Is Bush screwing up? Part II

[hijack]
Son comes down: on the Straight Dope AGAIN?

I reply yes, but in reality, I’m reading the links half the time. (or enjoying the stuff put up at Weird Earl’s, including, God help me, that “All the Base Are Belong to Us” stuff.)
I mean, the Internet without links is like pancakes without syrup, eh?
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[hijack] I like the name Bushbaby for our illustrious president; is it your own invention? There is a “Name the President” contest put on by The Nation magazine, but I don’t think that was one of the final choices.[/hijack]

My soon-to-be seventy-four year old father, a rabid, flaming Democrat, was very upset by Bush’s Kyoto repudiation. He thinks that it is a more impeachable offense than anything Clinton did, and he called the offices of all fifty Democratic senators to tell them so (he spoke with office personnel or voice mail).

Since his retirement, he has been trying to make the world safer for his grandchildren, and owns a book, Congress at Your Fingertips (available at 1-877-827-3327) with the phone numbers and addresses of all the senators and representatives. His phone bill is astronomical because of all the calls he makes to Washington each month.

First, I think you are mistaking me for an anti-action person. That is not correct. I know very well from reading the literature that action of global warming can, even under realistic, achievable scenarios, achieve real savings for the economy and serve policy goals such as reducing dependency on foreign energy sources.

As such, I reject the position of folks who are against taking action on global warming because “we’re in recession” (not yet) or “it’s too expensive” because such a position rests on an unbalanced analysis, focusing solely on costs, not factoring in real direct benefits, as well as implicit benefits. Frankly, I like to focus on the less warm and fuzzy real direct economic benefits since I like concretes. And I agree with your cites that these are enough to merit action.

That being said, Kyoto was not workable. As I mentioned earlier, its legal structure was misconceived and fairly inflexible, above all as read by the EU and Japan. (Whose collective lack of action makes them yet more hypocritical than Bushbaby —I do kinda like this moniker but no I’m not going to send it to the Nation, its just a fun name to me. If anyone else wants to feel free.) International emissions trading, even between a limited set of nations (i.e. the verifiable nations were fraud is least likely), has been ruled out by the EU and Japan to my recollection. Recall the letter Krugman signed which you are citing calls for fully market oriented policies. One can not characterize Kyoto in that manner, IMHO.

Now, in re the cites, I’d love to really go over them, but I’m already in a chronic work deficit so let me restrain myself to a few comments:

Behind “A Small Price to Pay” is a great deal of advocacy. I’m all for advocating but looking at their assumptions, I get prickly. Like I said, I can’t afford to go into depth, but a few comments. For example, take a look at the “Other Factors Relevant to Modeling” section. Note their discussion of the “variety of barriers to full market penetration of cost-effective clean technology.” Their move to dismiss these concerns rests on some very strong and in my opinion not fully supportable assumptions. First, I think they abstract away from the problematic of achieving adoption of many of the proposed actions. Second, in re the issue of institutional barriers, they’re fairly naive, IMHO, in re overcoming. Capital depreciation is a further major barrier, and I don’t believe that I am prepared to expect sufficient increase in capital equipment turnover through policy pressures sufficient to recommend the fairly substantial changes they have to expect. That is not to say that much good can not be done, I am only talking about meeting Kyoto deadlines and targets from our present position.

How hard are things now? Well, ironically we find a quickly accessible picture of that in the Executive Summary of Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future. I’m going to skip over the detials for the scenarios “Moderate” and “Advanced” — noting only that I find the “Advanced” scenario highly unlikely in real world terms, e.g. large scale replacement of coal fired plants — we see from E.S p6-7 that the Moderate scenario leaves the US at something like 80% above Kyoto target levels (looking roughly like 1250 on their chart, with 2010 being around1650) by Kyoto’s 2010 deadline for 7% below 1990 levels while the Advanced Scenario places the US somewhat above 1990 levels, and only meeting Kyoto targets 10 years later.

The document blandly notes, "In the context of the U.S. Kyoto protocol goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 7% below 1990 levels by 2010, the CEF policies would need to be supplemented by other means such as international carbon trading [rejected by other participants], reductions in other greenhouse gases, and/or stronger domestic policies.

If I had my article file some several thousand miles closer to me than it is, I might trot out some analyses by other economists — not the Cato kind — who take an equally dim view of Kyoto achievability.

So, let me state for the last time, I think the question is not whether reductions are good economically, they can indeed be so, but whether Kyoto provided a good framework for it. I think the answer there is fairly unambiguously no.

