The Benefits of Global Warming

I'm glad to see you have some perspective when it comes to the doomsday scenarios of global warming. But, it's difficult to agree whether or not the cost of action pales in comparison because a) we don't know the extent of the damages and b) more importantly, I don't know what your suggested alternative is. Is it slowing economic growth, carbon caps, standards, etc? I honestly don't know. At minimum, I would like to at least choose the less painful or least economically costly solutions first which is why I suggest pricing alternatives.

In regards to natural climate change, all those things you mention are ways to manage the inevitable, not change it. The difference with human-induced climate change is that the talk is to try to prevent it, not manage it. So, my original point there was to show that scientists/people seem to think we can "manage" the effects of natural climate change, but we can not effectively manage shorter term global warming, thus we must prevent it. Given the similar magnitude of the potential effects, I am surprised at what I think is a paradox. If we can manage the longer term pain, why not the shorter term. And if we can't manage any change, shouldn't we try to prevent the longer term change too? That was my thinking.

I would challenge you on criticizing my rhetoric. Here is the best starting point: 1) What is the problem? 2) What does the evidence show about the magnitude/certainty of this problem? 3) what are the alternatives? 4) choose the most cost-effective policy alternatives. 5) reevalaute after time.

You'll find this in any policy textbook. After years in government, I can tell you much of policy is made starting with step #4 (this is what I want, now let me back in to #1,2, and 3). This process disturbs me and I see it all the time on planetizen. If the solution is smart growth, the problems line up behind it - air pollution, global warming, obesity, traffic, social isolation, etc.

I think I start from this position and I think I need to be convinced to do something using the criteria method mentioned earlier. Each of those policy alternatives needs to be weighed with evaluation criteria - I don't think that was being done.

I appreciate your response and I hope I can convince you that this is the thought process I always use and why it is a good one.

I do agree completely that incentives are needed. I would like to see a refunded carbon tax: tax CO2 emissions, increase the tax every year until CO2 emissions decline by 80%, and refund all the proceeds equally to all Americans as an income tax credit (so there is no net increase in taxes). Before too long, most Americans would pay only the CO2 tax and would get a refund on their income tax.

That would give people a powerful incentive to change their behavior - eg, to replace SUVs with fuel efficient cars and even to move to walkable neighborhoods and live without cars.

But note that these two changes in behavior both involve consuming less, as would many changes encouraged by a carbon tax. And what would people do with the money they save by consuming less? Many of them would choose to work less, if they had that option - and this choice is best for the environment.

I am glad you partly agree with The End of Economic Growth and what it says about the law of diminishing marginal utility.

But you hesitate because you say that our standard of living increases the "choices, freedoms and leisure we have." Wouldn't we increase our choices, our freedoms and certainly our leisure even more if we had the choice of working less, as they do in Germany and the Netherlands?

Right now, we do not have the choice between more time and more money. We do not have the freedom to balance work and home obligations. We have less leisure than Europeans because we are overworked to maintain our standard of living.

A few people have these choices, but Juliet Schor has pointed out that the overwhelming majority of Americans have no choice of work hours, because most part-time jobs are much lower quality than full-time jobs.

Thanks for giving these ideas some serious thought.

Charles Siegel

You say... “However, your solution to become more European by working and producing less scares me because I am confident that economic growth gives us the great standard of living I think we enjoy here in the US. ..”

For anyone who travels in Europe as frequently as I do, it’s hard not to notice that most Europeans live quite well these days, thank you, even in the material sense (the way Americans like to measure quality of life). Moreover, there’s not near the economic divide between the haves and have-nots in Europe as there is in America… by US standards, far more Euros these days, as a percentage of the total, are middle class. America has a huge underclass, numbering in the tens of millions, plus growing numbers of people who once thought of themselves as “middle class” but who are now in debt up to their eyeballs, barely hanging on (the growing mortgage debt debacle may, in fact, drag a lot of these people into the underclass).

This is not to say that Europe is not without its economic and social problems (which vary country by country), but they seem mild in comparison to America. The possible exception is Britain, which has some serious underclass issues, but then again Britain is the country in Europe whose economic model is most like America. The myth that Americans perpetuate upon themselves that they enjoy the greatest standard of living in the world is just that… a myth, the social glue, if you will, that keeps Americans from descending into class warfare. This particular myth might have been true 40 or 50 years ago, when America for a time enjoyed unrivaled economic supremacy, but old myths, like old stereotypes, are hard to eradicate from the public conscience. Moreover, the perpetuation of this myth serves the interests of politicians in power, none more so than those in the current Bush Administration.

I agree with you, however, that pricing as a means to force people into making some lifestyle changes (e.g. raising the price of gasoline to $6, for example) may be the only way to effect significant behavioural change, since Americans seem unwilling to change their ways otherwise. In Britain, that country in Europe otherwise most like America... thanks to $7 petrol, you don’t see many SUVs or large cars on the road (a very good family friend lives in rural Shropshire and owns an old Daimler (a very big car)... it costs him US$175 to fill the gas tank; it would cost similar for a large American SUV).

Overall, I’m rather pessimistic about climate change, however. I think that it’s probably too late to turn that very big ship around. Perhaps planners should be thinking more in terms of how humans can live on a warmer planet than in combating the inevitable (be more like the Dutch, who are good adapters, and who are already designing and building houses which float as water rises). Most of the solutions offered here in America are too little too late or not effective at all. Read the SF CHRONICLE story “Why Green Buildings Cannot Save the Planet” posted today on Planetizen, for a good example. And again, it appears that most people won’t voluntarily change their habits in any event. Even climate change Guru Al Gore himself doesn’t live the life he preaches.

Just some thoughts...

Let me use a thought experiment to answer this "honest question."

Imagine that you are driving a car at high speed without looking where you are going. I am riding with you, and I know that, two blocks ahead, the street we are on becomes a pedestrian plaza that is filled with people. I tell you to look where you are going and slow down before we reach the plaza, so you don't kill people there.

You answer: "Let me ask you an honest question. This city is on the hundred-year flood plain of a river, and there will be a flood in the next century that could kill more people than I will kill when I drive through this pedestrian plaza. Are we morally obligated to dam the river to to save those lives, even though the flood is a natural event? I ask you this because people who talk about pedestrian safety are often furthering their personal agenda, trying to make me drive more slowly."

Now we are one block away from the plaza, and you are still driving at high speed without looking where you are going. You look at me smugly, confident that we will have a long discussion about building a dam before you have to slow down.

This thought experiment shows that, if you are doing something that threatens other people with immediate harm, you have a clear obligation to stop doing it. You are just muddying the waters if you start a philosophical discussison of an unrelated issue that is more problematic.

So, I think your "honest question" is not very honest after all. It is a dishonest attempt to avoid a real, urgent issue.

(There is also no point to speculating about the effects that natural climate change might have in 5000 years because we have no idea what people will capable of in 5000 years. The earliest civilizations emerged in Egypt and Mesopotamia 5000 years ago: look at how much civilization has changed since then, and it is clear that we have no idea what civilization will be 5000 years from now. So your talk about natural climate change is actually an even worse red herring than the talk about the 100 year flood plain would be.)

Charles Siegel

Charles,

This article is typical denialist/contrascientist apologia, and is part of the standard denialist FUD template: golly, warming is good for us!

Sure, it will be good for a few, bad for most, and the effects on ecosystems will likely be bad, entering us into a system with which we have no experience.

Best to save your energy on these arguments (and the one above), as they’ve been debunked 1,000 times and the people who count – decision-makers – for the most part don’t fall for them.

Best,

D