okie wrote:Parados, obviously you have never advocated destroying the economy. Let us say "4" is equivalent to destroying the economy. I think Bernard's argument is that kuvasz has not advocated "4," but he has advocated 2 + 2, which Bernard adds up to get "4." Kuvasz argues that it does not add up to 4. Perhaps we could rephrase the equation to "x + y," whereas Bernard interprets the x and the y to be the draconian economic and technical policies that add up to 4, while kuvasz do not see x and y as affecting the economy at all.
Well, how interesting. Once again words have been attributed to me that I did not make for the sake of yet more strawman arguments from the Luddites on A2K to savage. Nowhere have I advocated any such equation or presented arguments that would distill down to such plain addition or numeration. All I have stated, and repeatedly was that global warming is real, that it is anthropogenic and that temperatures will rise with increasing concentrations in the atmosphere of CO2.
Others have taken my defense of the theory of GW, the data that predicts it, and the rejection, based upon sound scientific principles of all the far Right Wing attempts to debunk the data and theory as a call for draconian economic measures. Nowhere have I spoken of a detailed plan of action to slow and stop GW. Others have fashioned from straw their own interpretation of my unspoken opinions on how best to slow and reverse the destructive potential of GW for the planet and human civilization.
And they are wrong.
Try as I might I have invited repeatedly those deceitful slanderers to stand and deliver any remarks from me and Parados to support their accusations. They have avoided answering my request like witches avoid water.
Recently, it has been said that their emphatic remarks stating that Parados and I wish to destroy the US economy should not be taken literally. But what sane men would state that another calls for the destruction of the US economy and then argue that such words should not be taken literally?
For when in the fundamental Aristotlian logic equation, (A) does not equal (A), there is no value in discussing what 2+2 equals or the value of z with such corrupted mentalities
That no Luddite has the emotional capacity to admit that they can be in error of their adversary is prima fascia evidence and a true reflection upon their ideologically dogmatic mentality. If normal logic systems do not apply to them there is no reason to engage such idiots in meaningful dialog.
Being idiots, surely they will argue with a senior fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution who has served as chief economist at the World Bank and is a Nobel Prize winning economist as well.
http://josephstiglitz.com/
Joseph Stiglitz proposes practical solutions to global warming issues. Stiglitz sees the Kyoto Protocol as positive but recognizes
1. that the world's biggest polluter (the US) has not agreed to join it.
2. that developing countries, which will shortly be contributing 50% of all emissions, are left without firm commitments to do anything under it.
While Kyoto requires that countries bring emissions back to 1990 levels, developing countries complain, with some justice, that their energy consumption was low then relative to developed countries so the cutback requirement is unfair. Stiglitz's approach is to provide an enforcement mechanism.
Instead of revising the Kyoto Protocol, or calling for a new treaty, Stiglitz argues that other nations should use a well-established existing international agreement -- the World Trade Organization -- to pressure the U.S. to change its ways.
Quote:In most of the developed countries of the world today, firms are paying the cost of pollution to the global environment, in the form of taxes imposed on coal, oil, and gas. but American firms are being subsidized--and massively so. There is a simple remedy: other countries should prohibit the important of American goods produce using energy intensive technologies, or, at the very least, impose a high tax on them, to offset the subsidy that those goods are currently receiving.
Stiglitz points out that the United States, a big backer of the WTO, has already recognized its right to regulate for environmental reasons, because the U.S. refused to allow importation of Thai shrimp caught in "turtle-unfriendly" nets.
He does admit that this policy might not be popular with everyone:
Quote:Of course, the Bush Administration and the oil companies to which it is beholden will be upset. They may even suggest that this is the beginning of a global trade war. It is not. It is simply pointing out the obvious: American firms have long had an unfair trade advantage because of their cheap energy, but while they get the benefit, the world is paying the price through global warming. This situation is, or at least should be, totally unacceptable. Energy tariffs would simply restore balance--and at the same time provide strong incentives for the United States to do what it should have been doing all along.
Here is another snippet from Stiglitz's proposal:
Quote:The world seems at an impasse: the United States refuses to go along unless developing countries are brought into the fold; and the developing countries see no reason why they should not be allowed to pollute as much per capita as the United States or Europe. Indeed, given their poverty and the costs associated with reducing emissions, one might give them even more leeway. But, given their low levels of income, that would imply that no restraints would be imposed on them for decades.
