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Allocating the Arctic
Today's declaration said that all five nations would abide by the 1982 Law of the Sea, which determines territorial claims according to coastlines and undersea continental shelves.
Here is the full story. The good news is that unclaimed territories, historically, have led to violent clashes. Settling the property rights in advance minimizes the chances of global instability. The bad news -- if you think the cost of fossil fuels is too low -- is that supply restrictions are far more effective than a Pigouvian tax on carbon.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 28, 2008 at 06:41 PM in Law | Permalink
Comments
This agreement is an acknowledgment that the economy wants to move the temperate zone north, meaning we are already setting up production to increase global warming.
From a property rights perspective millions of agents do not cause this effect, they work to prevent it in their energy usage. Which economic principle allows third parties pollute their atmosphere with carbon dioxide but not carbon monoxide?
Posted by: Matt at May 28, 2008 7:04:56 PM
I had the same thoughts
Posted by: Local89 at May 28, 2008 7:55:32 PM
Plants need carbon dioxide to live.They expell oxigen as a by product.While monoxide is a poison
Posted by: karl at May 28, 2008 8:40:10 PM
"The bad news -- if you think the cost of fossil fuels is too low -- is that..." you are suffering from a severe mental disorder.
Posted by: Tom Hanna at May 29, 2008 2:19:32 AM
Ummm, CO2 has never been considered a pollutant.
And in any common understanding of the word, it still isn't. It's not poisonous. You can't see it. It doesn't "pollute" an area where it is "dumped." It doesn't cause any immediate damage for any feasible amount one could encounter.
I think the common understanding of pollutants is that they cause tangible, relatively direct, demonstrable harm. CO2 may be something else, greenhouse gas for example, but it isn't a pollutant.
If you could just decide what you didn't like and call it a pollutant and get a few neighbors to agree, that would be fine, for some, but I don't think it would be capitalism and it wouldn't jibe with common law understanding of tort and it would torture the language. I'm a big fan of things that mean things actually meaning things.
Over here in my neck of the woods, we just had a kid charged with "use of a weapon of mass destruction" because he told some friends he wanted to blow up his school. CO2 being a pollutant is the same as a disgruntled high school kid being a terrorist. Thankfully they dropped that charge.
As for carbon taxes, in my opinion, the benefit isn't keeping it in the ground. It is increasing the rational allocation of its use once it's out.
As for the Arctic, I'd favor a homesteading allocation policy. There's no reason we couldn't do that within our little sliver. It would result in a competitive advantage for us by more efficient use of it by our folks.
Posted by: Andrew at May 29, 2008 5:14:32 AM
And, as for asinine, premature, not ready for prime-time "anti-CO2" measures, at least 3 light clusters in my house have burnt out compact flourescent bulbs in them. What a bargain!
Now, I was an early adopter. I was fluorescent before fluorescent was cool. But, I was a willing payer of the early adopter price of sketchy reliability and voluntarily guinea pigged their R&D. Thanks to impetuous policy makers, we are all early adopters now!
I can't wait to be an early adopter of LEDs.
Posted by: Andrew at May 29, 2008 5:21:12 AM
The Sinn article about Pigouvian taxes argues that suppliers will rush to extract oil if they think that oil taxes will rise in the future. An interesting corollary is that just promising to raise oil taxes in the future, without actually doing anything immediately, will lower oil prices today.
In other words, if you think too much money is going to oil dictators and terrorists and that the outflow is hurting our economy, then commit to raising taxes and watch them rush to cut their prices.
Posted by: a student of economics at May 29, 2008 8:47:24 AM
Can we tell if our climate is changing?
Doing a google search on surveys of noticeable climate changes, I find that Northern Siberian Russians were surveyed, and they noticed many changes if you are living near the Arctic. This article itself came about fromthe expectation of global warming.
In my part of Central California, people over the age of 50 notice considerable warming around here, but much of it they blame on our distribution of water. But lately the much warmer summers are definitely noticeable by non-scientists. WPeople inevitably blame GHG.
Regionsal cross p[ollution has been recongnized as an internal cost here in the USA for some time, some states leaving particulate matter drift to another state. We negotiate agreements.
A fair size piece of Los Angeles particulate pollution comes from China, yet there is no negotiating mechanism.
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