The triumph, for yet another year, of those who want to split the difference and, basically, do nothing (i.e. those whose key climate strategy is to invest in good ‘ole technology or at least to say they want to invest in technology) — this means you President Bush, Newt Gingrich, Bjørn Lomborg, OPEC (!), Shellenberger and Nordhaus (depending on what day you happen to catch them), and possibly Andy Revkin (and maybe even E. O. Wilson — say it ain’t so!)
By the way, the (lame) outcome of the energy bill ought to make VERY clear that funding clean energy technology at the level it deserves ($10+ billion a year) is NOT politically easier than regulating carbon (contrary to what Shellenberger and Nordhaus keep saying).
Conservatives hate both strategies — and we will certainly need the money from the auctioning of carbon permits to pay for the technology, since it is now clearer than ever that such money won’t come from 1) raising taxes [as if] or 2) shifting money away from huge government oil subsidies even when oil is at $90+ a barrel!
Happy New Year!
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Lumping Shellenberger and Nordhaus with deniers really is a disservice. They are completely cognizant of the urgency, support government action and are trying to push for effective strategies beyond that. The discussion on solutions they foster is a good thing.
Joe,
It sounds as if maybe your faith in government fixes is beginning to waver just a bit.
I have repeatedly asked you why you are so against private enterprise, such as in this thread
http://climateprogress.org/ 2007/ 12/ 21/ debunking-inhofe-report-over-400-prominent-scientists-disputed-man-made-global-warming-claims-in-2007-andy-revkin/
but I don’t think you ever answered.
Why are you so sure that a venture capital approach is wrong?
Joe,
You’ve got me confused. So many posts about how plug in automobiles will soon put us on the road to victory against CO2 and yet you constantly criticize anyone who thinks we should invest in new technology. You have said plug-ins are current technology, but they are not quite yet. GM and Toyota have pushed back their programs. The Tesla is a real beaut and a few hundred people will have one in a couple of years. There could well be a significant breakthrough affecting climate before plug-ins reach the people. I just don’t see the wisdom of attacking and alienating anyone who is not 100% committed to the war on CO2. Grandma always said you catch a lot more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
The premise here is of a high probability that CO2 above 500 ppm will bring hell and high water. Is that probability 100%? 90%? 85%? What are the probabilities the effect might be more or less severe? What happens if the 10% chance that CO2 isn’t causing climate change turns out to be the truth? The precautionary principle is often cited in support of CO2 abatement. It is a good argument. Even a 50% chance that CO2 is the culprit would compel us to combat it. The principle also applies in the reverse.
Paul,
The more I hang around here, the more convinced I become that Joe will continue to diss private enterprise for one or both or all three of these reasons: a)He’s a convinced socialist or communist and simply hates or has no faith in free enterprise; b)He stands to gain something (money, prestige) from getting his vision for climate legislation passed; c)He is paid to say the things he does.
At the very least, if he was committed to finding a solution to what he truly believed was a looming catastrophe, he would embrace private as well as public efforts.
Paul:
Saw a presentation last fall by a guy from PNL about plug-in cars. His analysis is that they will actually result in more emissions from coal and NG thermal electric plants since hydro power is incapable of providing the peak power drain.
Ron Paul: The more I hang around here, the more convinced I become that you don’t really absorb what I say.
One more time, as pithily as I can: With the right rules and standards, private enterprise is the solution to global warming — it has all the money and the factories. Without the right rules and standards, private enterprise is (obviously) the primary source of the problem — steadily rising emissions.
All the R&D spending in the world by govt (or even VCs) can’t change that equation — as useful as it might be. Plug ins are a good example. No gov’t standards — they are a small help. With gov’t standards — they are a core solution.
What S&N don’t understand is that federal technology spending is NOT even on the list of “must haves” to solve the climate problem — whereas they think it is at the top of the list.
(BTW, the precautionary principle does not apply in reverse, whatever that actually means.)
deadwood,
It’s about net fossil fuel use. While the need for electricity generating increases with plug-ins, the amount of gasoline burned goes down. Once plug-ins become widely available, it will still take 15 to 20 years to “convert the fleet.” During that time, we can assume a concurrent increase in alternative (wind & solar) electric power.
Joe,
So you’re saying that there’s no such danger with government fixes of not having the “right rules and standards”?
