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Climate policy is like buying insurance
Commentator David Frum.
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TEXT OF COMMENTARY
Kai Ryssdal: Commentator David Frum has been thinking a lot about climate change. What can be proved. And what has to be inferred. And about how all that might affect the decisions that are being made in Copenhagen and in Washington.
DAVID FRUM: We know how carbon dioxide interacts with heat radiation. We know how much carbon dioxide is being added to the atmosphere every year. And we have a fair estimate of how much more will be added over the next decade if nothing changes.
The trouble is, we don't know the things we most want to know. How much will additional increments of carbon raise the planet's surface temperature? How dangerous are such changes? What value should we set on preventing them?
Because we don't know the most important things, our climate policy is necessarily based on projections. We are trying to measure risk and the value of mitigating risk. In other words, climate policy is a little like buying insurance.
You'd never spend your entire income on a life insurance policy. On the other hand, it would be reckless to go uncovered against large and possibly lethal risks.
That's the approach we should be taking with carbon dioxide. We want to put a price on carbon dioxide that encourages consumers to conserve and producers to substitute.
The cap-and-trade plan before Congress does not set prices. It sets a limit on the total amount of carbon to be emitted. Such a system creates complex and often perverse incentives, as the Europeans are discovering. In order to win political approval, they set the emissions cap so high that no carbon abatement is expected for years to come.
A carbon tax, by contrast, would instantly signal everyone to change their behavior. A tax of, say, $15 per ton would add 14 cents to a gallon of gasoline and raise an estimated $80 billion a year. And it would launch a shift that could be accelerated by higher taxes if the first round did not work fast enough. And unlike a cap-and-trade system, which creates property rights, a tax is very easy to reduce or repeal if further research shows that global warming is proceeding slower or is less harmful than governments today fear.
A good insurance agent thinks not only of the policy he or she wants to sell, but about the total needs of the insured. Let's have more of that kind of thinking and less hustle.
RYSSDAL: David Frum is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Daryl: I wanted to comment on the three points you made:
1. It is true that global temperature has varied, but the point is it has not varied so much or so quickly as it has in the last 100 years or so.
2. While water vapor is, like CO2, a greenhouse gas, unlike CO2 the amount in the atmosphere depends on temperature—warmer temperatures leading to more water vapor. So water vapor *responds to*, rather than drives, greater temperatures—in no way does water vapor make CO2 irrelevant as a greenhouse gas. That in fact is bad news, as water vapor thus magnifies the warming caused by CO2.
3. It is simply incorrect that CO2 levels are nearly saturated. That has been known for more than 50 years.
I feel safe bypassing Mr.Frum's climatic speculations. Given that I've read that the cap and trade strategy has been gamed in Europe and that, furthermore, it WILL be gamed by the US's storied financial 'services' establishment, the carbon tax sounds like a good alternative. Unlike the vast herd of his ideological confrere's, David Frum has the occasional good idea.
Not many people doubt that the globe has warmed over some arbitrary period. I would even cede that manmade CO2 release has probably increased this warming slightly. The points to remember are the globe temperature has varied significantly over time, there are other gases that have a more significant impact than CO2 (e.g. water vapor) and the impact that man can make to the CO2 emissions without killing our lifestyle is small. Also consider that the CO2 contribution to warming is very close to saturation (i.e. doubling the atmospheric CO2 won't double the heat trapped). This seems like an attempt to grab tax revenue by draping it in a thin scientific veneer.
-A Scientist
Owen Musselwhite: The answer to your question "What is the optimal temperature of the Earth" is simple: It should be in the same temperature range that human civilization developed under, and around which its infrastructure and cultures have developed.
That infrastructure is massively expensive, and, when built, assumed a stable climate. The current change in climate that is occurring will not be consistent with that infrastructure, or cultures, leading both to huge expenses as well as greater potential for social instability.
On the warming Earth: while you are free to disagree, other readers should know that that change in climate is extraordinarily well-documented. The arctic ice cap, for example, is much smaller and thinner. The US Navy has a careful record of this related to the ability of submarines to surface there; the ice is something like half as thick as it was in the 1950s. And there are more than one thousand scientific papers documenting the migration towards the poles of plant and animal species, consistent with a warming. The Inuits, who require good ice from which to hunt, also know much about how things have warmed.
The evidence for a warming Earth is overwhelming. And most of the implications of that warming are negative.
Oh-Em-Gee! Did I just heard David Frum advocate government taxation of carbon over the free market solution quote/unquote of Cap-and-Trade?
In a cross-over question: would David Frum favor everyone buying mandatory global warming insurance or should those who live in high elevations places opt-out?
I think this commentator is seriously mistaken about government's willingness to give up a tax that has been proven unnecessary for its intended purpose. He also seriously overstates the case for government intervention. Someone entering a not-particularly-dangerous profession might well prefer the vanishingly remote risk of uninsured death to the all too real life insurance premiums; alarmists should be trying to convince the public to go their way rather than using the coercive power of government to make other courses of action illegal or prohibitively expensive.
OK let me get this straight. Man made global warming can't be observed, measured or proved - but we should purchase "insurance" in the form of confiscatory taxes on our citizenry because it "could" be a threat? Did I hear this right?
What's next? Taxes/Insurance against ET - bcause he "could" be a threat?
Mr. Fromm's assertion that I by car insurance to cover my risk so I should have taxes levied against me to cover the "risk" of global warming. The concept that I might hurt someone or damage property while operating my car is circumstance that CAN be observed, measured and even rated for risk (or probability of occurrence). "Climate Change" has exactly ZERO of these characteristics.
One question I'd love to ask these "experts" - What is the optimum temperature for the globe? I'd like a number. Is 72 dgrees? Is it 81 degrees? Give me a number! Now, tell how exactly you propose to get the planet to that number. Afterall, this is what "fighting global warming" is all about - altering the planet's temperature. Well, if you're of the believe we can affect the temperature/climate why not set a number at there as a goal? I know the answer to this line of thought... can your experts figure it out?
I DOUBT IT.
Owen Musselwhite
