Canada to reject Kyoto: What does this mean?

Where did I miss the rule that bullshit arguments have to be treated politely? Or the part that says people who have had their bullshit arguments exposed are justified in taking it personally? Or the one that says referring to one’s own academic degrees is an insulation from questioning, and an adequate argument in itself?

If you’re proven wrong, you’re wrong. If you’ve been using false or filtered facts, or faulty or specious reasoning, that’s your own fault. Having it exposed isn’t ad hominem, it’s simple forensics. Don’t pout about it; learn from it and grow. Or, if you can identify the flaw in the other argument, you have an obligation to return the favor by exposing it in turn.

The ignorance you fight may be your own.

Bumper Sticker Alert!

:slight_smile:

The ones who don’t drive SUVs are subsidizing the ones who do.

Jshore posted legitimate refutations to Sam’s arguments, some of which were patently absurd (come on Sam, you’ve been called on that “feed every starving child” illogic many times – do you think if you just keep posting it we’ll somehow accept it?). You on the other hand insinuate that Jshore is not a “real” scientist – an attack on a poster, not an argument. Talk about snide.

I’ve been reading Jshore’s posts for quite a while, and have always found him to be a measured and objective poster. I can understand a certain level of frustration at responding to the same arguments from the same posters over and over.

Also, what exactly does being “balanced” mean in this debate? As a scientist, If Jshore tries to present a “balanced” view between the political left and right, this would in fact be an unbalanced viewpoint in terms of the scientific community. This would misrepresent the current consensus among climate researchers, that global warming is caused at least partly by humans and poses potentially serious threats to our future – as Jshore has taken pains to point out in other threads.

Thanks, Ace Face, for the defense. I do, however, apologize for the harsh tone of my post of yesterday evening. But, as Ace face notes, one does start to run into a level of frustration after a while in dealing with people throwing around lots of numbers with no cites and making claims that are simply false and (in the case of the carbon sinks) of playing both sides of an argument. [Sam, if you think that carbon sinks are bad if they are included in Kyoto and bad if they are left out, then I think it is incumbent on you to at least say so in the same thread so people can judge the merits of your damned-if-they-do damned-if-they-don’t argument (which, thanks to your response to my complaint, you now have more or less in this thread).]

The latest claim that I find annoying here is that the costs of Kyoto have not been considered. What leads this claim to be made? If you go to the IPCC website and download the Working Group 3 summaries, you will find extensive discussion of this. And, I would be shocked if the nations just ignored this research when they got together and drafted the Kyoto Protocol and subsequent refinements. Listening to Sam, one would get the impression that Kyoto was written by Greenpeace or something. If you believe this is true, cite evidence for it. [God knows that we now have lots of evidence of who had the major input into Bush’s energy policy, thanks to the courts not buying the “executive privilege” argument.]

Anyway, I am at work now…I’ll try to address more substantive points later.

I generally merely lurk in global warming debates as, while I am familiar with many of the issues, I recognize they are very complex and that I do not (at least yet) have enough knowledge to form a solid opinion. I prefer to remain quiet an learn from those who actually do know what they are talking about (like Anthracite). I think I am a shining paragon of virtue and that the world would be a better place if more people followed my example.

TruthSeeker, while I think it is great that you are sitting back to listen and learn from posters, I think on this issue it is really important to go beyond the spin (admittedly on both sides…although one side has considerably more money and resources to do it) by looking at reports summarizing the views of the scientific peer-reviewed literature. In this respect, there is no substitute for looking at the NAS report and the IPCC reports. I’ve provided these links most recently in this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=104877

jshore
Thanks, I do indeed try and keep up with the literature, at least the highlights. However, I’m also mindful that, at the end of the day, global warming isn’t a scientific problem. It’s a social, economic and political problem. Science can provide the data on which to base decisions but it cannot make the decisions. For example, it might well be that global warming should simply be allowed to happen because the cost of mitigating the damage will be less than the cost of preventing it. You may agree or disagree with this option, however, you will agree that this is not a decision that can be made by scientists.