Simply put: Government will do it right. Private enterprise will do it wrong.
Yes, I see where you’re coming from.
Government has the knowledge, skill, and wherewithal to save us from ourselves and the disaster that is almost upon us, but interestingly they seem a bit behind on economics -
http://www.nypost.com/ seven/ 12292007/ business/ bond_rescue_plan_713208.htm
Maybe venture capitalists aren’t all bad. Hooray!
An alternative strategy would be to raise taxes, but I hope no socialists try to stand on Mr. Buffett’s hands.
Paul,
we can assume a concurrent increase in alternative (wind & solar) electric power.
Who or what are you basing your assumption on?
Ron,
Philosophical purity aside, Joe is correct that government has a role to play. I don’t think his view of what government should do is radical or socialistic. He can correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me he wants two things: tax and regulatory policies to make carbon free energy competitive in the marketplace and some sort of cap and trade system to provide economic incentive for reducing CO2 emissions.
Oops! That wrong name in the comment box problem is back. It occurs to me that some here may have thought Ron was talking to himself. Sorry, pal.
Joe,
I don’t think it’s an either/or government vs marketplace situation. The energy bill and the let’s talk about this later Bali result show that “getting it right” isn’t going to be easy. The point is I and others like Raphael don’t think you should be so critical of those who are generally in your corner but don’t share your single minded focus on CO2. I am not asking you to change that focus. Progress, however, comes when those with non identical views find areas of agreement rather than looking for disagreement. For example, you say that private enterprise “has all the money.” Well government has a lot of money, too. It buys a lot of stuff. Therefore, procurement policies can have significant impact. Let’s insist that government at all levels maximize their procurement of hybrid vehicles and incorporate alternative energy in government buildings. I bet even Newt Gingrich and Bjørn Lomborg would agree with that.
Ron,
You’re an idiot.
You also have an agenda, have tunnel vision and I think you are crooked.
For you to have read and thought about Joe’s post to write,
‘So you’re saying that there’s no such danger with government fixes of not having the “right rules and standards”’
is ridiculous.
Of course government can screw it up and they have. But of course government can do it right and they have.
You also wrote of a summation of what Joe wrote ‘Simply put: Government will do it right. Private enterprise will do it wrong.’
as a summation of what Joe wrote is amazing.
Don’t put written words where there weren’t meant to be any. What Joe wrote was accurate, informative, reasonable and made sense. For you to get out of what Joe wrote what you write you got out of it shows the tremedous bias that you have. Posts are wasted on you.
Paul,
Certainly government has a lot of money. It has as much money as it wants to take or to simply print. Both options, however, harm the private sector (the rest of us).
But if all it took to get a job done right was to have a bunch of money to throw at it, or tax people into submission, then government would have long ago proven itself as the efficiency leader of the world.
That’s not what history shows, though, is it? The fact is government does not operate by the profit motive, in fact it operates under a disincentive to be efficient and show results. And ‘its money’ is stolen money.
Joe’s distrust of the marketplace and reliance on government is unwarranted. In fact, it’s counter-productive, if he really believes we are on the verge of a catastrophe.
He’d like to stand on the hands of VCs, restrict energy use, tax and subsidize more heavily, and somehow ‘create a market’ for carbon credits – all the while expecting some technological innovation to come out of that. It makes no sense.
The only explanation(s) I can see is as I said in my earlier post above.
No amount of restatement by Ron will make Joe’s words different than what they are.
=====
From what I can see, many actions are common to avoiding an economic crash and climate change (the main exception being coal), and many of those actions require more government action than I’d prefer, but we already missed the chance to do it completely privately, especially given quarter-to-quarter mentality. Oddly enough, many CEOs actually *prefer* tougher regulations, if they keep the playing field level.
In light of (for example) the Hirsch Report, consider PlanA and PlanB:
PlanA( BAU): we keep doing all the stuff that Joe says we shouldn’t, like building new fossil-based infrastructure full-blast, keep our transport fleet fossil-based. I.e., basically, as per Hirsch, we don’t start mitigation until we’ve seen Peak Oil in the rearview mirror, and then we have 20+ years of supply shortfall because it is impossible to switch everything over very quickly. Fuel prices skyrocket. We burn coal like crazy.
IMHO: At some point, we get another Great Depression, like the 1970s oil crisis magnified.
