim is "a carbon tax is likely to solve the problem." That's not so clear. China and India may not follow suit, the oil may be pumped and used anyway, and the elasticities may be working against us. I give the carbon tax about a thirty percent probability of significantly ameliorating global warming and that is assuming that we engage China in a constructive manner. A pessimistic view, however, does not refute the case for trying. Addendum: Here is an interesting post on whether more information about global warming causes people to worry about it less.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 1, 2008 at 04:03 PM in Science | Permalink
Comments
"I don't think Ron [Bailey] could write -- at least I have not seen him write -- a piece that was consistent with a libertarian vision on global warming," [CEI's Fred] Smith says.
Libertarianism demands private property rights. No one has yet come up with an even slightly persuasive argument for how one could possibly have property rights in the atmosphere (or the oceans, for that matter). The atmosphere is a natural commons, and the standard libertarian arguments don't apply. And I suspect most libertarians know that, otherwise they'd be proposing "free market" solutions rather than continuing to deny the problem. (I have my own lingering skepticism about many "global warming" scenarios, but you can't tell me they're all wring.)
Bailey is exactly right: Once the science is settled, libertarians should look for the "least bad" regulatory solution.
Posted by: Franklin Harris at Mar 1, 2008 5:34:10 PM
Massive global cooling this January. . .
Posted by: Matthew at Mar 1, 2008 5:36:37 PM
"But when the science appeared irrefutable, Bailey changed."
What a joke. The "science" of global warming is about as refutable as it gets. China just had its coldest winter in 100 years, Baghdad had snow for the first time ever, record snow cover in North America, etc. Anyway, a carbon tax is the least of it; the emerging global warming regime wants power, and they won't stop there.
Posted by: Dennis Mangan at Mar 1, 2008 5:37:28 PM
I heard Joe Stiglitz make a good point in a speech at Google. He said something to the effect of, "if we have to tax, why don't we tax bad things, like pollution? Why tax something good, like productivity?". I think he's right that its a silly thing to do, but of course the incentives politicians operate under don't tend to produce taxation schemes which serve the public good. Even still, it would be nice if government was less terrible than it is.
Franklin, I'm not sure that the common libertarian arguments don't apply. If people were being demonstrably harmed by the pollution of commons, they would certainly be entitled to damages or to defend themselves. I think the difference between most liberal arguments and libertarian ones is that the libertarians demand demonstrable harm to life or property to justify the use of force, while many liberals seem to find stopping climate change to be an end unto itself.
Posted by: Grant at Mar 1, 2008 7:06:42 PM
As a first step, shifting tax to carbon seems like a very good idea. When we get down that road a little ways we can confirm that warming is still happening & etc.
Should it come to it, repealing a tax is not hard. It is certainly better than "oops, we should have done something 20 years ago."
(On practical economic harm ... regional models for western water resources are pretty scary.)
Posted by: odograph at Mar 1, 2008 7:34:44 PM
Global warming is so last week. The only question is how long it will take for Al Gore to take credit for the fact that we are now cooling.
Posted by: brian at Mar 1, 2008 7:57:02 PM
On the "cooling" this answer is suitably rude. (This other one is longer on math.)
Posted by: odograph at Mar 1, 2008 8:05:46 PM
the issue was never whether people believed what the thermometers might be saying -- though they might quibble over which thermometers should be read -- but rather whether, when the thermometers showed higher temps, we could conclude that (i) this was anthro driven; (ii) we could reverse the warming if we wanted; (iii) doing so was politically (and economicly) feasible; and (iv) the cost/benefit analysis justified doing so. even for those who think there's a consensus on (i), there are few honest folk who won't admit the remainder are questionable propositions, at best.
why these obvious complications are ignored in almost every story and report is beyond me (it's generally framed as though people actually denied the thermometer was showing whatever it showed). actually, the answer's obvious -- it's much more fun to present your opponents as crackpots.
