Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
In a piece in the Atlantic titled, “A Conservative’s Approach to Combating Climate Change,” Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and, more importantly, an old friend, argues for, among other things, reductions in greenhouse gases, preferably via a carbon tax, supplemented by adaptation.
While I have many issues with Jonathan’s piece, I will focus here on the logical disconnect between his purported rationale for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and his policy proposals.
He states that, “Were I a utilitarian, and if I placed substantial faith in such cost-benefit studies, I might find [convincing arguments that global warming is not a serious problem because the net short-to-medium term effects of global warming may well be positive] but I’m not and I don’t.” In his discussion, he identifies poorer nations as more victimized by global warming than the wealthier nations because the former are less able to adapt. He argues that harm from global warming is tantamount to a violation of one’s property for which the victim ought to be redressed. He then argues that if we believe in property rights then there is no room for utilitarian calculus, and if someone’s property has been damaged then that person is owed redress by the party or parties responsible for that damage.
As remedies, he advocates four sets of policies and measures. First, the federal government should offer prizes to induce the development of low-carbon technologies. Second, it ought to identify and reduce barriers to the development and deployment of alternative technologies. Third, the US should adopt a revenue-neutral carbon tax rebated to taxpayers—presumably, American taxpayers—on a per capita basis. As rationale, he offers a set of technical reasons, but for “a broader theoretical justification,” he argues, “if the global atmosphere is a global commons owned by us all, why should not those who use this commons to dispose of their carbon emissions pay a user fee to compensate those who are affected.” Finally, he would supplement the above policies with adaptation measures, e.g., greater reliance on water markets.
But none of these measures, including a carbon tax on American consumers, would make whole the party or parties supposedly harmed by global warming. This is obviously true if the tax is rebated to the American taxpayer. It is also true if it is rebated to the global taxpayer—or, for that matter, the Bangladeshi taxpayer—on a per capita basis (because not everyone would be equally harmed by global warming).
So I must ask Jonathan: how would your proposals remedy the alleged property rights violation and provide redress to the harmed party? Yes it punishes the American consumer, but how does it make whole the inhabitants of countries that may have been harmed. Also, how would you set a carbon tax, if not via a utilitarian calculus? Essentially, all estimates of the carbon tax, whether by Nordhaus, Tol, Stern or whoever, use cost-benefit analysis, that is, utilitarian calculus. [Don’t get me wrong, I probably have even less faith in these efforts than Jonathan does (1)].
1. Goklany, IM. 2009. Trapped Between the Falling Sky and the Rising Seas: The Imagined Terrors of the Impacts of Climate Change.
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Third, the US should adopt a revenue-neutral carbon tax rebated to taxpayers—presumably, American taxpayers—on a per capita basis.
The problem here is that the poor spend proportionately more of their income on energy than do the better off, especially in cool to cold climates. This is seen in the UK where increasing energy costs have led to widespread ‘fuel poverty’, requiring special payments to the poor in periods of cold weather.
Grannies freezing to death in the dark, makes for poor politics.
On an international scale it is more of the rorts, scams and outright frauds that plague the current carbon trading scheme.
I don’t see anywhere in Adler’s piece which argues the case for “mitigation” as opposed to “adaption.” For if doing something (about anthropogenic GHGs) turns out to have little or no measurable effect on climate after all, won’t the time and money thus invested be a waste?
Kurt in Switzerland
While it’s considered pretty mainstream economics to tax activities that cause negative externalities (so the consumers of those goods have to internalize the costs of the harms they inflict), there’s also the issue of being able to properly assess damages from the negative externalities. Assess the tax too low and the revenue collected won’t begin to address the harm to society, but assess it too high and the tax imposes a deadweight loss on society as people consume less of the taxed product than is socially optimal.
The question then remains – what is the harm, in monetary terms, of carbon emissions? Nobody seems to have a good estimate, and the numbers go all over the place. It’s possible that in the intermediate term that the social costs of CO2 emissions are negative (due to increased crop growth), which means that a carbon “tax” would become a carbon subsidy. The precautionary principle that governs such calls for a carbon tax, however, is likely to err on the high side to estimate the social costs of carbon, causing precisely the economic damage that conservative skeptics argue would happen.
(It’s also possible that federal gasoline taxes effectively encapsulate a Pigovian tax on carbon, assuming a social cost of about $20-30 a ton, but that’s tangential to the question of calculating the cost of the alleged damages.)
