How To Break The Climate Deadlock

[kmoney]

The most recent Scientific American has an article called 'How to Break the Climate Deadlock'. The main idea in the article is that progress on climate change can't be made with only reliance on free markets. There must be some government intervention, through carbon taxes or a trading system and then investment in renewable technology.

As some real world examples the author cites British Columbia. I found this brief article. http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2014/07/british-columbias-carbon-tax

BC’s levy started at C$10 ($9) a tonne in 2008 and rose by C$5 each year until it reached C$30 per tonne in 2012. That works out to 7 cents of the C$1.35 per litre Vancouver residents pay at the pump to fill up their vehicles. Because the tax must, by law in BC, be revenue-neutral, the province has cut income and corporate taxes to offset the revenue it gets from taxing carbon. BC now has the lowest personal income tax rate in Canada and one of the lowest corporate rates in North America, too. BC’s fuel consumption is also down. Over the past six years, the per-person consumption of fuels has dropped by 16% (although declines levelled off after the last tax increase in 2012). During that same period, per-person consumption in the rest of Canada rose by 3%. “Each year the evidence becomes stronger and stronger that the carbon tax is driving environmental gains,” says Stewart Elgie, an economics professor at University of Ottawa and head of Sustainable Prosperity, a pro-green think-tank. At the same time, BC’s economy has kept pace with the rest of the country.

She also gives a couple examples of using a trading system. The Clean Air Act to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions and what California did to improve air quality. China is mentioned also but there is no real data on their success or failure.

Another point is that markets alone can't work because markets don't account for external costs. The government would need to provide that through the use of a carbon tax or trading system. Once that's instituted then the markets can work from there. On the technology side, any major breakthrough and production on a large scale will need government assistance.

To quote something which sort of summarizes the article:

A hefty price on carbon, coupled with major investment in technology, can definitely limit climate change. But both steps require government action. That suggests one other necessary step: we need to stop demonizing government and recognize its crucial role in doing the most important thing that markets do not do, which is prioritizing and sustaining the common good.

Of course this assumes you think climate change is a problem. The arguments in this article are mostly for those who recognize a problem but want to leave it to free markets. Thing is, I bet that's a small group. Most people who recognize a problem are probably also those who don't mind government action. :chuckle:


Does British Columbia provide a good framework to duplicate in the US? What should be done to spur real change?

 

[kmoney]

Not all SciAm articles are posted in their entirety but it looks like this one is.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...he-marketplace-will-not-solve-climate-change/

A U.N. treaty is effective only if signatory nations are prepared to follow suit with firm domestic policies, but American politicians have resisted action, afraid of paying a political price. The rejection of climate action is largely based on suspicion of big government, and an international treaty is government at its biggest. Yet making a substantial impact on something so fundamental as the sources of energy that drive our civilization is going to require billions (if not trillions) of dollars of investments and incentives that span diverse industries—the kinds of actions that the private sector has historically not made. If nations are ever going to put the brakes on climate change, the U.S. will have to overcome its aversion to government playing a major role.
.....

Opponents of an international treaty on climate change have allowed their hostility to government not only to lead them to deny the facts of climate change but also to spill over into conspiratorial thinking. In a 1992 speech Dixy Lee Ray, a former governor of Washington State and a former head of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, insisted that the agenda of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was to “bring about … world government with central planning by the United Nations.” The flame she lit has burned brightly ever since. In his 2012 book Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma accused climate scientists of being part of a liberal conspiracy to dismantle global capitalism and compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo.

Inhofe's views may be extreme, but they reflect a greater conservative mind-set. In our 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt, Erik M. Conway and I show how conservative and libertarian think tanks have questioned the scientific evidence of climate change under the rubric of defending freedom, which they equate with laissez-faire capitalism: low rates of taxation, minimal regulation of business, and little or no government intervention in the marketplace. Social scientists have also shown a strong correlation between “free market ideology” and the beliefs that global climate change is not occurring, is not human-caused or will have positive effects—all positions that contradict the findings of the global scientific community.

.....

Economist Nicholas Stern and others have made the same point in more prosaic language. Investment in scientific research, public education and infrastructure is a common good, but our commitments to those activities have been weakened in recent decades. Yet history demonstrates that markets, by themselves, do not remedy market failures. Governments do.

