Carbon suggestion for Gary Johnson

Here's Gary Johnson backtracking on his seeming support of a carbon tax or fee, in an interview by Nick Gillespie at Reason:

Me: If Johnson is really open to ideas, he should consider the carbon fee and dividend proposal put forward by the Citizen's Climate Lobby. It is guided by the principle stated by one prominent supporter, George Shultz, that "It's not a tax if the government doesn't keep the money," as the revenues would be sent back to households as checks. It would deal with the international aspect by using border adjustments, which are import fees on products from countries that don't have carbon pricing. It is a proposal that has been around for several years, and it would be nice if people running for president of the United States actually knew something about it.

Shultz, climate and why Breitbart.com can't handle the truth

George Shultz has been a voice of reason within the Republican Party on climate policy. The following two paragraphs, from a Washington Post op-ed of his last year, "A Reagan Approach to Climate Change," sum up his approach (click to enlarge):

This is just one of many places in which Shultz advocated a carbon tax, with the caveat that the money should be returned to taxpayers. Now, one reaction on the right to this kind of thinking has been the "everyone makes a mistake once in a while, even George Shultz"-type dismissal given by (now thankfully former) presidential candidate Chris Christie a few months ago. Another reaction is to simply deny that Shultz has said what he's said. That's the tack taken at Breitbart.com today, in a piece by Chriss W. Street titled "Jerry Brown Tries to Flog a New Carbon Tax." Excerpt:

Notice that there's a link to something or another Laffer said, but nothing substantiating the statement that Shultz has "never backed a new carbon tax." That's because it's demonstrably false.

There's a lot wrong on the right these days, and I would put climate science denialism high on that list. But an unwillingness even to face readily evident facts about who disagrees with you is a sure sign your position is in serious intellectual trouble.

UPDATE: Aaron Huertas points out that Breitbart.com's Laffer link leads to something not by Laffer.

A brief word about Donald Trump

I'm going to have to break this promise.

I've been writing for 25 years. Other than this tweet, I don't believe I've ever written anything about Donald Trump. And I never will.

— Kenneth Silber (@kennethsilber) June 16, 2015

He's clearly more important than I gave him credit for. Read this David Weigel piece, which gives some indication of how he manages to appeal to people, beyond just by being flamboyant and obnoxious. Read also this exchange with Maureen Dowd, in which his answers overall seem sensible to me.

Will I vote for Trump? Not a chance. His egomania and abrasiveness, cynical populism, lack of governing experience and vagueness about what he wants to do, along with the handful of policy-related ideas he has stated, disqualify him by my lights. And I speak as someone who's found him interesting and even somewhat sympathetic for a long time. I recall reading Jerome Tucille's biography of him some four* decades ago (!). 

Do I think Trump has any chance of winning the GOP nomination? Yes, though I would certainly bet against it. Do I think he has any chance of winning the presidency? A slim one, but not negligible. If he won the nomination, his credibility by that point would be considerable; and it's not as if the Democrats have a frontrunner currently whose viability looks to be assured going forward. But the likelihood that Trump would lose in a general election has sparked some genuine agonizing on the right, and it's kind of funny to watch conservative pundits suddenly embrace the pragmatic electability criteria they spent the past couple of cycles disparaging.

Then again, here's a point Trump made that I find hard to argue with:

My own preferred candidate is John Kasich, though I was disappointed with his recent comment about anthropogenic climate change being "some theory that's not proven." My ideal, but sadly nonexistent, candidate would say something like the carbon tax speech I wrote for FrumForum years ago, made even better with some material about taxing non-carbon-priced goods at the border. Trump could give a speech like that, if he weren't on record with this truly stupid statement:

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

Anyway, that will do for now. It's a long way till November 2016.

_________________________________________

* - Actually three decades ago.

The climate-foreign policy nexus [updated]

Here's some dreary news:

Levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose at a record-shattering pace last year, a new report shows, a surge that surprised scientists and spurred fears of an accelerated warming of the planet in decades to come. 

Concentrations of nearly all the major greenhouse gases reached historic highs in 2013, reflecting ever-rising emissions from automobiles and smokestacks but also, scientists believe, a diminishing ability of the world’s oceans and plant life to soak up the excess carbon put into the atmosphere by humans, according to data released early Tuesday by the United Nations’ meteorological advisory body.

Such information gets only a fraction of the attention it deserves, in no small part because many people have convinced themselves there's no problem. Amid the current international turmoil, climate change will probably get even less attention than it typically does. There is a tragic irony there, in that foreign policy problems and environmental problems are not unrelated; on the contrary, they are intimately connected by the nexus of fossil fuels.

Civilization's heavy reliance on fossil fuels is a key contributor to climate change, through the mechanism of the greenhouse effect--and at the same time is a key contributor to geopolitical trouble, through the mechanism of revenues to trouble-causing states and terrorist groups. Putin's Russia and socialist Venezuela are buoyed by fossil fuel revenues, as are numerous bad actors in the Middle East. (Fossil fuels also cause environmental and geopolitical problems in other ways, ranging from oil spills to the need to keep supply lines open by policing the Persian Gulf with aircraft carriers.)

Reducing fossil fuel reliance would make sense even if there were no climate change problem; and is an imperative given the climate issue. Lamentably, recognition of the interrelated nature of these problems is scant across the political spectrum. On the right, objection to supposed "alarmism" about the climate blinds many to fossil fuels' relevance to national-security threats that are otherwise perceived as pressing. On the left, environmental alarm is intense, but expressing concerns about fossil fuel revenues to malefactors tends to be avoided as so much saber-rattling. (The concern that climate change itself is a national security threat gets play instead, and while it is valid, it is by and large a longer-term consideration than what enemies are doing with fossil fuel revenues right now.)

