The Tragedy of Obama’s Climate Policy
If you want some detailed blog analysis of the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade package—and you should—check out Brad Plumer and Dave Roberts. For my part, I was initially puzzled by the linkage of carbon permit auction revenues to the administration’s Make Work Pay tax credit. But then I thought about it again on the Metro and it made more sense to me—it lets you characterize the proposal as a tax cut for working people financed through a tax on polluters.
The trouble with the plan, of course, remains what it’s long been namely that “my best guess is that Obama’s climate proposals are too ambitious to be enacted and too timid to avert catastrophe.” In other words, this is a good proposal. But it’s not good enough to avert catastrophe. And it’s overwhelmingly likely that to get it passed through congress it’ll have to be watered-down.
41 Responses to “The Tragedy of Obama’s Climate Policy”
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February 27th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
I’m increasingly convinced that we should just roll the dice on new technology saving us from human frailty. It seems likely that hydrogen is the way to go, that it’s getting close to economic viability, and that once it happens nobody is going to want to stay in hydrocarbons for all sorts of reasons. The best thing the government could do would be to offer a zillion dollars, whether in conventional funding or in prizes or in some combination of the two, to incentivize hydrogen-based energy on all scales; in the car, on the grid, wherever. In the mean time carbon permit auctions sound like a nice way to extract taxes out of business that our ridiculous political system won’t permit in more straightforward ways so I have no problem with it, but without a new source of energy we’re screwed regardless.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
“In other words, this is a good proposal. But it’s not good enough to avert catastrophe.”
Get a clue, Matt. Obama obviously doesn’t really think there’s a risk of “catastrophe”. This is just another redistribution from productive enterprises.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
We are in a recession. People are loosing their jobs and Obama is planning to place a de facto duty on nearly all goods produced in the domestically? Why are the republicans letting him getting away with this job destroying plan?
Even if you feel carbon is an externality (which 44% of Americans don’t) it strikes me as odd you would impose only a tariff on the carbon used in America. Like the toy from China that is now much relatively cheaper won’t have a carbon footprint.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Hydrogen is a way to store energy. It’s not a source of energy.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
We are in a recession. People are loosing their jobs and Obama is planning to place a de facto duty on nearly all goods produced domestically? Why are the republicans letting him get away with this job destroying plan?
Even if you feel carbon is an externality (which 44% of Americans don’t) it strikes me as odd you would impose only a tariff on the carbon used in America. Like the toy from China that is now relatively cheaper won’t have a carbon footprint.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
So why do anything? If it’s not going to “avert catastrophe,” which is a joke, wouldn’t any tax just be a waste of money?
February 27th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
OT, but I hear from private sources that Larry Summers bears considerable responsibility for Harvard’s endowment losses — which may be larger than reported. Anyone else hear anything on that?
February 27th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Cap and trade fees which will be immediately passed on to consumers amount to just another of Obama’s transfers of wealth to the lower classes.
This is not a tax on the Uber Rich.
It is a new tax on the middle class passed off as a fee on evil big business and is just another of Obama’s Progressive Lies.
Rather than simply refund poor workers’ FICA taxes (which would worsen the SS prognosis) Obama will instead fund the rebate of those taxes from general revenue making the SS system dependent upon general revenue for the first time.
It is a cute accounting gimmick but a dishonest one which, because the game works both ways, will eventually make both the poor and the middle class worse off.
Yet more Small Change.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Obama has also come out against any increase in gas taxes, which is totally nonsensical. Relying too much on oversized cars is one of the most idiotic sources of CO2. A gas tax would discourage this, raise revenues, and reduce our balance of trade deficit all at once. Obama’s vision of “climate policy” doesn’t seem to include political courage.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
After assiduously doing nothing the last eight years, we need a politically viable program in place, stat, even if it falls short of what’s ultimately needed. At the very least there’s no other way to get big developing nations (lookin’ at you, China and India) to consider participating in the challenge of carbon reductions. To achieve any sort of reduction you need to begin by eliminating the acceleration.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
DTM,
I am skeptical of your argument but would like to see more. What I am worried about is that while some industries can absorb the costs and will change their behaviour other highly competitive industries will just move overseas.
