OPINION/COMMENTARY

Carbon's Kindergarten Cop

I don't know what you'd call an investor who puts lots of money into "investments" that offer no benefits, but "Schwarzenegger" might be a good label. The Governor's pledge to lower greenhouse gas emissions in California to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 will bring Californians little or no environmental benefit, while costing the citizenry a substantial amount of money. The Governor has long pandered to California's environmental interest groups, but as an earlier (and wiser) Republican Governor named Reagan observed, "Facts are stubborn things." So let's look at the stubborn facts. If it worked perfectly, the legislation now in front of the California Legislature -- largely in line with the Governor's plan -- would lower California greenhouse gas emissions by 145 million tons by the year 2020[1]. That might sound like a large reduction. But let's do some math. Global emissions of greenhouse gases in 2020 are estimated to be about 42.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent -- yes billions, with a 'b.' If California avoids emitting 145 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, that's about a 0.3 percent (three-tenths of one percent) reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions. Now let's figure out what benefit that provides. Despite people mislabeling greenhouse gases as "pollutants," greenhouse gases are non-toxic: the only benefit you get from reducing them is to avoid some degree of global warming in the future. The predicted warming by the year 2020 according to the absolute worst-case computer models of the United Nations[2] is about about 1.3 degree (Fahrenheit). If we make the assumption that California's action will knock out temperature change equal to its greenhouse gas reductions (0.3 percent) we see that California's actions will avert about four one-thousandths of a degree of warming, an amount far too little to measure, much less to offer any benefits to Californians (or anyone else, for that matter). So much for benefits, let's talk about costs. California politicians like to talk about California as if it were a country. So, let's pretend that's true, and assume the likely cost of GHG reductions in California will be similar to what's been estimated in other high-tech, economically-powerful countries. A 2002 study looked at the impact of greenhouse gas reductions on the economies of four European countries with goals about 20 percent weaker than what the Governor is proposing, so we'll call those least-cost estimates.[4] Germany, according to that study, would lose nearly 3 percent of its gross domestic product and up to 1.3 million jobs annually by 2020, and ever after. The Netherlands would lose about 2 percent of GDP, and up to 180,000 jobs, while the UK would also lose about 2 percent of GDP, which could cost them up to 750,000 jobs....

Republicans Out of Gas

It's increasingly clear that Republican politicians have zero interest in knowing anything about which they speak and no commitment to any principle beyond that of getting elected. The high-voltage debate about gasoline prices makes that point in spades. Consider a talk on energy policy given the other day by Rep. Jack Kingston (R., Ga.). The congressman was invited by the Media Research Center to provide his thoughts on the media's coverage of the recent gasoline-price spiral. Rather than do that, however, Kingston used his time to pitch his bill—HR 4409—and to ruminate on how we got into this mess. Now, Jack Kingston is thought of as a pretty conservative guy as far as these things go. He was a member of the Republican class of 1994 and is currently vice chairman of the House Republican Conference. The MRC—a long-standing member of the Washington conservative establishment—was sure that they were getting one of the most free market guys on the Hill to talk some sense to the press. Here's what they got: a pitch to have the feds establish a goal of reducing oil consumption by 20 percent by 2025. To get there, Kingston proposes to compel auto manufacturers to make flexibly fueled vehicles, to further expand the subsidies provided to those who buy hybrid-powered cars, and to unleash another avalanche of subsidies on exotic energy technologies far and wide. If we adopt this bill, Kingston believes that America will be energy independent by 2015. Let's dwell on this for a moment. Government pronouncements that the economy produce x amount of this or consume y amount of that are the characteristics for which Soviet five-year plans were famous. Unfortunately, such dictates are all the rage in Washington today. One might expect free-market Republicans to be leery of such ham-handed intervention. But one would be wrong....