What amzes me is that Bush made the decision to publicly and unambiguously reverse the US position on Kyoto. Internationally, this is a huge slap in the face to our allies. One of the “polite lies” of international politics is the idea that nations have honor, that successive regimes will honor the promises of their predecessors. Now, those who live in the world of realpolitik understand this is fiction. There are any number of ways for a new political leadership to escape out the back-door of international treaties: lax enforcement, failure to “dot the i’s”, torurous interpretations of the language, delays in ratification or implementation, . . .the list goes on.

What is not done, usually, is to stand up and baldly declare that the leader of a nation has no intention of honoring a treaty signed by his predecessor. Perhaps this is what Bush meant by “restoring the integrity of the office”, but it seems quite clear that neither Japan nor our European allies share his view. (Mexico seems to like it, though.)

I wonder which, if any, of Bush’s brain trust of international advisors told him this was a good way to go.

Collounsbury, I understand that you are not against taking action. However, I worry that condemning the Kyoto Protocol as unworkable will remove the best hope for insuring that such action comes about. The changes that are necessary to bring about the reductions in greenhouse emissions are not simply going to happen on their own. There must be some fairly rigid goals to meet.

Right now, our nation is addicted to inefficient energy use and to policies of not incorporating the environment costs of our choices into the market and thus into our decisions. As an example of this, when the government was proposing to raise the emission standards for SUVs to be compatible with cars, the auto industry trotted out an estimate (which, if history is any guide, was probably horribly inflated anyway) that this would add like $100-200 to the price of an SUV. And, this was actually considered by them to be the beginning and end of any serious discussion about whether or not this new standard should be adopted! Fucking pathetic!

I don’t believe that the original Kyoto Protocol was actually specific enough to be inflexible. Now, admittedly, in the negotiations at the Hague last year to determine details such as whether international emissions trading would be allowed or whether “carbon sequestration” would count for something, various countries were taking various positions. My recollection is that while the EU and Japan were holding fairly firm (although perhaps not completely…I’m not sure) against international emissions trading, there was some give in their position on the issue of counting sequestration for at least part of the reductions. At any rate, the solution seems to be further discussions, not a complete abandonment of the protocol.

You also have to remember that these countries have goals which are basically the same (to within a percentage point or two) to the goals that must be met by the U.S. Clearly, these nations are taking a fairly hard line because they are quite confident that they can meet the goals at an acceptable cost. Why does the U.S. have so much less confidence that it can do so?

I read the discussion in “A Small Price to Pay” on barriers to market penetration very differently than you did. I don’t think they dismiss these issues at all. In fact, their point is that these issues exist which is why we can’t just blindly let the market run its course. We must correct the externalities, etc. that exist in the market so that these barriers can be overcome. The whole point that is being made is that we can’t just sit back and blandly say “the market will take care of it” as the Cato folks would like us to. [Riddle: How many libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: None, because the market will take care of it!]

I also read the conclusions of the Five Labs study somewhat differently than you. (I also have the benefit of another article by three of the participants in that study which was published in Physics Today, November 2000, pp. 29-34.) First of all, it is important to note that the Advanced scenario, which does get us all the way back down to 1990 levels for CO2 by 2010, is one in which their best estimates of the net costs is that they would be zero or negative. So, while this scenario is more ambitious than the Moderate one, it is not costly! Secondly, their full view on reaching Kyoto is that they “believe that such measures can reduce US emissions from CO2 to 1990 levels, with the rest of the mandated reductions in carbon-equivalents coming from cuts in other greenhouse gases or from carbon sequestration.”

I was trying to find out more about the Hague meeting in November. I haven’t found anything summarizing where positions stood at the point where discussions ended, but I did find a good source of background info on the issues to be discussed there: http://www.wcel.org/wcelpub/2000/13242.html

Note that there are important reasons to be leary about things such as international emissions trading. If implemented with too few controls, they could essentially make the Kyoto Protocol a joke. One problem explained in that link is the following:

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There sure wasn’t for the past eight years. But glad to see it’s finally a concern of your’s, Squink. Wonder why, now?

This maybe true, but you don’t just scrap a plan if the intention or idea is right. Just saying: “No, it’s not in our best economical interests” says to me that Bush doesn’t care about this at all. True leaders do not back away from a plan if the intention is good. A good leader will take someone’s idea and make it workable. Bush shouldn’t just walk away from the issue if he is really concerned about the environment. And if he really doesn’t think that helping the environment will help the economy, then God have mercy on us all.

