14
Dec
2015
On Paris Climate Deal (and Alleged Fate of Humanity), Show Your Work, Dr. Krugman
My latest post at IER. C’mon tell me this isn’t a good line:
Notice the absurdity, and we’re still in Krugman’s first two paragraphs. The existence of humanity itself is allegedly on the line—Krugman wonders if there will even be future historians—and yet this Paris meeting won’t solve the problem. Isn’t it weird that a handful of “deniers” in the United States apparently have the power to tell the whole world what to do with their economies? If this is such an open and shut scientific case, why won’t the Paris talks achieve anything beyond symbolism? Would Krugman be bestowing such honors and prestige on, say, the Captain and crew of the Titanic having a meeting where they agreed to start thinking about icebergs?
“U.S. Not a Big Player In Climate Change.” You are being politically absurd. The USA is a big player in pretty much everything, but certainly in climate change. It is historically the biggest emitter, it remains second biggest emitter, it is the largest economy and one of the richest countries in the world.
If the USA, with this history of emissions and current wealth will not take action, then international agreement is impossible. USA probably more than any other country can determine succes of failure of any agreement. If the USA walks away, so does the rest of the world.
Now it is one thing to argue that any agreement is a good or bad thing, but to deny the importance of the USA in the negotiations is daft.
“If the USA, with this history of emissions and current wealth will not take action, then international agreement is impossible.”
If Climate Change is as important as other countries make it out to be, they’ll do something *without* international agreement.
The only reason international agreement is sought is because it strips nations of their sovereignty so as to force everyone closer to global Communism.
Harold, do you deny that starting today, the US contributions to global temperature rise by 2100–according to standard models that EPA uses etc.–is negligible compared to a bunch of other countries?
It depends what you mean by a bunch. I don’t think USA emissions are negligible compared to any single country. USA is second in absolute terms and first on per capita basis for 2015. This will decline in relative terms, but I don’t think it will get to “negligible”.
Yes, of course it would be better for the USA not to cut back, and for everyone else to do so. But every country can say that.
The USA is a big player in climate change because of its political clout, not just because of its emissions.
How exactly do you see the US being able to get the whole world on board with their political clout?
“How exactly do you see the US being able to get the whole world on board with their political clout?”
Not easily, but it would be very easy to scupper the others getting on board. Do you deny that the USA is pretty important in these negotiations? It is not true to say they are not a big player – they are one of the biggest whichever way you look at it.
Tel- OK, USA may not be first, but that does not alter the argument at all.
I don’t see anyway the US can get the whole world to adopt policies that hurt their economies when they have almost no impact on the outcome individually. So, no, I don’t see them as being important to changing global temperatures.
Heck, you can’t even attempt to answer my question on how they are supposed to herd all these cats who are at cross purposes. You just give the “Who knows, but we gotta do something” response.
Personally, I don’t believe any of these politicians are so absurdly naive to think they can get the whole world to meet the global warming activists’ necessary demands for averting this crisis they believe is coming. I think these meetings are nothing more than cover for socialists to convince more people to bend over and take it as they take even more of our money.
But I’m weird. I’m the kind of guy that wouldn’t give my money to a home builder if I asked him how he planned on getting my house built and his response was “who knows, but we gotta start somewhere”.
Hey man, I am not the house builder. No use not giving the money to a housebuilder because you ask the Vicar how the builder is going to build the house, and he says “I don’t know, but he will have to start somewhere.”
You are asking me to provide details of how the USA should go about international political negotiations involving 195 countries. I don’t have the answers to hand, and since it is not important to my argument I won’t go down the line of finding out.
If you check Wikipedia, Australia is first in per-capita emissions, followed by Saudi Arabia. That’s because under the Kyoto agreement, they count Australian coal exports and Saudi oil exports as “emissions”.
Then that Australian politicians tell us we aren’t doing enough because we are first in per-capita emissions so they must tax electricity harder, tax fuels harder. What are they expecting me to do about the coal exports, sabotage?
“What are they expecting me to do ..”
I expect you to die Mr Bond!
