Cafe Hayek

The Psychology of Climate Change and Intervention

Writing in today's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof argues that we're not as frightened of climate change as science counsels that we should be, and that our fear's inadequacy is rooted in our evolutionary past.  We are, Kristof correctly says, evolved to fear immediate, visible threats and not so much those threats - such as climate change - that are more distant, more speculative, and less visible.

Contrary to Kristof's conclusion, though, this fact doesn't necessarily justify climate-change regulation.  The same evolved structure of our brains that causes us to discount relatively distant and speculative climate-change effects also causes us to discount relatively distant and speculative economic effects.  So this economist, trained to see the invisible hand, points out that too many people are insufficiently aware of - and, hence, insufficiently fearful of - those relatively distant and invisible threats posed to a healthy economy by government regulation.

Treason Against Reason

John Stossel challenges Paul Krugman's over-the-top assertion that oppostion to climate-change legislation is "treason against the planet.

I also challenge Krugman in a different, but complementary, way.

George Will on Green Jobs

George Will is always worth reading.

Did Global Warming Cause the Air France Crash?

This letter (below), published in today's edition of USA Today, is a perfect specimen of the sloppy, 'the-facts-must-fit-my-pet-theory' thinking of many persons who worry about climate change:

Speculation has blossomed concerning the causes of the loss of Air France Flight 447 ("Wreckage yields clues in jet crash," News, Thursday).

It would be irresponsible to get ahead of evidence, but important factors are emerging. First, some experts blame global warming for the increased severity and frequency of hurricanes (most of which originate at latitudes within 5 to 15 degrees of the equator). Second, the flight appears to have passed through a band of equatorial megastorms. Finally, levels of turbulence in such storms are being investigated in the crash.

Perhaps the memorial service in Paris will be recognized as the first for airline victims of global warming.

Richard Danforth - Seneca, S.C.

Note that I am not here saying that global warming isn't occurring.  What I am saying is that anyone who would, presumably with a straight face, leap to the conclusion that Mr. Danforth leaps to is someone not interested in serious thinking about this subject.

Suppose, for example, that I wrote that "some experts blame" government regulation for creating greater safety hazards for consumers, and then concluded that the crash of the Air France jet was likely the result of government regulation.  Clearly, such a conclusion -- even tentatively stated -- would be absurd.

It's also telling that a major newspaper thought that this letter is fit to print on something other than the comics page.

And, in this beautiful irony, on the same day that Mr. Danforth's letter appears in USA Today, this report appears in the Washington Post -- a report arguing that global warming (by reducing the differences in air pressure between each of the two poles and the equator) is reducing the globe's average wind speeds.

......

Global warming really is blamed for all sorts of things.

Blowing the Cover on Political Hot Air

"Green jobs" will dig us more deeply into the red -- so argue Andy Morriss (my Market Correction co-blogger), William Bogart, Andrew Dorchak, and Roger Meiners.

Fooled by randomness

According to my car thermometer, It was 54 degrees this morning at 8 am here in DC on May 19. It encouraged my skepticism about global warming. Paul Krugman has none:

The scientific consensus on prospects for global warming has become much more pessimistic over the last few years. Indeed, the latest projections from reputable climate scientists border on the apocalyptic. Why? Because the rate at which greenhouse gas emissions are rising is matching or exceeding the worst-case scenarios.

One of us is being fooled by randomness. Hard to say which one. But Paul is very confident. He is willing to justify protectionism:

As the United States and other advanced countries finally move to confront climate change, they will also be morally empowered to confront those nations that refuse to act. Sooner than most people think, countries that refuse to limit their greenhouse gas emissions will face sanctions, probably in the form of taxes on their exports. They will complain bitterly that this is protectionism, but so what? Globalization doesn’t do much good if the globe itself becomes unlivable.

It’s time to save the planet. And like it or not, China will have to do its part.

The implications of Krugman's certainty is much more frightening than he is willing to admit. If you think China is destroying the planet, a tariff is just the beginning of what you will do.

Stamp Act

The evidence is overwhelming that global warming is caused by humans, incompetent humans in the US Post Office, unable to keep costs down. (HT: Planet Gore)

What Earth Day Means to Me

My son, Thomas (a sixth grader), has a homework assignment today: write an essay entitled "What Earth Day Means to Me."  I will help him out with my own essay.

Earth Day, to me, means an opportunity to express thanks for all the ways that capitalism makes our lives and environment cleaner and healthier.

I'm thankful for the automobile, which has cleaned our streets and highways of animal feces, which is both foul and filthy itself, and that attracts flies that spread it into our homes and workplaces.

I'm thankful for the automobile also because it allows us to travel in a cleaner environment than we had when we traveled on horseback or in buggies.  Modern automobiles cool or heat the air immediately surrounding their passengers, making these passengers comfortable and, in summer, less sweaty and stinky.

I'm thankful for air-conditioning that keeps our interior environments not only comfortable but more healthy, as it allows us to better keep insects out of our homes, shops, factories, and offices -- and also, in humid places, to dramatically reduce the growth of mold and mildew in our homes.

I'm thankful for indoor plumbing.  (The anti-polluting properties here are too obvious to spell out.  Ditto for disposable diapers -- yet another product for which I'm most grateful.)

I'm thankful for the inexpensive soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, dental floss, toilet tissue, and plastic bandages and other first-aid items that make it possible for us to de-pollute our persons regularly.

I'm thankful for electronic appliances, such as those that (along with modern detergents - for which I'm also thankful) allow us to clean our used clothing and dirty dishes -- clean these more deeply and more thoroughly than was possible in the past without spending multiples of the time on such tasks that we spend on these tasks today.  These appliances enable us to recycle our clothing and our dishes for many reuses.

I'm thankful for electricity for making these appliances possible - and for enabling us to light our home without dirty candles, and for enabling us to heat our homes without coal, wood, peat, or other filthy substances.