Occasionally, there are hints of some concordance between "national security hawks" and "climate hawks," as they have been dubbed, but the friction of divergent world views has prevented anything like a meaningful coalition from developing. Such a coalition might press for a carbon tax and stepped-up renewable energy research, citing the full range of reasons such things make sense (including fiscal ones). Thirteen years after 9/11 and facing a new Middle East war, even as carbon continues to build up in the atmosphere and oceans, it's high time for such a coalition to take shape.

UPDATE: An interesting piece: "The Republican Party's Secret Stance on Climate Change."

UPDATE 9/10: Just came across this from a few days ago: “I don’t think we really want a commander-in-chief who’s battling climate change instead of terrorism.”-- Rand Paul. Note to self: Never vote for Rand Paul. UPDATE: All the more reason.

GOP future possibilities

A terrific article by David Frum in Foreign Affairs: "Crashing the Party: Why the GOP Must Modernize to Win." Read the whole thing if you're interested in U.S. politics and, especially, a Republican contemplating the future of your party. Excerpt:

Any aspiring center-right party hoping to succeed today must match its core message of limited government and low taxes with an equal commitment to be culturally modern, economically inclusive, and environmentally responsible. In the United States, with all its global responsibilities, there is an additional necessary component: a commitment to U.S. primacy that is unapologetic yet not bellicose. The passage of time will help Republicans get from here to there, bringing new generations to the stage and removing others with outdated ideas. Repeated defeat administers its own harsh lessons. But most of all, new circumstances will pose new challenges -- and open up new possibilities.

As David later points out, in a paragraph that opens with "Conservatism should be thriving in the United States" and lists several Obama administration failings:

Instead of market mechanisms to deal with climate change, the Obama administration has ordered up a new system of bureaucratic regulation of carbon emissions.

Me: Speaking of new possibilities, there would be, in Obama climate policy, a suitable target for the GOP if the party had not become so invested in denying there's a climate problem in the first place. Perhaps more Republicans will start listening to Eli Lehrer, whose advocacy of a carbon tax is the subject of a savvy Bloomberg View piece by Christopher Flavelle. Otherwise, we'll just have to see if the coming Naomi Klein phase of the climate debate helps center-right types define themselves against the hard left, or just gives hard-right types an excuse to continue dismissing the whole subject.

In any case, I highly recommend Frum's piece, including an apt point about Bob Dole's 1996 rhetoric.

Climate minus capitalism

Every once in a while I think there's some prospect that a reasonable degree of consensus will form on climate policy such that effective action can be taken. Such action, in my view, likely would consist of some combination of a carbon tax (accompanied by cuts in other taxes, but not necessarily revenue-neutral) and (partly as a consequence of that tax) stepped-up public and private research and development of advanced technologies that would reduce or counteract greenhouse gas emissions. Further, a combination of taxes on carbon-intensive imports, and international competition to be at the forefront of profitable new technologies, would spur international action along similar lines, in my hopeful vision.

Every once in a while I see signs that conservative and libertarian circles that have resisted such ideas are coming around to the imperative of taking action on climate change, as with the Energy and Enterprise Initiative and the Risky Business project. Resistance to climate solutions and to acknowledgement of human-caused climate change as a problem, is a prime reason why have I been a disaffected escapee from conservative and libertarian circles in recent years. Looking ahead, I have considered the possibility that climate politics will undergo a shift whereby the right is more willing to take action (and the left possibly becomes less willing to do so, though in my optimistic view I hope that reluctance can be overcome) as such action comes to include large-scale energy technologies and possibly geo-engineering.

But lest I get too optimistic, there's always some counter-evidence to suggest that human folly and ideology will persist far too long and far too strongly to enable the climate problem to be addressed with even a minimum of adequacy. Often, such counter-evidence comes from the right, but sometimes it comes from the left. Case in point is this post, "Everything Changes," by D.R. Tucker, which anticipates an upcoming book by Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. Klein apparently argues, as her subtitle suggests, that there is a fundamental incompatibility between capitalism (or even more fundamentally, economic growth) and sound climate policy, and Tucker is excited to see her impact on the debate, with Klein set against people like Henry Paulson, Bob Inglis and Paul Krugman, who all take what we may call a "compatibilist" view. Tucker:

The question of whether the climate crisis can be resolved by fixing flaws in capitalism or fixing the flaw of capitalism is the most compelling political, ecological and economic question of our time. Only a debate between Klein and an advocate of the Krugman/Paulson/Inglis view can provide an answer. That debate will indeed change everything. 

Me: The "incompatibilist" view that to avoid climate disaster we must scrap capitalism and economic growth is not new (see for example this 2012 Grist post) but it is likely that Naomi Klein's book will give it a visibility it has not had previously. Probably this in turn will have some effect of hardening right-wing opposition to climate action on such grounds as "look, the greens have now acknowledged that their aim is to impose socialism and/or a reversion to a pre-industrial society without refrigerators."

Leaving aside its unfortunate impact on climate messaging, the deeper problem with the incompatibilist view is that it's wrong. It is wrong because it fails to see the disastrous record that non-capitalist and low-or-no-growth societies have compiled over the decades, centuries and millennia in managing their environmental impacts, from mammoth hunters in the Pleistocene to the Soviet treatment of the Aral Sea. It is wrong because it fails to take into account the human misery that would be involved in a deliberate suppression of economic growth, and how such a suppression would undercut prospects for remediation or adaptation in the face of climate change. (See Bangladesh.) It is wrong for thinking that a no-growth regime could be imposed by anything short of totalitarian methods and that it wouldn't ultimately be overthrown. (See Nicolae Ceaușescu.)