Good luck taxing me then!
Your suggestion is very similar to Alex Epstein’s argument, that the fundamentals of the Green movement, is simply a desire for depopulation (which is why nuclear power is not seen as acceptable replacement for coal, and why they reject “plant food” evidence without even considering the argument).
http://industrialprogress.com/author/alex/
Personally, I trust in the greed of politicians… they will always want to tax me in preference to killing me.
Wait a minute. Part of what Murphy is mocking is the notion that the US could, all by itself, heat the world beyond salvation. So what a “bunch” means is pretty obvious: any group whose contributions are noticeably greater.
So you’re saying the rest of the world believes the global warming rhetoric but they’re going to cut their head off to spite their face if the US doesn’t participate?
“True, nothing agreed to in Paris will be enough, by itself, to solve the problem of global warming. But the talks could mark a turning point, the beginning of the kind of international action needed to avert catastrophe.”
Nothing, by itself, will be enough to solve the problem of global warming, which is why it will continue to be trotted out for the foreseeable future as a hobgoblin to justify every economic intervention imaginable. In politics there’s nothing worse than a problem that can be solved quickly, once and for all.
“The existence of humanity itself is allegedly on the line …”
If people actually thought about this, they’d realize that it was a non-issue. What would it matter to any of us if, after we die, humanity ceased to exist?
It’s not worth worrying about until it is your own neck on the line. Like when Warmist policies would result in more deaths, *today*:
760 dead in English heatwave — NYU prof calls for end of air conditioning
http://junkscience.com/2013/07/760-dead-in-english-heatwave-nyu-prof-calls-for-end-of-air-conditioning/
If people actually thought about this, they’d realize that it was a non-issue. What would it matter to any of us if, after we die, humanity ceased to exist?
So I’m guessing you don’t have kids.
I think the point is that after we die, it won’t matter to us, since there will not be an us for it to matter to.
Maybe Z will agree, but most of us care what happens after we die whilst we are alive.
I understand that – I just think it’s immature and selfish. It’s one thing to say that it’s more important to worry about current and certain deaths than future and uncertain ones. It’s another thing to say that the future doesn’t matter at all if we (those currently alive) have already passed away.
The future doesn’t matter at all to those who are currently alive.
It’s not immature to attempt to economize on one’s own resources.
And it’s no moral deficiency to be selfish with one’s own resources because it is the right of the owner to do with them as he sees fit.
It *is*, ironically, selfish to “care” with other people’s resources against their will (taxation, regulations, etc.), since you are merely attempting to substitute your own individual preferences – which happen to be egalitarian – for another’s.
You don’t get a say with regard to other people’s stuff.
And it’s no moral deficiency to be selfish
I was unsure whether to quote this part alone or quote the entire sentence because both seemed equally absurd.
Just because someone has a right to do X doesn’t mean they should do X. Libertarians make this distinction over and over again when accused of libertinism. No, it’s not morally acceptable to deny a drowning man acess to your boat just because the boat is your property. No, it’s not morally acceptable to shout obscenities and verbally harass someone while you’re in your own home. And no, it’s not morally acceptable to take an action that destroys the entire world a couple hundred years down the road because you’re merely using your own property.
“No, it’s not morally acceptable to deny a drowning man acess to your boat just because the boat is your property. No, it’s not morally acceptable to shout obscenities and verbally harass someone while you’re in your own home.”
On the first one, yes, it is, unless an authority higher than my own says so – a case you’d have to make. Just as it is morally acceptable to use violent defensive force against those who would force me to do so.
On the second, it’s not harassment because you’re on *my* property. You have zero rights on my property.
No right to dignity, etc.
If you don’t like those terms, then don’t come on my property.
If I don’t like being alone, it’s in my interest to treat people with respect.
Both of these options are at my own discretion.
“And no, it’s not morally acceptable to take an action that destroys the entire world a couple hundred years down the road because you’re merely using your own property.”
If it takes a couple of hundred years, then I didn’t cause it.
That, as Major.Freedom has noted, is called “nature”.