I'm thankful for plastics, which very effectively and at very low costs allow us to keep bacteria confined.  A plastic storage bag, for example, keeps food bacteria confined to the interior of the bag.

I'm thankful for refrigeration for retarding the growth of bacteria and, hence, keeping our foods cleaner and healthier.

I'm thankful for chemical fertilizers that increase the productivity of the earth's soil, and thereby helps to prevent malnutrition -- which, in turn, better enables each of our bodies to succeed at fighting off diseases that are more likely to sicken, or even kill, malnourished persons.

I'm thankful for factories (and the fuels that power them) that make possible things such as modern textiles -- modern textiles that enable even poor people in market societies to own many changes of clean clothing.

I'm thankful for modern insecticides and cleansers that help to protect us from bugs and bacteria that would otherwise pollute our environments.

I am, in short, thankful for private-property markets that are the main driving force behind these (and many other) anti-pollutants -- a force so powerful that we today enjoy the incredible luxury of being able to worry, should we so choose, about very distant and very speculative forms of environmental problems such as species loss and global warming.

Green Jobs Myths

"Green jobs" promise a black-and-blue future.

Another climate skeptic

Freeman Dyson.

Paper Moon

That the modern environmental movement is infected with a huge dollop of puritanism -- with a large number of persons who itch to force others to live lives more spartan and less enjoyable -- needs no further proof than this "report" appearing on the front-page of yesterday's New York Times.

It's ironic, is it not, that this report appears in a newspaper?

Here's the letter that I sent earlier today to the New York Times.

Private vs. public

The New York Times reports:

The Energy Department has $25 billion to make loans to hasten the arrival of the next generation of automotive technology — electric-powered cars. But no money has been allocated so far, even though the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan program, established in 2007, has received applications from 75 companies, including start-ups as well as the three Detroit automakers.

The rest of the article is mostly about the bureaucratic bottlenecks that have kept the program from doing anything. But the best part is this quote from the director of the program:

“No one else out there will take on this risk,” said Mr. Seward. “It reminds me of the time at the dawn of the auto age when you had hundreds of companies making hundreds of kinds of cars and then they all coalesced. We are back in that era of invention again.”

No one else will take on this risk? GM has put $2 billion into the Chevy Volt. Toyota is working on a battery powered car. The Tesla is out there. There are all kinds of other efforts going on, all financed privately and all actually doing something. But he's partly right. If the government program gets big enough, all those efforts will stop and everyone will turn to Mr. Seward.

Saving the planet

When it comes to saving the environment or saving the children, which is more precious. James Lileks gets it right.

Comment of the week

This post discusses a study that claims that of the three year increase in life expectancy from 1978-2001, five months of the increase came from cleaner air, vindicating the investments made in making the air cleaner. Dave comments:

Of course we'll have no way of knowing how much the life expectancy would have increased without the "expense" i.e. the redirecting of resources that would otherwise have been invested and ultimately resulting in more comfortable and healthier lives for everyone.

This accounts for 5 months out of three years. where did the other 2 years and seven months come from? Who gets the credit for that? The short answer is from the very same things that result in pollution.

Don't think so? then how did that kidney get rushed from California to New York overnight?

Bravo, Dave.

But what was the cost?

The AP reports:

Cleaner air over the past two decades has added nearly five months to average life expectancy in the United States, according to a federally funded study. Researchers said it is the first study to show that reducing air pollution translates into longer lives.

Between 1978 and 2001, Americans' average life span increased almost three years to 77, and as much as 4.8 months of that can be attributed to cleaner air, researchers from Brigham Young University and Harvard School of Public Health reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Some experts not connected with the study called the gain dramatic.

"It shows that our efforts as a country to control air pollution have been well worth the expense," said Dr. Joel Kaufman, a University of Washington expert on environmental health.

How do you figure? To answer that, you'd need a measure of the expense. That number, and the alternative pleasures, delights and health benefits we might have generated from those dollars, is missing from the article.

I also love that phrase, "as much as." That means that 4.8 months was the upper bound. I wonder what the lower bound estimate was.

Winning the debate

The side arguing that reductions in CO2 aren't worth it, lost the debate. But check out the difference in the before and after votes. The doing-nothing folks couldn't budge the people on the other side. But they improved their vote almost by the exact amount of the undecideds. Tells you a lot about bias and people's openness to change, at least on this issue.

The Noble Motivations Behind Regulations (Or, "We'll Take You to the Cleaners")

Baptists, Bootleggers, and Workin' in the Car Wash Blues -- and Greens (of both varieties).

(HT Chris Meisenzahl)

Did I See this Item in a New York Times Headline?

Perhaps global warming is to blame for the fact, as reported in the September 2008 issue of Nature, that "Arctic ice shrinks less this year than last."

(HT Karol Boudreaux)

Paul Johnson on Marxism, Freudianism, the Theory of Relativity, and Global Warming

Which one is not like the others?

Another Romantic and Ridiculous Assault on Modernity

Here's a letter that I sent yesterday to the Washington Post:

From across the country activists have converged on San Francisco for the 'Slow Food Nation" rally ("As Food Becomes a Cause, Meeting Puts Issues on the Table," August 30).  These activists insist that consuming non-local foods harms the environment, exploits workers, severs community ties, and numbs our taste buds.

Overlook the fact that these claims are not supported by empirical research or sound thinking,* and let's get into the rally's spirit, which refuses to be dampened by facts or reason.  Start by asking: why reject only non-local foods?  Why not also reject non-local news - such as this very report from San Francisco?  And why not also reject non-local culture?  Surely we Washingtonians would be happier and more in touch with ourselves if we read only novels written by locals such as Christopher Buckley and not those written by the likes of Milan Kundera, Margaret Atwood, or Larry McMurtry.  And what's with the Kennedy Center bringing in performers from outside the Beltway? How much CO2 is unnecessarily emitted into the atmosphere whenever the Kirov Ballet flies in from St. Petersburg or when James Levine comes down from Boston?  And how many local artists do we overlook in our thoughtless insistence on seeing non-local acts performed on our local stages?