On a brighter note, the comments under Tucker's piece suggest that the putative incompatibilist Klein view and Tucker's provisional enthusiasm for it generated some healthy skepticism among readers at the liberal Washington Monthly, so maybe my optimism isn't misplaced after all.

The reform conservative climate punt

Just for the record, in case future researchers in a heavily air-conditioned facility someday scroll through this blog as part of some vast data-mining project, let me state, unequivocally, that I dispute and reject Ross Douthat's post "Reform Conservatism and Climate Change," in which he argues that avoiding policy prescriptions on climate change is exactly the right thing for reform conservatives to be doing.

Douthat makes an extended analogy in which climate policy is likened to insurance that will be costly and have uncertain benefits, and require your neighbors to buy into it as well, plus the thing you're insuring against doesn't seem as bad as it did a few years ago, plus you're not as wealthy as you were a few years ago, so now is not the time to … blah blah blah. It's all offal. The risks are plenty real. The neighbors are considerably subject to your influence (because you are a huge property-owner known as the United States of America, and you buy a lot of their products and can put fees on ones that are carbon-intensive). You're not too poor to afford the insurance policy--if it's a carbon tax, it raises money, and can be used to help your economy by enabling cuts or elimination of other taxes.

This is what reform conservatism amounts to in 2014? Some child tax credits and deliberate omission of  action on climate? What kind of world are those kids going to grow up and grow old in? This kind.

UPDATE 6/30: "The best way to understand Douthat’s piece is by reverse engineering his argument as a constrained minimization problem The objective is to minimize the craziness he needs to embrace, subject to the constraint that he must end up in line with the denialist conspiracy theorists who dominate the base." I find this sadly persuasive, notwithstanding its lack of punctuation.

Carbon taxation for skeptics [with small update]

Sometimes, an opinion piece is notable not just for its opinion but for the lengths to which the author will go to convince a particular audience of that opinion. Case in point: Irwin Stelzer's "Let's Tax Carbon," in the Weekly Standard. I strongly agree with the basic position (tax carbon and cut taxes on other things), which is one of the issues on which my centrist zig veered from the conservatives' zag in recent years. But I'd part company from Stelzer's rhetoric at moments like this:

Conservatives can maintain their skepticism about global climate change, but that does not mean that a bit of prudential action might not be appropriate should it turn out that carbon emissions are indeed having a negative effect on climate.

Me: Conservative identity has become so beholden to "skepticism about global climate change" that it's apparently now necessary to tell conservatives they can keep that set of beliefs even while trying to convince them to act as if they didn't hold them. If you like your skepticism, you can keep your skepticism. But I'm a pragmatist and not complaining. I hope Stelzer's approach is convincing.

UPDATE 7/17: Stelzer and the Standard double down, denying a carbon tax even has anything to do with climate change.

Overblown light bulbs at Reason [updated]

"Lights Out for America's Favorite Light Bulb," by Shawn Regan at Reason. This piece epitomizes the misinformation now spreading about the light bulb "ban." Notice how the word "halogen" shows up in there without explanation or elaboration, before the writer focuses laser-like on the downsides of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). We're told that the "traditional" incandescent has been "effectively" banned, but we're not given the rather crucial context that halogen bulbs are incandescent lamps--they're incandescent lamps that meet the new energy-efficiency standards (by using halogen gas to redeposit tungsten atoms on the filament).

Instead of buying a 60 watt "traditional" incandescent, you can now buy a 43 watt halogen incandescent. Instead of a 100 watt "traditional" incandescent you can buy a 72 watt halogen incandescent. Instead of a 40 watt "traditional" bulb, you can buy a 29 watt halogen incandescent. These new products are basically the same as the old products, except they are more efficient.

They also cost more--which is why it is wrong as well to suggest there are no costs or tradeoffs in the new regulations. You'll probably pay something like $1.50 for a halogen incandescent, compared to 50 cents or less for a "traditional" one. On the other hand, you'll be using less electricity, and you may be replacing bulbs less frequently. Whether you end up paying more or less will depend on your electricity rates and other factors. Also, there are many exemptions to the energy efficiency rules, for specialized types of incandescents (such as ones used in fridges, for instance). But consumers are not being forced to buy non-incandescent lamps such as CFLs or LEDs, which is the impression you'll take away if you put stock in articles like the one at Reason.

The Reason article also complains about the "baptists and bootleggers" coalition that backed the new rules when they were legislated in 2007 (pushed by the Bush administration). That charge of crony capitalism is, at best, an oversimplification, as some companies opposed the new rules and those that supported them did so seeking to forestall rules that would have been more onerous. In any case, once the rules were in place and companies had developed new products in response to them (an expensive process), repealing the "ban" would be of dubious effect. For the companies that stopped making "traditional" lamps to start those production lines up again is not exactly a cost-free proposition.

By the way, what kind of "tradition" are energy-inefficient bulbs? Was leaded gasoline also a "tradition"?

For my part, I think a carbon tax (with cuts in other taxes) would be a better way of dealing with energy efficiency (and getting at the key underlying problem: carbon emissions driving climate change) than lamp efficiency standards. But I'll settle for some second-best policies in preference to doing nothing.

UPDATE 1/10: And here's Nick Gillespie doing the same thing in a video format: complaining that the incandescent bulb has been "effectively banned" and replaced by halogen, CFLs and LEDs. Do the people at Reason not know that halogen lamps are incandescents, or do they just not care?



UPDATE 1/11: "Elegy for the Incandescent Bulb," by Tom Purcell at Townhall, offers the same red herring with half the wit. And adds this:

To be sure, you have been so successful, it took the government - not better lighting products - to kill you off. That's because, some argue, you are causing the Earth to warm. 