For instance if a car has an effective carbon cost of $1,000 in the US, what is stopping me from buying a cheaper car made in China that doesn’t have this carbon cost? This definitely sounds like the beginnings of an international trade war with the democrats taking full responsibility. I can already see the republican attack ads. And this will be most effective with the democrats’ base (i.e. those earning less than 50k).
February 27th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Is every initiative by Obama going to be met on the Left with, “it isn’t the total comprehensive solution we need”? It is 36 days into the guy’s administration and this is his first budget. We are in the middle of the Second Greatest Depression and were nitpicking the cap & trade proposal? A proposal that would never have happened 37 days ago.
I’m getting a little tired of the sniping. When we are in year five of Obama and he actually doesn’t go far enough, nobody will be listening to the Left.
February 27th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
It’s not clear that a half way plan is worse than none.
If it slows down the rate of CO2 increase, it buys us a little more time.
The harder thing to answer is how do we convince the Chinese to leave their CO2 sequestered underground in the form of “Coal”
February 27th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
DTM,
You’re still not addressing my point. This climate change proposal is politically unfeasible and the democrats know it. Those supporting it (Obama included) are merely posturing to their base (perhaps quite effectively). If it were to pass it would only accelerate America’s manufacturing demise or start a nasty trade war both of which Democrats cannot afford.
You seem to agree that this poses a burden on society (that’s not my opposition) but you ignore how utterly impractical and perhaps counterproductive such unilateral climate change legislation would be.
February 27th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Here are my thoughts: We should try for the best we can get, and then keep working on it. The public needs to have some epiphanies, which are not going to happen all at once. If we get a law passed, we will at least be pointed in the right direction. We’ll have something preliminary in place. Then we’ll be positioned to take the next step.
February 27th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
We can’t talk to the Chinese and Indians if we’re not walking the walk ourselves.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
…nobody will be listening to the Left.
I get sick of this “the Left” stuff. WTF is that? Is Dr. James Hansen part of “the Left”? He voted for McCain back in 2000. “The Left” is just a way to paint certain things a certain way so you can politicize the discussion.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
We can’t talk to the Chinese and Indians if we’re not walking the walk ourselves.
This makes sense, how? If we “walk the walk” China and India will have less incentive to do more themselves since global carbon emissions would already be much lower. Conversely if we say “China, India we’ll cut our emissions if (and only if) you cut yours too” then they’ll want to do more. Will they cut their emissions as low as us? No of course not but they will cut them more than if all that was pressuring them was some abstract and non-binding moral imperative.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Providing more of their people with jobs and a minimally decent standard of living is likely to trump concerns about global warming in China and India for the foreseeable future.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Obama’s climate proposals are too ambitious to be enacted and too timid to avert catastrophe.
If that’s true, then it would seem to be a property of the political landscape as compared to science, not a shortcoming of any Obama plan.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
This makes sense, how?
Well, it has to do with the way non-insane human beings behave. So I can see how it puzzles you.
February 27th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Well, it has to do with the way non-insane human beings behave.
Really? So if we walk-the-walk and they don’t do the same in response, they’re “insane,” are they?
February 27th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
If that’s true, then it would seem to be a property of the political landscape as compared to science, not a shortcoming of any Obama plan.
Political infeasibility is certainly a shortcoming of a legislative proposal.
February 27th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Really? So if we walk-the-walk and they don’t do the same in response, they’re “insane,” are they?
Uh, no. See if it’s possible for you to look at this from the perspective of the non-insane. If you can manage that, you might understand what I’m saying.
February 27th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Some of the problems of dealing with this crisis are technical, and have to do with coming up with innovations. Once you come up with the solutions, you can share them. If no one starts finding solutions, there will be none to share.
February 28th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Re: The trouble with climate proposals is that nobody knows the size of climate feedbacks.
