Megadittoes
It’s infuriating how all three presidential candidates prattle on about the need to fight global warming while also complaining about the high price of gasoline. The candidates treat CO2 emissions as a social issue like gay marriage, with no economic ramifications. In the real world, barring a massive buildup of nuclear plants, reducing carbon dioxide emissions means consuming less energy and that means raising prices a lot, either directly with a tax or indirectly with a cap-and-trade permitting system.
So writes Virginia Postrel. The theoretically charitable explanation is that the candidates know they’re not going to move the price of gas so much as a nickel, so inveighing against high gas prices is a cheap way to signal empathy for those of us who pay through the nose for long commutes. In other words, it’s bottomless cynicism in the costume of compassion.
Like I say, that’s the charitable explanation.
Comment by Rob —
April 21, 2008 @ 9:40 am
Its infuriating how all these libertarians prattle on about economic issues while not acknowledging there is a big difference between expected and unexpected changes in prices. The charitable explanation is they don’t understand how markets work.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 21, 2008 @ 9:57 am
Rob, do you have anything even approaching an argument here?
Comment by Moleman —
April 21, 2008 @ 11:32 am
Okay, but what’s the libertarian solution for global warming? If infrastructure changes are out (loads of new nuke plants aren’t going to get built out of NIMBY concerns, solar and wind apparently aren’t worth mentioning, and transportation infrastructure changes aren’t on the menu) and regulation is doomed (either from lack of political capital, or pushback from regulated corporations), what? Lie down and wait for the end to come? If I wanted to get uncharitable from the liberal perspective, it’s that stuff like this is the natural progression from denialism: It’s happening, but fixing it would be hard, so we won’t do anything.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 21, 2008 @ 11:36 am
Moleman: I think Postrel is saying, if you want less driving because of global warming, and the implication is that she does (so do I, btw), then higher gas prices will give you that. So fighting to lower gas prices as such is fighting to have more driving and more carbon emissions than you’d have otherwise.
There are real hardships with, say, the rural poor, who are very car-dependent, that we should talk about how we want to address. But higher energy prices at least begin to deter promiscuous fossil-fuel use.
Comment by Scott H —
April 21, 2008 @ 11:44 am
It is kind of ridiculous that the only alternative mentioned is nuclear, when we’ve just recently had good coverage on solar in fairly mainstream media – SciAm’s Solar Grand Plan at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan and a decent NYT article a week or two ago at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/earth/15sola.html – and wind is starting to become more competitive as well. Honestly, if we put half the effort that’s going into developing ethanol (although if we got *cellulosic* ethanol it would then be actually worthwhile) into these alternatives and making things more efficient, we could significantly reduce demand for fossil fuels over the coming decades.
Comment by Mike Kozlowski —
April 21, 2008 @ 11:45 am
Higher prices are one way to reduce emissions, but given the price inelasticity of demand for gasoline, it may not be the best way; and it’s certainly not the only way.
It’s entirely possible to imagine a future America where everyone pays less a year for gasoline, but also emits less CO2. Probably not one laden with 8mpg vehicles, and hopefully one with much improved rapid transit systems, and maybe CFLs and other energy-conscious appliances.
Higher gas prices are probably coming one way or another, but they’re not necessary for CO2 reduction purposes.
Comment by y81 —
April 21, 2008 @ 12:35 pm
It’s certainly possible to envision a future where people use less gasoline even though gas prices are lower. Most obviously, the government could prohibit the manufacture or sale of cars that get less than 40 MPG, or whatever. So no matter how rich you are, you can’t choose to spend your money on a gas guzzler.
It’s possible to imagine that, it’s just not a very libertarian kind of imagining.
Comment by Mike Kozlowski —
April 21, 2008 @ 12:44 pm
It turns out that Obama and Clinton aren’t libertarians…
Comment by y81 —
April 21, 2008 @ 1:22 pm
Mike Kozlowski, that’s a fair point. Following this train of thought to its logical conclusion, it appears that Postrel and Henley are infuriated that Clinton and Obama aren’t libertarians. (McCain isn’t either, actually.) Which is kind of silly of Postrel and Henley.
Comment by Mike Kozlowski —
April 21, 2008 @ 1:44 pm
More charitably, libertarians are perhaps more used to looking for market solutions and don’t believe in regulation as a force for good.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 21, 2008 @ 2:21 pm
Or is it that statists are unwilling to make trade-offs and would rather try to eat their cake and have it, to?
Comment by Thoreau —
April 21, 2008 @ 3:00 pm
I guess we could have a big tax on gasoline, so that oil company profits go down, thereby reducing incentives to produce oil and find new reserves, while also diminishing consumer demand. But then we could use that tax to subsidize oil consumption, to help the consumers who are hurt by the tax.
I’m sure that this will work out just fine. We’ll tax it AND subsidize it, thereby assuring that use drops but it’s still affordable. I mean, it’s got to work, right?
Comment by Moleman —
April 21, 2008 @ 3:10 pm
Eric, I’m not sure how fair that is- every solution has tradeoffs, it’s just that some have tradeoffs that don’t put the burden entirely on the end consumer, instead of government or private industry (yeah, it’s going to get passed along in part, but if the libertarian argument is that the cost of getting to a CO2 production scheme that’s neutral from a global warming perspective are worse than the externalities of global warming itself, then maybe this is one of those things that we just can’t agree on).
