Re: What's The Point?
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a post in which I tried to predict the course of the climate change debate. In it I said this:
Given current projections, the costs of restricting emissions just can’t be justified based on the benefits that it is projected to provide.
As far as I can see, proponents of emissions reductions will respond with four arguments: (1) inflate the analyzed costs of global warming by claiming the science actually now says things will be even worse than we previously thought, (2) inflate the analyzed costs of global warming by embedding indefensible discount rate assumptions in the black box of econometric calculations used by economists to conduct the cost-benefit analysis, (3) deflate the analyzed costs of emissions mitigation by claiming a free lunch – that there is a cost-free or low-cost way to radically reduce emissions, and/or (4) turn this into a moral crusade asserting that we have a moral duty to the poor of the world because of our past sins of emission. I have laid out responses to each of these objections: 1, 2, 3 and 4. When considered carefully, emissions mitigation proponents have no persuasive arguments.
Conor Clarke has a written a post in which he manages to combine two of these arguments at once.
Claiming the science actually now says things will be even worse than we previously thought? Here’s Conor:
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.)
Check.
Turn this into a moral crusade asserting that we have a moral duty to the poor of the world because of our past sins of emission? Here’s Conor:
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.
Check.
The thing is, I agree that these are significant considerations – they’re just not as obvious as Conor asserts they are, and I think a useful analysis of the problem requires confronting the strongest arguments around both issues. I’ll just start by referencing the counter-arguments from my earlier post. And before anybody gets on a high horse about how CO2-laden economic development is such a threat to the poor of the developing world, he really ought to have a response to this analysis.
Conor writes:
Aesthetically, that would indeed be a drag. Or maybe Conor mistakenly left out Clause 9. “If Manzi is wrong, your children will know a world with fewer island nations, and it’ll be our fault!“
Or maybe my problem is that I’m not as sentimental about island nations as Conor and children. That’s a possibility!
But still. I’ve been listening in on these back and forths for a while now, and I think it’s pretty obvious that efforts like ACES are not meant to mitigate climate change; their impact in that regard is minimal. What they’re meant to mitigate is guilt; what their meant to restore is peace of mind to a well-heeled conscience. It’s the legislative equivalent of saying three hail marys and seven how’s your fathers over nice big plate of KFC.
But I was never going to be a worthy warrior for gimmicky absolutions. I got that weird wirin’, as my pa likes to say. Whatever. Pass the unleaded and tequila, I’m going on the boat.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jun 27, 08:03 PM · #
I clearly don’t have enough to do this weekend. Response here:
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/conor_clarke/2009/06/a_predictably_liberal_take_on_global_warming.php
— Conor Clarke · Jun 27, 08:30 PM · #
Manzi’s exactly right — far more drastic measures are called for than the weak cap-and-trade-style compromises Congress considers acceptable compromises. The mild benefits of Waxman-Markey are not worth the costs. A much tougher, stricter approach is called for, one that provides real benefits rather than cosmetic ones.
At least, that’s what I get from Manzi’s analysis. We need to go big or go home.
— Erik Siegrist · Jun 27, 10:58 PM · #
baby steps, Dr. Riddick, baby steps.
Oh, and the global meme war.
Do we want Angela Merkel standing shoulder to shoulder with our president?
Or do we want our president rubbing her shoulder while she glares at him.
we have a lot of rebranding to do.
— matoko_chan · Jun 28, 01:20 AM · #
“Claiming”? Science actually does now say that things will be even worse than we previously thought.
— Chet · Jun 28, 05:36 PM · #
Manzi says:
“Turn this into a moral crusade asserting that we have a moral duty to the poor of the world because of our past sins of emission?”
I have seen him characterize carbon-emissions reduction measures in this way several times. Sometimes he calls them “reparations” for past emissions/development (this is the conceit in another, very bizarre, post of his regarding the morality of climate change that I can’t find right now).
Why does he repeatedly describe the aims of something like Waxman-Markey in this way? “Reparations” (as I understand the term) means somehow compensating people for wrongs already committed. When people say that we have a moral duty to reduce our carbon emissions because these emissions will have a harmful effect on poor countries, this is not an argument that we should somehow “repay” these people for our prior carbon emissions (we are not talking about the past). Rather, it is an argument that we should reduce our future emissions so as not to harm the poor people in the future (it as an argument about the future).
Taking measures, including spending money, to avoid doing something that will harm someone is not what I understand by “reparations.” Why does Manzi keep describing carbon reduction programs in this idiosyncratic way?
— Dave Roth · Jun 28, 10:31 PM · #
In a price performance matrix international relations have value as well….Dr. Riddick has a narrow lens, which is why he would prefer not to count good will chits drawn on the international community as value added…..instead styling them as guilt payoffs, ie “reparations”.
— matoko_chan · Jun 28, 10:45 PM · #
Its a neocon thang.
— matoko_chan · Jun 28, 10:47 PM · #
“Why does Manzi keep describing carbon reduction programs in this idiosyncratic way?”
Why? Because “idiosyncratic” is practically Jim’s middle name!
— Tony Comstock · Jun 28, 10:59 PM · #
Given that you’ve done a good job staying within the lines of opposing this particular bill, and maybe certain approaches to climate remediation, then your entire discussion has just been rendered moot. This clever little insertion is such a stunningly awful piece o’ crap that it renders your objections so far second- or third-order problems with the bill. If the only way you can pass this turkey is to stuff it with that then the whole thing should be discarded yesterday, and the argument against the bill just from that provision is going to make the stuff you’ve been raising so far small beer.
— Sanjay · Jun 29, 01:46 AM · #
My house is going to be ocean front and their are going to be perfect left-handers on the inlets where Lunch and the IGA used to be.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 29, 01:52 AM · #
euwww trade sanctions!
Still….the attitude of the last administration was they hate us n/e way so lets REALLY put the screws to them.
Not exactly a wild success, was it?
— matoko_chan · Jun 29, 03:07 AM · #
I like Kris Seargent’s take – if we pass Waxman Markey, our children will still know a world with exactly as many fewer island nations, but it will be slightly less our fault. (The alternative theory is that by enacting Waxman Markey, the underpants gnomes will prevent global warming.)
— J Mann · Jun 29, 03:41 PM · #
Well, the question is if passing WM makes it the last act we ever take on global warming, or passing WM makes such acts more likely in the future.
Of course Manzi’s take is that our best possible position is to say to China and India “awful nice climate you got there, shame if something… happened to it.”
— Chet · Jun 29, 04:17 PM · #