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July 1, 2009

Will fixing global warming be good for us?

Does the G.O.P. want to be the party of sex scandals and polluters or does it want to be a partner in helping America dominate the next great global industry: E.T. -- energy technology?

Isn't it a nice coincidence that what is best for the planet is also best for economically and as a matter of international relations.

I am deeply skeptical. Why should the economic benefits of being a C02 cleanup first-mover are anywhere close to the costs? It is also important to remember that jobs spent cleaning up the environment are COSTS not BENEFITS of cleanup programs. Their labor is spent cleaning up waste not building things and delivering services we want.
Consider the major environmental cleanup legislation in the last hundred years. Taking lead out of gas, building nuclear plants, reducing DDT usage, CFC reduction to heal the ozone, particulate emission reductions, cleaning up our rivers, and building wildlife refuges. Not a single one of these policies produced enough growth to offset their costs. The argument for these cleanups was that there were aesthetic, health, and consumption benefits that made them worth their enormous costs. I can't help that feel that those trying to persuade us that this global warming prevention stuff is good for the economy are selling us a bill of goods. Preventing global warming may well be worth doing. But we need to be grownups and admit that fixing the problem will be expensive. There may be enormous economic advantages to not being a first mover.

From an international relations perspective, I think there are very few people who care about the US position on global warming issues. I suspect no meaningful CO2 reductions will occur until the BRIC countries get on board anyway, so this is all environmentalism theater anyway. One possibility there is conditional carbon tax. In the last election Maryland passed a bill (Dropping out of the electoral college) that said that the winner of the national popular vote would get all of Maryland's electoral votes, but only if enough states had done so to ensure that the winner of the popular vote also won the presidency. Until then, Maryland continued to issue their electoral votes to the party that won the most votes in Maryland. We could easily say that we will impose a carbon tax that binds the US, but only when a certain number of the large countries have a system in place that makes the other major producers do so too. That costs us nothing, and also makes us part of the solution.

Posted by OneEyedMan at July 1, 2009 11:29 AM

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