You’re kidding, right? Show me where I’m holding the planet hostage for anything.
I have nowhere said where, say, funding for rail has to be included, or no deal. I have simply said that’s what I think should be included. For instance, I think that the climate bill passed by the House had absolutely abominable compromises and concessions in it. It’s still better than nothing, IMHO, and if that’s the only sort of climate bill that can get through Congress, I’m supporting it. How’s that for left-wing absolutism?
You’re the one who’s said if it’s not revenue neutral, the planet can fry.
Any child over the age of four can see who’s willing to compromise for the greater good, and who’s saying, ‘screw the world if I don’t get my way.’
I don’t think we need to let this devolve into a dispute over comparative levels of obstinacy concerning choices for climate policy, rather than a debate on the choices for climate policy themselves.
I think it’s more helpful to focus on Sam’s specific recommendations for policy choices and his rationales for preferring them, and ignore the rather hostile and dictatorial “if I don’t get what I want I’m going to take my marbles and leave!” tone in which he presents them. No ultimatums from Sam are going to make or break any climate policy decisions anyway, so let it go.
I concur that some government-funded infrastructure projects are going to be valuable, and perhaps necessary, in transitioning to the carbon-market economy that you and Sam advocate. But I’m not yet quite convinced that they’d have to skew revenue neutrality significantly. Aren’t these policies going to be saving us buttloads of cash in other subsidies, such as automobile transport and fossil fuel use? Do we know for certain that shifting taxes and subsidies in the proposed ways will necessarily mean a net revenue decrease that will require increasing taxes?
It seems to me that debate over climate policy is a nice, safe discussion to have.
Such debate allows us to defer indefinitely a more tender discussion: "What are reasonable lifestyle adjustments re: global warming? What should we reasonably be expected to adjust, in our day-to-day lives, to counteract the issue of global warming? ".
Would any AGW realists wish to advance a particular lifestyle adjustment? Should we avoid flying first class now (just to take an example out of the blue), or may we wait until climate policy legislates which adjustments we should make?
I assume any proscription of what I as an AGW ignoramus should do would reflect a proscription for all. That is to say, if it’s an AGW-based lifestyle sin for me, it’s an AGW sin for all. I am looking for guidance from those who believe in this Cause.
What is a specific, concrete “reasonable lifestyle adjustment re: global warming” that applies to all?
The thing is that the answer to such a question depends largely on policy choices. For example, if it’s suggested that nobody should have more than one car per household, then determining whether or not that adjustment is “reasonable” depends on what alternatives are available. If there’s abundant convenient public transportation, then such a requirement is much more reasonable than it would be if people without cars have to walk five miles to get anywhere they want to go.
I understand that your goal, in the concurrent AGW thread as well as this one, is to make this a “gotcha” game, where you can argue that people concerned about AGW impacts must be insincere and hence unworthy of serious consideration if they won’t issue rigid draconian universal rules of emissions-reducing personal conduct. But I’m afraid you’re not going to get anybody in a serious discussion of emissions reduction strategies to play that game with you. Perhaps the most constructive thing you can do here is to declare victory and go away, leaving the discussion to those who are actually interested in trying to identify effective policy choices for emissions reductions, as per the OP’s request.
I wasn’t trying to make it a personal ultimatum. I was speaking more generally - there is great opposition to climate change legislation, and in part it is driven by the suspicion among many on the right that this is another issue the left is trying to use to drive social policy in the direction they want it to go.
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘watermelon’. It’s a pejorative used against environmentalists - ‘green on the outside, red on the inside’. And there is some truth to it, unfortunately. It has always seemed suspicious to the right that the environmental movement always seems to think that every solution to every environmental problem seems to involve implementing progressive social policy.
It’s refreshing to hear people like you, who are willing to separate the problem from the solution, and at least entertain the possibility that perhaps markets can solve the problem with the right incentives in place. Unfortunately, the environmental movement is largely driven from the left, and therefore it always seems to go hand in hand with big government, lots of regulations, and progressive social policy.