Feedbacks can be negative as well as positive (negative feedbacks are called “damping”). The fact that we have not had as much warming as models predict is an indication that damping mechanisms are involved that the models do not account for properly. One example is the fact that increased evaporation leads to increased cloud cover, which reflects more sunlight, leading to cooling (or at least less warming). The models have made an attempt at capturing that, but it’s mainly guess work. All we know for sure is that the world has gotten cloudier, we do not know how much warming that is canceling out.
February 28th, 2009 at 8:54 am
There seems to be a lot of gamblers against action on this issue. “What if the models are wrong?”
The gamblers have all been wrong so far. The predictions have all come true, and so far we’ve exceeded many of the moderate predictions. That doesn’t give me a lot of faith in the gamblers.
This is common sense. If you live in a flood zone, you buy flood insurance. If there is a non-trivial possibility of catastrophic climate change, and there is, you do something about it.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Re: One example is the fact that increased evaporation leads to increased cloud cover, which reflects more sunlight, leading to cooling (or at least less warming).
By the same token, Jon, decreased ice cover leads to decreased reflection of solar radiation, which leads to increased warming.
It’s true that there are negative feedbacks as well as positive ones, but we haven’t well quantified them, and we can’t conclude that the negative feedbacks will outweigh the positive ones. One proposed negative feedback (increased forest growth) is looking like it will be less important, quantitatively, then people thought a few years back.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Re: It’s true that there are negative feedbacks as well as positive ones, but we haven’t well quantified them, and we can’t conclude that the negative feedbacks will outweigh the positive ones.
I am not claiming that the negative feedbacks will predominater, only that they exist and are (apparently) not properly factored into the models.
Re: One proposed negative feedback (increased forest growth) is looking like it will be less important, quantitatively, then people thought a few years back.
I’m not too sure about that. At a timescale much larger than human history this whole business looks like a Gaian “plot” by the forests and other C3 plants to restore the warm-wet climate and the CO2 concentrations that obatined in earlier eras of geologic history, and thereby allow themselves to thrive at the expense of the grasses and other C4 plants. (C4 plants are rather recent in evolution; they do well at lower levels of CO2 in the atmosphere– CO2 had been slowly declining for millions of years before humanity created this so-far brief spike. The more CO2-dependent C3 plants have been at the lower limit of their viability for some time now, nor has the dominant cold-dry climate of the last few million years helped them much.
March 1st, 2009 at 8:11 am
“The fact that we have not had as much warming as models predic”
Stop makin’ stuff up. Each year, we have had more warming than the average “scientific consensus” models have predicted.
‘At a timescale much larger than human history this whole business looks like a Gaian “plot” by the forests and other C3 plants to restore the warm-wet climate and the CO2 concentrations that obatined in earlier eras of geologic history, and thereby allow themselves to thrive at the expense of the grasses and other C4 plants.’
That does seem like a very likely scenario. Humanity would of course have a massive, at least 90%, drop in population due to starvation within a thousand years under such a scenario. If not total extinction.
The CO2 concentrations we’re approaching, if we don’t limit our carbon emissions FAST, are those of the peak temperature achieved on Earth. This coincided with a humungous mass extinction — and the negative feedback effects finally kicked in and pushed the temperature back down.
The geological record indicates that, most likely, the negative feedback effects will only outweigh what we’re doing well after the catastrophe has driven humanity to near extinction. The Earth will be fine, as will life as a whole. However, humans, not so much.
Accordingly, as a matter of sheer species self-interest, we have to limit CO2 emissions as much as possible as fast as possible in any way possible.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Nathanael,
“Stop makin’ stuff up. Each year, we have had more warming than the average “scientific consensus” models have predicted.”
No we haven’t. Talk about makin’ stuff up.
March 16th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Nathanael continues to “believe in” the vile trash called the hockey stick; is clearly AGWA. Explanation here: http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20090225/OPINION02/902250301
earlier piece here: http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20080206/OPINION02/802060308/1014/OPINION