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

* See, for example, Andrew Lilico, "Buying local is not necessarily green," Economic Affairs, Vol. 28, June 2008.

Wipe that Smile Off of Your Face

We can only hope (however hopelessly) that Chandrama Pyakurail is a master of satire rather than a Person Really and Truly Concerned With the Environment -- and likewise for the folks at Wallypop (here, and here). 

Cuts Both Ways

Here's a letter that I sent today to the Baltimore Sun:

Brad Heavner says that "drilling off our coasts would have no significant impact on gasoline prices - not in the short term, not in the long term, not ever" (Letters, August 3).  If so, then Mr. Heavner is mistaken to worry that such drilling would "increase our dependence on oil and produce more global warming pollution," for any such impact would also be insignificant.  An amount of oil that would affect prices only inconsequentially is an amount of oil that would affect global warming and Americans' use of oil only inconsequentially.

And see Ross Kaminsky on this topic.

Lomborg on Dealing with Climate Change

Bjorn Lomborg writes great good sense in today's Washington Post.

How Pressing a Problem is Global Warming?

The important work of Bjorn Lomborg -- the Skeptical Environmentalist and organizer of the Copenhagen Consensus Center -- is the subject of this insightful essay in today's edition of the Wall Street Journal.  Here's a slice:

Even as the U.S. Senate debates a vast new tax and spend regime in the name of fighting climate change, a more instructive argument was taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark. Some of the world's leading economists met last week to decide how to do the most good in a world of finite resources.

Scarcity is a core economic concept, though politicians and even many economists prefer to ignore it. There isn't an unlimited amount of money to be spent on every problem, so choices have to be made. The question addressed by the Copenhagen Consensus Center is what investments would do the most good for the most people. The center's blue-ribbon panel of economists, including five Nobel laureates, weighed more than 40 proposals to improve the world by spending a total of $75 billion over the next four years.

What would do the most good most economically? Supplements of vitamin A and zinc for malnourished children.

Number two? A successful outcome to the Doha Round of global free-trade talks. (Someone please tell Barack Obama.)

Global warming mitigation? It ranked 30th, or last, right behind global warming mitigation research and development. (Someone please tell John McCain.) The nearby table lists other rankings.

"It's true that trade doesn't immediately save lives," explains Bjorn Lomborg, the political scientist who heads the Copenhagen Consensus Center. "But it's proven that when people have more money" – as tends to be the case when trade barriers fall – "they improve their health, their education and so on." The resulting prosperity reduces such problems as malnutrition and disease, while improving education. All three of those ranked high on the priority list.

The benefits of freer trade were estimated in a paper presented by Professors Kym Anderson and Alan Winters. They found that a successful Doha Round could generate up to $113 trillion in new wealth during the 21st century, at a cost of $420 billion or less from inefficient industries going bust. If you like ratios, that's a return of $269 for every $1 of cost. A less conservative projection puts the gains three times higher. More than 80% of this global windfall would go to the world's poorest countries.

Vernon Smith, Professor Emeritus of Economics at GMU (and 2002 co-winner of the Nobe Prize in Economic Science), is among the scholars active in Prof. Lomborg's important enterprise.

Two Letters on the Market

Today's edition of USA Today published this letter of mine:

Commentary writer Alan Webber applauds the idea of the so-called social business — one that "has a social cause, not just a financial goal." Webber also tells us: "Think of it as capitalism with a human face" ("Giving the poor the business," The Forum, Wednesday).

I don't question Webber's uncritical assumption that social businesses will work.

I do, however, question his hackneyed suggestion that the face of for-profit capitalism is inhuman.

No other economic system but capitalism has lifted billions of people so decisively out of poverty.

Economist Joseph Schumpeter noted this fact in 1942: "Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them.

"It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to a rich man.

"Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."

And today's edition of the Baltimore Sun published this one:

Julie Sensat Waldren eloquently explains the difficulties of "being green" ("It's not easy being green," Commentary, May 17).

For example, consumers cannot possibly know how the environmental impact of disposable cups compares with that of ceramic cups whose production consumes lots of energy.

Contrary to a profusion of claims by naive pundits, the economy is far too complex for any person or even a committee of geniuses to trace the full environmental consequences of any of the hundreds of ordinary decisions consumers and producers make daily.

Economists since Adam Smith have taught that the best we can do is to have well-defined property rights that owners use and exchange as each judges best.

The unplanned result isn't an earthly paradise, but it's vastly superior to what emerges when people consciously aim to bring about a specific outcome in the overall pattern of economic activities.

Made Blue By Green Initiatives

In my column today in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, I explain why I wince even at private initiatives to "live green."  Here's my concluding paragraph:

There are worthwhile private green initiatives, such as driving less when the price of gasoline rises. But these worthwhile initiatives almost all are economically sound responses to changes in market prices -- prices that contain information from around the globe about the objective state of the world. Acting on such knowledge is the best that we can do

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg makes a similar point.

Lentil stew for everyone!

The National Post editorializes (HT: Nathaniel Clarkson) on the moral high ground being claimed by the Democratic Party's plans for their August convention in Denver:

The Denver Post reported on Sunday that local caterers are having trouble adhering to environmental and health guidelines laid down by the host committee on the party's behalf. A request for proposals obtained by the Colorado paper indicates that fried foods will be banned, that all meals must be served on reusable or recyclable plates and that no individual plastic containers for drinks will be allowed.

But the trickiest part is the rule that everything on the table must be locally or organically grown. "We all want to source locally," says one exasperated caterer, "but we're in Colorado. The growing season is short. It's dry here. And I question the feasibility of that." Another potential bidder observed that green sourcing rules sometimes forced them into counterintuitive choices. Would it be "better" to order compostable cornstarch cutlery, even if it had to be delivered from an Asian factory?