There is a way out, and that is through a common (global) environmental tax on emissions. There is a social cost to emissions, and the common environmental tax would simply make everyone pay the social cost. This is in accord with the most basic of economic principles, that individuals and firms should pay their full (marginal) costs. The world would, of course, have to agree on assessing the magnitude of the social cost of emissions; the tax could, for instance, be set so that the level of (global) reductions is the same as that set by the Kyoto targets.
As technologies evolve, and the nature of the threat of global warming becomes clearer, the tax rate could adjust, perhaps up, perhaps down. ... each country could keep its own revenues and use them to replace taxes on capital and labor: it makes much more sense to tax "bads" (pollution,like greenhouse gas emissions) than to tax "goods," like work and saving. (Economists refer to these taxes as corrective taxes.) Hence, overall economic efficiency would be increased by this proposal.
The big advantage of taxation over the Kyoto approach is that it avoids most of the distributional debate. Under Kyoto, getting the right to pollute more is, in effect, receiving an enormous gift. (Now that pollution rights are tradeable, we can even put a market value on them.) The United States might claim that because it is a larger country, it "needs" more pollution rights. Norway might claim that because it uses hydroelectric power, the scope for reducing emissions is lower. France might claim that because it has already made the effort to go into nuclear energy, it should not be forced to reduce more. Under the common tax approach, these debates are sidestepped. All that is asked is that everyone pay the social cost of their emissions, and that the tax be set high enough that the reductions in emissions is large enough to meet the required targets. The economic cost to each country is small?-in some cases, actually negative.
http://www.envirovaluation.org/index.php?title=the_economists_voice_via_berkeley_electr&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Quote:If the United States could go its own merry way-keeping the carbon dioxide it emits over its own territory, warming up its own atmosphere, bearing itself whatever costs (including hurricanes) that result, would be one thing. But that is not so. The energy profligate lifestyle of the United States inflicts global damage immensely greater than any war it might wage. The Maldives will within 50 years be our own 21st century Atlantis, disappearing beneath the ocean; a third of Bangladesh will be submerged, and with that country's poor people crowded closer altogether, incomes already close to subsistence level will be further submerged.
Stiglitz points out that the United States refusal to reduce its carbon emissions is like a subsidy to itself at the expense of other countries of the world. He proposes that a world wide carbon tax be imposed on carbon emissions. Under his plan, everyone in the world would be required to pay the social cost of emissions. Furthermore, such a tax would be high enough so that emissions reduction would meet its required targets.
Quote:Stiglitz's approach is to provide an enforcement mechanism. Non-signatories to Kyoto, such as the US, who continue to spoil the earth's atmosphere, should have a WTO case of unfair subsidisation brought against them by countries who have signed such as Japan and Europe. Even the US recognises the role of such actions - it prohibited the import of Thai shrimp that had been caught in 'turtle unfriendly' nets. With respect to global warming the subsidies are the costs to the global environment caused by US firms not paying the full global costs of production. Complainant countries should accordingly prohibit the import of goods that benefit from such subsidies or at least levy hefty taxes on them. This is a bit like earlier proposals for counterveiling tariffs to help enforce international agreements.
Problems of bringing about change in the developing world could be resolved by scrapping the Kyoto agreement but introducing a global environmental tax on emissions that achieves global reductions in emissions equivalent to the Kyoto targets. This tax might change as information about global warming improves and technologies evolve. Each country could collect and utilise its tax revenues as it saw fit and could cut pre-existing taxes on capital and labour in response to the new revenue source. Such taxes would improve efficiencies because they are directed at a ?'bad' (pollution) not a ?'good' (like work and saving). Such taxes would have low costs - in some cases there might be net benefits.
These are worthwhile suggestions that apply the notion of unpaid social costs at the global level and which recognise the superiority of green taxes with their ?'double dividend' advantages at the national level.
Stiglitz also has ideas on how to bring developing nations into line, but he begins with the biggest problem: the United States. Some might not like the regulatory thrust of his plan, but a carbon tax, which it implies, is hardly a new or radical proposal. After all it was proposed eight years ago by that radical Left Wing magazine, called the Economist
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/7/17/152930/785
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/glotax/carbon/econmist.htm
http://www.env-econ.net/2006/07/stiglitzs_presc.html
FYI to counter the marginally sane fetish about Lomborg and his implied infallibilities via-a-vis GW.