Well, my position is that Kyoto was badly concieved from the get go, although earlier action would certainly have made the current bind less serious.

I have no problem making the argument that Kyoto had structural flaws while simultaneously holding firm to the necessity of good, strong policy action on this front. I has condemn a badly structured treaty – however throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn’t the way to go. Renegotiating certain aspects might have led to a fix.

I agree, especially the first part of the statement and from a pure market perspective, leaving aside environ. cost concerns, inefficiency is bad.

True, true.

Well, I could argue, but its rather moot…

There are good reasons for being careful in re trading – especially for Russian/East Euro “hot air” – but that’s not a reason to reject int’l trading per se, one just excludes countries which don’t meet certain criteria.

I’m well aware of that.

No, my read of the situation is they’re being fucking hypocritical. In large part the G7 countries have not taken any real serious steps. Dumb fucking finger pointing game. EU and Japan face the same math that we do,

Well, I’m looking at what correcting for externalities really means in practical application. I think one has to make some fairly strong assumptions about the success of policy in quickly moving society at large towards some fairly large scale changes and some fairly rapid(and capital intensive) changes in cap equip turnover.

It’s all well and fine to assume that this will go well, but achieving much of this policy at the Federal level I don’t think is realistic.

Net, based on assumptions in re saving which while not unsupportable are going to be weighted in the real world by upfront costs. Getting movement on that among a complex network of players is damned hard.

Their estimates still strike me as unrealistic in re what is actually achievable.

However, as noted by myself and others, Bushbaby’s approach was all wrong. Even the repudiation, perhaps not necessary, put the US in a worse position, in re further negotiations. Ham handed stupidity. I quoted relevant comments from Whitman, I think in the pit. Clearly she understood the game. As for Bushbaby…

Coll – If you don’t have the time to respond, no problem. However, I do feel some of your observations deserve comment:

A deal was all but struck in the last moments at The Hague that accommodated the US position. In retrospect, it seems clear Bush would have reneged on the deal anyway (and Congress probably would have rejected a Clinton engineered deal even if Bush didn’t) regardless of what was agreed but it was very close

How can this be the case when over 100 Nations (too early to say how many over the 100) are still trying to comply with the undertakings they made at Kyoto ?

To get 180 countries to agree to anything let alone something that can be easily mis-characterised as a burden is no small potatoes. As a first step toward some kind of collective effort and harmonising of international action, Kyoto is alive and working.

We have no choice other than to go on without the United States. It is now (largely) up to Europe to try and try and keep countries, now tempted to waver, on target.

I don’t quite understand your point about the legal structure: Kyoto is a Protocol that each country needs to ratify. I hope you’re not suggesting the world can’t agree to something because it doesn’t sit happily with one 235 year old Constitution ?

Inflexible ? - How would we agree to anything without ‘targets’ ?

My understanding is that the G7 are pretty much on target (excluding the US), cite please :slight_smile:

Europe and Japan are currently playing it quite cool but I suspect the road ahead is going to be confrontational. I find it hard to believe Europe will accept Bush’s position and, in my opinion, the likely area in which the tough talk will come will be trade – the US position appears to constitute unfair trade (i.e. goods without environmental costs) as defined by the WTO.

Unless Bush and his cronies reconsider (Bush, Cheney and Don Evans representing the oil industry, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil representing the aluminium industry, Interior Secretary Gale Norton representing the lead industry, etc, etc – a group of self-serving bastards the world hasn’t seen since Nazi Germany), international relations are going to get rather ugly.

Incidentally, The US Environment Protection Agency has a nice little web site at: http://www.epa.gov/ - if you search for ‘Kyoto’ not one single result is returned.

For current news, I find this a rather handy portal site: http://www.climateark.org/

At least they deserve something! You’ve got me over a barrel on more info for the moment, I don’t have it at the finger tips.

(emphasis added)

Now this is probably true, sadly enough.

Signatory and complying in reality are two different issues. In any case, if you don’t have the USA on board, you’re got a treaty with a big hole in it.

Granted.

Better to rejig. But that may take 4 years…

No, no. I was talking about targets and the like. It would take me a while to develop this, but I think the Kyoto structure and language was not the way to go.

Well, there are targets and there are targets. Depends on how you specify, what you specify, whether you specify certian methadologies, etc. etc.