CEI Launches Ad Campaign to Counter Global Warming Alarmism

The Competitive Enterprise Institute today launched a national ad campaign to counter global warming alarmism. CEI has produced two 60-second television spots focusing on the call by some environmental groups and politicians to reduce fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions. “The campaign to limit carbon dioxide emissions is the single most important regulatory issue today,” says Marlo Lewis, a CEI senior fellow in environmental policy. “Claims of looming climate disaster due to energy use are unfounded; our ad campaign is a call for balance in public discussions of global warming.” “Our ‘carbon footprints’ have become the environmentalist version of criminal fingerprints—a basis for fines, restraints, and punishment,” says Sam Kazman, CEI’s general counsel and the campaign’s script developer. One of the ads focuses on the often-forgotten benefits of the processes that produce carbon dioxide and improve our quality of life, giving us heat, light, and transportation. The second ad focuses on the disparity between the glacier-melting headlines and the actual science. The ads will run in 14 U.S. cities from May 18-28, 2006. The cities include Albany, NY; Albuquerque, NM; Anchorage, AK; Austin, TX; Charleston, WV; Dallas; Dayton, OH; Denver; Harrisburg, PA; Phoenix; Sacramento and Santa Barbara, CA; Springfield, IL; and Washington, DC....

Natural Enemies: An Anatomy of Environmental Conflict

For those who live in modern cities, nature is a haven, a refuge from an urban jungle. The frustrations of the city make it easy to feel nostalgia for a simple life that never was: days spent hiking in the Grand Canyon, nights spent curled up by the fireplace after a hot shower and something nice from the refrigerator. But nature is not a national park, as people who make their living in its midst are aware. My ancestors emigrated from Germany to North America in the 1850’s, settling in Minnesota and Saskatchewan. Like most settlers, they had mixed feelings about nature. [1] Beautiful it may have been, but it was not the innocuous beauty that city dwellers find in art galleries. Nature was wild, literally. It could be kind. It could be indifferent. Or it could be an appalling enemy, a promise of hard life and sudden death. My mother lost a brother to diphtheria. A mile down the road, her uncle watched his whole family, a wife and three children, die of diphtheria in the space of three days. She grew up on a farm that got virtually no rain for a stretch of ten years. [2] She said, "You’d see black clouds boiling on the horizon. If you didn’t know better you’d think the rain was finally coming. But it wasn’t rain. When you got up in the morning everything would be covered by a carpet of dust. Or grasshoppers." For many of the world’s people today, nature remains as it was for my ancestors–red in tooth and claw. It comes in the night to kill their children. [3] No hot shower. No refrigerator. Western civilization has given me the luxury of being an environmentalist. I am insulated against nature, and this insulation gives me the luxury of no longer needing to see nature as a threat. Unfortunately, not everyone is so insulated, and thus not everyone is in a position to join me in treating wilderness preservation as an urgent priority. Therein lies a source of conflict, a kind of conflict that is bad for the environment and that we cannot resolve unless we understand that it is not like other kinds of conflict....

The Bear Facts

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has just put the polar bear on the endangered species list because it is supposedly "facing extinction" -- mainly, it claims, as a result of global warming. But statistics show the polar bear is not facing extinction, not by a long shot. The polar bear biologist cited by the IUCN correctly states the current population of polar bears to be about 22,000-25,000. But when asked for historical data he responds that this number has not changed much in recent decades. He does not mention the fact that half a century ago there were only about 8,000-10,000 polar bears. That low number was not the result of global warming or even cooling but of overhunting. A subsequent regulation of the hunt solved the problem: the polar bear population started to increase again. While it is probably not possible to define an ideal number of polar bears that "belong" on the planet, there are indications, both from scientific studies and from traditional Inuit knowledge (called IQ for Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit) that the current number of polar bears is actually high. There are about 20 groups of these animals in the Arctic and the majority of them are thriving. The avalanche of media reports about polar bears in trouble is based on just two of these groups. The recent increase of hunting quota for polar bears in Greenland and Canada would actually indicate that their number is increasing....