Quote:The Cost of Doing Nothing
(Australian Financial Review)
11 April 2002
Experienced debaters rarely commit themselves to an unambiguously false statement. So I was surprised to read Bjorn Lomborg's claim that 'the results of all major cost-benefit analyses show that doing Kyoto or something even grander is simply a bad investment for the world'. There are plenty of examples to prove him wrong.
Among the many economists whose work supports Kyoto is Jeffrey Frankel, a member of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton. Frankel is cited by Lomborg for his work on economic growth, but his work on climate change is ignored. According to the modelling reported by Frankel, the costs of Kyoto would be about 0.1 per cent of GDP for developed countries. This is far below the range of $150 billion to $350 billion (0.6 to 1.5 per cent of GDP) cited by Lomborg.
Frankel is not alone. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cites a range of model estimates of the costs of implementing Kyoto using market mechanisms. They show that, with a global system of emission rights trading, the cost of implementing Kyoto would range from 0.1 per cent to 0.2 per cent of GDP.
Lomborg dismisses global emissions trading as politically infeasible because it would involve the redistribution of billions of dollars to developing countries (page 305). But then he turns around (page 318) and attacks alternative ways of implementing Kyoto by suggesting that the billions required could be better spent - by redistributing them to developing countries.
To put the cost estimates in context, 0.1 per cent of Australian GDP is about $600 million per year. The economic benefits generated by the Great Barrier Reef alone are more than this, but, like reefs around the world, it is already being affected by bleaching arising from rising water temperatures. Interestingly, Lomborg (page 4) promises to refute the claim that 'coral reefs are dying', but this issue is not mentioned in the chapter on global warming or, as far as I can see, anywhere else in the book.
Other economists argue that the benefits of doing 'something even grander' will exceed the costs. A recent paper entitled Climate Change:An Agenda for Global Collective Action, proposes a modified version of Kyoto which could achieve greater reductions in emissions while overcoming some political objections. One of the authors is Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel prize. Other notable supporters of action to mitigate global warming include Kenneth Arrow, William Cline and Paul Krugman. Lomborg gives 16 references to his preferred expert, William Nordhaus, but omits all these eminent economists.
Lomborg's estimates of the costs of mitigation are too high. However, the real problems in his book relate to the costs of doing little or nothing, as he proposes.
Because the costs of doing nothing arise in the future, the weight that is placed on those costs depends critically on the rate of discount that is adopted. The real after-tax rate of interest on government bonds over the last 100 years has generally been between 1 and 3 per cent, but Lomborg assumes the rate is 5 per cent. The effect is to reduce the value of costs incurred in 50 years time by a factor of around 10, effectively disregarding the interests of future generations.
The most important problem with Lomborg's work is easier to understand. Lomborg claims to be an environmentalist. But in 70 pages on global warming, he says nothing about its effects on natural ecosystems. The IPCC report lists a wide range of ecological impacts on species extinction, coral reefs, wetlands and so on, which, taken together, show that climate change is the biggest single ecological problem faced by the world. For developed countries, the ecological costs of climate change will far outweigh direct economic impacts.
Most economists who have looked at the ecological costs of climate change conclude that, while they are almost impossible to evaluate in monetary terms, they are sufficient to justify substantial action. Lomborg ignores them completely.
Nordhaus, on whom Lomborg relies for all his modelling results, makes an admittedly 'speculative' estimate of the costs of ecological damage. This estimate is absurdly low - $5 billion a year for the entire US, including the economic costs of rising sea levels.
Of course, if you define a problem out of existence, as Lomborg and Nordhaus do, the optimal response is to do nothing. Lomborg is free to believe the most optimistic estimates on every environmental issue, and the most pessimistic estimates of the cost of doing anything. But he shouldn't call himself 'skeptical' or an 'environmentalist.
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/news/Lomborg0204.html
Professor John Quiggin is a Senior Research Fellow of the Australian Research Council, based at the Australian National University and Queensland University of Technology.
The Economics of Climate Change: A Primer
bibliography
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4171&sequence=7
THE COSTS OF INACTION WITH RESPECT TO CLIMATE CHANGE:
This paper has focused first on the overall benefits and costs of global warming abatement, and second, on quantifying the costs of delaying policy action. Read it all or skip to the conclusions.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/37/2/34738373.pdf
