Cafe Hayek

"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.")

Will Gore Warm to Stossel?

ABC News' and 20/20 co-anchor John Stossel will have a segment, on tomorrow night's 20/20 telecast (8:00pm, EDT), on why the debate over global warming is not over -- or, ought not be over.  Tune in.  I will.

Costs and Benefits

James Pethokoukis calls it Al Gore's $307 Trillion Gamble, pointing out the costs of actions and the benefits of inaction on global warming:

In one of its occasional assessments, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the cowinner with Al Gore of the Nobel Peace Prize—posited a scenario in which the global economy would grow at about 2 percent a year for the next 100 years (it's growing at more than twice that pace currently) with "fragmented" and "slow" per capita economic growth and technological change.

Indeed, it is just this scenario that was used by the influential Stern Report on the economic impact of climate change. By the year 2100, the size of the global economy would be $243 trillion. However, there is another IPCC scenario. It imagines "a future world of very rapid economic growth, low global population growth that peaks in mid-century and declines thereafter, and the rapid introduction of new and more efficient technologies." According to this story line, the global economy would grow at 3.5 percent per year, giving us a $550 trillion global economy in the year 2100, more than twice the size of the economy assumed in the first scenario.

I don't know about you, but give me a century of accelerating technological change and $300 trillion to pay for it, and there are few problems that would keep me up at night. So the question is: Which policies will get us there?

The Backlash

Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize has caused some folks to speak out against the religious component of global warming. The most thoughtful I've seen so far comes from Daniel Botkin in today's WSJ. (His book Discordant Harmonies is a fascinating look at how our often false and imperfect perception of nature and man's relationship to the natural world handicaps our ability to solve environmental problems.) Here are a few highlights from the WSJ article:

This year's United Nations report on climate change and other documents say that 20%-30% of plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction in this century due to global warming -- a truly terrifying thought. Yet, during the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the millions of species on Earth went extinct. The exceptions were about 20 species of large mammals (the famous megafauna of the last ice age -- saber-tooth tigers, hairy mammoths and the like), which went extinct about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and many dominant trees and shrubs of northwestern Europe. But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct, and few mammals.

Another:

I'm not a naysayer. I'm a scientist who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us. I have worked for 40 years to try to improve our environment and improve human life as well. I believe we can do this only from a basis in reality, and that is not what I see happening now. Instead, like fashions that took hold in the past and are eloquently analyzed in the classic 19th century book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," the popular imagination today appears to have been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.

Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest assessment is naïve. "Wolves deceive their prey, don't they?" one said to me recently. Therefore, biologically, he said, we are justified in exaggerating to get society to change.

And one more:

Many of my colleagues ask, "What's the problem? Hasn't it been a good thing to raise public concern?" The problem is that in this panic we are going to spend our money unwisely, we will take actions that are counterproductive, and we will fail to do many of those things that will benefit the environment and ourselves.

For example, right now the clearest threat to many species is habitat destruction. Take the orangutans, for instance, one of those charismatic species that people are often fascinated by and concerned about. They are endangered because of deforestation. In our fear of global warming, it would be sad if we fail to find funds to purchase those forests before they are destroyed, and thus let this species go extinct.

Lomborg on Gore

Here's Bjorn Lomborg, writing in yesterday's Boston Globe, on Al Gore's Nobel Prize.  Below are the first three paragraphs:

THIS YEAR'S Nobel Peace Prize justly rewards the thousands of scientists of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These scientists are engaged in excellent, painstaking work that establishes exactly what the world should expect from climate change.

The other award winner, former US vice president Al Gore, has spent much more time telling us what to fear. While the IPCC's estimates and conclusions are grounded in careful study, Gore doesn't seem to be similarly restrained.

Gore told the world in his Academy Award-winning movie to expect 20-foot sea-level rises over this century. He ignores the findings of his Nobel co-winners, who conclude that sea levels will rise between only a half-foot and two feet over this century, with their best expectation being about one foot. That's similar to what the world experienced over the past 150 years

Fishing

University of Illinois law professor Andy Morriss (who co-blogs with me at Market Correction) sent this excellent letter yesterday to the Financial Times.

Sirs,

Your story on the overfishing problem in the EU (“Report tears into Brussels fishing policy”, Sept. 27) quotes the author of a report critical of current regulatory efforts as attributing the problem to politicians’ and bureaucrats’ lack of will in standing up to fishing interests.  Fisheries are the classic tragedies of the commons and fishermen are behaving rationally when they overfish, for all of the benefits of each fish caught accrue to them while the costs are borne by the population as a whole. Fishermen are also behaving rationally when they “fish” for politicians in Brussels or national capitals, for if French fishermen do not, they will suffer when Italian fishermen do and vice versa.

Since the problem is a tragedy of the commons, the solution lies in an infusion of property rights rather than one of political will. Garrett Hardin, author of the original 1968 article describing  the tragedy, concluded that it was solved by “private property or something formally like it.”  Since then Iceland and New Zealand’s respective successes with “individualized tradable quotas” (ITQs) have demonstrated that property rights can solve the tragedy of the commons in fisheries in fact as well as theory. Rather than devolving power to regional councils, as the fishing commissioner suggests, the solution is to devolve power to individuals by creating property rights via ITQs. If the EU does so, the incentive to fish in Brussels will evaporate, while the fishermen will have incentives to protect the health of the fisheries.