I’d have to search around, which I will do when I get some time, so I’m fraid I’m gonna have to cop a plea here.
Europe and Japan are currently playing it quite cool but I suspect the road ahead is going to be confrontational. I find it hard to believe Europe will accept Bush’s position and, in my opinion, the likely area in which the tough talk will come will be trade – the US position appears to constitute unfair trade (i.e. goods without environmental costs) as defined by the WTO.

W/O necessarily disagreeing with Bushbaby’s policies so far, per se, I’ll say the execution per international policies is amateurish and ham-handed.

To be fair, I’ll point out that O’Neill is actually considered to be toward the environmental side of the global warming debate, at least relative to most of the rest of the Administration (which admittedly may say more about the rest of the Administration than about him…although he had made statements on the issue before joining the cabinet that at least sounded pretty good).

Collounsbury, I actually to a large extent agree with your assessment that the sort of barriers to moving toward a new energy-efficient economy are very real and formidable. That is why I think we need something like Kyoto. To put it bluntly, in the absence of severe penalties for non-compliance, it is not going to be in everyone’s best interests to do what needs to be done. (As someone at work likes to point out, everyone optimizing their local piece does not lead one to a global minimum since the easiest way to optimize is to offload costs on someone else! And right now there is an incredible amount of offloading of costs onto others in the energy sector!) This is why in some sense the penalties need to be large enough that nearly everyone loses if they don’t comply! Actually, I don’t know much about the sort of penalties for non-compliance that are built into Kyoto but my guess is that if anything they might not be as strong as they might have to be.

yeah, I agree. Actually he has sounded like a straight up rational guy. I don’t mind that sort of person diverging in policy from my ideal world, I hate what appear to be dumbshit, seat of the pants decisions. (i.e. Kyoto, per leaving poor Whitman hanging, who I also think is fairly straight up).

Right, but let me come back that I too don’t think they’re impossible, so we’re in the same ballpark.

I agree, my perfect world would have seen some renegotiating around the margins, maybe annex to add in some mechanisms for adjusting goals to new consencus science. That sort of thing. One can always jerry rig things if necessary.

Welcome to Game Theory! Yup, cost shifting, the good old prisoners dilemma… I love the stuff. Just wish I was good at modelling. But I suck.

However, it’s good shit to know when arguing with simple-minded markets always works dingalings. (nota bene to the reader, I am a pro market fellow and I do think they are th most efficient method of resolving most problems, but they are not magic.)

Collounsbury,

Well, at this point I’m not sure if there is really much left that we disagree on.

[small hijack]
And, yes, I agree wholeheartedly with your statement about markets. I like to put it as a paraphrase of Churchhill’s statement on Democracy: “The market system is the worst form of economics ever invented, except for all the others.” I think taking this attitude leads one to believe that markets are the thing to go with in most cases, but with some regulation, and not to blindly believe in them in the religious sense that many people seem to.

In particular, one has to understand the assumptions that go into market economic theory. I don’t know what to call people who believe in accepting market pricing mechanisms in the face of huge externalities. They believe in “free markets” in a religious sense, clearly not in “market economic theory” since their views are unsupportable in such a theory. (The only conceivable rational argument that I could see people making is that even though the market is pricing things wrong, any attempt to correct it will just create more problems than it solves. And this argument is probably true when the externalities aren’t too large. But, once they become as dominant as they are in the energy sector, for example, I just don’t see this argument working.)
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As you say, Jshore, it’s all relative. From this article on her appointment (I’d recommend the article if only for the thoroughness with which it considers Norton’s record, albeit from an ‘anti’ perspective):

“She and her proteges have argued in court that the Endangered Species Act and the Surface Mining Act are unconstitutional, even though as Secretary of Interior, it will be her job to enforce them. They have attacked Native American religious practices and fishing rights even though as Secretary she will oversee the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They challenged the ability of the National Park Service and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to protect endangered species and parks.”

She now heads those agencies.

“Norton is openly hostile to federalism, federal laws, and federal lands. She is the antithesis of every value the Secretary of Interior is trusted to uphold.” – and she’s considered to be one of the moderates in this Administration.

Oh, and she is a former member of ……The Libertarian Party :eek: Now that’s reassuring

Opps I had a funny five minutes, sorry. Picking on the wrong lobbyist…err, Appointment. Yes, I agree O’Neil isn’t the worst of the Dirty Dozen. Not sure yet his aluminium alumni means he can be characterised as the token liberal appointment. Probably can in this Administration.