Guest Post by David Middleton
This is a question that is rarely asked by pollsters, but is is probably far more important of a question than “Are you now, or have you ever been a climate denier?”…
How Much Will Americans Pay to Battle Climate Change? Not Much
Sam Ori is the executive director of the Energy Policy Institute at University of Chicago.
A wide range of public opinion polls point to a clear and growing trend: Americans of all political stripes are increasingly worried about climate change. This is undoubtedly good news for those advocating for robust policies to reduce carbon emissions, the main contributor to climate change.
But here’s a less asked and probably more important question: What are Americans actually willing to pay to do something about it?
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This is what researchers from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) and the Associated Press—NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago set out to better understand. Their nationally representative pollfound that 43% of Americans were unwilling to pay an additional $1 per month in their electricity bill to combat climate change—and a large majority were unwilling to pay $10 per month. That’s despite the fact that a whopping 77% said they think climate change is happening and 65% think it is a problem the government should do something about. Support plummets as the amount of the fee increases.
This is an upside-down result. The best available science tells us that Americans should be willing to pay considerably more, because the damages from climate change are so great—including to them personally. If we use the federal government’s estimate of the combined social cost of carbon pollution and apply it to the typical U.S. household’s electricity consumption on today’s national grid mix, the average household faces damages of almost $20 per month. Yet just 29% of respondents said they would be willing to pay at least that much.
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You can count me in the 43%. I wouldn’t pay $1 per decade more for electricity to combat something that is 95% mythical and 5% benign.
This bit is priceless and worth repeating:
The best available science tells us that Americans should be willing to pay considerably more, because the damages from climate change are so great—including to them personally. If we use the federal government’s estimate of the combined social cost of carbon pollution and apply it to the typical U.S. household’s electricity consumption on today’s national grid mix, the average household faces damages of almost $20 per month. Yet just 29% of respondents said they would be willing to pay at least that much.
The first part strikes me the same way that this Roy Spencer quip did:
“The best available science tells us that” the observations are wrong. So, if that same “best available science tells us that” global warming will inflict $20/month of damages on the typical household, we should happily shell out $20/month to prevent it… Any sane person would say… “No thank you.”
Furthermore, the “social cost of carbon” isn’t “the best available science.” It isn’t even science. It’s more like fraud…
The EPA Uses New Math to Justify Costly Global Warming Regulation
When calculating the future impacts of government action, the federal government has very specific rules about how the calculation should be done. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) clearly states that when calculating the cost of future impacts a standard “discount rate” of 7% should be used (a discount rate is used to take account of the fact that $10 today is worth more than $20 10 years from now). But when it comes to global warming regulation, that 7% rate is a problem for bureaucrats. With a 7% discount rate, the present cost of future global warming is virtually zero, even using the federal government’s excessively alarmist models. What’s a radical federal bureaucrat to do when math says that global warming will have virtually no negative economic effect? Well, they take a page from Common Core and change how they do the math.
In 2010, global warming alarmists in the Obama administration set out to find a way to justify the huge costs of the global warming regulations they wanted to pursue. This effort focused on creating a “social cost of carbon,” which purports to put a dollar figure on the alleged future economic harms of global warming. The bureaucrats could then take this theoretical “cost” and use it to claim that their regulations were actually saving the economy from future damage.
To estimate future costs, the government selected three integrated assessment models which try to project the economic future. Not surprisingly, all three tend to estimate substantial harms from global warming, even though there is still a great deal of debate over both how much warming might happen in the future and whether any such warming will be harmful (but for the purposes of this discussion that can be left aside). When the federal government’s standard 7% discount rate was applied to these theorized future harms, the present value of those costs dwindled to insignificance. Indeed, applied to one of the models, the present “cost” is actually negative, implying that taking no action to reduce carbon dioxide could actually be economically beneficial. In other words, more economic growth today will be more beneficial to future Americans than restrictive regulation, even if we assume significant future harm from global warming.
Of course this result could not be allowed to stand. The whole point of a social cost of carbon is to artificially inflate the benefits of global warming regulation. So the bureaucrats do what they do best: change the rules to get the outcome they wanted. In this case, the Obama administration used different, much smaller discount rates. The administration publicized a calculated social cost of carbon for discount rates of 5%, 3% and 2.5%, completely disregarding the required 7%. Then they chose the “mid-range” of their new three lower rates, and announced a social cost of carbon of $36 per ton of carbon dioxide (in contrast to close to $0 per ton at a 7% rate).