The fact still remains, though, that the only tradeoff that Postrel and Henley seem interested in is of higher gas prices in an attempt to lower consumption. This is a little limited, especially when lowering consumer demand is probably a better way of dealing with CO2 emissions.
Comment by b-psycho —
April 21, 2008 @ 3:14 pm
Dunno about Virginia or Jim, but some libertarians especially don’t look fondly on state intervention because they see the government as having encouraged the problem to its current point in the first place.
I don’t think it’s nutty in the slightest to consider, when it is pointed out that long commutes are both a necessity for many & a problem for the environment, just who set in motion the circumstances leading to it & for whose benefit. Feel free to fill in the blanks.
The only problems I see w/ the fuel prices themselves are in the short-term pain sense, & in some fear of what may be done out of panic (if you think we suck up to Big Oil & meddle in the middle east too much NOW…). Long-term, anything that hastens us getting off oil altogether is good, the only reason it’s such a factor is we’ve folded the real cost of it into our military budget, and that cost is now spilling back out where it belongs.
Comment by quasibill —
April 21, 2008 @ 3:15 pm
That certainly would be an interesting future America, though one that most of us wouldn’t recognize. No farming allowed (the pickups necessary for the job would never get that MPG). No local contractors (have you ever seen the amount of tools and provisions the average plumber packs into his van?). No fledgling music bands (how do you get the amplifiers and drumset from show to show in a Prius?) Many, many poor people driving patched up 30 year old cars because that is all that they can afford.
Unintended consequences and the road to hell and all that. But hey, it’s not like any of that will actually happen anyway – the government fetishizes economic growth, and has for 100 years. The folks who call the shots like it that way – it’s not going to change with any of the talking heads currently available for our selection.
Jim’s point stands – they’re all talking a good talk, but I guarantee you that they won’t do anything to solve the problems y’all are complaining about.
Comment by Leonard —
April 21, 2008 @ 3:35 pm
quasibill, of course the 40mpg would be for the common people. Businesses and other government-approved purposes would be allowed to have trucks. In fact, right now CAFE standards do not apply to vehicles over a certain weight, so, it’s not like this is something new. Just higher numbers and harsher penalties. I certainly think companies should be free to sell whatever car they want, but at the same time I’ll agree with pwoggies that 40mpg for 95+% of vehicles is a viable goal even with today’s tech. (Whether the net energy-cost of a hybrid is really so CO2 friendly I don’t know, but since I don’t care, it’s not an issue to me.)
Comment by Leonard —
April 21, 2008 @ 3:45 pm
I don’t think there’s one libertarian argument on global warming, and I don’t speak for libertarians. But, yes, I believe that the cost of getting to a CO2 production scheme that’s neutral from a global warming perspective is far worse than the externalities of global warming itself.
It’s not just that the cost of global warming do not appear particularly alarming to me. Although they don’t. Rather it is that the scale and degree of power necessary to impose effective carbon limits on the world would require a world state, and a rather powerful one at that.
How much power, do you think, would it take to reduce China’s masses to a 1970 standard of living?
Comment by Avram —
April 21, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
Our 1970 standard of living, Leonard, or theirs?
Comment by Tony P. —
April 21, 2008 @ 4:12 pm
Thoreau:
Suppose we impose a $1/gal tax on gasoline. Suppose we simultaneously enact a bottom-end tax cut — say, by exempting your first $20K/year from FICA. Suppose, in other words that we raise the price of gas but raise your after-tax income to help you buy gas. Will you have any incentive to buy less gas?
YES. Gas just got more expensive relative to, say, beer. You can spend all your tax savings on gas and be no worse off than before. But you can make yourself better off by driving a bit less and drinking a bit more.
Note, incidentally, that dedicating the gas tax money to the SS Trust Fund would (if we choose the numbers about right) leave SS no worse off than before.
So, the net change would boil down to a small reduction in gasoline consumption. Too small, perhaps, but a reduction nonetheless.
– TP
Comment by joe —
April 21, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
It’s a long-term/short term issue.
In the short term, people are paying too much in energy costs just to live normal lives. In the long term, global warming gonna getcha.
The solution to both of these is the deployment of energy alternatives, green buildings, and less energy-intensive community- and regional-development.
There’s no hypocrisy here, but I would like to see them make the relationshiop more explicit.
Comment by Moleman —
April 21, 2008 @ 4:23 pm
Yeah, that’s kind of where I figured the sticking point would be- I guess the only real point we could argue is whether the goal is to keep China at a 1970’s level, or help them leapfrog with us to some future (2020? 2050? Who knows?) level where the efficiency we’d need is feasible. It just feels a little cynical to say that the nastier outcomes of global warming (and the possibility of running into peak oil with a oil based economy running full steam, but that’s like a million damn other arguments, and one that even I’m not convinced is a good way of looking at it), is better than what’s not much more pernicious than a series of global trade agreements. Maybe a good way to talk to fellow liberals, but when talking to minarchists or libertarians probably comes off as [insert apropos metaphor involving some group and asking them to set aside their underlying universal principles here].