Take the ‘Green Jobs’ initiative of Van Jones. It’s nothing more than a scheme to tax rich people and funnel the money down to the poor. There’s nothing about it that will create wealth, build a new economy, or probably even be particularly green. It’s just a new set of clothes on the same old left-wing ideas. Every time environmentalism gets hijacked by ideologues like Jones, it becomes more difficult to get consensus for the tough choices that need to be made.
The point I’m making is that tying climate change legislation to ‘progressive’ causes and left-wing policies makes it less likely that climate change policy will ever get enough support to be enacted. If you care about the planet more than you do about progressive politics and wealth redistribution, you’ll divest the debate over climate change from partisan politics and seek a bigger tent.
I think you understand this, Kimstu. It’s a shame there are so many on your side who don’t.
Having government regulate specifics like how many cars you can own is exactly the wrong way to go about it. First, government will get it wrong. Governments are terrible at micro-managing people’s choices.
A far better way to go would be for government to put general incentives in place through carbon taxes, and let the free market sort out the details. Is it worse to own two cars than one? What if they are both Priuses? What if one is a collector’s car or a boulevard cruiser that only drives 1,000 miles per year? What if I’m willing to live in a smaller house in exchange for having a car that burns a little more gas?
Government should not be involved at that level of decision-making. It won’t do it right.
As an example, the government takes generally the right tack on CAFE standards. It doesn’t tell the auto industry how much power their engines can have, or how many trucks they can make, how how heavy the vehicles are. Those are engineering and market decisions the government is not qualified to make. Rather it just says, “Hey, do what you want, but your fleet had better average at least X miles per gallon.”
Can you imagine the mess if government was involved in every engineering decision affecting fuel economy? For example, had it tried to control fuel economy by mandating that cars could not be heavier than, say, 3,000 lbs, we’d probably have lighter cars today, but we wouldn’t have global chassis, shared architectures, and all the safety gadgets we have today, because those are responsible for the rise in vehicle weight. And trying to meet CAFE standards with heavier vehicles drove innovations in vehicle design that weren’t even on the horizon when the first CAFE standards were instituted. CVT transmissions, direct injection, variable displacement technology, computerized spark advance, hybrid motors… None of which might have happened had the government tried to control fuel economy by directly meddling in the engineering design of the cars.
As for how much sacrifice is required, here’s a simple question for the Global Warming crowd: Has France done enough. 70% of its energy comes from nuclear power. Is that good enough for you?
If so, then the answer is that our lifestyle restrictions don’t have to be so bad. Moving to a nuclear power infrastructure might cost a few tens of billions of dollars per year more in overall energy costs, but that’s a manageable sum that wouldn’t greatly impact lifestyles.
You’re right - we want to keep the world from heating up excessively. That’s the direction we want social policy to go.
But unlike you, we’re fairly flexible about how we get there.
First I’d heard of the expression.
And conservatives view tax cuts as the solution to every problem, if we’re gonna paint with a broad brush. Sheesh!
Also, I don’t understand your definition of ‘social policy.’ Have we tacked DADT repeal onto Clean Air Act amendments, or something? Gotta say, I missed that.
Funny, the solutions I’ve seen to environmental problems have usually been pretty focused on the actual causes. Coal-burning plants putting sulfur dioxide into the air? Put scrubbers on the smokestacks. Fisheries being overfished? Place catch limits or moratoriums on fishing. Wildlife habitat being chewed up? Buy up land, put wilderness protections on it, stuff like that.
This is what mathematicians call “handwaving.”
Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s make a bunch of unsupported assertions that are sufficiently off-topic to avoid serious challenge, and use those as supporting evidence for our main points!
I don’t see any evidence that many advocates of action to reduce climate change have made wealth redistribution and other progressive issues a precondition. Sure, if we can do two good things at once, why not - but I don’t see anyone laying down a gauntlet over any of this.
