11
Jun
2016
The Climate Change Policy Bait and Switch
My latest at IER. The reason I like this one is that I merely quote from climate change experts who support a carbon tax, in order to show just how dubious the case for it is. An excerpt:
Now I hope the reader starts to see how the bait-and-switch works. Advocates of intervention throw out short-term goals that they can (with unrealistic and naïve assumptions) show will have a relatively small impact on the economy. This leads the casual reader to suppose that the nightmarish climate catastrophes of the future can be avoided at relatively affordable cost.
Ah, but someone who digs deeper soon learns that these “affordable” policies don’t actually solve the problem. To do that, much more painful measures are necessary. Specifically…
What’s key here is the science of climate change, and making sure that the external costs of carbon emissions (if any) are measured properly. Your article makes it sound like none of that matters – all that we should worry about is not doing anything that will damage “growth”.
Suppose the scientific consensus is right and carbon emission are causing global warming and this is a harmful externality for the vast majority of people. Standard economic theory says this would provide a justification for taxing carbon emissions. And if the tax was set at the right level then what difference would it make if it led to ‘a possible ten percent hit to output’? Economic theory would suggest that we’d still be better off with the tax and the output hit than without it.
“Suppose the scientific consensus is right… [that] this is a harmful externality for the vast majority of people”
Well here’s your problem right there. That’s not what the scientific consensus is.
This is economics – I can suppose anything I like.
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
A) Never cite Wikipedia on climate change and
B) As expected you didn’t understand my statement. I chose to parse your sentence very carefully. There is no scientific consensus that global warming is “a harmful externality for the vast majority of people.”
“Suppose the scientific consensus is right and carbon emission are causing global warming and this is a harmful externality for the vast majority of people. …”
“… Economic theory would suggest that we’d still be better off with the tax and the output hit than without it.”
First of all, “the majority” is not the guage of economic benefit, since only individuals economize. Effectively, you’re saying that the individual doesn’t matter and is expendable for a collective ideal – a collective that, apparently, the sacrificed individuals didn’t really belong to, even though the rest of the collective held them accountable to it as if they did.
Second, two can play the externalities game: The collective’s decision to restrict my ability to trade with whomever I wish in order to adapt to the supposed dangers of the non-existent global warming and global climate change [there’s no such thing as a global temperature, and therefore no such thing as a global climate], is a negative externality upon me.
Now what?
What a clear, cogent answer. Well said!
This doesn’t address the fallacy of composition argument, which is what I believe the left’s response would be to your comment.
The only meaningful “whole” one can make out of many individuals is that of one particular individual’s plan for everyone else – the slave owner’s plan for his supposed slaves.
Here, there’s at least no misunderstanding of the fact that each individual is a person and acts independently of everyone else. It’s just that the slave owner believes it’s everyone else’s duty to serve his ends.
There is logically no such thing as an all-encompassing egalitarian purpose, because values are subjective. Individuals are what give resources their values.
And you can’t logically centrally plan for the satisfaction of individual, subjective ends – they’re subjective. And they change all the time.
Any central plan must sacrifice individual preferences. Which means it’s not in the interest of any individual to be a part of a so-called collective unless he’s benefitting from what is taken from others.
I don’t disagree with anything you just said, but I don’t necessarily agree with your initial argument still. Let me change my criticism. You said:
[“First of all, “the majority” is not the guage of economic benefit, since only individuals economize. Effectively, you’re saying that the individual doesn’t matter and is expendable for a collective ideal – a collective that, apparently, the sacrificed individuals didn’t really belong to, even though the rest of the collective held them accountable to it as if they did.”]
This is not really what is being said when referring to a “harmful externality for the vast majority of people.” Imagine that pollution from the actions of all in the world somehow only effected a single individual. Would that individual’s claim against the remainder of the world over the impact of their actions on his private property be valid _if it could be proven true_ (my assumption). You for some reason grouped a bunch of individuals together as the “majority” and then disregarded each individual’s preference as much as you claim the opposition did. To the extent pollution does indeed have a negative externality on another individual’s self or private property, that person does have a valid claim against the committing party. Which leads to your next point about conflicting externalities.
If you accepted that the first action of an individual did indeed cause a negative externality on another, any restriction as a result of a legal claim would not itself be an externality of the same kind, but simply a byproduct of legitimate judicial action. Just like if I spun around in my suburban home and fired a gun in every direction. The bullets would travel into another person’s property. You wouldn’t consider the restriction on my ability to do this a negative externality. Same goes for excessive noise or excessive odor…etc. By the same logic, I’d hold that you can’t dump trash in a creek in your back yard if that creek carries the trash into a neighbor’s property (whom doesn’t want the trash to be there). This article does a decent job articulating my thoughts:
https://mises.org/blog/how-property-rights-%E2%80%94-properly-understood-%E2%80%94-limit-spread-wmds
I dont quite get why its a bait and switch. A bait and switch means that something offered will be “switched” later on.
But the quotes from the WSJ article you use explicitly say that we need to do something short-term with small (perhaps manageable) costs to start with, however that dont hit the ultimate target but move closer to it.
Thats not a bait and switch. thats just laying it out — the most we can do if move closer, because of these economic costs. The fact we arent moving towards the goal IMMEDIATELY is a concession to the reality of said economic costs that limit the benefits from temparature mitigation.
and as for the future, there is no burying there either. They explicitly claim that the costs in the future (further away enough), are speculative. it could be higher, but it could also be lower.
Whats the problem?
There is no bait and switch. if you dont believe in climate change, thats fine ; just argue the merits of the position. After all, if it doesnt exist, then ANY mitigation for ANY cost is a mistake.
But if you believe it in, then you have to come up with a politically feasible plan to implement a mitigation strategy amongst people in countries with varied levels of development. Thats not easy. Neither is the ONLY way to do so would be to go (painfully) to hit the 2degree mark.
I think, that the climate change is the big problem for all countries. It is changing dramatically and some actions should be taken. Thank you for showing this question http://bigpaperwriter.com/blog/global-warming-argumentative-essay in the article.