Jun 27 2009, 2:19AM
What's the Point of Reducing Carbon Emissions?
The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) -- the bill that would impose a cap and trade regime for U.S. carbon emissions -- has passed the House of Representatives. Was it worth it? Well, on its own, ACES will in no sense make the world a cooler place. Other nations will help themselves to more coal, like bad kids on Christmas morning. An American cap and trade bill will have a meaningful impact only if it induces other nations to follow suit. So the hope -- plausible if not irresistible, I think -- is that passing climate-change legislation will be a powerful gesture before December's United Nations climate change conference.
But even if the Copenhagen Conference produces a meaningful consensus on climate change, will it matter? Jim Manzi does not think so. He runs some numbers, in response to a post I wrote yesterday, and concludes that even if you eliminate all the costs of global warming in the next century, the economic benefits would be negligible -- and certainly disproportionate to the hysterical rhetoric you hear from the left.
It's possible to quibble with Manzi's data. (More recent temperature estimates than the IPCC's exist: You can check out the work of MIT's Joint Program on Global Change for more.) Or, one might suggest that the factual uncertainty here suggests erring on the side of caution. (If Manzi is right, your children will enjoy a 1% increase in consumption. If Manzi is wrong, your children will know a world with fewer island nations.) But I don't think making a compelling case for regulating carbon emissions requires diving down that empirical rabbit hole. Even if we assume that the worldwide future economic benefits from cap and trade are tiny -- and, on the flipside, assume that the average economic costs of global warming are small -- the critical consideration is where those costs and benefits fall.
The big costs of global warming will fall overwhelmingly on developing nations with dense, coastal populations. You can be a realist about those costs -- why on earth should America care what happens to Bangladesh? -- but the costs are still real. They are also, by and large, not costs for which the developing world is responsible.
And they are big. Manzi cites the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report for his high-end estimate that "economic damages from [a temperature increase of 4 degrees celsius] are equal to 5% of [global] GDP." True fact. But the same report says that, in Africa, the cost of adapting to rising sea level alone "could amount to at least 5-10% of Gross Domestic Product." A one-meter rise in sea level will destroy 1,000 square kilometers of farmland in Bangladesh. And you don't even need to consider the tediously debated issue of sea level to indulge in a little hysteria: Temperature increases could help cut crop yields in agriculture-dependent South Asia by 30% come the middle of the 21st century.
I don't think this is hysterical or even controversial: Travel to South Asia and you can watch it happen now. The question is just how it enters the policy calculus. And why shouldn't it?
[Update: Jim Manzi responds to me (again) here and I respond to him (again) here. Round we go.]
The Atlantic ran a piece recently that pointed out that geoengineering plans are so cheap that they are within the reach of third world countries. So it may not matter much what we do about Green energy supplies. If seas start to rise, Bangladesh may just start seeding oceans with iron or one of the other plans.
Who would stop them or argue that they have no right?
BUt wasn't the moral of the piece that those scenarios might have incredible unforeseen consequences? Like spending the rest of eternity blowing sulfur into the atmosphere with zeppelins? And are thus unappealing?
I don't know if I'd argue bangladesh has no right to create a giant plankton bloom or whatever. I'd much prefer not getting to that point, and not facing the question!
The true purpose of this law is not to curb pollution or minimize environmental destruction. That was just icing on the cake to appeal to those interested in such things. The true purpose was to minimize use of non-renewable resources, such as petroleum and coal, which also happen to be combustible and therefore cause pollution. These fuels are rapidly being depleted, as evidenced by petroleum's recent price escalations. By minimizing their use, the expectation is that energy costs will be reduced in the long run.
You are incorrect regarding the price of oil in the current market. The price has risen by over $1.00 due to the decreasing value of the dollar. The dollar's decreasing value is directly related to our balloning deficit and the Fed printing vast sums of paper, worth less and less with each round of printing. Oil, like gold, is a fixed commodity and investors turn there when currencies weaken.
As to decreasing reserves, how do we know? Vast amounts of possible deposits are off-limits to discovery. But, if oil so conerns you, perhaps you support already available clean energy, like nuclear? Thought not.
The price of petroleum has increased worldwide, not just in the US, so this explanation is not sufficient.
As for oil being fixed, I can't agree, and simple science explains why. Oil is consumed when used in combustion, and you are never getting that oil back (unless you are willing to wait millions of years of fossilization).
It may be true that there are still oil deposits in unknown places, but that would not matter in the long run. The cost of extracting increasingly rarer oil will continue to increase until the marginal cost will not be worth the returns. This is why, until we discover a source of energy that is more abundant or perhaps even renewable, something has to be done to curb the dependence on non-renewable fuels.
It seems that this is a good place to argue for mitigation of effects rather than expensive, uncertain strategies to attack carbon emissions.
The Netherlands have managed fairly effectively to exit slightly below sea-level. There's no reason that Bangladesh could't do so as well. And if building the dykes were to be paid for by foreign aid it would be an economic stimulus as well. W00t, it's a twofer, saving Bangladeshi farmland, and providing employment!
I get a little nervous when you call an IPCC report estimate a true fact. Are you saying it's a fact that that's what they said, or a fact that that's what will happen? While I don't hold out hope for the IPCC thinking they deal totally in facts anymore (the whole hockey stick graph in the climate change report soured me to that), I'm hoping there aren't too many others that are going down that road, because it's essentially calling predicting the future factual.
Ooops, sorry. What I meant was that Jim Manzi's reading of the IPCC report was accurate -- not that the IPCC report is a totally accurate reflection of what will come to pass. Obviously that's unlikely to be the case, even if it's the best availble estimate.
Conor