Jonathan Adler
Before putting pen to paper, put brain into gear, ( old saying )
Before putting pen to paper, read the last 12 months of WUWT and try and understand the comments ! ( logical )
I understand it is snowing in Stockholm, Sweden, at the start of June? If I pay a politician extra taxes, will the Swedes warm up? (Warm Swedes are very nice.)
http://notrickszone.com/2012/06/03/winter-returns-to-europe-stockholm-has-coldest-day-in-84-years-sweden-coldest-in-20-years/
The base assumptions of CO2 caused warming, human control over CO2 levels, and long-term damage from warming/higher CO2 are fundamental to his position. Not one is adequately supported.
The levying, collection, and distribution of the tax revenues he envisages, in any case, are subject to massive and inevitable abuse and misdirection.
So his essay and argument hold up neither at the front end, nor the back. So the middle linkage between the two is irrelevant.
Adler should first look at where new co2 emissions are coming from, it’s not OECD countries but from the non OECD, led by China, India etc.
The OECD countries have been flatlining for years while the non OECD countries emissions have been soaring. http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8&cid=CG6,CG5,&syid=1990&eyid=2009&unit=MMTCD
China and India etc have more than 1 billion+ people to drag out of poverty so good luck convincing them to cut emissions this side of the year 2100.
Will these people ever wake up?
Relating to the US, taxing relatively energy-efficient manufacturers simply exports production overseas to less-efficient producers, who then ship their output to the US. Incurring additional transportation energy consumption.
How does ‘mankind’ gain?
All the above relies on the theory of GHG’s being correct and we are getting uncontrollable global warming caused by GHG’s.
All observations show that the GHG theory sadly wanting and at present the planet is slowly cooling.
Right.
Since CO2 is a necessity for plant growth and the idustrialised countries are providing ( at this moment) it FREE to all those poor agriculturally based countries, thereby increasing their productivity – shouldn’t they be paying us? ( tongue now firmly centalised).
If Adler is really concerned about the plight of 3rd world peoples, instead of spending shedloads of money on dealing with a non-problem, why not advocate cutting out the middle man and use the the money to increase foriegn aid? And while we are doing that ensure the money actually goes to benefit the people it is supposed to?
Too easy?
If you want to make people do something contrary to logic and common sense, first make them feel guilty. Then you control them because they don’t want to feel bad about themselves – irrespective of whether there is anything to be guilty about.
Oh come on. As soon as someone – especially a politician – starts proposing ways to “combat climate change” you know they’re a charlatan and/or an idiot. Why read any further.
To have taxpayer funded regulators trying to measure the unmeasurable and making mandatory claims against industry and farmers who cannot quantify their emissions seems like an irreconcilable activity that will cause lots of problems as well as an incredibly unproductive activity.
What if ACO2 turns out to be a benefit to our burgeoning population?
The birds in my garden are thriving on the extra worms from increased CO2.
Does Adler define what he means by “harm?”
New Zealand (NZ), possibly one of the first countries in the World to promote the concern that a causal association existed between cow methane emissions and CAGW, thereby creating a platform from which to announce the infamous ‘phart-tax’ on farmers. Did Adler consider the agricultural implications of his hypothetical views and the implication that carbon dioxide taxation on primary food production has the capability of increasing production costs thereby penalising those less fortunate?
As an aside, the irony is that in NZ, after nearly a decade of silly ‘phart tax’ babble, that methane was a ‘mistaken’ assumption, and the real problem is the 20% increase in population! In truth, this really unpleasant, rarely articulated, dangerous agenda is usually side-stepped. Unusually, it now disturbingly finds mention in the main stream media. The thesis is that human population per se must logically attract a carbon dioxide tax. After all, we are lifelong biological emitters. Thus, countries with the highest populations could find themselves bearing a pro rata, per capita taxation. What I wonder, is Adlers’ view on this? After all he states: “if the global atmosphere is a global commons owned by us all, why should not those who use this commons to dispose of their carbon emissions pay a user fee to compensate those who are affected.” Under such reasoning, it might also be legitimate to argue that less populous nations are “more victimized” by the CO2 emissions of highly populous nations.
I believe that it takes very little imagination to see where this reasoning leads.