As electricity passes through your filament, you see, the filament gets white-hot. That is how light is created - but in the process, you also create a lot of heat, and heat is wasted energy.

Me: No more updates on this post.

How I decided not to vote for Steve Lonegan

I wrote recently about being unsure whom I would vote for in the New Jersey Senate race. There was a time when my vote for the Republican could've been taken for granted. Long ago, as a New Yorker, I voted for some of the mediocrities the GOP put up against Sen. Moynihan, even though I liked him, on the grounds that I wanted more presence for Republicans in the Senate. That reflexive desire to see victories for the Republican Party (which I've now been a member of for 30 years) has dissipated. Interested readers can find a couple of broad snapshots of my political evolution here and here.

The polls' recent tightening shows Steve Lonegan a "mere" 12 or 13 points behind Cory Booker. In all likelihood, he is going to lose, and I doubt the current showdown in Congress is going to help Lonegan, who praises the GOP legislators for "having the guts to hold the line" -- and, after all, why wouldn't they, given that their paychecks continue and many of them represent safe, gerrymandered districts? I share the widespread disagreement with using a government shutdown (and worse, a possible debt default) as a mechanism for stopping Obamacare, which by the way I consider to be a bad piece of legislation that should over time be replaced with better health care reform ideas (which the GOP has been slow to produce).

So, my dislike for what's now going on in Washington lessens my willingness to vote for a "hold the line" conservative. So does the appearance just now in my county of one Rick Perry, campaigning for Lonegan by calling Obamacare a "criminal act" and a "felony." (Why not "treason" too?) I might have voted for Lonegan, despite generally disagreeing with him on social issues, if I saw in him even a hint of the open-mindedness and policy innovation the Republican Party needs now. It needs people who would be willing to consider such policies as a carbon tax (coupled with other tax reform), market monetarism, and substantial long-term investments in science and infrastructure.

The Democratic Party is not a vehicle for such things because it's too busy generating subsidies and regulations that calcify the economy. But the Republican Party is worse--at present--because it's dominated by a misguided and destructive knee-jerk Tea Party conservatism, and sending Lonegan to Washington would be a message to continue in that vein. So, with no particular enthusiasm, I'll vote for Cory Booker.

My anti-anti-carbon tax argument [corrected]

UPDATE 12 Noon ET: I made what is, for someone who's worked as a professional fact checker and copy editor, the rather terrible error of not looking at the byline of what I was criticizing. Pethokoukis had linked to the post, but it was written by Benjamin Zycher. Corrected below.

James Pethokoukis Benjamin Zycher has an anti-carbon tax response to Greg Mankiw’s recent pro-carbon tax column. I think Pethokoukis’ Zycher's argument is erroneous for several reasons.

Pethokoukis Zycher writes:

Economics first.  The US emits about 17 % of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG).  If we apply the MAGICC climate model developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and assume the IPCC mid-range emissions path for the 21st century, an immediate cut in US emissions by half would reduce global temperatures a century by now by 0.1 degrees.  As the standard deviation is 0.11 degrees, that reduction could not be measured reliably.

Me: Any analysis that limits the effects of a U.S. carbon tax to U.S. emissions is unreliable. A U.S. carbon tax could and should be applied to imports from non-carbon tax countries as well. It should aim, as the book The Carbon Crunch advocates, at applying to carbon production, not consumption. A U.S. carbon tax would also, besides pricing out some U.S. carbon emissions, tend to spur low- or no-carbon technological developments that also could be exported and applied internationally. Pethokoukis’s Zycher's focus only on the obvious, direct effects of a U.S. carbon tax is the kind of static analysis that supply-siders used to decry.

Pethokoukis Zycher writes:

Science next.  Assume that the IPCC-class climate models are correct, despite the reality that they can predict neither the past nor the present. Assume any set of predicted effects, however apocalyptic.  It remains the case that the proposed tax is inconsistent with the underlying climate science.  Why?  Because the effect of increasing GHG concentrations is logarithmic: The marginal impact of emissions declines as concentrations increase.  As the developing world consumes more fossil fuels—the inexorable human pursuit of higher living standards is universal—GHG concentrations will rise, which means that (changes in) US emissions will matter less and less, unless one assumes a large increase in the vulnerable capital stock without adaptation by markets. 

Me: The effect of increasing GHG concentrations is logarithmic, in that each doubling of emissions is expected to produce roughly the same temperature increase. This does not mean that going forward there is less and less reason to worry about greenhouse gases. Emissions may well rise fast enough to outpace the logarithmic effect and produce an accelerating warming (and delayed temperature effects of carbon already in the atmosphere may also be significant). But in any case, what we ultimately care about is the impact of the temperature increases. Does Pethokoukis Zycher feel confident that, say, the difference between a 3.5 degree warming and a 2 degree warming is insignificant (because we avoided a doubling of the first 2 degrees)?

Pethokoukis Zycher also asserts a carbon tax should decline over time (to reflect the alleged declining impact of warming), rather than rise as proponents often suggest. But note that a gradual ramp-up of a tax would reduce shocks to the economy and offer incentives to reduce carbon emissions (and develop new technologies) in advance of expected increases in the tax.

Pethokoukis Zycher writes:

Moreover, the tax would be inconsistent with the principles of efficient taxation under democratic institutions.  Taxes are prices for public services, and the pursuit of efficiency in public spending means that tax prices should reflect the valuations that individuals place on those services.  Proposals for carbon taxes offer no plausible link between the economic burdens that the tax would impose and the differing benefits of public spending across individuals.  Because the tax would be hidden in the prices of goods and services, it would obscure rather than clarify the cost of government, a “fiscal illusion” effect inconsistent with the pursuit of fiscal discipline narrowly and efficiency in the size of government generally.