If the Democrats were serious about eating green, they could surely just have some army cooks make a few thousand quarts of nice healthy lentil stew for everybody. What they want is credit for environmental rigour without sacrificing their bourgeois right to fine dining.

The rest is just as good. Good economics and good rhetoric. Enjoy.

"A Clean and Snappy Place!"

McDonald's makes the world a cleaner place.  So concludes Wharton's Adrian E. Tschoegl in his 2007 paper "McDonald's -- Much Maligned, But an Engine of Economic Development."  Here's the relevant passage (from page 12):

McDonald’s emphasis on cleanliness, including or especially in restrooms, has led its competitors to upgrade their facilities.  Before the first McDonald’s opened up in 1975, restrooms in Hong Kong’s restaurants were notoriously dirty (Watson 1997).  Over time, competitors felt compelled to meet McDonald’s cleanliness standards.  The same thing appears to be occurring in China (Watson 2000).  In Korea, McDonald’s introduced the practice of lining up in an orderly fashion to order food; traditional practice was simply to crowd the counter, with success in ordering accruing to the most aggressive (Watson 2000).  In the Philippines, Jollibee mimics McDonald's clean and well-lighted look.

Here's yet another small way that capitalism makes humans' environment safer and more pleasant.

Capitalism Day

On this Earth Day, I celebrate capitalism -- the institution that, far more than any other, has made human lives clean, safe, dignified, and culturally rich.  Capitalism is also responsible for giving people the wealth and leisure to permit them to mis-perceive nature as loving and bountiful, and to enjoy nature in a way that few of our pre-industrial ancestors could ever have enjoyed it.

So, on this Earth Day, I offer you here my essay, inspired by the work of Julian Simon, entitled "Cleaned by Capitalism."  Here are the central paragraphs:

Before refrigeration, people ran enormous risks of ingesting deadly bacteria whenever they ate meat or dairy products. Refrigeration has dramatically reduced the bacteria pollution that constantly haunted our pre-twentieth-century forebears.

We wear clean clothes; our ancestors wore foul clothes. Pre-industrial humans had no washers, dryers, or sanitary laundry detergent. Clothes were worn day after day without being washed. And when they were washed, the detergent was often made of urine.

Our bodies today are much cleaner. Sanitary soap is dirt cheap (so to speak), as is clean water from household taps. The result is that, unlike our ancestors, we moderns bathe frequently. Not only was soap a luxury until just a few generations ago, but because nearly all of our pre-industrial ancestors could afford nothing larger than minuscule cottages, there were no bathrooms (and certainly no running water). Baths, when taken, were taken in nearby streams, rivers, or ponds, often the same bodies of water used by the farm animals. Forget about shampoo, clean towels, toothpaste, mouthwash, and toilet tissue.

The interiors of our homes are immaculate compared to the squalid interiors of almost all pre-industrial dwellings. These dwellings’ floors were typically just dirt, which made the farm animals feel right at home when they wintered in the house with humans. Of course, there was no indoor plumbing. Nor were there household disinfectants, save sunlight. Unfortunately, because pre-industrial window panes were too expensive for ordinary families and because screens are an invention of the industrial age, sunlight and fresh air could be let into these cottages only by letting in insects too. Also, bizarre as it sounds to us today, the roofs of these dwellings were polluted with all manner of filthy or dangerous things. Here’s the description by historians Frances and Joseph Gies, in Life in a Medieval Village, of the roofs of pre-industrial cottages:

Roofs were thatched, as from ancient times, with straw, broom or heather, or in marsh country reeds or rushes. . . .  Thatched roofs had formidable drawbacks; they rotted from alternations of wet and dry, and harbored a menagerie of mice, rats, hornets, wasps, spiders, and birds; and above all they caught fire. Yet even in London they prevailed.

Peace and free trade.

Optimal Population?

In his new book, Common Wealth, Jeffrey Sachs expresses his concern about population growth.  Worried by a U.N. prediction that global population will rise to 9.2 billion by the year 2050, from 6.6 billion today, Sachs says (on page 23 of his new book) the following about these additional 2.6 billion persons:

I will argue at some length that this is too many people to absorb safely, especially since most of the population increase is going to occur in today’s poorest countries.  We should be aiming….to stabilize the world’s population at 8 billion by midcentury.

(HT Karol Boudreaux)

Eight billion.  I'm not sure where Sachs got that number.  And, to be frank, I'm not curious about where he got it.  He could have dreamed it up in his sleep, or taken it from a multi-year study conducted by a lavishly funded committee made up of the world's most accomplished economists, demographers, environmentalists, statisticians, physicians, and other Very Smart Experts.  No matter where the number comes from, it's worthless.  There is simply no way to know how many persons the earth can "support" in the year 2050 (or any other year, for that matter).

First is the question: support at what standard of living?  Even if we grant the validity of the resources-are-very-tightly-limited supposition (upon which fear of population growth chiefly rests), there is no objective, scientifically determinable "optimal" number of people who can be alive at any one time.  According to the resources-are-very-tightly-limited supposition, the less that people consume, the greater are the amounts of resources that will be left for the future -- the greater is the earth's carrying capacity.  In this view, resources are simply 'out there,' waiting to be gathered, processed, and consumed by humans.  So more humans (or the same number of humans consuming more) will deplete resources faster than will fewer humans (or the same number of humans consuming less).

So on this resources-are-very-tightly-limited supposition, as people decrease their material standard of living, the earth can sustain a larger population.

How do we know today at what average standard of living persons alive in 2050 will seek to achieve?  We don't.  It's conceivable that the typical person alive in 2050 will have become so devoted to saving the earth that the prevalent culture and norms will dictate that most persons settle for material living standards lower than those that ordinary Americans enjoy today -- or, perhaps even lower than ordinary Americans enjoyed in 1950.  If so, then surely the "optimal" global population in the year 2050 will be lower than it would be if most persons alive in 2050 will seek to achieve living standards much higher than ordinary Americans now enjoy.