For instance, taking the proceeds of fully auctionable cap-and-trade, and rebating them to the citizenry on a per-capita basis, would in fact be redistributive - as well as revenue-neutral. But there’s a pretty good argument for that: the climate belongs to all of us equally, so the monies paid for permits to dump carbon into the atmosphere should be shared equally.
But it’s not like anyone is saying, if we don’t do it that way, then let the planet bake.
I understand, and I think it is not entirely unreasonable for RTF to characterize that (general) resistance as somewhat irresponsible, if it involves opposing necessary policy measures largely on the grounds of chronic “leftophobia”.
However, I think that over-scrutiny of the opposition’s motives on both the left and the right is mostly a distraction from the more important task of sussing out the common ground. How stupid would we have to be to sit here screaming at each other “You’re willing to destroy the economy if we can’t reach agreement on a viable strategy!” and “You’re willing to trash the planet if we can’t reach agreement on a viable strategy!” rather than actually investigating to see if we can reach agreement on a viable strategy?
Well yes, environmentalism does often go with liberal/leftist attitudes in other areas too. (Though I would think that proud conservatives would be ashamed to let the liberals own this issue to the extent they do, given the important contributions of some non-liberals like Teddy Roosevelt in launching the modern conservation/environmental movement.)
But to some extent, I think conservatives will just have to grit their teeth and accept that under present conditions, taking action on the environment will intrinsically require liberal-type policies in many cases. This is not because liberals are nicer people and love the planet more, but because conservatives and libertarians in recent decades have (somewhat short-sightedly, IMHO) successfully branded all forms of regulation as a “liberal” strategy. And what we need now, in order to be able to internalize the very distorting costs of carbon emissions, is primarily a big-ass regulation that will make the atmosphere into a market resource instead of a free unregulated infinite carbon sink.
Once the right manages to choke down that bitter spoonful of acquiescence, we can start making use of market strategies, as RTF and you propose, to bring about emissions reductions rather than depending totally on governmental dictates to bring about change. I think conservatives and libertarians can end up being very happy in a more environmentally aware economy where smart sustainable thinking can earn its proper economic value. But they’re going to have to hold their noses and temporarily put on their despised liberal hats in order to get to that place.
Funny, that’s the sort of progressive policy that we libruls have been advocating. Via cap-and-trade rather than tax, but same difference, except in optics.
There’s no pleasing you guys.
How can you say that? That’s progressive social policy, I tell you!!
Again, “how much sacrifice is required” is the wrong question, and really a pretty silly one. Institute a cap, auction off the permits, and, like you say, let the market do its magic.
The only places I’d like to see the government spend money on this is where the market isn’t going to generate alternatives. If people want to get out of their cars altogether, the market isn’t going to create a light-rail network.
It’s not even remotely the same. A carbon tax is industry-agnostic. It just says, “I don’t care what you do, but if you generate carbon, you’ll have to pay X in tax to cover the externality.” But it says nothing about how much carbon will be allowed, or who can burn it.
Cap and Trade involves the government involving itself in setting carbon caps, administering carbon auctions, etc. It’s an intrusive process. The current cap and trade bill grandfathers in existing industry, which is a gigantic implicit subsidy of the status quo. And because the government modifies carbon caps as it sees fit, it inserts uncertainty into business planning. Also, carbon credits are a form of financial derivative, which will lead to the kinds of problems other derivative products have. It also means volatility, because when you have a hard ceiling on the amount of carbon that can be produced, you have a situation where spikes in demand can cause spikes in carbon credit pricing, whereas carbon taxes are linear with consumption.
Because of all these factors, I believe government would wind up constantly meddling in the marketplace. There would be exemptions for companies that are hurting, changes to the cap based on political fiat, and huge lobbying pressure on Washington to bend the rules to suit special interests.
These are the reasons why the overwhelming majority of economists think carbon taxes are a superior mechanism.
I know. We actually demand accountability and rational policy. Crazy, isn’t it?
Let me rephrase: Of all the ways the government can intrude in the market to control vehicle economy, a universally applied CAFE standard is probably the least damaging.