That’s one of things that makes global warming such a complicated issue. Far too many people on all sides, including respected scientists, have an agenda and try to twist the science to fit that agenda.

Okay, my promised longer post…First, again I apologize for being a bit snide in yesterday’s posting but it is hard to keep one’s patience sometimes. Most of you know that I take very liberal (by U.S. standards) positions on most issues here on SDMB. And, certainly we all come here with our biases.

However, on the issue of global warming, I have tried to bend over backwards to present a fair assessment of the state of the science. I have consistently cited references, favoring when possible the reviews and synthesis of the peer-reviewed scientific literature provided by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), http://www.ipcc.ch/ , and the U.S. NAS (National Academy of Sciences), http://books.nap.edu/html/climatechange/ . I have always quoted the full range of the IPCC’s estimate for global warming and have noted that its large range indicates that considerable uncertainty remains in the magnitude of the expected warming. I spent a particularly large amount of time digging up and presenting information in the thread that I cited in my above response to Truth Seeker. Thus, I do get irritated when in return (synthesizing some posters in that thread and this), I am greeted with lots of one-sided claims that are backed up either by no cites at all or cites to sources that present an extremely one-sided viewpoint.

Now to answer some specific points…

Well, I fail to see how you are not arguing for and against carbon sinks when you here complain that including them in Kyoto causes this distortion whereas above you argued that policymakers should give more consideration to using carbon sinks.

As for this claim about the distortion, my basic point would be that there are all sorts of huge distortions that exist already. You seem to be only interested in the ones produced by the treaty and not the ones that pre-exist it, i.e., the market’s complete failure to account for the potential costs of our current fossil fuel usage due to climate change…and how this impacts different nation’s differently. Some are responsible for a larger share of the problem and some will reap a larger share of the consequences.

I have heard noone present evidence that the distortion that you identify is large enough to cause any mass exodus of companies to the developing world. Furthermore, since the developing world is supposed to be covered under future agreements, companies would be making an uncertain bet by making such a move.

You’ve identified an effect by which there could conceivably be flight of industry to the Third World and resulting rise in pollution there especially because of their weaker environmental laws. However, you have made no estimates of the magnitude of this effect and how it compares, say, to the ancillary benefits of less pollution that will occur because cutting CO2 emissions in the developed world will also cut pollution emissions.

There is still considerable debate on the carbon sinks issue; Kyoto (as currently fleshed out in subsequent agreements) makes some allowances for it as a result, but allowances only to a degree given the uncertainties. In fact, I would argue that the sort of technologies that you are discussing are exactly the sorts of things that Kyoto would encourage the development of by placing a cost on the emission of greenhouse gases. Surely, under such an agreement with future agreements to follow, innovators would have a much larger incentive than they do now to pursue these technologies if they could prove more cost-effective in the future than reducing emissions at the source.

Sam, all because you haven’t read the analysis does not mean it does not exist. If you are interested, you can read the analysis ad nauseum in the IPCC Working Group III summary for policy makers and ad-additional-nauseum in the technical summary. I must admit that I personally haven’t read this stuff in detail and your statement may cause the ancillary benefit of providing more incentive for me to do so. But, to say such analysis does not exist is just not so.

Admittedly, given the large uncertainties in both the costs of mitigation and the costs of the problem, it is hard to derive an exact or even very approximate result. This uncertainty is what is driving the current policy of some caution in starting to take small steps in a direction that will keep our options open for the future. What you are correct about is that Kyoto is only a fairly small step in reducing greenhouse emissions; and this is precisely because it is a compromise between what ought to be done if our worst fears come to past and what ought to be done if our best hopes come to pass. [Somehow, however, you argue that this small step has huge economic cost…an argument that seems particularly hard to make given that Kyoto is far from an extremely restrictive treaty that leaves little room for market forces. Kyoto is completely open in that regard and thus allows you to achieve all the emission reduction targets by market means.]