Posted by: dj superflat at Mar 1, 2008 8:16:46 PM
the issue was never whether people believed what the thermometers might be saying -- though they might quibble over which thermometers should be read -- but rather whether, when the thermometers showed higher temps, we could conclude that (i) this was anthro driven; (ii) we could reverse the warming if we wanted; (iii) doing so was politically (and economicly) feasible; and (iv) the cost/benefit analysis justified doing so. even for those who think there's a consensus on (i), there are few honest folk who won't admit the remainder are questionable propositions, at best.
why these obvious complications are ignored in almost every story and report is beyond me (it's generally framed as though people actually denied the thermometer was showing whatever it showed). actually, the answer's obvious -- it's much more fun to present your opponents as crackpots.
Posted by: dj superflat at Mar 1, 2008 8:17:55 PM
"China and India may not follow suit, the oil may be pumped and used anyway, and the elasticities may be working against us."
--Once the tax is placed, there will be significant incentives for a technology that reduces carbon concentrations in the atmosphere, so we could increase emissions and still decrease carbon in the atmosphere. A carbon tax is indispensable even if we were to not reduce emissions.
Posted by: saifedean at Mar 1, 2008 8:34:28 PM
I think there is a suspicion that people who pack "i ... iii" are making a sliding defense. When the constant is "let's do nothing" but the logic and rationale changes ... you've got to wonder.
Posted by: odograph at Mar 1, 2008 8:35:19 PM
"No one has yet come up with an even slightly persuasive argument for how one could possibly have property rights in the atmosphere (or the oceans, for that matter)."
Look at Barrack Obama's carbon credit scheme, it's a very Coasian approach at the problem, that sidesteps all of the problems Tyler described(at the cost of economic growth).
A similar approach would work for oceans(at least for fishing).
Posted by: David Shor at Mar 1, 2008 10:16:24 PM
If nothing else, we cannot emit accelerating rates of carbon forever.
Why.??
Posted by: russ at Mar 1, 2008 10:25:14 PM
In the Lovelock story he smiles about his prediction to oil businesses that warming will effect their bottom line being confirmed. But has that actually happened? I was under the impression that the warming that has occurred so far has been quite minor and it won't get bad until the future when things like albedo, tundra peat and cloud changes have self-reinforcing effects.
Posted by: TGGP at Mar 1, 2008 10:37:10 PM
But we don't want to *stop* global warming anyway. We want the *right amount* of global warming, the socially optimal amount. Stern's basic approach was correct (it's easy to argue with the specifics though, like the discount rate), how much is global warming going to cost? We should therefore be willing to spend up to that amount to avoid that damage. But not more than that amount.
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Mar 2, 2008 6:02:05 AM
"If nothing else, we cannot emit accelerating rates of carbon forever."
"Accelerating rates of carbon forever" is simply not what happens given no carbon tax.
"Stern's basic approach was correct (it's easy to argue with the specifics though, like the discount rate), how much is global warming going to cost? We should therefore be willing to spend up to that amount to avoid that damage."
No, Stern's basic approach was wrong, because he should have looked at the margin and not the average. If solving the first half of the problem takes 10% of the resources and solving the second half takes 90% of the resources, then solving the second half may not be worth it even if solving the whole problem is better than solving nothing.
Posted by: steven at Mar 2, 2008 9:36:31 AM
Since production of crude and condensates peaked in 2005 (the recent rise in all-liquids production comes from other liquid hydrocarbon sources) it sure looks like we are near Peak Oil. So how are we going to keep heating the planet?
The biggest question in the global warming debate ought to be "how much coal is left?" But we can find orders of magnitude more people worried about AGW than about coal reserves.
If we have a lot of coal then, yes, we can melt the polar ice caps. But if the Energy Watch Group, CalTech's David Rutledge, and a few other analysts are correct then Peak Coal is coming in 20-30 years too.
The question about coal is a subset of a bigger question: Is our bigger problem anthropogenic global warming or Peak Fossil Fuels? I'm inclined to think the latter is the bigger problem. So Ron Bailey has moved from one wrong position to a different wrong position.