In the aftermath of the cold war, conservatives and liberals agreed that market-based democracies had done a better job than centrally planned ones at providing goods and services, as well as protecting civil liberties and quality of life. But even Adam Smith, the champion of laissez-faire capitalism, noted that markets only function well with appropriate rules and regulations. One might have thought that the global financial crisis of 2008, the worst since the Depression, would have reminded us of the need for a reasonable set of rules. Yet decades of deregulated capitalism have led to environmental damage on a scale that threatens the very prosperity it is meant to generate.

We need a new conversation about the appropriate role of government in fostering innovation, remedying market failure and tackling inequality. We have to abandon magical thinking and quasi-religious faith in the marketplace. We must acknowledge that we need governance to foster the technologies needed to meet our energy demands without destroying the natural world.

Government is not the solution, but it has to be part of the solution. Although international agreements such as the one sought by COP21 are useful in encouraging national governments to do the right thing, ultimately nations act on a national level. If the 20th century is any guide, once the government lays the foundations for new technologies, the private sector will step in to do what it does best, which is not to invent them but to sell them.

 

[ClimateSanity]

The most recent Scientific American has an article called 'How to Break the Climate Deadlock'. The main idea in the article is that progress on climate change can't be made with only reliance on free markets. There must be some government intervention, through carbon taxes or a trading system and then investment in renewable technology.

As some real world examples the author cites British Columbia. I found this brief article. http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2014/07/british-columbias-carbon-tax

BC’s levy started at C$10 ($9) a tonne in 2008 and rose by C$5 each year until it reached C$30 per tonne in 2012. That works out to 7 cents of the C$1.35 per litre Vancouver residents pay at the pump to fill up their vehicles. Because the tax must, by law in BC, be revenue-neutral, the province has cut income and corporate taxes to offset the revenue it gets from taxing carbon. BC now has the lowest personal income tax rate in Canada and one of the lowest corporate rates in North America, too. BC’s fuel consumption is also down. Over the past six years, the per-person consumption of fuels has dropped by 16% (although declines levelled off after the last tax increase in 2012). During that same period, per-person consumption in the rest of Canada rose by 3%. “Each year the evidence becomes stronger and stronger that the carbon tax is driving environmental gains,” says Stewart Elgie, an economics professor at University of Ottawa and head of Sustainable Prosperity, a pro-green think-tank. At the same time, BC’s economy has kept pace with the rest of the country.

She also gives a couple examples of using a trading system. The Clean Air Act to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions and what California did to improve air quality. China is mentioned also but there is no real data on their success or failure.

Another point is that markets alone can't work because markets don't account for external costs. The government would need to provide that through the use of a carbon tax or trading system. Once that's instituted then the markets can work from there. On the technology side, any major breakthrough and production on a large scale will need government assistance.

To quote something which sort of summarizes the article:

A hefty price on carbon, coupled with major investment in technology, can definitely limit climate change. But both steps require government action. That suggests one other necessary step: we need to stop demonizing government and recognize its crucial role in doing the most important thing that markets do not do, which is prioritizing and sustaining the common good.

Of course this assumes you think climate change is a problem. The arguments in this article are mostly for those who recognize a problem but want to leave it to free markets. Thing is, I bet that's a small group. Most people who recognize a problem are probably also those who don't mind government action. :chuckle:


Does British Columbia provide a good framework to duplicate in the US? What should be done to spur real change?

Why is it you want to limit carbon dioxide in the first place? Forget the west for a moment. Think of sub Saharan Africa and India and other impoverished places in the world. Think of how many lives could be saved and lifted out of poverty with cheap energy. You cannot make these into thriving and growing economies by either making carbon credit transfer payments to them or by imposing draconian measures on the west. Turning the west back two centuries economically will do nothing to lift the third world out of poverty . I would like to see these countries reach the economic power of the US in the fifties. That was the decade we really began to see a much wealthier populace as a whole.

 

[Idolater]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_Delta#Sea_level

As the polar ice caps melt, much of the northern delta, including the ancient port city of Alexandria, will disappear under the Mediterranean.

 

[exminister]

Is climate change only about CO2 or is it the only one opponents care about?

 

[Jonahdog]

Is climate change only about CO2 or is it the only one opponents care about?

Probably the one with the most $ at risk. I think methane is even a stronger green house gas but there is not as much of that and it is not primarily a result of fossil fuel use.