PlanB: go all-out on efficiency and do the other things Joe says. Fossil fuel prices go up, but much slowly, and transport shifts to electricity (and maybe some biofuels, where we may argue). Do things like Denmark or California, which have not made everybody there poor. Economic growth may slow, although those places hae done OK so far.
Which Plan these would each of the following prefer:
a) Fossil-fuel company executive?
b) A wealthy person with a lot of money in fossil fuel companies?
c) A well-off person with no fossil fuel investments?
d) A fossil fuel company, average income worker?
e) An average worker in other areas?
Question for Joe: when we had a fuel crunch in the 1970s, how well did people do in those various categories or equivalents? I couldn’t find any government reports on this quickly, but maybe you know some?
[What I recall is that e) got hammered pretty well, and since prices for lots of things went up, it's not clear that big oil prices helped d) a lot, but maybe it evened out. It was good for a) and b); c) could ride it out, because prices of necessities are a small fraction of income for them. But maybe I'm wrong in thinking that another oil-smashup would hammer average-income people?]
A lot of (very-well-off) people in this town have been trading in their BMWs and Mercedes for Priuses… [We don't like to change cars often, so we're holding out for PHEVs.]
But amazingly:
A. People in a) and b), who may find it convenient to call themselves libertarians (but are amongst the most ardent lobbiests and obtainors of government tax breaks and other sudsidies)
B. Fund lobbiests / thinktanks to fight conservation / efficiency / distributed power generation or anything else that might reduce profits for fossil fuel companies. They do not want people going off-grid or buying more efficient cars, just as cigarette companies don’t want people to get unhooked.
(Well, A and B aren’t amazing), but
C. And they do this in the name of libertarianism. (amazing).
D. AND, truly amazing, a lot of people who call themselves libertarians BELIEVE them, suspedning
Hopefully, the libertarians who believe them are in category c), but if they’re in d) or especially e), they are helping push themselves or their kids into a bad place … and those in a) and b) will laugh all the way to the bank. Fossil fuel companies are necessary, and not going away any time soon, but if they make even better profits, where exactly did that money come from? [Note: I have nothing against oil companies in general, I've spent a lot of time with petroleum geologists and helped sell them a lot of computers.]
E. AND, worst of all, speaking as a “keep government as small and minimally intrusive as possible, as local as possible, and as big as necessary, ” Independent:
If people manage to hold off useful actions long enough for desperation to set in, libertarians are especially going to like the resulting government a whole lot less.
There is something wrong with what Shellenberger and Nordhaus has to say and I’ll try to give my version. Joe wrote a lot about it to in his articles which you should read, but I’ll give my version here.
They wrote about the death of environmentalism in an article saying that we should emphasize the good about clean energy instead of trying to warn people about the dangers of all the carbon dioxide. That people don’t want to hear the bad message. Be more like Martin Luther King jr’s message of his ‘I have a dream’ speech and just like that the new environmentalism would be as successful as the civil rights of the 1960’s.
The problem is that the 1960’s were successful with the civil rights because of the clear knowledge of the bad that can happen as well as the ‘I have a dream’ speech.
Why is Christianity successful? Partly because of the heaven that it promises. But also for it’s hell. It gets you with the bribe of heaven and the blackmail of hell.
How is it that the good cop-bad cop can succeed at getting suspects to confess to crimes? Would good cop-good cop work as well? I don’t think it would, it’s when the have the bad cop is mad at the suspect and the good cop tells the suspect, hey come on, I can’t control the bad cop, you got to give me something. So the suspect confesses to the good cop.
Why did the civil rights of the 60’s work? Partly because of the ‘I have a dream’ heaven vision that Martin Luther King gave. But also partly because of the anger coming from the black community with the riots showing the hell that can happen.
The same with the C02 problem. S N think we only have to show the heaven of clean carbon reduced energy and the world will change. But without the hell of global warming and the possibilities of a very changed world with a different hotter climate, they have reduced their message greatly and they have cut the legs out from underneath much of the environmental movement with their ‘the death of the environment’ article.
S and N have has said that we should increase the energy research budget greatly. Has that happened even with this democratic congress? No. Partly because now republicans can target keeping the energy research budget low for the fossil fuel industries support that democrats won’t get.