Posted by: Randall Parker at Mar 2, 2008 1:58:17 PM
I'm fine with switching to a consumption tax; carbon emissions are a good proxy, carbon consumption would be better (and should lead to emissions reductions) .
30% seems very optimistic. Being revenue neutral, initially there should be no changes. Over time people/business will work to avoid the tax, so emissions will grow less and possibly even be reduced (at least as a per capita measure). However, if people find easy ways to avoid emissions, the goverment is going shift to other taxes. And companies may curb co2 emissions, but doing so may actually increase consumption and increase emissions of real pollutants.
The idea that warming is real, well that's common sense. We're certainly contributing to it, and our GHG emissions are certainly a small part. The idea that we're a big part of it and that it's a problem is highly unlikely. Over pricing CO2 as almost sure to happen, that will likely lead to shifting to other less effective technologies before they are really ready for large scale production.
I think people are too focused on the uncertainty associated with AGW and don't realize that that uncertainty isn't greater than the uncertainty that already exists and still would even if emissions were magically stopped at no cost.
Please see thoughts on uncertainty.
Posted by: aaron at Mar 2, 2008 3:17:14 PM
Another consideration.
Our tax system serves to provide the data that economists and government need to monitor economy.
Switching to a simpler system may leave us in the dark.
Posted by: aaron at Mar 2, 2008 3:33:06 PM
Given the consequences that taxes have on both markets and individual behavior the burden is on the policy maker to overwhelmingly justify them. The case of global warming is a great example. Here we have a group "wishing" to tax carbon, a natural product of metabolism (natural and machine) with no real evidence that the tax will improve the environment, not adversely impact the poorest in society, and not have other unintended consequences. In addition, we have legitimate questions about the efficacy of the tax of curbing CO2 accumulation and material concern that adverse impact on the poor is material. I am dumb struck that people can take the idea of such a tax seriously. Luckily for humanity inertia dominates the public space.
Posted by: bee at Mar 2, 2008 4:53:26 PM
Yes, it is because the more informaton you get on global warming, the less alarming it is. The first hand information basis are exaggerated news paper claims mostly showing off catastrophic end-of-the-world scenarios, but when you look at the actual science, it doesn't look so bleak (considering conervative estimations - which incidentially were the right ones for the last years).
As with many news paper storys on science the extremist views are bound to lose in contrast to the actual science.
Even if you are giving carbon tax cuts a chance, I doubt that will have any effect on net buying behaviour or carbon emissions. Easy example:
A house with solar cells on top needs 20 years to bring in the net carbon emission that it has used for being produced and it is hard to see how solar cells can do that with a degration of efficiency due to wearing off over time.
Also, I doubt that anyone can raise taxes on products so high without being punished, that people won't buy them in contrast to more local products or "low carbon" products.
Posted by: Max at Mar 3, 2008 6:28:24 AM
Tyler - What probability do you give that some other climate change policy (such as a prize for carbon-neutral fuel) will be successful?
Posted by: John Horowitz at Mar 3, 2008 10:08:13 AM
There is a huge difference between weather, climate, and geology. Some people seem to misunderstand the different relevant timelines of each.
Just because it occasionally rains in the desert doesn't mean it is not a hot, dry and arid climate . . .
Posted by: Barry Ritholtz at Mar 3, 2008 3:58:49 PM
Richard Posner in his book 'Catastrophe' argues that a carbon tax (or even more efficiently an emissions tax) will work best precisely when the substitution elasticities are low, and best when they are zero. That's when you'll get the biggest incentive for induced innovation, which is good, since innovation's the only way we'll get on top of this problem. He thinks it's a more direct and market friendly way to incentivize innovation that raising taxes to pay for government R&D subsidies.
Posted by: mb at Mar 4, 2008 1:32:15 PM
Posted by: 燈光音響 at May 23, 2008 11:25:22 PM