A much deeper problem with Sachs's eight-billion number is that, in calculating it, there is no way to predict how human creativity will alter the world during the next 42 years.  It's ludicrous to pretend that we can know now what, say, the average MPG will be for internal-combustion engines in 2050.  Hell, we don't even know if automobiles and lawnmowers and the like will still use such engines then.

Will another Norman Borlaug arise, between now and 2050, to spark another green revolution?  Will someone invent a way to efficiently power automobiles with air?  Will someone develop new and better techniques for defining and enforcing private property rights in ocean-going fish stocks so that the tragedy of the commons called "over-fishing" is eliminated?  Will an enterprising entrepreneur invent a means for ordinary households to power their homes with mulch or autumn leaves or small fragments of fingernail clippings?

Think back 42 years to 1966.  Who in that year imagined personal computers in nearly every home in America?  The Internet?  Digital cameras?  Cell phones?  Quality wines sold in screw-top bottles?  Buying music with literally the click of a button (and not having to burn fossil fuels in driving to the record store).  Aluminum cans that contain only a fraction of the metal that cans contained back then?  The Kindle (that will reduce the number of trees cut down to enable people to read books)?  Medical advances that make hip-replacements about as routine as getting cavities filled by the dentist?  Microfiber?

There is no way -- literally, no way -- to know how technology and social institutions will change between now and 2050.  Given this impossibility -- and given the fact that we can nevertheless predict with confidence that technology will advance and that social institutions will change -- to assert that "optimal" population in the year 2050 will be eight-billion persons is ludicrous in the extreme.  It's faux-science, and deserves only ridicule.

Commerce and Nature

Over at Say Anything Blog I find this wonderful quotation from the late science-fiction master Robert Heinlein:

There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled Nature.” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature"-but beavers and their dams are.  But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity.  In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and hatred of dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the “Naturist” reveals his hatred for his own race-i.e., his own self hatred.

In the case of “Naturists” such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot.  But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most at any rate.

Reading this Heinlein quotation -- which, because I've never developed a taste for reading science fiction, I've not encountered before today -- reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Thomas Babington Macaulay's History of England.  I re-run Macaulay's passage below (I've run it before), for it is both eloquent and wise -- and should be reflected upon deeply by all, especially by those persons who profess to love nature and who worry about commerce and civilization spoiling nature:

Indeed, law and police, trade and industry, have done far more than people of romantic dispositions will readily admit, to develop in our minds a sense of the wilder beauties of nature. A traveller must be freed from all apprehension of being murdered or starved before he can be charmed by the bold outlines and rich tints of the hills. He is not likely to be thrown into ecstasies by the abruptness of a precipice from which he is in imminent danger of falling two thousand feet perpendicular; by the boiling waves of a torrent which suddenly whirls away his baggage and forces him to run for his life; by the gloomy grandeur of a pass where he finds a corpse which marauders have just stripped and mangled; or by the screams of those eagles whose next meal may probably be on his own eyes. . . .

It was not till roads had been cut out of the rocks, till bridges had been flung over the courses of the rivulets, till inns had succeeded to dens of robbers . . . that strangers could be enchanted by the blue dimples of lakes and by the rainbows which overhung the waterfalls, and could derive a solemn pleasure even from the clouds and tempests which lowered on the mountain tops.

Green Is As Green Does

Today's edition of the Wall Street Journal contains several excellent letters on the alleged desirability of using government to promote "green" technologies.  Here are the first three of these letters:

Fred Krupp's op-ed "Climate Change Opportunity" (April 8) overlooks what most climate change skeptics are skeptical of: government's ability to effectively regulate the economy. If there is a way to make money from alternative energy sources, the market will find it. There is no need for bureaucrats to lead the way. Government regulations at best distort the market to benefit politically favorable (read "green") industries, and at worst create unintended consequences that increase the cost of energy and energy innovation. Congress doesn't need to act in order for energy efficiencies to be realized by business; it needs to stay out of the way.

David Smith
Boston

In Europe, consumers pay up to $9 a gallon for gasoline, in part because European Union governments tax gasoline at rates of $2 to $3 a gallon and more. What most people don't realize is that gasoline taxes are implicit carbon taxes. Taxing gasoline at $1 a gallon is roughly equivalent to taxing the carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline at $100 per ton. So, European motorists are paying carbon dioxide penalties of $300 or more per ton. That's about six times higher than the maximum estimated carbon permit price under the Warner-Lieberman cap-and-trade proposal.

Yet where in Europe is the miracle fuel to replace petroleum? Where are all the zero-emission vehicles? Europe is not one mile closer than we are to achieving a "beyond petroleum" transport system. In fact, from 1990 to 2004, EU transport sector carbon dioxide emissions increased by almost 26%.

Mr. Krupp and other cap-and-trade advocates ignore the main lesson of the failed Synfuels program of the 1970s, memorably expressed by MIT's Thomas Lee, Ben Ball Jr. and Richard Tabors: "If a technology is commercially viable, then government support is not needed, and if a technology is not commercially viable, no amount of government support will make it so."

Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington

The Environmental Defense Fund's president says he is simply trying to lower the cost of adapting to climate change. I'm suspicious. When environmentalists wanted to save the spotted owl, they told us that economic costs should not be a factor in that decision. When they wanted to save salmon by demolishing dams, they told us that cost should not be an issue. When they wanted to protect Alaskan wilderness, they said that energy costs should not be considered. Now, suddenly, they are all about saving us money. Either they have changed the way they think about the environment, or they want to control how I live my life, using any argument. That's handy.