Andrew P. Morriss
H. Ross & Helen Workman Professor of Law and Business
Professor, Institute for Government and Public Affairs
University of Illinois

The Case for Increasing Supplies of Petroleum

A few Cafe patrons have, quite reasonably, questioned my claim that it is not at all obvious that we're running out of oil.  The main point common to all of the e-mails that I've received on this matter is that, even though proved reserves of oil are today higher than they were in decades past, the actual, physical amount of oil in the ground must be less than it was back then.  After all, the more oil we use the less oil there must be remaining in the ground.

This fact is almost surely true.  But economically it might be irrelevant.  I reprise below one of my earliest posts here at Cafe Hayek:

Is it Possible that the Quantity of Oil is Practically Infinite?

Don Boudreaux

It seems obvious that we're destined to encounter seriously reduced supplies (and higher prices) of oil.  Even physics professors say so.

But consider a couple of scenarios.

Scenario One: You’re a hungry mosquito on the surface of an enormous balloon. The balloon contains as much blood as an Olympic-size swimming pool contains water. You, hungry mosquito that you are, inject your snoot into the balloon and enjoy a meal. Of course, by doing so you negligibly reduce the volume of blood in the balloon. But whether you know it or not, you can gorge yourself on blood from this balloon for the rest of your life and there will still be far more blood remaining in the balloon at your death than you’ve consumed during your lifetime.

Scenario Two: You’re a hungry mosquito on a balloon the size of child’s marble. You take a meal. The size of your meal relative to the blood-contents of the tiny balloon is large; you significantly reduce the contents.

…..

I don’t know if humanity and its demand for oil is like the mosquito in scenario one, but I’m sure that we are not like the mosquito in scenario two. We might be in some intermediate scenario – say, like a mosquito sitting atop a blood-filled balloon the size of a large beach ball.

But we could be like the mosquito in scenario one. That mosquito needn’t know – probably wouldn’t know – that she’s atop a physical quantity of blood that is practically limitless. If she's told, accurately, that the amount of blood in her balloon is finite, she might worry that she’ll run out of blood, or that she'll drink so much that what eventually remains in the balloon will be too costly for her to suck out; she might persuade herself to drink less blood. Would she be wise to do so?

If scenario #1 is closer to reality -- and the evidence so far is consistent with that possibility -- then the relevant constraint on our getting oil out of the ground is not any scarcity of the physical amount of oil that exists in the ground as much as it is the scarcity of our ingenuity and resources for use in that endeavor.  As this ingenuity and these resources become more abundant -- as their effectiveness in finding and extracting crude oil improves -- the amount of oil available for our use does indeed increase, in a very real way, over time even as we consume more oil.

Really?!?!

Here's a letter that I sent a couple of days ago to the Washington Times.

22 September 2007

Editor, The Washington Times

To the Editor:

Carl Henn makes two astonishing claims (Letters, Sept. 22).  The first is that "our fuel of choice oil runs out at exactly the rate we use it."

According to MIT's M.A. Adelman, "At the end of 1970, non-opec countries had about 200 billion remaining in proved reserves.  In the next 33 years, those countries produced 460 billion barrels and now have 209 billion 'remaining.' The producers kept using up their inventory, at a rate of about seven percent per year, and then replacing it."  Over the same time period, proved reserves in opec countries have nearly doubled from 412 billion barrels to 819 barrels.  [From Adelman, "The Real Oil Problem," Regulation, Spring 2004.  Available here.]

Clearly, we don't run out of oil "at the exact rate we use it."

Second, Mr. Henn avers that cars aren't important because "our country somehow got along without them for more than 200 years."  Well, yes - and Americans in the past also "got along" without refrigeration, indoor plumbing, and antibiotics. Is Mr. Henn content to "get along" also without these things?

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

TANSTAAFNP

Here's a letter I sent recently to a local radio station in D.C.

15 September 2007

News Editor, WTOP Radio

To the Editor:

I waited in vain for you to draw your listeners' attention to the connection between two of your reports today.  The first report - delivered in a grave voice - was of how rising rents are financially squeezing low-income families.  The cause you give for these rising rents is a "housing shortage."

The second report - delivered in an upbeat, almost triumphant voice - was of how Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has set aside yet more land in that state as a nature preserve.

As government declares more and more land off-limits for development, it reduces the potential supply of new houses and apartments, thereby causing housing prices and rents to rise.  More nature preserves might be desirable, but people should be made aware of their long-term costs.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Carbon Footprints

Here is Allen Sanderson on the virtues (or lack thereof) of minimizing your carbon footprint.

Eat Global

A lot of environmentalists want people to eat local to reduce transportation costs. But James McWilliams in this New York Times piece, points out that transportation isn't the only cost (HT Jim Morse and Coyote Blog):

But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment? Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand, no doubt responding to Europe’s push for “food miles labeling,” recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption. Other scientific studies have undertaken similar investigations. According to this peer-reviewed research, compelling evidence suggests that there is more — or less — to food miles than meets the eye.

It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.

Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.

These life-cycle measurements are causing environmentalists worldwide to rethink the logic of food miles. New Zealand’s most prominent environmental research organization, Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua, explains that localism “is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport.” The British government’s 2006 Food Industry Sustainability Strategy similarly seeks to consider the environmental costs “across the life cycle of the produce,” not just in transportation.

I suspect those New Zealand researche