Me: I’m not sure what kind of tax really makes “a plausible link between the economic burdens that the tax would impose and the differing benefits of public spending across individuals.” Certainly the income tax doesn’t do this; one taxpayer might pay much more than another, in absolute or proportional terms, without necessarily benefitting more from whatever the government does with the money. As for being “hidden in the price of goods and services,” surely people will know that increased prices at the gas pump and elsewhere are related to any carbon tax that’s been imposed by the federal government; if not, that would suggest the tax really isn’t much of a burden, and in any case some form of disclosure could be added (e.g., your gas receipt saying x dollars or percent of this bill resulted from the carbon tax).

Pethokoukis Zycher writes:

The carbon revenues will engender a large rent-seeking tug-of-war exercise the result of which is difficult to predict; but it is far, far, far from obvious that improved “economic efficiency” would be prominent among them.

Me: Yes, there will be fights over government funding, just as there are now. If a carbon tax replaces (as it should) some portion of income taxes, payroll taxes or other taxes, this effect could be limited. In the present situation, fossil fuel companies have done an excellent job of promoting their own interests over broader public interests, so a carbon tax will have the benefit of reducing that effect. The question is not whether a carbon tax will be perfectly designed and implemented, but whether it would be an improvement over current public policy. I don’t find in Pethokoukis’s Zycher's argument a compelling reason to think it would not.

Some climate movement

A note on Obama's climate speech: Kudos. "Flat Earth Society" and other rhetorical swipes were amply justified. New rules on coal: a reasonable approach given a political climate that precludes carbon pricing. Submitting the Keystone pipeline to a test of whether it increases pollution: acceptable but probably has a significant element of arbitrariness; a thorough evaluation would consider not just whether the oil would move anyway, but tradeoffs between oil (even tar sands oil) and coal, and exploitation of North American fossil fuels (relatively easy to regulate, as well as better for national security) versus overseas resources.

Here's a different perspective, from Jennifer Rubin: "Obama's climate gift to Republicans." Excerpt:

At a time that Republicans are divided on immigration reform and the National Security Agency surveillance programs (although really only a few libertarian cranks oppose defending ourselves with technology overseen by Congress and the courts), President Obama delivers today a gift, wrapped in a bow, to Republicans in the form of his political and policy blunder, otherwise known as the “war on coal."

When Democrats controlled both the House and Senate, Obama could not get climate control legislation passed. That explains why he is now seeking to go around Congress to enact anti-coal regulations by fiat. 

The reason even Democrats balked on climate change regulations in the first term (it stalled in the Senate) is because it is economically debilitating, especially in energy producing states; politically unpopular in red states and among the vast majority of all conservatives nationwide; and useless (so long as China, India, etc. don’t follow suit it does virtually nothing for the planet as a whole – even if one buys the global warming hysteria).

Me: This passage actually underscores why a carbon tax would be a better policy--it could be applied to imports and put pressure on China, India, etc., and it would produce revenues that could limit the economic fallout in coal-producing states and elsewhere. I think the Obama administration is wrong to oppose such a tax, but there's no denying that the chances of passage would be slim; too many people (especially in Congress) think as Rubin does. As someone who believes in dealing with reality--political as well as climatological--Obama's half-measures look like a glass half-full, and his tough rhetoric has the virtue of calling those who deny there's much of anything to worry about on climate what they really are. Possibly, in time, that will look like anything but a gift to the Republicans.

Cooling, but misstated, consensus

Will Wilkinson in The Economist writes about global warming not proceeding as fast as expected: "A Cooling Consensus." Excerpt:

We have not been awash in arguments for adaptation precisely because the consensus pertained to now-troubled estimates of climate sensitivity. The moralising stridency of so many arguments for cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and global emissions treaties was founded on the idea that there is a consensus about how much warming there would be if carbon emissions continue on trend. The rather heated debates we have had about the likely economic and social damage of carbon emissions have been based on that idea that there is something like a scientific consensus about the range of warming we can expect. If that consensus is now falling apart, as it seems it may be, that is, for good or ill, a very big deal. 

Me: The key consensus was, and is, that global warming is happening; is anthropogenic; and carries serious risks. Often, this has been expressed in terms of projected temperature ranges. It is not the case that we know how much warming there will be, and it is not the case that carbon taxes or other measures would only make sense if we did know. A great virtue of carbon pricing, in fact, is that it can be adjusted as new information comes in about the extent and effects of warming.

Wilkinson is right* that some people have overstated the certainty of disaster if we don't keep atmospheric carbon to certain levels (e.g., "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math"). But for years we've been hearing from the other side of the "debate" that global warming is not happening, not anthropogenic or nothing to worry about (hey, good for plants, even). Two of those propositions are false, and the third is still dubious. If, as many scientists believe, the oceans are absorbing much of the warming, with the result being rising sea levels, then a do-nothing policy is still dangerous. I'll add that the case for a carbon tax is not solely dependent on global warming but also draws on other environmental, fiscal and national-security considerations. Having said all that, you'll never hear me argue against adaptation as part of the strategy. Given the politics involved, we'll need it.

* UPDATE 1:23 PM: Rereading what I wrote, I'd amend the last paragraph to take out the opening words "Wilkinson is right that..." as the subsequent point, though relevant, is not something Wilkinson asserted.

UPDATE 6/23: These posts by Greg Laden make good explanatory points:
--"The Ocean is the Dog. Atmospheric Temperature is the Tail."
--"Why you sound so stupid when you say 'global warming has stopped'."