For a successful global warming program to work, we’ll need to talk about the heaven of clean, carbon reduced energy, but we will also need to talk about the hell of hotter climate world.
We’ll also need reduce the use of carbon fossil fuel someway, while increasing non carbon sources someway, with some type of government regulation and/or incentive. There is just not enough of a cost difference that can be built up with non carbon energy sources to replace fossil fuels and the entry barriors.
What is the proper roll of government and the proper role of industry to reduce carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere?
One explanation I have read is that a role of government is to steer, while the role of industry is to row. Government can give a direction that we should move towards and it’s up to industry to do the work that needs to be done.
Can moving to reduced carbon energy sources be done without some regulation and/or incentives? Probably not, probably not until those sources are greatly exhausted and the cost increases because of that exhaustion. By that time we will have changed the climate to the hotter climate. Just like it requires regulations to force companies and individuals to not pollute rivers, lakes and the air, to not add the carbon dioxide to the atmosphere for the avoid the hotter planet, some government action is required. And that’s for governments around the world to do the same thing.
We need the governments to steer in the right direction of reduced use of carbon energy sources. Given regulations and incentives to do go in the right direction, industry can do the rowing of changing the energy we use to clean non carbon sources.
Is government inherently bad? Some argue that it is. But it is just like any tool. It can be good and it can be bad. Examples of a tool being at different times being good and bad are numerous. A person can us a Gun to hunt for recreation or to feed a family, or to kill without just cause. A jail can be used to lock up someone who is a threat to society or to lock up someone who is completely innocent of a crime, but the justice system made a tragic mistake in a guilty verdict.
A government can be good if it protects us from bad. A climate that is much hotter than the one we have now, which changes where we have farmland into desserts and rivers and lakes into dry gulches is bad and it is something we should try to avoid. For that we need some government.
Ronald,
What is the proper roll of government and the proper role of industry to reduce carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere? Not withstanding the folly in assigning roles to institutions, the question omits that most important piece: the people. Environmentalists Shellenberger and Nordhaus wrote we should emphasize clean energy rather than the dangers of all the carbon dioxide as a strategy for success. We all want a replacement of fossil fuel by 2050. The real question is how we best get there.
The explanation that the role of government is to steer, while the role of industry is to row is a description of, at best, mercantilism and, at worst, totalitarianism. When I read it my first thought was, “Who’s cracking the whip on this tub?”
Paul K.
you’re right. What you wrote made me picture some ancient world movie with the rowers tied to there ship and oars. Not what I or anybody would want or what I tried to describe.
You’re right that it doesn’t describe the people, but that is what representative government is suppose to take care of. We’ve got no chance without sometime in the future we elect representatives who can sell us on a way out of the global warming mess. Governments determine the rules to the economic game and without favorable rules to limit carbon fossil fuel energies and replace that with non carbon energy, we may not get anywhere.
None of what I wrote meant we should remove any of the freedoms already in the political system, only that we do what should be done and slow the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere.
Paul K.,
What I wrote on steeting and rowing was not meant to advocate government intervention into industry decisions other than the overall goal of reduced carbon dioxide release.
It is a question whether we are allowed to “plan” as a society…to use foresight and knowledge to make decisions about the direction of our energy economy and management of existing carbon stores. The libertarian and libertarian-esque ideology of the Bush administration is so afraid of passing laws that affect rich people or corporations that they forbid talk of planning which they equate with expropriation of private property and the (delusional) idea that there should be no restrictions or impediments on private property owners use of their property. They use the model of the old Soviet Union to say “planning never works”.
The problem we are currently facing in our society is that the human capability to plan for the future as a group is denied us by the political strength (but moral and intellectual bankruptcy) of this ideology. Corporations and individuals should continue to have the ability to plan the disposition of their own private properties but what happens to those aspects of life that exceed the bounds of anyone’s private property? Can we still have the ability to “plan”, to use our ability to observe the world, draw conclusions and strategize accordingly as a group of people? Or is this forbidden to us by the “laws of the market” that require planning to end at the boundaries of our respective properties?
It would be great if people could get together a form a non-governmental cooperative that would be able to project common interests and needs that go beyond each of our parochial interests. But that would be re-inventing the political wheel at a point in time when it appears as though, for some purposes, the government is adequate enough, if people get behind it and hold it accountable for the changes they want to happen.