On the other end of this, can I note how wierd it feels to be trying to argue to libertarians that better technology, incentives and personal action are politically preferable to just piling on the taxes?
Comment by Thoreau —
April 21, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Fair point, Tony P.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 21, 2008 @ 6:28 pm
No, it’s going to be passed along full stop, unless you’re going the “we can cut CO2 production, keep gas cheap, and never, ever pay for it!” deficit-ballooning route. At most, you can transfer the way end-consumers pay for it (by hiding it in their income tax bill instead of the pump price) and put the burder more heavily on particular groups of end-consumers.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 21, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
So, the devastating answer to libertarians saying, “fighting the increase in gas prices is dumb” is “hey, we could make make gas prices even higher than they would be otherwise!”? Er, OK.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 21, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
Between now and 2050, while we’re trying to figure out how to reach some level of efficiency, what do you imagine China to be doing? Waiting?
Comment by Tony P. —
April 21, 2008 @ 7:28 pm
Eric:
If you believe that “the market” will drive up gas prices, all by itself, we have no argument.
But let’s be clear: “the market” will do that based on supply and demand for fuel, not based on externalities like CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Pricing in the externalities would seem perfectly compatible with libertarian principles. So what’s your point?
– TP
Comment by Leonard —
April 21, 2008 @ 11:17 pm
“Help” them? In what way? I mean, we’re “helping” Iraq modernize — Iraq the model! Har har. Look how good that’s going.
If you’re talking about making capital investments in China, there’s several problems with that. For one, there’s people lining up to do just that — it’s just that capital investments, by their nature, tend to use energy to increase productivity. This is both one-off, as energy spent producing capital, as well as ongoing, as energy spent to run factories. China will take years and year of heavy capital investment to reach a Western standard of living. The CO2 she releases is going to skyrocket.
But even if you’re talking about the USA making targeted capital investments in China, there’s a big problem: we don’t have any money. (Of course, “we” the people do, but “we” the government don’t, because people don’t like paying taxes.) Our government is not flush with funds just waiting to invest to better the world; rather, we borrow money from China to run our war, maintain our huge standing army, and buy off client classes with social spending. There’s no real contradiction in us borrowing from China to invest in China, just that eventually China will tire of lending us money because we won’t seem likely to pay it back, and then we will no longer have any to invest in China.
As for your notion that somehow CO2 balance could be attained by “not much more pernicious [means] than a series of global trade agreements” — well, that we might argue. In the abstract, you’re right, assuming such things enforced themselves, and that states would make them to begin with. But then, if we assume that we might also assume us up a pony or two. I think you’re living in cloud coo-coo land here, because people — including us, not just the impoverished masses of China, India, etc — will not accept any serious crimp in their standard of living. And yet that is exactly what cutting CO2 emissions means. We are rich, and I think might accept some impoverishment for a good cause. But the poor countries, especially those without democracy to manufacture consent to it, just cannot. What legitimacy the Chinese regime has (which ain’t so much), is now built purely on a foundation of delivering the goods. We know this; they know it. What ruling class has ever voluntarily accepted its own displacement? None.
Comment by Monte Davis —
April 22, 2008 @ 10:05 am
They might even have read Crane Brinton’s old Anatomy of a Revolution, which argued that folks are most likely to get feisty not when poverty & oppression are at their worst, but when a period of rapid improvement (and rising expectations) runs into a hitch.
Comment by Barry —
April 22, 2008 @ 10:17 am
Comment by Leonard —
“How much power, do you think, would it take to reduce China’s masses to a 1970 standard of living? ”
I’m dubious of comments like this about global warming.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 22, 2008 @ 1:43 pm
I’m dubious of flat statements of dubiousness, without support or counter-argument.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 22, 2008 @ 1:43 pm
Not sure what your use of scare-quotes is about, but hey. And the answer is “depends on the nature of the externalities”.
I asked first…but OK. Whether you buy peak oil or think it’s a matter of Bush’s foreign policy, fuel prices have gone up; it’s better to take advantage of the trend than go through the ritual charade of denouncing oil companies or even trying to fight the trend. It’s unnecessary to pile onto the trend if it achieves the desired mitigation of CO2 production, even in the name of “externalities” – this is public policy, not exacting penance.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 22, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
Because you’re not?
Comment by Tony P. —
April 22, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
Eric:
I’m not interested in fighting the trend of higher gas prices. I am interested in two things:
1. Discouraging gasoline consumption and encouraging alternatives; and
2. Minimizing economic hardship for people, overall.
I am not interested in hewing to any particular principle or philosophy in preference to those things. Thus, I am willing to advocate meddling in the market by imposing a tax on gasoline specifically and reducing the pain with a reduction of taxes on income generally.
You seem to prefer a different policy. If you have different goals than I do, that’s only natural.
– TP
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 22, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
Tony:
Your policy sounds interesting to me, but I can only buy the necessity for further discouraging gasoline production if it’s established as necessary over and above the discouragement we can already expect from price increases from the market; that’s all.