Okay, substitute ‘carbon taxes’ for ‘cap and trade’, and we’re close to being on the same page so far.
And now we’ve gone off the rails again, so to speak. Suddenly we have to implement new light-rail networks, do we? What else? High speed trains? Policies that support the inner city and punish suburban living? More taxes on cars and subsidies on rail to push people into trains?
Suddenly our light footprint on the private sector is getting a lot heavier.
Assuming that you meant “limited by” when you said “limited to”, it’s you who’s wrong. It simply is not true that the number of animals can’t increase relative to the available plant biomass. If we wanted to have more animals today than they had 10,000 years ago, it would be pretty easy. (Unless Roland Emmerich’s vision of prehistoric times is correct, but I feel pretty safe there.) All we’d have to do is create strains of plants that are much more efficient in producing edible matter. The corn and soybeans that we feed to our livestock (and ourselves) today produce much more edible mass, relative to the sunlight and water that go into them, than any naturally occurring plants. As a result we can sustain much greater numbers of animals than would have existed back then. And we’ve also genetically modified our animals to be larger, so a modern cow emits more carbon dioxide than an ancient cow.
Actually, quite the opposite. I’m interested in finding out if any AGW realists hold to a position that personal behaviour should change even if there is no broad agreement on what should be done at a policy level. The OP wants to know, regarding global warming: What are the reasonable lifestyle adjustments?
Are you able to name a single specific one? If we can’t decide what they are, we’ll never make the jump to public policy which effects them. We’ll just have nice fireside chats, and have people show up in their G5s to help moderate the chats.
I submit that the hesitation to “play the game” is that, while AGW realists fancy themselves to be on the forefront of trying to save the world, they are bereft of principle. While they seem to enjoy indulging themselves in the excitement of telling the ignoramus he needs to Believe the Science, they are very uncomfortable translating belief into behaviour. This suggests to me that AGW realists are about the intoxication of proselytizing for Great Causes, and the mental masturbation over debating Policy Creation for the Other Guy (and the attendant power of policy creation, in the case of politicos) as opposed to being willing to personally change or even deal with the ramifications of their Cause.
There is nothing unfair about playing a “gotcha” game if it gets you because your position is indefensible. I submit that behaviours of AGW realist promoters which are in stark contrast to the AGW Message are the real reason you are so hesitant to lay out even a handful of specific lifestyle change proposals.
A cap-and-trade program is industry-agnostic. It just says, “I don’t care what you do, but if you generate carbon, you’ll have to purchase enough carbon permits to cover the externality.”
Big difference!
A cap-and-trade regime says nothing about who can burn it either. And the fact that it DOES say how much carbon will be allowed is where it’s strong, and a carbon tax is weak. The goal isn’t to raise money; the goal is to put less carbon in the atmosphere. A carbon tax tells you how much it’ll cost you to dump the carbon, but if you can pay the tax, you can dump as much carbon as you like. As time goes along, you have to raise the tax and guess how much that will affect carbon emissions. Cap-and-trade starts with the intended result, X tons of carbon emissions in year 20XX, and lets the market set the price of the permits that will achieve that result.
And taxation isn’t, by comparison?
Like I said, those of us who support doing something about AGW didn’t say, “if the GOP and the Business Dog Dems force some gawdawful compromises on us, we’ll say, ‘let the globe fry.’” Yeah, this sucks, but the suckitude comes from your end of the political spectrum, and we on the left swallowed our manifold objections to this suckitude for the sake of making what progress could be made.
And having to raise carbon
tax rates to much less certain levels, of course, would have no such effect.
You’re kidding, right?
Carbon credits are not a derivative of another financial instrument.
Besides, we already did this with the ozone hole. What happened?
We’ve gone through a great deal of volatility with petroleum prices over the past five years. I think we can deal. And carbon taxes would have to be raised frequently to reduce carbon output, and the size of those raises would be unpredictable - or ineffective, take your pick. So they’d only be linear between tax hikes.
