Good news from the EPA

My prediction: filibuster in the Senate, heel-dragging through every stage of the regulatory lobby apparatus. It’s probably just as easy for industry to cut a deal through regulation as it is through legislation, and it delays matters for longer. Plus if the regulation has to be done under the Clean Air Act, it won’t be really suited to greenhouse gasses as well as something specifically designed for them would be, and industry will get to complain about that too.

Long-term enlightened self-interest would say that industry would be better off making a legislative deal now and then adjusting to it. But given that large American businesses preferred to go bankrupt rather than support health care reform, they are not really motivated by enlightened self-interest. The decision makers are motivated by class interest / ideology.

They will probably work on a proportional reduction in US emissions.

I believe this may turn out to be a mistake. If it’s used as a stick to force cap and trade through Congress, I can see the upside. However, if the EPA ends up making substantive regulations on CO2, it will a) likely err and b) give Republicans a stick with which to beat us for several years. Unelected bureaucrats! Calling a gas that is essential to life a pollutant! etc.

As most of you would (mistakenly) characterise my views as climate skepticism, you may feel free to take my thoughts with a grain of salt. But I hang out with them, metaphorically speaking, and I think I can see where the pushback will originate.

Er, actually, I do. I think the bulk of our emphasis should be on connecting the 1.6-2 billion humans who currently don’t have access to electricity to some grid, any grid, anywhere. Using the Millenium Development Goals as a mechanism…

The industrial world has gone from burning wood to coal to oil to gas. We are now trying to move less than 1 billion people (EU and US) from gas to a new means of generation. If we instead focussed our efforts on moving those in the third world from wood to oil or gas, we would lower CO2 emissions (deforestation causing 20% of manmade CO2, and less efficient forms of fuel releasing more pollutants, including CO2). We would reduce emissions of CO2. We would help the people on this planet who need it most. And you would get to shut cranks like me up forever.

Decarbonization proceeds at about 0.4% per annum. Energy efficient increases by about 1% per annum. I think our policy goal should be to make improvements in decarbonization at least equal to improvements in energy efficiency.

Thinking quantitatively, which would be more beneficial in your opinion? Moving 2 billion people from wood to natural gas, or moving 700 million from oil and natural gas to, well, something?

Tom, that’s false. It’s not your-opinion-is-wrong wrong, it’s factually wrong. The people burning wood would not emit less carbon if they were moved to electricity generated via gas. They’d emit more. Electricity generation inefficiencies, grid inefficiencies, wood being biomass in the first place, people using more energy because now they can … the reasons why you’re wrong are so many that I can only consider your point to be another form of denialist obfuscation. If you’re sincere, then you’re so careless, you should be ashamed of yourself.

To forestall straw man #2, of course people without access to electricity should have it. So connect them to the grid, or give them independent power generators. The process of converting the grid to non-CO2 generating sources, or of developing local generators that are not CO2-generating, will help with that.

Denialist. You use stats for home heating efficiency for a comparison which you stated as being between burning of wood by people off the grid and connecting them to the grid. Converting heat energy into electricity involves large losses. So does sending it over a grid. And, of course, CO2 within wood has just been taken out of the atmosphere / ecosphere, and returning it doesn’t add CO2 to the system in the same way that digging up natural gas does.

In other words, all of my original objections stand. Denialist.

Denialist! Denialist! The parrot isn’t dead–it’s a denialist!

Tom, you’re not really cut out for the Internet. Someone with your delicate sensibilities would be better served by throwing a dinner party or something.

No one who has looked into this at all could possibly not understand why burning “wood/animal dung” does not add to the overall carbon in the atmosphere, while burning fossil fuels does. Therefore Tom is a denialist — confirmed by a quick Google, which shows him spouting various denialist talking points elsewhere.

Tom, why should we waste any more time on you? You’re dishonest, you’re probably a paid flack, and you’re just trying to move the thread from what it’s about to a straw man of your own devising.

There is near-zero chance of the GOP trying a low-post defense. Nothing in contemporary politics can be understood without understanding the disjunction in interests between elites and their parties. The GOP leaders don’t care about GW one way or another; they don’t even really care much about industry. They care about outrage.

And, by the way, your “it is flatly impossible” is also wrong. Not as provably wrong as Tom’s—but the cost of anti-GW measures is a couple of percentage points of the economy.

But even if that estimate of GDP effect is correct, that is beside the point. The point is that Americans are not going to live in smaller houses unless it costs much more to heat and cool the bigger ones. And they’re not going to buy small cars, drive less, and take public transit, if gas remains $2/gal. And the well-off lefties I know who profess to be very worried about AGW are not going to stop flying all over hell for the fun of it unless the cost to do so gets just too damn high. Or at least that is the way it seems so far — I’ve yet to detect any change in their behaviors based on environmental concerns alone.

