Inside the Beltway

CEI’s Myron Ebell

The Wall Street Journal has an article (page A4, 12th September) by Deborah Solomon that discusses the policy divide between politicians who favor a cap-and-trade scheme and economists who favor a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Left out of the discussion are the more rational people who oppose both.

Bjorn Lomborg in his concise new book, Cool It, reviews the academic literature on the possible costs of global warming impacts.  Nearly all the estimates support the conclusion that the costs of potential global warming impacts will be far less than the costs of policies to stop global warming.

Powerful support for this conclusion is also found in a new study by one of the pre-eminent economists in the field, William Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, which concludes that the costs of global warming policies would be two to three times the costs of global warming impacts.  Nordhaus’s study has not gotten much attention, but it is hard to get around because Nordhaus is not a global warming skeptic and the numbers he uses are from official sources, such as the UN IPCC.  In my view, the official forecasts probably over-estimate the costs of global warming impacts and underestimate the costs of reducing emissions.

Moreover, the higher energy prices resulting from either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade will be felt disproportionately by poor people, who already pay a higher percentage of their incomes on energy than the better off.  This is made clear in Taxing the Poor, a recent study by the National Center for Policy Analysis, which is a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition.  It should always be kept in mind that when alarmists like Al Gore say that we must reduce our use of hydrocarbon energy, it is not wealthy elitists like Gore but rather the poor who will be doing most of the reducing.

Across the States

ALEC’s Daniel Simmons

Global warming policy in the Golden State threatens to make local government obsolete.

This summer, California Attorney General Jerry Brown initiated lawsuits against local governments if they failed to sufficiently incorporate global warming mitigation strategies into county and municipal development plans.

Then, California’s legislature began consideration of S. 375, a measure that would dictate to local communities how they can plan for the future by linking state funding for local transportation projects to a municipality’s adoption of low carbon development plans.

Now, the California Energy Commission has released a report suggesting that the State strip local leaders of all development decisions. The report, “The Role of Land Use in Meeting California’s Energy and Climate Change Goals,” recommends that legislators create a land use policy template that localities must follow when planning long term growth.

Land use policy-making is one of municipal and county governments’ most important decisions. Throughout California’s history, these decisions were made by local politicians with the unique sensibilities of local inhabitants in mind. Now, the So Cal urbanites who dominate California’s legislature want dictate to all California how it can grow. Only in California!

Around the world

CEI’s Iain Murray

The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (APEC), representing most Pacific Rim countries, last week agreed a declaration on global warming that fell far short of the hopes of most of the green lobby.  It committed the APEC nations to work within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and set an "aspirational" long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Australian and Canadian climate campaigners called the agreement "faudulent" and a step away from the Kyoto process. 

As often predicted in this column, the world is indeed moving away from binding emissions reduction targets in the short to medium term.  The next step looks like the crafting of some form of face-saving exit strategy for the European Union.  That process could begin as early as the conference called by President Bush for Washington on Sept. 27-28.