And if you think a carbon tax would be immune from all this, you’ve never seen Congress messing with the tax code. Why do you think the Internal Revenue Code is as complex as it is?
Maybe - but your end of the spectrum has turned ‘tax’ into a dirty word. It’ll take a generation to undo that - and we don’t have a generation to spare.
Well, take some responsibility here: at least admit that you guys have made carbon taxes politically unfeasible, and admit that, whatever theoretical advantages there are to a carbon tax over a cap-and-trade regime, your team has blocked that road.
Also concede that comparisons between the ideal carbon tax and the cap-and-trade bill that actually passed the House are an absurd comparison. If a carbon tax had not been anathema, and the Dems had gone that way, the resulting product would be every bit as complicated and compromised as the Dems’ cap-and-trade was, since (with probably even fewer GOP votes than the 8 it got, given that it would be a tax), the selling price of every Business Dog Dem’s vote would have been even higher than it was this summer.
Let’s not, but at least we’ve got that much agreement.
Speaking of going off the rails, that’s an interesting approach: take what I said, and just assume it implies a whole bunch of unrelated stuff.
Why does this interest you? You’ve made no effort to establish that global warming can be sufficiently slowed through voluntary action. Absent an assumption that it can, it hardly matters what changes in personal behavior people are willing to make voluntarily. Absent that assumption, changes in personal behavior for the benefit of the climate are either done because one genuinely wants to do them anyway, or because one is a poseur.
Sorry, but you’re completely wrong about that. In order to achieve a general goal of overall reduced emissions, we don’t need to mandate any specific emissions-reducing behaviors that must be enforced on everyone in all circumstances.
In fact, as Sam Stone in particular has pointed out, that kind of rigid detail-focused approach is an incredibly inefficient way to achieve a general result.
Once we have market structures in place for internalizing the costs of our carbon footprints, most people will be able to choose for themselves which “lifestyle adjustments” constitute the best tradeoffs for them personally between economy, convenience and comfort.
So you see, there’s really no need for any of us to go around decreeing any specific behaviors that need to be enforced universally. Not even “a single specific one”.
Sure, there are plenty of lifestyle adjustments to choose from, and many of us AGW realists have chosen to adopt some of them voluntarily even in the absence of a carbon market, aka “turning belief into behavior”. (I already offered back in the other thread the example of my own choices not to fly first class and not to own a car.) But there’s no reason for any of us to arbitrarily pick out any of those lifestyle adjustments as mandatory for everybody.
You really do seem to be clinging to this position to provide yourself with a comfortable excuse for continuing to ignore the views of people who consider AGW a serious problem.
You’re demanding that AGW realists advocate a foolish, inefficient and unpopular draconian approach to the goal of encouraging emissions-reducing behaviors, despite the fact that a more flexible market-based approach is clearly likely to work far better. And you’re insisting that if we don’t, you’ll simply refuse to take us seriously or believe in our good faith.
Well gee, Chief, while it breaks my heart to have to give up hope of winning the coveted approval of someone so evidently knowledgeable, sincere and disinterested on this issue, I guess we AGW realists will just have to resign ourselves to carrying on as best we can without your support.
I agree that banning behaviour is not as effective as marketing it away. But I’m not wondering about that. I’m wondering what (if any) lifestyle adjustments re: global warming are appropriate for AGW realists to undertake.
Hey, if all I need to do is let market forces allow me to decide which behaviours in which to engage, there’s no need for me to ignore the views of people who consider AGW a serious problem. I can go right ahead and accept their view. It becomes a problem that will not affect me in any way personally.
And you continue (deliberately, I think) to pretend I am suggesting AGW realists need to advocate foolish, inefficient and unpopular draconcian approaches. While it is true that I think only draconian approaches will effect any real difference in AGW if the AGW realists are correct, I’m asking a much simpler question. The same question, in fact, the OP asks in the title:
What are reasonable lifestyle adjustments re: global warming?