The carbon costs (however they are imposed) must raise transport fuel prices and must raise home electrical and natural gas prices by a non-trivial amount to produce anything other than a trivial change in behavior — *that* is the point.

So when Tom was banned, it didn’t apply to all of CT?

Slocum, given that your ad hom is on my post, I’ll take it as directed at me. I have taken active measures to reduce my air travel, and to offset what I can’t eliminate.

No, it was not directed at you–I don’t have any idea what kind of traveling you do. I live in Ann Arbor — I was talking about people I know. One guy is a scientist who actually studies climate change professionally. But I know the family — you’d be amazed (or maybe you wouldn’t) at the all non-professional traveling they do. Concern about AGW seems to have had no effect at all — but perhaps they salve their consciences by buying offsets for all the travel (they’re wealthy enough to do so–they’ll certainly be able to buy their way out of whatever carbon restrictions come along).

Many of these people I know have kids who are university age. So you’d assume maybe they’d encourage their kids to go to school closer to home to minimize the climate impact of travel, right? Not a chance. Multiple college visits across the country by air is SOP. And when the kids inevitably go to those east or west coast schools, there are many more flights back and forth for kids to come home for holidays and for parents to go visit. But of course I couldn’t ever point this out to any of them or I’d be about as popular in real life as I am on CT virtually. And obviously they would never call each other on it.

But it’s not as if they think that environmentally-motivated changes in personal behavior are irrelevant. They recycle like mad. They tote their re-usable grocery bags. They participate in fund-raisers for ‘Recycle Ann Arbor’. They try to buy local at the Farmer’s market. These things are just inconvenient enough to make them feel virtuous, but not inconvenient enough to have any noticeable impact on their lifestyles. But reducing travel *would* be a real sacrifice that would affect their lives — which is why my sense is that they’ll never do it unless they simply can’t afford to do otherwise.

Rich Puchalsky: The point is to replace the infrastructure. Once the power plant runs on non-fossil-fuels, use as much electricity as you want. Once the cars run on electricity, ditto. Changing consumer behavior always was a loser issue; it’s a favorite of industry types who don’t want anything to be done, because it causes a vague feeling of guilt and nothing else. Even if everyone “stopped flying all over for the hell of it” who could, the result would be negligible.

When (if) the power plants run on non-fossil fuels, electricity will cost a great deal more than it does now. The idea that wind and solar are going to replace coal at the same cost is a total fantasy. As we shall see. And it is not primarily ‘industry types’ who have advanced the idea of smaller houses, smaller cars, density, mass transit, ‘food miles’, etc — those are favorite issues on the environmental left, as anyone could easily discover that with the barest minimum of googling.

Are you really telling me that the typical environmental lefty believes that Americans can carry on living as always (big cars, big houses, big lawns, single-driver commutes around the suburbs), but spend no more of their income on energy, and still reduce carbon emissions by 90% by 2050 — and that anyone who says otherwise is an industry stooge trying to scare you? Really?

“I live in Ann Arbor—I was talking about people I know.”

Talk about predictable. Thanks for mindlessly carrying out the same rhetorical stupidity that I said you would. See, John? It doesn’t matter to tell them what you do. There’s always somebody somewhere…

“The idea that wind and solar are going to replace coal at the same cost is a total fantasy.”

Uh huh. I guess I’ll take your word for it — wait, maybe not! In fact maybe I just cited a reputable source that says 2% of GDP.

For the rest, I could say something about how, yes, probably a majority of the austerity environmentalism these days originates with corporate stooges. But that would have to get into subtle distinctions between that and, say, what Duncan Black writes about livable urban communities with mass transit, and that in turn would require that you be a person worth talking to and not a denialist.

I agree that in a sane world we wouldn’t be using the Clean Air Act to fight global warming. But then, in a sane world we also wouldn’t have the filibuster or similar antidemocratic institutions. If you’re going to make a very concerned and serious objection based on procedural issues, you’d better think hard about just how much democratic legitimacy your preferred procedure has.

Allow me to point at the elephant in the room named France. It is demonstratably a straightforward exersise in engineering to decarbonise the electric grid entirely, and at a price wholly competetive with fossile fuels, via the use of standardised nuclear reactors.

Slocum, I’ve rarely seen such an exercise in sustained dishonesty as your last comment. You’ve carefully avoided obvious troll signatures — you didn’t call me a jerk — but your comment is one dishonesty or stupidity after another.

“the revenues from the sales of carbon credits are counted on to help pay for the major expansion in the size and scope of government that is underway.”