Keeping tabs on reform conservatism [updated]

There's been a lot written lately about "reform conservatism," such that even people who are interested in the subject might have trouble keeping up. Here are a few notes from me on recent developments and current trends:

1. David Frum has put his DailyBeast blog on indefinite hiatus while he focuses on family and personal matters. He will continue his weekly CNN column but, for the time being, cease being the prolific figure he's been on the punditry scene. I wish him well, look back fondly on my involvement with the earlier FrumForum, and fully expect he'll return to a highly active public role sooner or later.

One thing that was great about FrumForum was that it was informed by a common sensibility (in particular, a belief that the GOP and conservatism needed to renew themselves in some way) but also contained a considerable diversity of opinion on particular issues and priorities. How else could the site have had room for, say, both me and my friend John Guardiano, who is notably more conservative than I've ever been? (I will note, though, that one other person I knew through FrumForum later made a point of cutting his ties to me, and not explaining why, which suggests limits to that intellectual diversity.)

2. Ross Douthat recently itemized his idea of a conservative reform agenda. I was reasonably in tune with a fair amount of what's on the list, but was unpleasantly surprised to see that he explicitly excluded "a cap-and-trade bill, or any sweeping regulatory response to climate change," while citing the influence of Jim Manzi and linking to a piece by the latter rejecting a carbon tax. There's room for debate on what to do about climate change, but if the conservative reform answer is to do nothing, or to focus some limited effort on future technologies that may help someday, then there is a gaping political and policy weakness at the center of reform conservatism.

3. There's some fuzziness as to what constitutes reform conservatism such that some people frequently identified as reform conservatives disclaim that they are conservatives. This came up recently with regard to the fast-rising pundit Josh Barro, who describes himself as a "neoliberal" and adds: "But people might understand better if I just started saying 'moderate.'" I agree that "neoliberal" is a confusing label (all those free-market reforms outside the U.S. were also "neoliberal," for starters). For my part, I am happy enough with "moderate" or "centrist" and have stopped calling myself, as I did in years past, a "libertarian" or "libertarian conservative." But since such I'm-not-a-conservative admissions generate an enormous amount of crowing from the likes of adamant conservative non-reformer Erick Erickson, I would also like to point out that what counts as conservatism has changed again and again over the decades (see The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution, by Gregory L. Schneider for background) so I can easily imagine a future in which, say, Josh Barro is considered a conservative and Erick Erickson is considered what he is: a suitable partner for Lou Dobbs in discussions of biology.

4. I'm not quite as politics-focused as some of the people discussed above. Career-wise, I've had oars in multiple streams over the years, including financial journalism, science journalism and the Erie Canal. Quicksilber can be expected to continue covering eclectic subject matter, and there are even plans in the works for an artistic collaboration involving alien life. Still, at a time when there is some contention over where and among whom "real" conservatism and "real" reform conservatism can be found (and some hypocrisy about that, as Conor Friedersdorf points out), I consider my wide range of interests an asset, as reform conservatism will need input from people of varied backgrounds. I expect to continue paying attention, and occasionally weigh in, on this overall subject in the future.

UPDATE 2:10PM: Here's a reform conservative manifesto at Forbes, by Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry, in which the environment and science figure not at all. Man, this movement needs to broaden its agenda.

UPDATE 6/7: Welcome TalkRadioSucks members.

Carbon tax adjustments

Interesting piece: "The Carbon Tax Is Overrated," by Evan Soltas at Bloomberg View. Actually, the headline obscures the key point, which is that a carbon tax can be modified to reflect and adjust to uncertainties about the costs and risks associated with carbon emissions. It seems to me one might come away from reading this more favorably disposed to a carbon tax than one was at the outset.

China's carbon tax: the video

Recommended viewing, as China enacts a carbon tax.


And remember the Obama administration is on record as opposing a carbon tax in the U.S.

Some more analysis here.

GOP salvation watch

Recommended reading: "How to Save the Republican Party," by Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner at Commentary. I agree with much but not all. Excerpt:

To acknowledge climate disruption need hardly lead one to embrace Al Gore’s policy agenda. It is perfectly reasonable to doubt the merits of pushing for a global deal to cut carbon emissions—a deal that is almost surely beyond reach—and to argue instead for a focus on adaptation and investments in new and emerging technologies. Republicans could back an entrepreneurial approach to technical and scientific investment as opposed to the top-down approach of unwieldy government bureaucracies offering huge subsidies to favored companies such as Solyndra. (See above, under “corporate welfare.”) 

Confronting climate change is important in and of itself. It is also important as a matter of epistemology, to show that Republicans are not, in fact, at war with the scientific method. Only then will Republicans have adequate standing to criticize junk science when it’s used as a tort weapon or as an obstacle to new energy technologies.

Me: This is a vast improvement over the currently pervasive Republican denialism and glibness ("government can't control the weather") on this issue. The policy approach is not exactly what I'd prefer. A carbon tax that includes imports (and thus pressures other countries to adopt carbon taxes or pricing) is far more feasible than a global agreement, and would be complement and spur to the R&D that the authors want.

There is much else in the piece of value, but I'm not sure the authors have entirely faced up to an implication of their analogy of today's GOP to Democrats of 1970-1992 and Labourites of 1970-1997. That is, it took a long time for those parties to reform themselves (whereas Gerson and Wehner, understandably, pivot to a discussion of 2016). On the other hand, maybe things move faster now.

Will anti-carbon tax arguments make a comeback?

In the Wall Street Journal today, an op-ed: “Will the Carbon Tax Make a Comeback?” by William O’Keefe, CEO of the Marshall Institute and a former executive of the American Petroleum Institute. 