Bill Conerly
Chairman
Cascade Policy Institute
Lake Oswego, Ore

The Market, Not Nature, Is Bountiful

Robert Kennedy, Jr., recently wrote this letter to the editor of the New York Times expressing his opposition to building hydroelectric dams in Chile.  I sent my own letter in response to Mr. Kennedy's missive:

Robert Kennedy, Jr., might be correct that electricity is best provided in Chile by means other than hydroelectric dams (Letters, April 8). His presumption, however, about the source of prosperity casts doubt on the quality of his argument.

Mr. Kennedy opposes dams because he wants to protect "nature's bounty."  But nature is not bountiful. If it were, human history would be one of prosperity and long, healthy lives rather than one of oppressive poverty and short, miserable lives.  Nature is miserly.  The bounty that Mr. Kennedy presumes comes from nature is, in fact, the relatively recent product of human creativity and industry unleashed by free markets - and now threatened by the mindless worship of nature.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Oops?

I guess ten years isn't a trend. It better not be or some people going to look a bit silly. (HT: Drudge)

"Earth Hour" and the Dark Ages

The World Wildlife Fund arranged today's "Earth Hour" -- a pledge by many people from around the world to turn off lights for an hour.  The following is from a page on the WWF website:

Earth Hour is a global event created to symbolize that each one of us, working together, can make a positive impact on climate change - no matter who we are or where we live.

Created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, Earth Hour has grown from a single event into a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 35 US cities will participate, including the US flagships--Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco.

Earth Hour brings together communities, local governments, corporate and nongovernmental organizations to heighten awareness about climate change and to inspire our nation to take practical actions to reduce their own carbon footprints.

Reading about the WWF's "Earth Hour" -- and hearing on the radio and t.v. too many mindless endorsements of this stunt, and seeing Google's special black "Earth Hour" design for its opening page today -- I sent the following letter to Carter Roberts, President of the WWF:

Dear Mr. Roberts:

You and members of your organization worry that industrialization and economic growth are harming the earth's environment.  I worry that the intensifying hysteria about the state of the environment - and that the resulting hostility to economic growth - might harm humankind's prospects for comfortable, healthy, enjoyable, and long lives.

So I commend you on your "Earth Hour" effort.  Persuading people across the globe to turn off lights for one hour supplies the perfect symbol for modern environmentalism: a collective effort to return humankind to the dark ages.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

By the way, of course, the WWF should award some special prize to the North Korean government, for that government keeps North Koreans not in any meager "Earth Hour," or even "Earth Day," but in what WWFers might call "Earth Decades" -- very little light ever.  This picture of the Korean peninsula speaks volumes -- the Dark Ages today; a society keeping its carbon footprint tiny.  Of course, in doing so it keeps itself also desperately poor, often even to the point of starvation.

Nasty dogs?

Arnold at EconLog has a very nice post on the environmental impact of dogs:

Which do you think takes a bigger toll on the environment, owning a dog, or owning an SUV? My bet would be on the dog. I'm thinking of all of the resources that go into dog food.

You could argue that children also consume a lot of resources, but that is different. A dog does not have the potential to discover a cure for cancer. A dog is not going to provide for you in your old age.

I personally have nothing against dogs. But it does seem to me that environmentalism inevitably points toward a policy of extermination of pet dogs. Unless environmentalism is simply hatred of industry.

What's particularly interesting are the comments. People are angry. Dogs are great, they say. They make people's lives better.

No doubt. So do SUVs. So do grapes from Chile. I think Arnold was merely suggesting that there are tradeoffs. If you make tradeoffs for dogs (which of course you should), why not make them for SUVs?

Worstall on Bureaucratic Actions

Here's a letter that I sent yesterday to the Wall Street Journal:

Arthur Brooks reports on research showing that "political intolerance in America ... is to be found more on the left than it is on the right" ("Liberal Hatemongers," January 17).  I'm not surprised.  "The right," after all, includes many persons who are liberal in the original sense.  These persons distrust centralized power and celebrate markets and free trade as liberating humankind from poverty, tyranny, and superstition.  True liberals do not fancy themselves fit to tell others what to ingest, what not to smoke, what merchants to patronize, what insurance to buy, or otherwise how to live.

True liberals understand that society is indescribably complex and that our knowledge is always tentative.  In contrast, too many of today's "liberals" - overestimating their own intelligence and underestimating both the intelligence of others and the dangers of government power - egotistically yearn to remake society according to their own images.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Lending evidence to the hypothesis that today's so-called "liberals" overestimate their own intelligence, the insightful Tim Worstall over at the Globalization Institute's site has this important post on -- oh my! -- a big bureaucratic blunder.  Turns out that government bureaucrats are human after all.

Walter Williams on Government Control Over Thermostatsl

My colleague Walter Williams shares his spot-on insights about the proposal in California to give a government agency the power and authority to remotely control thermostats in private buildings.  Here are some paragraphs from Walter's column:

Some people might agree with this level of government control over their lives, but if these amendments become law, you can safely bet other intrusive energy-saving proposals are waiting in the wing.

For now, California's energy Nazis are simply testing how much intrusiveness Californians will peaceably accept. I can easily imagine California's Energy Commission requiring remotely controlled main circuit-breaker boxes that control all the electricity coming into your house. That would enable the energy czar to better manage your use.

Say you're preparing a big dinner. The energy czar might decide you don't need so much heat in the rest of the house. Or, preparing a big dinner might mean the energy czar would turn off the energy to your washing machine and dryer while the electric stove is on.

There's no end to what the energy czar could do, particularly if he enlists the aid of California's Department of Health Services. Getting six to eight hours sleep each night is healthy; good health lowers health costs. So why not make it possible for the energy czar to turn the lights off at a certain hour?California's Department of Education knows children should do their homework after school rather than sit playing videogames or watching television. The energy czar could improve education outcomes simply by turning off the television, or at least turning off all noneducational programs.Of course, there could be a generous provision whereby if an adult is present, he could use a password to operate the television.You say, "Williams, you must be mad. All that would never happen." That's the same charge one might have made back in the '60s, when the anti-tobacco movement started, if someone predicted that the day would come when some cities, such as Calabasas, Calif., would outlaw smoking on public streets.