I have no idea where you are getting the idea that this is the state of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on the subject. Yes, considerable uncertainty remains about the impacts. However, your summary of what they are probably corresponds more closely to the views of the Greening Earth Society, an industry front group if ever there was one, than to the general state of opinion in the scientific literature.

First, I did note that these studies of saving money are on the optimistic end of the spectrum, although given the tendency in the past for the overestimation of the costs of complying with environmental regulations, I tend to believe that they might be closer to the truth. Admittedly, that is a personal opinion. There are essentially two kinds of studies, “top-down” studies by macroeconomic models and “bottom-up” (or “technology-based”) studies. The former tend to be more pessimistic than the latter. If you want to read more about this, including some references discussing the issue of why top-down studies might be too pessimistic, see pg. 10 of the UCS study “A Small Price to Pay” http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/smallprice.pdf [and, yes, I know you will think the source itself is biased but it gives you some links into the literature].

As for the technology-based studies, one (and not the most optimistic), the so-called “Five Labs Study” (technically called “Scenarios for A Clean Energy Future”) was done by 5 U.S. government laboratories for the Department of Energy, http://www.ornl.gov/ORNL/Energy_Eff/CEF.htm The basic conclusion was that the net costs for reducing the U.S. emissions to the 1990 baseline was, within the margin of error, zero. [Kyoto, of course, mandates something like 7% below that baseline for the U.S. but given the allowances for carbon sinks and what-not, I am not exactly sure how far below it is. At any rate, back down to baseline is most of the way there from our current emissions.]

My one technical regret in my response to you was in labeling the numbers you quoted “ludicrous” rather than simply “high-end” and quite out of context. If you look in the IPCC WG-II summaries, you will find estimates that the costs to those countries that are covered by the Kyoto emissions reduction targets is a reduction in the projected GDP by the end of the period of between 0.1 and 1.1% with full emissions trading and 0.2 and 2% without full emissions trading. [I believe that the current framework allows emissions trading but perhaps not completely fully…I would have to look into that more closely.] Note that most of these studies from which this estimates are derived are based on the more pessimistic “top-down” models and they do not include the use of carbon sinks, negative cost options (i.e., they assume the market was perfect to start with), and ancillary benefits, among other things. [The conversion factor between %GDP and money is said to be that 0.5% drop in GDP would correspond to $125 billion per year of ~$125 per person in these countries (in US dollars).]

Yes, they are called “market barriers” and other market inefficiencies. If you believe that markets are always perfect then of course you don’t believe in them. However, if you believe that, say, a potential homebuilder might install a less efficient furnace expecting that the owner will not notice that the difference in price is such that a more efficient one would pay for itself after a few years, then you might begin to get the idea of what some of the issues are here.

So, Sam (and others who want to join in the fun), there you have it. I have endeavoured to provide a balanced account of things here and have given several links, all but one to sources that are unlikely to have a significant bias (and I would argue that UCS is pretty straight with the facts too…you might disagree). And I did it in “only” about 2 hours (God, I spend a lot of time on these boards! :wink: ]. Will you respond in kind?

That would be horrific things to first world economies would have to be done first. Companies don’t go where the price is the least most of the time. They only do this for very manual labor. Most companies perfer to stay in places where productivity is greatest. Productivity is much more important than the wage you have to pay for location of companies.

Um… it’s common sense really. If you create plants that use less electricity, you spend less on electricity and that makes up for the fixed cost in the beginning. Higher miles per gallon makes for MUCH lower gasoline costs (which is the main cost for a car).’

Actually some already are… such as ALCOA.

Truth Seeker, I do basically agree with what you said. And, if you look at the IPCC and NAS reports you will see that what they try to do is exactly to provide the information on the science, the economic costs and benefits, etc., and let the policymakers decide. Out of this has grown Kyoto and out of this has also grown individual countries reactions to Kyoto.