Where in that, exactly, am I suggesting AGW realists need to force anything on anyone? I am trying to coax out whether or not they think someone is required–on the grounds of principle and consistency–**to adjust their personal behaviour **because of the fact that the AGW realist position presents anthropogenic CO2 production as being dangerous to the world.
And your silence on this–your stubborn refusal (fear?) to suggest even a single one–speaks volumes about the unwillingness of AGW “realists” to translate their belief into practice. Why should I bother with AGW if it turns out I can simply buy my way out of it? I’ll just wait until those market factors give me a price for my profligacy. And so, frankly, will the rest of the world. Except that if India and China and the rest of the developing world cannot be convinced that there is any moral high ground–that we should change our personal behaviour because it’s the right thing to do–they won’t charge themselves a fee for their carbon output. And, frankly (some free advice here) if AGW realists cannot win the moral high ground they will not win the battle to create market forces by policy even here.
I am guessing that your personal choices reflect a personal conviction that you should do what you can–that you should do your part. I am disappointed you are unwilling to take a position that we should all do our part and it makes me wonder if you are simply loathe to criticize the hypocrisy of those who are seen as leaders of the movement.
It may seem calculating to you, but my major interest in AGW is motivated by trying to predict markets created by the movement in the hope of making the right financial bets. Right now I’m betting on a lot of hot air and a lot of grandiose policy-making sessions and not much more. We seem to have lost our way convincing anyone but grade-schoolers that we should walk our own talk. So what I see right now is a bunch of fourth-grade locavores saving money to plant trees but who, as adults, save money to buy their Gulfstreams.
Yes. I call it “translating my belief into practice”. Snappy phrase, don’t you think?
But of course I take the position that we should all do our part. I just have more sense than to think that I can make a one-size-fits-all choice for everybody about the specifics of what “doing our part” should entail.
Exactly!!! Now you’re starting to get it!! There’s absolutely no need for any of us AGW realists to give a decayed rat’s ass about whether you personally “bother” with AGW or “believe” in AGW, or personally can be persuaded to adopt voluntary lifestyle changes based on moral convictions about AGW.
All we need is to put into place appropriate market mechanisms to internalize the costs of greenhouse-gas emissions overall. Then if you personally decide you want to pay the costs of indulging in carbon-intensive activities, you’re free to go on doing so without anybody pestering you about the moral purity of your choices.
In fact, since you are self-confessedly choosing to remain deliberately ignorant of almost all the facts about AGW, it would probably be best for all concerned if you just stopped bothering your pretty head about it altogether. If you’re deliberately refusing to put yourself in a position where you can make informed choices, you might as well just leave the subject alone and let more responsible people handle the policy issues.
I’ll give you the direct answer, which I think at least both Kimstu and I would agree on:
<on preview - it appears he posted pretty much the same thing>
It’s up to society to figure out how to correct for the externality problem of C02 emissions. Society’s interest is in making sure you pay for your share of the damage being charged against future generations. This is good social policy, because it’s just. It’s good economic policy, because externalities make markets inefficient, and correcting them will actually allow the market to price the true cost of energy, which will lead to a more optimum and rational utilization of it.
So, we tax carbon. Whatever you buy that has carbon increases in price a little. some things more than others. Carbon-intensive goods will lose competitive advantage in the market, and their share of the market will shrink as compared to products that are more carbon efficient. Auto fuel efficiency is now a more valuable selling point, and the mix of autos eventually changes to a more efficient one.
And so it goes. Assuming we can price carbon accurately and apply the price rationally, then you are no longer imposing an externality on anyone else, so you can buy whatever you can afford, and do whatever you want to do. Society has extracted your cost to it from your activities, and no longer should have any say, either legally or morally, in how you choose to consume carbon goods and energy.
The problems are all in the details. What’s the real price for carbon? How do you apply it evenly in a political environment where government is heavily influenced by special interests? What do you do with the carbon tax money? People will argue and fight over all these things, and the ‘right’ answer is increasingly unclear as the questions become increasingly political and less directly related to the science of global warming.