It begins with some triumphalism about the defeat of Bill Clinton’s proposed BTU tax almost 20 years ago, which O’Keefe describes as “a similar gambit” to a carbon tax. O’Keefe writes:

The proposal provoked a brutal backlash, to the surprise of no one but the Clinton White House, environmental advocates, and liberal members of Congress such as Henry Waxman (D., Calif.). The vocal anti-BTU coalition included small businesses, the agriculture sector, the building trades, the transportation industry, manufacturers and even social-service organizations that relied on gasoline and heating oil to care for the poor and homeless.

A few months after Mr. Clinton proposed the tax, the administration and Democrats in Congress abandoned the idea. As the great English writer Samuel Johnson observed, there is nothing like a hanging to concentrate the mind. "BTU" became a verb, and from then on no politician wanted to be "BTU-ed." A year later, in November 1994, voters gave control of the House to Republicans for the first time in decades.

Me: Ah, good times, good times. Actually, wait a second. The BTU tax would’ve been imposed on a broad range of energy sources including non-carbon ones such as nuclear and hydropower, and had no mitigating cuts in taxes elsewhere. A carbon tax, aimed at promoting non-carbon energy sources and coupled with cuts in income and payroll taxes, might get a very different reception.

Here’s more O’Keefe:

A carbon tax is intellectually elegant to economists but dangerous and complex in practice. The theoretical basis is to raise taxes on things considered bad (carbon from energy consumption) and to lower taxes on things considered good (labor, for example).

But energy is consumed to produce things that people value, and there are no near-term substitutes for fossil fuels. So a carbon tax would affect food prices, consumer goods, electricity, mobility, charitable works and more. It would also destroy jobs, and a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that it would "impose a larger burden on low-income households.

Me: Yes, “energy is consumed to produce things that people value,” but some types of energy produce vast social and environmental costs that a carbon tax would make better reflected in energy prices. Why not let people keep more of their money to begin with, and then choose (directly and indirectly) among energy sources?

As for there being “no near term substitutes for fossil fuels,” that is a straw-man argument. There are some non-carbon substitutes for fossil fuels and importantly there are also lower-carbon fossil fuel substitutes for higher-carbon fossil fuels. A carbon tax would accelerate the recent push toward more use of natural gas. The goal is not some green utopia but rather a more sustainable mix of energy sources.

O’Keefe:

A carbon tax is a slippery slope. Once in place, small changes in rates would yield large increases in federal revenue. Who is naive enough to believe that Congress wouldn't be tempted to make small increases that accumulate over time?

Me: Yes. There should be small increases that accumulate over time. In fact, there should be a schedule of such increases, so as to minimize shocks to the economy and encourage investment in cleaner energy. Gradualism would be a virtue in a carbon tax, not the insidious menace O’Keefe portrays.

O’Keefe:

What's more, the climate-change justification for a carbon tax is bogus. Greenhouse-gas emissions are rising in China and other emerging economies, not in the United States. Carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S. have been declining and by 2035 will return to 2005 levels, the Energy Information Administration projects.

Me: U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions declined from 2005 to 2010. From 1990 to 2010, they increased by 10.5%. The U.S. remains the second highest emitter of CO2 in absolute terms and a far larger per-capita emitter than China and other emerging economies. Moreover, a properly designed U.S. carbon tax would impose costs on imports from countries that don’t have a carbon tax, precisely because this is a global problem that requires international action to address it.

O’Keefe:

Advances in climate science, meanwhile, raise even more doubt about the assertion that human activities are the primary cause of warming. Former NASA scientist Roy Spencer, for example, has shown that temperatures since 1976 have risen and stabilized in parallel with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a natural climate pattern affecting all sorts of natural phenomena. An increasing number of experts now admit that natural variability is poorly understood and poorly reflected in the models that are the foundation of so much climate-change dread.

Me: There remains a strong consensus among experts that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are the primary driver of climate change--and O'Keefe's wording is rather slippery, as the number of contrarian experts could be increasing while remaining very low, and as acknowledging uncertainties about natural variability does not equate to thinking they plausibly could account for global warming. Also, fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, indisputably cause vast damage to humans and the environment even apart from climate change. But O’Keefe’s resort to the science denialism card is revealing. It suggests that he and his editors perceive that his case against a carbon tax can’t stand up without that crutch.

Carbon tax opposition

Everything about the Fox News segment above is lamentable, from the graphics at its outset ("Regulation Nation" with a rubber stamp voiding "jobs") through the end of Steve Doocy's interview with Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.). Doocy explains that a carbon tax involves taxing "things that go up in the air" and is "crazy." Upton manages to mis-describe a carbon tax as the same thing the Democrats failed to pass in 2010, thus conflating it with a cap-and-trade system; he vows to stop this "mole" from rearing its head ever again, cheerfully ignoring his own past contention that everything should be on the table for reducing carbon emissions. No viewer who watches this comes away with any better sense of what's involved, what the choices and tradeoffs actually are. It's all just "crazy" and deeply stupid.

Carbon pricing opportunity

At MIT Technology Review: "Europe's Carbon Trading Problems May Influence U.S. Climate Policy."

There's an opportunity here that Republican politicians are missing: to point out that the Democratic Party's favored climate strategy, cap and trade, has been a failure internationally. In fact, it was a failure that resulted from trying to take a sound idea (which worked well enough on localized problems such as acid rain) and apply it to a global problem for which it was ill-suited. Of course, to make the most of this opportunity, the GOP politicians would have to be willing to (a) acknowledge that global warming is a problem and (b) present their own solution, in particular a carbon tax. (Of course, the rhetoric of recent years of cap and trade being "cap and tax" has generated public confusion about the distinction.)