It’s largely Keynesian spending. Calling it “an expansion in the size and scope of government” pretends that we’re only Keynesians during boom times.

“Personally, I’d favor revenue neutral carbon taxes at a level tied directly to the 10-year moving average of global temperatures. ”

Do you have any idea how ignorant of how global warming works you have to be to think that the 10-year moving average of temperature is what we should be responding to? Since you claim not to be ignorant, then you must be aware of how dishonest this is. Confusion of timescales is one of the key denialist tropes.

“What happened to 2-3%? ”

Christ, the quote is right up there! If you want a range, it’s -1% to 3.5%. The average estimate is 2%. You don’t get to cite the range instead of the average and then drop off the lower end.

“I don’t know anyone (other than you) who thinks a 2-3% increase in energy prices is going to drive major changes in energy usage and carbon emissions.”

If energy goes up a lot more, than other things have to come down for the total to be -1 to 3.5%. And there you go with your “I don’t know anyone” bit, as if the world’s experts can be dismissed because you don’t personally know them.

Outside of some market ideologues in the U.S., it’s not a widespread belief that market pricing is what is going to drive this conversion. Decisions about major energy plants are a governmental matter, always have been, although they like to conceal it in the U.S. The people of France, who as someone about points out haven’t decarbonized through austerity, don’t agonize about it — once the power plants are changed, who cares?

“That was my point talking about the lefties I know, by the way. In general, I like them and think they’re people of good will. ”

I don’t think that righties like you are people of good will. I think that you are generally stupid, ignorant, and / or evil.

It’s largely Keynesian spending. Calling it “an expansion in the size and scope of government” pretends that we’re only Keynesians during boom times.

No — the revenue from cap & trade is permanent. The plan is, for example, to use it as a permanent funding source for universal health care. I would expect those on the left to think that’s a good idea — not to deny it.

Do you have any idea how ignorant of how global warming works you have to be to think that the 10-year moving average of temperature is what we should be responding to? Since you claim not to be ignorant, then you must be aware of how dishonest this is. Confusion of timescales is one of the key denialist tropes.

I’m not confused — just not entirely convinced. The more temperatures continue to rise, the more convinced I’ll be, and the more I’ll be willing to favor major energy price increases and energy use changes. And I think this is the way the politics are going to shake out, too. That is, if temperatures do NOT continue to rise, the political will is just not going to be there for the strong actions you favor. That’s my prediction, anyway.

If energy goes up a lot more, than other things have to come down for the total to be -1 to 3.5%.

The gas price spikes of last year did not result in an immediate drop in GDP (it took the bursting of the housing bubble to do that). Still, many people thought the gas price increases were kind of a big deal despite the negligible effect on overall GDP.

Given budget projections, in the U.S. it seems extraordinarily unlikely that taxes are going to be going down in any significant way in coming years. So what most people are likely to see are flat or higher taxes (CT had a thread on instituting a VAT in the U.S. just a couple of days ago which you may have seen) to go along with higher fuel prices and electricity and heating costs (driven by cap & trade). That is what voters will be responding to. But maybe the government will, at the same time, be providing enough new services that most voters will think it’s a good deal overall.

I don’t think that righties like you are people of good will. I think that you are generally stupid, ignorant, and / or evil.

How does Rich go about getting banned around here, anyway? Or does this fit the CT model of civil discourse?

Zamfir: Actually, I know very European technocrats who do not only believe that pricing is a good solution, but even use it as pretty much the only mechanism in their models to estimate economic cost…

Thank you. But be careful — Rich now probably thinks you’re stupid, ignorant, and/or evil. And he won’t be shy about saying so.

It’s not civil to lie, slocum.

You seem to define ‘lies’ as ‘statements I disagree with’. It’s generally considered pretty damn rude to call someone a liar without specifying what it is they said they said that they knew was false. Perhaps you would do me the courtesy of point to what it was I said here that I knew to be untrue.

“Dear Tom

Given your apology, I am unbanning you – but putting you on a strict
warning to be a fair bit more careful in future, and to think
carefully about how you put arguments etc so as to minimize the heat
and maximize the light.

Best

HJF”

Henry, I don’t even *have* children, and I still understand the problem with that. You just undercut JQ’s authority. Given Tom’s previous and ongoing attitude, expecting change for the better is expecting what is unlikely.

Hi folks,
I won’t be participating in your discussions in future, but I just thought I would stick up for Henry here in response to Barry’s comment–he ‘unbanned’ me and wrote that long before John Quiggin got ‘tipped’ (I could think of a more pungent description) by onymous that I had been banned.
ATB
Tom