However, there are some things about current policy that can be stated pretty unambiguously. One is the fact that Bush is not dealing honestly with the issue in the sense that he is saying that he believes it is a serious problem and wants to set us on a path toward reducing emissions while at the same time setting targets that pretty much within the noise (i.e., depending on which specific years you choose to extrapolate from) correspond to continuing on the same course in terms of reducing “greenhouse emissions intensity” (i.e., the ratio of greenhouse emissions to GDSP) as we have been on over the last one to two decades. [Note that this includes a time when energy prices were low and there was an explosion of inefficient energy usage such as people buying SUVs, when fuel economy standards were not being raised, …]

Also, while I agree that there has been some exageration on both sides, the playing field is by no means level both in terms of who have been the worst offenders and who have the most financially at stake, and are able to bring financial resources to bear, in the policy debate.

ISiddiqui brings up a good point in terms of companies already embracing energy efficient technologies. Some companies (in fact, mine, I believe) have stated their intention to reduce their greenhouse emissions to the same percentage below 1990 baseline levels as is mandated by Kyoto.

One quibble: At current gasoline prices in the U.S. and Canada, I don’t think it is true that gas is quite the main cost of a car. If you consider driving a vehicle that gets 20 mpg for 150,000 miles and paying $1.50 per gallon, then you get a total gasoline cost of $11,250 which is certainly a substantial amount but not likely to be the main cost.

First of all, I have absolutely no complaints about Jshore’s messages. I very rarely agree with him, but I can’t remember the last time I thought he was offensive. Maybe never.

Back to Kyoto:

Ace-Face: Show me where the ‘feed every starving child’ comment has ever been discredited? Jshore’s point that the money saved wouldn’t be used for that anyway is valid, but irrelevant. When advocating NEW spending, you have to evaluate it not just on its own merits, but compared to the merits of other programs that could use the money. If you’re going to take the position that the money would just be blown by rich people anyway, then you can justify ANYTHING. And that makes for bad policy.

And I’m fully aware that many, many people have done cost-benefit analyses of the Kyoto treaty. What I’m saying is that many of the original signatory countries didn’t pay any attention to that. At the time Kyoto was signed, the costs were a long way away, and it was unlikely to ever be ratified in the first place. Certainly, the costs wouldn’t have to be considered until the leaders of the signatory countries were long out of power.

Not only that, but to many leaders supporting Kyoto was a ‘free’ way to gain votes, because the treaty was structured in a way that made it unlikely to be ratified in the first place.

Or to put it another way: Let’s say that every country that signed Kyoto had been required to cough up the annual cost in the very year that they signed. Let’s say that signing Kyoto would have meant that the U.S. would have had to cough up 100 billion in that year. Is there anyone here who thinks ANYONE would have signed that treaty? Can you imagine even Al Gore coming home and telling the voters that they were about to take a 100 billion (or even 10 billion) hit for a treaty he just signed?

Now that it’s getting close to the point where action has to be taken, LOTS of countries are having second thoughts. And it’s not just because of the big bad USA pulling out, either. New Zealand, for example, has a problem with Kyoto in that 50% of their greenhouse gas emissions come from animal flatulence. Making a reduction in that is very difficult, and is sure to anger a very large, powerful farm lobby.

Canada is having second thoughts not because of the U.S., but because Alberta alone would wind up bearing a good chunk of the costs, and Albertans aren’t happy about that. Of course, it could be spread out over the whole country, but the ruling party’s base is in the east, so it’s kick Alberta time again. But even the Liberals have been having second thoughts.

And so it goes. It’s easy to sign a treaty in a year in which the environment is seen as being one of the biggest issues for voters. It’s another thing to then have to start spending the money years down the road, when there is little political upside left and a LOT of downside.