“On the first one, yes, it is, unless an authority higher than my own says so – a case you’d have to make.”
And even then, the right isn’t inherent, but is conferred by the higher authority.
That higher authority has a right to force me to accept the drowning man on my boat, but no one else.
Either way, no human has a right to force me to save the drowning man.
Once again, you’re conflating the right to do X with saying you should do X. The two are not equivalent, and I’d appreciate an acknowledgment from you about this.
Let me bring up your original quote again. You said
If people actually thought about this, they’d realize that it was a non-issue. What would it matter to any of us if, after we die, humanity ceased to exist?
I’ve thought about it, and it’s definitely an issue. It matters to me that humanity continues to exist after my death. Your apathy at caring about other people once you’re dead is appalling. There’s no need to appeal to a higher authority, this is just common sense.
You’re free to care with your own money, time, and effort.
Not with mine.
Oops, Harold, I missed your point in my haste to respond. But I don’t think that’s what the guest meant.
Are the next generation of kids going to die from Climate Change?
I brought that up because I thought if you had kids, you’d know the feeling of caring about someone other than yourself, and you certainly wouldn’t be making crass statements like “I don’t care about the anyone’s situation once I’m dead.”
If they’re not your kids, or they haven’t yet been conceived, then they’re not your concern.
Worry about your own family. Mind your own business.
That’s not crass.
That is crass. You’re making these generalized statements when they contradict the (apparent; correct me if I’m wrong) libertarian views you hold. So if they’re not your kids, you don’t care if people aggress against them? They’re not your concern? If someone is conceived 30 years from now and is eventually aggressed against, you don’t care at all?
“If Climate Change is as important as other countries make it out to be, they’ll do something *without* international agreement.”
The argument put here frequently is that USA cuts will only result in miniscule cuts in CO2 related damages. This applies even more to every other country in the world. There is no point any country acting on their own – even the largest of emitters does not contibute enough. In the absence of agreement to cooperate, the best option for every country is to defect.
A strange Prisoner’s dilemma, where the outcome is worse for everyone if the participants cooperate than if they defect.
Why would the best option, in your worldview, be for every country to contribute to a faster extinction, absent international agreement?
It seems to me that you’re making the case that quality of life trumps duration, in certain circumstances.
That’s essentially *our* argument. We have a different set of circumstances than you.
Some of us don’t want to live in a world where we have to forego our individual preferences, and we have no problem leaving alone those who do (actually, they have subjective egalitarian preferences they want satisfied).
Your side wants for force everyone to pay for the longevity of others at an opportunity cost that can only be assessed subjectively by the individual.
I think Andrew’s point was that CO2 is not a problem, so all effort to reduce it make us worse off without benefiting future generations, but I could be wrong.
I’m confused how stating that the current climate talks don’t solve the problem is an argument against alarmists. To your analogy, if the crew of the Titanic started discussing the glacier issue way in advance, of course it’d be a good thing. And if climate change really is an issue, then reducing the degree of its impact is good as well. And finally, coming together every X years in some sort of world convention would likely help encourage and accelerate solutions.
What you are actually seeing in the new agreement is the growing consensus, even among the alarmists, that the temperature rises are much more modest than thought just twenty years ago. It was becoming clearer every year that the climate was far less sensitive to CO2 than the models were projecting. So, in Paris, you got an agreement with literally no enforcement mechanisms because, of course, none of the developing countries were ever going to agree to actually stop developing on the back of fossil fuels (seriously, they tell you explicitly in their submitted proposals that they won’t do so before 2030 at the earliest). The plan is to still try to get the money funneled through and to the various rent-seekers and other parasites that live off of it, but they have now positioned themselves to take credit over the next two or three decades for the slowing (or possibly even a coming decline) of temperature increases that had already happened over the last two decades.
Here is my prediction- in 2030 CO2 concentrations will have reached 600 ppm and still be rising at nearly the same rate, and the world’s temperature will not have increased by any statistically significant degree over that time as measured by satellites. However, Paul Krugman, if he is alive still, will write a column lauding the Paris Accord as the reason for the temperature stability.