Nano Technology

In today's Washington Post is this report about how terrible it is that countless more Indians will be able to afford automobiles now that Tata has introduced its Nano, priced at $2,500.   Chief among the laments, of course, is the fact that such prosperity will result in the creation of more greenhouse gases.  (But Mira Kamdar, the author, rather inconsistently also frets that such an inexpensive car might further diminish the U.S. auto industry.)

For a much more clear-headed assessment of what the Nano means for ordinary Indians, read this blog post by Barun Mitra.  Here are some key paragraphs:

Not surprisingly, there are many who have expressed concerns about the prospect of the masses accessing personal automobiles. The issues they raise range from the impact on oil prices and a concern for global warming, to traffic congestion. Most such commentators have not been known to eschew their personal automobiles, or other modern conveniences, but have no qualms in frowning upon the masses enjoying some of the same benefits. This desire to keep others off the life-boats of their standard of living is a common feature of many who claim to have social or environmental concern in their hearts. One fact worth reminding them of is that transportation is one of the biggest expenses faced by rural poor seeking health care.

 The opposition to Nano is also an illustration of the head-in-the-sand mind-set, which pits rising demand for consumption against environmental conservation.

In fact, as more Indians are able to afford more cars, the scale of consumption will help improve the technology, improve efficiency and clean up the environment. It is not a coincidence, that Toyota's ascent up the world auto league has been accompanied by its pioneering efforts in new technologies and innovation. Though counter-intuitive, it is true of most areas of enterprise that only enhanced scales of consumption lead to improvement in efficiency - in this case, easily measured by tail-pipe emission. It is worth noting that while Toyota sold well over 9 million vehicles in 2007, Tata Motors took ten years to sell its millionth passenger car.

A Critical Distinction

Today's New York Times ran this report on the attempt by the government of California to gain statewide control over private thermostats.  I sent the following letter in response.

Government officials in California now seek power to centrally control thermostats in private buildings ("California Seeks Thermostat Control," January 11).  In an attempt to paint those who object to such government intrusion as alarmists, your reporter explains that "The fact that similar radio-controlled technologies have been used on a voluntary basis in irrigation systems on farm fields and golf courses and in limited programs for buildings on Long Island is seldom mentioned" by opponents of such power.

Suppose Sacramento proposes to remotely control, in "emergency" situations, all newspaper presses.  Would you remain sanguine about such government powers if someone explained that history is full of instances of the press voluntarily restraining itself?

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Call me pedestrian -- bourgeois -- simple-minded -- dumb-as-dirt, but I see a huge difference between voluntarily doing something and being forced to do that same something.

Rampaging Regulators

Quoting from an e-mail sent out by the good people at Free Market Environmentalism Roundtable (a project of PERC):

As some of you may already know, the California Energy Commission has proposed amendments to its standards for building energy efficiency. These standards include a requirement that any new or modified heating or air conditioning system will have to include a thermostat whose set point can be remotely controlled by government authorities who would be empowered to lower (in winter) or raise (in summer) your thermostat's temperature set point during "emergency events." The comment period closes on January 30th for those of you (especially California residents) who would like to register your ire and opposition.

Here's the document: CEC-400-2007-017-45DAY.PDF .  Check out pages 63-64 of this document for the offensive section.  (HT Roger Meiners)

I understand that any clever economist or philosopher can build models or offer coherent arguments "proving" that giving government power to control the thermostats in private buildings will improve "social welfare."  But no one can explain how such power does not diminish human freedom -- and is not a huge leap down the road to serfdom.

I quote again the final lines of Thomas Sowell's greatest book: Knowledge and Decisions:

[Freedom] is, above all, the right of ordinary people to find elbow rooms for themselves and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of their "betters."

Tierney on "Availability Entrepreneurs" and "Availability Cascades"

For several reasons, this New Year's Day article by New York Times science writer John Tierney is a must-read.  Here are the opening several paragraphs:

I’d like to wish you a happy New Year, but I’m afraid I have a different sort of prediction.

You’re in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what’s in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet.

Unfortunately, I can’t be more specific. I don’t know if disaster will come by flood or drought, hurricane or blizzard, fire or ice. Nor do I have any idea how much the planet will warm this year or what that means for your local forecast. Long-term climate models cannot explain short-term weather.

But there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).

Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.

A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”

When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

Dim Wits

Being an economist, I'm no expert on the physical principles that separate incandescent light bulbs from fluorescent ones.  I do, however, know enough to realize that Congress understands these principles no better than I do and, more importantly -- regardless of the knowledge possessed by any one or a group of members of Congress -- any legislation forcing Americans to switch from using one type of bulb to another is inevitably the product of a horrid mix of interest-group politics with reckless symbolism designed to placate an electorate that increasingly believes that the sky is falling.

These two letters in today's edition of the Wall Street Journal are worth a read:

In the final paragraph of your editorial "Dim Bulbs," (Dec. 21) you say that Congress has now dictated phasing out the incandescent bulb starting in 2012. Think of the hardships and costs that law will force on the public. Ponder your current incandescent bulb usages that do not readily adapt to compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) or others.

Incandescent bulbs can operate on low voltages such as three volts (flashlights) and 12 volts (autos) but compact CFLs cannot. No more flashlights for emergency or convenience use. When the bulb burns out in the ones you have, throw it away! How about no more power-on and indicator lights on your auto dashboard and your large and small (coffeemaker, iron) home appliances? Consider no more holiday lights such as on Christmas trees and outdoor decorations. What would you use for bicycle head and tail-lights? How about roadside distress and warning lights that plug into cigarette lighters or dashboard power sockets? Also mood lighting for parts of your home and some commercial establishments, since CFLs do not readily adapt to dimming. We could add to this list.