And of course Jshore has valid points - on an issue this complex, there are valid points on both sides. Making a point that is valid is not a blanket refutation of the other side’s entire argument - it’s just a data point to be factored into the final equation. For example, no one has refuted my argument about capital flight to non-signatory countries. Does that mean every argument in favor of Kyoto is BS? Of course not.

There were also no refutations of my claim that there may be far cheaper ways to scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere than trying to do it at the source. For example, we get from this article: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/carbon_oceans991202.html

Here’s another article on iron seeding: http://www.aquariauk.com/research3.html

Then there is the concept of planting special high-CO2 uptake crops in otherwise useless areas.

The main problem I have with sweeping, extremely expensive treaties is that I think the science of global warming and its avoidance is still very much in its infancy. We still don’t have good atmosphere models. We aren’t sure what the net effect will be, and the results of more recent science indicates that the effects are less severe than originally thought.

So, I believe we should dramatically increase funding into research of a number of environmental issues surrounding warming - cleaner factories and power plants, scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere by a variety of methods, alternate energy sources, and better atmospheric modelling. We aren’t that far from having a much better idea of just what we need to do. Perhaps a decade or so. In the meantime, putting off Kyoto or other draconian CO2 reductions will have a negligible effect on warming over that time frame.

We can afford to wait, so let’s put our efforts into understanding this problem better.

Anthracite: The openly hostile tone of this thread against the “evil conservatives” has convinced me yet again not to participate in another Energy-related thread.

Sam Stone: Anthracite: It’s not just this thread. The tone of many of the threads on this board is becoming increasingly hostile and snide towards conservatives.

Overreacting a bit here, folks, aren’t you? I took a careful read through all the posts and found not one reference to “evil conservatives”. In fact, the only use of the word “conservative” that I found prior to your complaints was in jshore’s remark about “economic fearmongering that self-interested parties and their conservative allies tend to resort to when these sorts of issues come up.” For “snideness” and “hostility”, I don’t think that that outdoes emarkp’s earlier crack that “I’m sure someone will manage to criticize Bush for it.” There are also some harsh criticisms of Kyoto opponents in particular and the current administration’s policies, and jshore sarcastically expressed some exasperation at what he considered Sam’s less-than-debateworthy remarks (and has since apologized—twice—for that). If that’s what conservatives consider “hostility” and “snideness” toward all members of an entire ideological orientation, you should see what we liberals have to put up with! :wink:

Mind you, I am all for courtesy and consideration on both sides of a debate, and I’m happy to see more of it. If you’re calling for a higher etiquette standard, though, I think that in order to hold up your end you’ll have to renounce analogies with “the crazy man on the street howling about the alien butt-burglars from Jupiter” and insinuations about opponents’ faking their RL qualifications.

(And yeah, jshore, you can simmer down the pitta a bit too. P.S. D/J suggest post-Gordon opportunity. The pale dog howls in the moonlight. The daffodils are yellow. ;))

I did not insinuate that any specific person was not a “real” scientist. And if I had intended to tell some specific person they were not a “real” scientist I would goddamn well say it to their face, just like I have in the past. But you see…I didn’t.

You need to do some research before you go down this road of calling me “snide”.

Maybe I was expressing frustration at yet another SDMB energy/environment thread that quickly devolved into references of the same old “evil conservative” line. But I suppose that I won’t get that same benefit of the doubt from you, will I, Ace?

I see this in nearly every single thread on this Board that has any controversy to it (gun control, the last election, immigration, etc.), and seeing it again in energy threads just makes me sad. Oh, and Ace? I’m glad you see nothing unmeasured or subjective about the phrase “economic fearmongering that self-interested parties and their conservative allies tend to resort to when these sorts of issues come up”. Since we all know that only conservatives would resort to fearmongering of any kind in an ecological/environmental debate…

I’m a conservative scientist - an arch-conservative lesbian power plant scientist, in fact, who ironically happens to hold a similar view to jshore on many levels in this debate. And I really appreciate the work that he does finding references and laying things out in lay terms for people, and in presenting strong arguments for his cause that do have a very sound backing.