S&N are trying to sidestep the political questions by saying that technology innovation will fix it all. There is a chance that this may happen but this is not likely. They are accommodating themselves to the Reagan-Bush political tradition that has proscribed government action as ipso facto ineffective.
We do need to express joint purpose that goes beyond individual interests (though may not contradict those interests and for many will support and enrich those interests) whether through government policy or some other means. Right now, the US political scene doesn’t allow for that kind of expression of joint interests: people accuse you of being anti-market or anti-business in often slanderous ways. In other countries, they have less of a problem with the government doing things. We need to recover some of this unproblematic acceptance that government is a necessary evil that may actually do some good. Otherwise we are up sh*t’s creek without the proverbial paddle.
Michael,
I agree with you with most of what you wrote, but we need to be careful of what we mean by plan, both with how we talk about it and how we go about doing it. What I wrote before sounded to much like government intervention is industry and society than I wanted it to sound.
Anything we want to do should include as much freedom to make the individual choices as possible. Somehow if we are to make progress on dealing with the carbon dioxide problem, we have to make sure that it isn’t about changing peoples lives other than to fix the problem.
I am familiar with Shellenberger and Nordhaus only through this blog. I gather they are among the group of environmentalists in which I include myself who criticize the single minded emphasis put on CO2 by AGW proponents. The belief is a broader emphasis is more likely to succeed and, by the way, it’ll take care of your CO2 problem too.
Can anybody guess who said this? “I think our challenge has to be to think through how you genuinely solve the problem here. And I think the answers are very clear-cut. As I said earlier, if we had a 20-year tax credit for wind power, South Dakota alone can provide 10 percent of the energy in — electricity in the United States through wind power by itself. If we had a serious effort for ethanol and made it available at stations, it dramatically improves gasoline usage and it dramatically improves carbon loading.
There are new technologies that are going to take carbon out of coal, and they’re going to take carbon out of the existing atmosphere. And there are things that are happening where it’s very likely that we’re going to be able to sequester carbon in huge quantities in a way which will make a difference. And it’s conceivable within 20 years you will actually see a decline in carbon in the atmosphere if we make the right kind of investment.”
Ronald,
In the way I wrote my contribution, the part where I emphasize that people and corporations should continue to have almost all of the rights they have now to plan with regard to their own property, kind of got lost in that sentence.
But this right to property is not as absolute as ideologists on this site would like you to think. Property rights are cultural conventions, codified in laws that change over time to reflect changes in the culture. There is no way to pussyfoot around the notion that the libertarians here are saying that new laws the regulate markets do subtly or not so subtly change the rights that people have to use their property. I’m just saying that this is not the end of property rights or the world, unlike these libertarian chicken littles who shriek bloody murder if you suggest a new law or tax. You need to acknowledge that this is the case but it is not nearly the big deal that those who claim that it is the end…just explain to them in “property rights” terms what the change will entail.
There is general mistrust of government officials speaking in these terms because people are afraid of an absolutist government that will mistreat them and their property. People need to be vigilant about government abuse but I think we have gone too far in our country, given too much regard for property absolutists who have had the ear of the most powerful people in the US for around 25 years.
These absolutists have provided ideological cover for backwards-looking industries and moneyed interests who have used these objections to strike fear in ordinary people about what are really moderate or pragmatic uses of government to better the general welfare. You hear the libertarian folks here scoff about how impure Bush etc. are, but their ideology has been one of the covers for the ongoing corruption of the government and its alliance with among others the extractive industries. What I called in another post “the cult of liberty” is part of a set of political incantations that need to be thoroughly set in a new light: they have functioned as a cover for greed and un-freedom of most people who are left with fewer choices in a fragmented country in a more debt-ridden economy, wedded to the past.
Somehow we need to de-fragment but these fellows who sing the praises of unregulated markets and libertarianism contribute further to that fragmentation. The government can help us do that, though it certainly is not the only venue within which that can happen.
Michael,
Plusgood post, comrade! You are a fullwise goodthinker. On reflection I find your words goodthinkwise to be more than duckspeak; they are true goodwise blackwhite, plusgood bellyfeel.
I guess I am just an ungood oldthinker, trolling stupidwise, hanging cultwise onto plusungood ownlife ideals. The thought police should send me speedwise to Room 101!
Doubleplusgood New Year!
you are right