While some of the above uses are for convenience, others are for safety and life-saving reasons. Although decades in the future scientists may develop other sources of light, in the near term we do not have reasonable replacements for most of the above uses.

Roger A. Baumann, P.E.
Tucson, Ariz.

Reflecting upon the editorial "Dim Bulbs" I feel that a more illuminating title would have been "Dim Wits."

Does Congress understand that their beloved compact fluorescent light bulbs are miniature toxic bundles of mercury just waiting to pollute your local land fill? Does the public understand that their conventional light dimmers do not work with these bulbs? Just read the warning labels on the package.

Charles G. Battig, M.D.
Charlottesville, Va.

Global warming causes everything, Part II

Here from the Washington Post are just a few of the ways people are going to die because of global warming. Correction, a few of the ways people might die, according to a majority of scientists. Please click the link. It's a spectacular graphic of alarm.

It is hard to keep track of what global warming causes. It is simpler to just say "everything." There is no possibility mentioned of some people not dying if the earth gets warmer. There is no mention of how people might die if we tried to stop it.

In my version of the graphic, there is advertisement for a BMW holiday event. What a cheerful conjunction of events. Buy a car, drive more, cause more people to die from yellow fever!

Not from the Onion

I'm having a little trouble figuring out what to say about this story. The story is that divorce is bad for the environment. The Washington Post reports (HT: Mathieu Bédard):

Divorce is not just a family matter. It exacts a serious toll on the environment by boosting the energy and water consumption of those who used to live together, according to a study by two Michigan State University researchers.

The analysis found that cohabiting couples and families around the globe use resources more efficiently than households that have split up. The researchers calculated that in 2005, divorced American households used between 42 and 61 percent more resources per person than before they separated, spending 46 percent more per person on electricity and 56 percent more on water.

Their paper, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found that if the divorced couples had stayed together in 2005, the United States would have saved 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water in that year alone.

Well, yes. Two can live more cheaply than one. And of course, four can leave more cheaply than two because they can all watch the same TV and use the same overhead light. Thank goodness for the National Science Foundation that helped fund this study. (And some people say that we need more government support of basic research.)

"Hopefully this will inform people about the environmental impact of divorce," Liu said in an interview yesterday. "For a long time we've blamed industries for environmental problems. One thing we've ignored is the household."

The environmental impact of divorce? Are you kidding me? This is the cost of not understanding economics, not understanding trade-offs, not understanding the role of prices. The virtue of prices is that prices tell us what things cost. Some things are relatively cheap. Some are relatively expensive. Marriage is tough on cotton. When you marry, you tend to have kids. Kids tend to wear clothes and that means marriage is tough on cotton. But we don't worry about that. We understand that the price of clothes discourages people from consuming too much clothing. And when clothing gets cheaper, as it has over the last 50 years, people buy more clothing as a result, use more cotton, devote more land to cotton farming and so on. That's not a downside of marriage or having kids--people pay for the clothing they use. They take account of the cost when they decide to buy something. So when they do buy it or use it, that means that the benefits outweigh the costs. And that means that live IMPROVES and gets better, not worse when we use more of something.

In the case of water or electricity, if they're subsidized, then yes, people ignore the full costs when they use more of those things, whether it's because they're divorced or simply because they want a warmer home or take a longer shower. The solution isn't to decry divorce, it's to fix the prices.

Liu, who recently celebrated his 20th wedding anniversary, said he also tries to practice what he preaches. "I'm not divorced, and I've not thought about divorce," he said.

The implication is that Liu hates his wife and she hates him. But are they considering a divorce? No way. They're not that selfish. They care about the earth. Saints, that what they are. Saints.

The story closes with a similarly absurd quote from Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute:

"It would suggest we should be a little more careful when one's marrying to make sure the marriage is going to last, but that would be counter to the trend we've seen in recent decades, at least in this country," he said.

Yes, that's the reason to marry carefully. To make sure you don't use too much water or electricity. Not because it's tough on the kids or yourself to get a divorce. Here's a secret. Don't tell anybody. Living uses electricity and water and it's worth it, most of the time. Here's another secret. Civilization uses electricity and water. I guess we need more people living naked in caves.

If you don't like how much electicity and water we use, explain to me why it's the wrong amount. Then change the prices.

Everything is caused by global warming

Six hundred things and counting. Ah, science. The list is quite spectacular. Wander through it. (HT: Jeff Bliss and Christopher Alleva.

The list is compiled by John Brignell. The rest of his site is here.

Nature

The latest episode of EconTalk is a conversation with Daniel Botkin. He has a lot of interesting things to say about how humans view nature and how our metaphors color our policy preferences.

The Browning of Britain?

One of the hallmarks of sound economic thinking is the ability to distinguish costs from benefits.

Tim Worstall is a darn good economist.

Cleaned by Capitalism

I sent this letter today to the Baltimore Sun:

You again call upon government to force us Americans to reduce our emissions of CO2 ("Green and right," November 2).  And like nearly everyone else demanding further regulation of markets in the name of environmental protection, you overlook the fact that the very markets that you want to restrain save millions of lives annually by making people's living environments cleaner.

For evidence, read Margo Thorning's essay that appears today just inches from your own editorial.  In "Ending energy poverty," Ms. Thorning reports that "About 1.3 million people - mostly women and children - die prematurely every year because of exposure to indoor air pollution from burning biomass for fuel."  These deaths happen routinely in developing countries because people there have so little access to electrification, internal-combustion engines, and mass-produced consumer goods that they must burn biomass in their homes.  So in developed countries – whose denizens enjoy ready access to electric heating, home delivery of fuel oil, and other life-saving wonders - the capitalism that people loudly fear might raise global temperatures a few degrees over the next several decades silently yet effectively saves thousands of lives each and every day.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Be Very Scared

The October 29 issue of The New Yorker has a brilliantly insightful and funny cartoon.  (If the caption is difficult to read, it says "And now here's our environmental correspondent with some alarming news about the sky.")