But if I tire of seeing “conservative”, or “liberal”, used in a way that diminishes the message and substance of a scientific debate or discussion, how can this feeling of mine not be supported by reasonable people?

This isn’t about jshore, whom I like quite a bit, and whose knowledge and research I do respect and read whenever he posts it (And yes, jshore, there are people who read everything you write and click on your links, so you shouldn’t feel as if you do all that work for nothing, as opposed to my very limited knowledge area which no one gives a shit about). So you can leave me alone now, Ace, you no longer have any cause.

I also think that Sam Stone made some very astute points, especially (upon preview) in his latest post, that could work well in conjunction with the points that jshore made. I do not see their positions as being mutually exclusive in several ways.

On preview:

I’m certain you’ll show where that happened here, and who specifically it happened to. Who exactly are my “opponents” anyhow, since I specifically included people who slur liberals and conservatives alike? Wow, I’m so full of hate - who knew?

And if you can’t understand the “ABBFJ” analogy, then you need to perhaps read it again. Or open a few dozen gun control debate threads here and read them - all 50,000 posts or so - to see what I mean. My point was that I do not smash my head against walls anymore to try and change people’s views if they’ve already shown that they categorized things in terms of “evil liberal” or “evil conservative”. If you think or are saying that I was calling someone here an “ABBFJ” then you are both most incorrect and being unfair to my point.

Una

Thanks. :slight_smile:

But the opposite extreme of comparing any possible new policy to some utopian policy that has never been in the cards anyway is a prescription for never enacting policy and continuing to let the unfettered free market, externalities and all, rule. (Which might be what you want?)

While your political analysis of getting such a treaty signed has some truth to it, I think that you are neglecting a lot of counterarguments about how difficult it is to get most of the world to agree to anything…even in principle. And, in terms of short term – long term, the consequences of global warming are also long term so they are also getting discounted politically. In fact, in a strictly political sense, I don’t think Bush’s policy is necessarily unwise…He’ll be long gone by the time the “shit hits the fan”! So, all in all, I tend to see the signing of Kyoto as being closer to realistic assessment of long term cost-benefits than the reluctance on some politicians’ parts to implement it.

Both the articles you cited talk about very preliminary research and have significant caveats. [By the way, I am also not completely sure that if these technologies pan out, countries couldn’t claim credit for them under Kyoto…and certainly are likely to be able to under future agreements.] These ideas are promising but it is too early to fully assess them, for example how long they sequester the CO2. They also suffer from the “swallow a spider to catch the fly” sort of mentality…Technological solutions such as these are certainly worth investigating but one must be cautious to fully consider all the potential consequences. Certainly, working toward stabilizing our CO2 emissions in the meantime is the prudent way to proceed. (And, since these technologies won’t be free, continuing to value greenhouse gas emissions as free in the marketplace is not the wise way to go.)

Well, one problem is that we have a basic disagreement about whether Kyoto is draconian or not. I consider a marketplace that places zero cost on greenhouse gas emissions and thus results in things like people buying gas-guzzling SUVs for reasons that are, to put it mildly, hard to fathom to be draconian.

The second point is that this research won’t happen by magic. If the market continues to believe there is no cost to greenhouse gas emissions, then the only way this research will get done is by government funding. While I am in favor of this too, I am often told by people on this message board that the market is a more efficient mechanism by which to get things done.

The problem is that the longer we wait, the more draconian will be the cuts in emissions when they do come. And, then people like you are libel to be even more unhappy with the magnitude of the cuts. Also, the technologies to make the cuts will continue to come along at a much slower pace than they would if the market were to understand there is a cost associated with greenhouse gas emissions. The whole point of Kyoto, as I see it, is to force the market to partially internalize these costs so that it behaves more rationally.