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The German population, it is often pointed out in these pages, is paying one of the worlds highest rates per unit of electricity consumed.
but when you examine it, the German population is willing – indeed happy – to pay that rate, because it overwhelming supports the idea of renewable energy, protecting the environment and fighting climate change.
The energienwende is popular and all German political parties support it (I say all – haven’t checked the AFD viewpoint).
(I note also German electricity bills aren’t that much higher: they have very efficient electrical devices and are more likely to have their own solar panels or efficient insulation or part ownership of an energy collective).
Why are US citizens less concerned about green issues?
Really? So all Germans are happy with this? Second most expensive electricity in the world (50% of it taxes) and at least 30-40% more than most other countries except for Denmark.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/international-domestic-energy-prices
What’s not to like ?
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/polls-reveal-citizens-support-energiewende
“The German public remains strongly in support of the transition to a low-carbon and nuclear-free economy. This factsheet provides a summary of recent polls measuring citizens’ acceptance of the project. ”
They are hardly in widespread revolt, are they?
Griff, they’re German. The weren’t in wide scale revolt under the NSDAP either.
Why are US citizens less concerned about green issues?
We’re just less concerned about phony green issues.
How much will folks pay?
http://observer.com/2016/09/exclusive-hillary-clinton-campaign-systematically-overcharging-poorest-donors/
WOW
ALREADY paying.. regulations killing economy
But, Joe, if regulations don’t kill the economy then the fed will…
THE U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE: CREATING RECESSIONS SINCE 1913
At least the Fed creates recessions so they can create recoveries… There is no recovery from mental green****ation… 😉
“The best available science tells us that Americans should be willing to pay considerably more,” is an indictment of the humanities that attempt to pass themselves off as ‘sciences’ – social science political science, psychology, and all their spinoffs. Science concerns itself with things that can be objectively measured because such things can be evaluated independently by various investigators and checked for Repeatability – one of the 6 pillars of evidential reasoning.
https://ikt.id.au/2011/12/11/filchers-the-six-rules-for-evidential-reasoning.html
Unfortunately, anything that addresses the human consciousness cannot meet this standard because, by its very nature, human consciousness cannot be objectively measured.
Without objective measurability you cannot establish any consistency in the consequences of any hypothesis.
Other requirements for evidential reasoning are also absent in dealing with human consciousness, notably Logic (humans are rarely logical) and Comprehensiveness (humans are so variable and diverse that almost no generalizations can be shown to apply to all).
Briefly, if the subject is human, the discipline is not science.
Paying more to battle Climate Change is much like paying more for a better public education … “it’s for the children.”
Well, until I see children walking out of schools with paychecks in their hands, I just don’t believe it.
Likewise, the money for Climate Change just goes into the pockets of the “Consulting Class”.
The Public should be prepared to bend over and kiss their arse goodbye should the Government declare war on CAGW. History demonstrates that when the government declares war on social issues two things immediately happen.
First they establish a transfer payment system to move money from the middle class to the weathholders, politicians and bureaucrats. Second, they proceed to lose the war slowly, for without a war the payment transfer cannot by justified.
Does it sound familiar when public officials announce that we need to hire more policemen, teachers, etc (read collectively bargaining public servants) to turn the tide in the war on drugs, illiteracy blah, blah, blah.
Save the planet hire a scientist.
Look there are about 500 billionaires in the USA. Have them take care of the phantom oh so scary global warming if they think they might be inconvenienced by moving their beach furniture . Leave everyone else out of it who are not flying around boinking bimbo’s on private jets and living on beach front properties .
Alternatively fix some real problems like poverty , lack of access to clean water and electricity . You
know actual real shit .
We’ve already paid about trillions during Obama’s terms alone, in lost growth to over regulation and misallocated funds. We pay every day, and for what? Unproven phenomena that offer unproven threats. No one really knows what fraction of impact humans have, let alone whether any changes are good or bad. If history is any indication, we do better when it’s warmer.
If greenhouse gases are to blame, the primary culprit has got to be H2O because H2O is the primary greenhouse gas. In an effort to end the drought, the State of California should ban all forms of H2O from the state. for now and for all time. Since people are mostly H2O they should be banned from the state as well for now and for all time.
The exponential expansion of the silicon and nanotech revolutions mean that by around 2020 – when solar and EV drivetrains reach market price parity, ie. without subsidies – both sides in the argument – Green Panic Addicts and the Complacent Energy Cynics – will have to find something more useful to occupy their politicized hearts and minds.
Perhaps nuclear war….
Does anyone consider the possibility that carbon is not a pollutant? What actual proof do we have that it is?