A Heritage of hooey

Yesterday I happened across a Heritage Foundation post "Carbon Tax a Recipe for Economic Disaster," and was struck by its lameness, its pile of assertions without analysis. I clicked through the links and found some other Heritage pieces that too had little analysis and less that was persuasive or even relevant. "A Carbon Tax Would Harm U.S. Competitiveness and Low-Income Americans Without Helping the Environment" is the most substantive piece there but still is very lacking: it can't be bothered to assess such possibilities as that a carbon tax would be coupled with cuts in other taxes; it relies on boilerplate denialism such as "the field of climate science is far from settled"; it presents a graph showing the effects of a defunct cap-and-trade bill as a stand-in for analysis of a carbon tax, and while noting that U.S. action would be ineffective in restraining climate change without international action, makes a hand-waving assumption that there's no possibility of such action even if the U.S. puts an import fee on goods from countries without a carbon tax. How do you know that, Heritage?

Anyway, reading that stuff put me into somber reflection on the sorry state of much think tank "analysis." Today I see Heritage is getting a new president, as Sen. DeMint makes an early departure from the Senate. Sadly, it does not look like this change will spur any rethinking--or first thinking--on climate and carbon; but maybe some future Heritage papers will press the "it's snowing" line of obscurantism.

Carbon tax considerations [updated]

David Frum makes a case--and it's a powerful case--for taxing carbon. Unfortunately, there isn't currently an administration in place that's willing to take such a step (and unlike the recent Republican challenger, the president does not have economic advisors known for high-profile advocacy of a carbon tax).

I would emphasize a point David makes, which is a central insight of the recent book The Carbon Crunch (which I've only had a chance to skim so far), that a carbon tax must fall ultimately on consumption, not just production. In other words, it's futile and counterproductive to put a tax on a factory in one country that just encourages the company to move to a country without a carbon tax. Rather, goods must be taxed as they enter the importing country, if they're made someplace without the tax.

UPDATE: Bipartisan opposition in the House.

Carbon tax politics

"We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one." -- Jay Carney, White House spokesman, Nov. 15.

Chris Mooney here argues that's a good thing, that the Obama administration's focus in the near term should be on regulatory efforts that don't require legislation, and that carbon pricing should be pushed off into the future. This strikes me as an example of the kind of stubborn partisan cohesiveness Mooney rightly decries when conservatives do it. At a moment when a carbon tax is gaining momentum, the idea that Obama should push it off (till when?) is very hard to reconcile with the urgency of the issue. Surely, the re-elected president can push regulatory efforts while also working on a carbon pricing solution that, as it happens, is also relevant to the imminent fiscal cliff. And when exactly would Obama have more political capital than he does in the aftermath of winning 332 electoral votes? Never.

UPDATE 1:17 PM: Via Instapundit, more evidence that the people who voted for Obama because of climate concerns have been had.

Carbon tax momentum

A carbon tax--which has been a cause célèbre of this blog since its earliest days--is getting new political momentum. May it keep moving forward. May it come coupled with tax cuts elsewhere, at least as a significant part of its revenue allocation. That will make it politically palatable and prevent it from unduly burdening the economy. May it be described truthfully as a tax, without any verbal subterfuge.

Big picture view

It's good to get up into the mountains to reflect on events. My sense of the political situation is that Romney's momentum has largely dissipated but not before giving him a real shot at victory. Bloomberg, the Economist and Colin Powell have given Obama some of the centrist imprimatur he needs to win over swing voters. Hurricane Sandy, which has made a hash of my New Jersey neighborhood, has given Obama some of the reputation for competence that had been tattered by everything from Benghazi back to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. I don't think the perceptions of centrism and competence are accurate as applied to this president, and if he is reelected I expect that people who are voting on such a basis are going to be disappointed, to say the least.

Moreover, I think the notion that a post-Sandy Obama victory would be some kind of victory for better climate policy is, sadly, completely wrong. Obama in this campaign has acted as a sycophant to the coal and oil industries, no less than has Romney. Worse, Obama also has cast his lot with higher taxes on incomes and greater burdens on growth, which in turn mean there is no flexibility for the policies that are needed to limit carbon emissions. A carbon tax could only be implemented in an economy with a relatively light tax regime on incomes. A robust research program, including exploration of long-term geoengineering options, could only occur in the context of a federal budget that includes entitlement reforms. And, getting back to the short term, tight federal regulation of natural gas production would have the perverse effect of shifting energy use away from the cheapest and most efficient alternative to oil and coal.

Romney, for his part, is a flawed and frustrating candidate, for many reasons. But a President Romney, likely facing a Congress with a Democratic Senate and a smaller GOP House majority than the present one, has greater upside potential than the guaranteed mediocrity-at-best of Obama II. So my vote remains unchanged (assuming they have a vote in New Jersey). As for my prediction, I'm still inclined to say Romney pulls it out, even though I recognize that could easily be wrong.

Pictured: mountains around New Paltz, NY.

Carbon tax toxicity

This has a desperate, rearguard quality to it. Climatewire reports on a looming scare campaign by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Excerpt:

Climate skeptics concerned about the rise of conservative groups favoring a carbon tax are preparing a response that seeks to make the policy politically "toxic" for Republicans who might consider it.

The pre-emptive effort, still in its early stages, is designed to discredit the idea that taxing carbon emissions is a good trade-off for lower corporate and individual tax rates, as the nation lurches toward, perhaps, a wide-ranging overhaul to its tax system.

Particularly worrisome is the influence that Mitt Romney's key economic advisers, three of whom support taxing carbon, might exert on the Republican Party as lawmakers weigh difficult choices to avert sunsetting tax cuts and to reduce the $16 trillion deficit. Other prominent economists, like Arthur Laffer, who advised President Reagan, also advocate taxing carbon over income.

Question is what they'll come up with now that the idea of billboards with Theodore Kaczynski on them has already been used.