Anthracite: *But if I tire of seeing “conservative”, or “liberal”, used in a way that diminishes the message and substance of a scientific debate or discussion, how can this feeling of mine not be supported by reasonable people?

This isn’t about jshore, whom I like quite a bit, and whose knowledge and research I do respect and read whenever he posts it …*

Fair enough, Anthracite. Since you began by complaining about what you perceived as “[t]he openly hostile tone of this thread against the ‘evil conservatives’”, and since the only person who had even mentioned the word “conservative” in this thread prior to that was jshore, who had the most posts of anyone in the thread so far and who had been the most antagonistic towards anti-Kyoto arguments, I assumed that he was the one you were complaining about. It seems I was wrong, and I apologize.

Anthracite, thanks for the kind words. It is indeed nice to hear that my posts get read. I enjoy your posts too.

As for the “economic fearmongering” quote that seems to have promoted the most controversy, well yes, I think there has been fearmongering on both sides of environmental/economic debates. However, in my experience, it seems to me that the instances of this on the environmental side have been widely noted (and exagerated) while those on the economics side generally have not been. Thus, the use of the term was sort of a conscious attempt on my part to point out that, “Hey…one side in the debate often talks about fearmongering but this is fearmongering too of a less widely acknowledged sort.”

One can also see the great incentive on the part of industries that will be adversely effected by some policy to both exagerate the effects on their own industry and, even more compellingly, on everybody else. And, the fact of the matter is that arguments that these industries have brought up have found a very strong echo among, e.g., various conservative and libertarian think-tanks and politicians. But, I didn’t mean by pointing out this fact to make this thread degenerate into a liberal-conservative argument. And, I know that, for example, there are members of the Republican party that are trying to push that policy to adopt more environmental stances. More power to them!

With your permission, I’d like to take one sentence from your lengthy post out of context and make a big deal of it.

**
From what I understand, this sentence, albeit unintentionally, encapsulates many of the problems inherent in the global warming debate.

First, from the standpoint of the developed countries, it’s hard to see, speaking strictly as a rational profit maximizer, why developed countries would want to internalize many of these costs. Externalized costs are good, if you are doing the externalizing. Assume that “Global warming will cause the Seychelles to disappear.” is a true statement. It does not necessarily follow, at least from a hard-nosed economic standpoint, that, say, the United States should internalize the cost of preventing the Seychelles from disappearing. “What will it cost me if the Seychelles disappear?” asks the United States. If the answer is “Nothing,” the United States will simply not be willing to spend 100 billion dollars to prevent it.

You can argue that the developed world has a moral duty to prevent the destruction of the Seychelles and you might be correct. However, you can’t assume that, because the United States’ furious emissions of green-house gasses is responsible for the destruction of the Seychelles, the United States will be willing to incur the pain necessary to save the Seychelles once they understand that.

Second, there is a serious clash of cultures in this debate. For example, IIRC, the proximate cause of the U.S. abandoning Kyoto was the dogged resistance to creating an unbridled carbon emmissions market. Many countries felt that fairness required the pain should be shared to some extent and that too much emmissions trading would allow the rich (especially the U.S.) to buy their way out of emissions cuts. While there may be something to be said for this position, it isn’t beyond debate that “fairness” should be an element of a global emissions treaty.

My point here is that deciding what to do about the problem is going to be harder than deciding there is a problem. When you say “The problem is that the longer we wait, the more draconian will be the cuts in emissions when they do come,” you are making an assumption that may not be warranted. It is entirely possible that, even though everyone agrees there is a problem, no one will be able to agree on what to do and that there will never be any cuts. Countries will simply deal with problems caused by global warming on their own, to the extent they can. The unfortunate result of this is that poor countries are likely to experience one disaster after another while rich countries will survive relatively unscathed. After all, half the Netherlands is already below sea level.

Well that is true in the US/Canada. Of course gas prices don’t incorporate the externality cost (ie, how much it costs to treat people because of sunstroke, the increase temps effects on crops) in gas prices.