In the present reality where CAGW remains a regrettable and politically correct hypothesis used to justify a hitherto unprecedented and spurious assault by taxation and freedom, hypothetical policy discussions – even by ‘old friends’ are premature and might even be argued as grand-standing. The articulation of a ‘solution’ based on unsettled science merely serves to deflect from the turmoil of the present day. First, prove anthropogenic CO2 is causally related to AGW. Second, prove the run-away theory of CAGW. Third, prove ‘harm’. Fourth, prove the cost benefit ratio of mitigation, or the cost / risk ratio of impoverishment and primitivisation. In short, do the work before the policy.
I also understood that the accepted present day term of ‘climate change’ had become the favoured cliché in preference to the considerably less obvious ‘global warming’? Were Adler to use ‘climate change’ instead of GW, one can see that his discussion appears to become considerably less compelling.
He argues that harm from global warming is tantamount to a violation of one’s property for which the victim ought to be redressed
============
There is an “after-the-factedness” to the paraphrae. Even if we stipulate all that is being bandied about the latest example of preening, we have to be able to prove a harm has happened (notices the ed at the end of the word), before compensating.
A victim is compensated as a redress not as an address.
Law must start with facts. Adler is not using facts, therefore he should resign his post as “law” professor.
“Combating Climate Change”
This man is expressing paranoia, delusion and megalomania.
Dump him and all the others in the loony bin.
Australian carbon tax is due to start July 1, so we are sensitive about it.
Adler makes a horrendous mistake in the interpretation of property rights by writing “if the global atmosphere is a global commons owned by us all, why should not those who use this commons to dispose of their carbon emissions pay a user fee to compensate those who are affected.”
The atmosphere is a global commons owned by us all and therefore as users of it (by breathing and more) we ought to be paying for our use of it. Instead he recommends the opposite, that the average Joe gets money from someone who puts CO2 into it.
Let’s have less confusion about who ought to be paid and payee.
Same in Australia with carbon. The Prime Minister has said that miners do not own coal, it is a Sovereign asset. Yet she is about to tax those who add oxygen to it and give the tax to the general populace-in-need. Again, taxing the owners, being all people, should be the remedy – not paying them the proceeds of taxing others. Those others who might mine coal or make electricity do not own the coal, so how can they be taxed on a commodity they do not own? At what point (in law) does ownership of the carbon in coal pass from the Soverign state to an entity such as CO2 that is owned by those Parties and attracting tax?
Property Rights are there to simply, not to complicate by abusive interpretation.
How is redistribution of wealth in any way “conservative”?
So the “Nuisance” would be ………………….what ?……. The quantum of quantified and qualified Co2, the Sun, El Nino, La Nina or something like plain straight out Consumerism?
And, the evidence would be……………what ?……no more than adjusted data and a hockey stick in sums equal to the sums of all imagination.
Are skeptics promoting anti-Semitism?! Warmists’ new claim: ‘Is global
warming a major Jewish issue? It should be’ — ‘Israel will be no more
if we do not stop global warming in its tracks now’. see Climate Depot on this. Developing….
“John Silver says:
June 5, 2012 at 3:17 am
“Combating Climate Change”
This man is expressing paranoia, delusion and megalomania.
Dump him and all the others in the loony bin.”
The Old Pirate is right! He is also expressing extreme stupidity, groupthink, lack of original thought,
lack of basic common sense self censorship and lack of common sense altogether.
This is nothing but a back-door attempt, via government fiat, of forcing a switch from relatively cheap and reliable fossil fuels to far more expensive and less reliable alternative energies such as wind, solar, and biofuels, all based on pseudoscience.
Adler piles poor logic upon faulty assumptions, and completely fails to consider the consequences of his proposal. His status as both a professor and a conservative are highly questionable.
A carbon tax is just another socialist money grab that serves no purpose except to be used to buy votes and support. Why give any governmnet more money from the taxpayer when governments on a whole have proven they are not fiscally responsible with the money they have now – i.e. see Europe, the Obama administration, etc.
Third, the US should adopt a revenue-neutral carbon tax rebated to taxpayers—presumably, American taxpayers—on a per capita basis.
The problem here is that once the government gets it, then it is no longer the people’s money (even though the government is purportedly of and by the people). So the money would be spent on other pork, and the politicians would vilify those who deserve it as “giving” to the wealthy. Or in the case of business, subsidizing them.
The principle of Pigovian taxation is well established as a free market based mechanism to correct for externalities. The tax isn’t there to compensate the people that are affected by the negative externalities but to ‘level the playing field’ as a market mechanism so that (in this example) the price of fossil fuels includes the cost of the anticipated damage that they cause, this, for example, would have the effect of making Nuclear Power more competitive.