Interesting how we are now concerned about impoverished populations.

 

[Nick M]

There must be some government intervention, through carbon taxes or a trading system and then investment in renewable technology.

Ask yourself how wealth being redistributed will change pollution.

 

[chrysostom]

How To Break The Climate Deadlock


get a clue

 

[Nazaroo]

No one is going to give a poop about pollution during World War III.

 

[Alate_One]

If we don't do something about climate change we're going to get WWIII from people fighting over limited resources.

As far as the BC proposal, I think it's good. It's a general problem with free markets, they can't encompass everything. You need government intervention in the case of pollution, public safety etc.

 

[GuySmiley]

Of course this assumes you think climate change is a problem. The arguments in this article are mostly for those who recognize a problem but want to leave it to free markets. Thing is, I bet that's a small group. Most people who recognize a problem are probably also those who don't mind government action. :chuckle:


Does British Columbia provide a good framework to duplicate in the US? What should be done to spur real change?

I don't see how anything in the BC solution is "leaving it to free markets." An increasing scale of tax by the government isn't "free market."

I read this just last night.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427855/new-breed-greens-pro-capitalism-pro-fracking-patriotic

This group seems sensible to me. The answer doesn't have to be global socialism.

EDIT: I should add that I'm highly skeptical of global warming, but I'm not against treating the planet better, but not at the expense of going back to the stone age either.

 

[genuineoriginal]

Is climate change only about CO2 or is it the only one opponents care about?

It is the only one that can be used to produce money out of thin air, which is really what the whole climate change hoax is about anyway.

 

[genuineoriginal]

If we don't do something about climate change we're going to get WWIII from people fighting over limited resources.

That is funny.
:rotfl:

I think that the attempts to limit carbon dioxide emissions is what will lead to WWIII, not the negligible effects of the naturally occurring climate change.

 

[ok doser]

sell me a Tesla Model S with a 500 mile range, 15 minute recharge and the ability to pull a 2000 pound trailer for $20,000 and i'll buy one :idunno:

 

[kmoney]

Why is it you want to limit carbon dioxide in the first place?

Concerns about what it could be doing to the environment.

Forget the west for a moment. Think of sub Saharan Africa and India and other impoverished places in the world. Think of how many lives could be saved and lifted out of poverty with cheap energy. You cannot make these into thriving and growing economies by either making carbon credit transfer payments to them or by imposing draconian measures on the west. Turning the west back two centuries economically will do nothing to lift the third world out of poverty . I would like to see these countries reach the economic power of the US in the fifties. That was the decade we really began to see a much wealthier populace as a whole.

Why do you think the US would be turned back two centuries?

What is climate sanity?

 

[kmoney]

Ask yourself how wealth being redistributed will change pollution.

If a certain behavior is taxed people might do it less. :idunno:

 

[kmoney]

How To Break The Climate Deadlock


get a clue

Are you giving them?

 

[kmoney]

I don't see how anything in the BC solution is "leaving it to free markets." An increasing scale of tax by the government isn't "free market."

I'm not sure I undersatnd this. The article wasn't about leaving it to free markets and BC wasn't supposed to be an example of it. Either you misunderstood the article or I misunderstood your post. :chuckle:

I read this just last night.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427855/new-breed-greens-pro-capitalism-pro-fracking-patriotic

This group seems sensible to me. The answer doesn't have to be global socialism.

Thanks. I did a quick read now but need to come back to it later.

EDIT: I should add that I'm highly skeptical of global warming, but I'm not against treating the planet better, but not at the expense of going back to the stone age either.

What makes you think we'd end up in the stone age? What does 'stone age' mean?

 

[kmoney]

sell me a Tesla Model S with a 500 mile range, 15 minute recharge and the ability to pull a 2000 pound trailer for $20,000 and i'll buy one :idunno:

:car: Me too.

 

[GuySmiley]

I'm not sure I undersatnd this. The article wasn't about leaving it to free markets and BC wasn't supposed to be an example of it. Either you misunderstood the article or I misunderstood your post. :chuckle:

Oh, I misunderstood. Completely But in that case, no, the BC example is horrible.

What makes you think we'd end up in the stone age? What does 'stone age' mean?

"Stone age" is a wild exaggeration. I mean that the radicals would like us to gimp industry to extremes. I know that's not what the article suggests, I was just stating my general position there.