Bali high, Bali low: engaging the Rizalist on global warming and prematurely melting snow

Is global warming the new Y2k bug without a deadline? Dean Jorge Bocobo asks. His post on climate change has the promise of reason, but quickly degenerates into a polemic against environmentalism, the media, politics, and Al Gore.

• First, we agree with Dean that on any issue, a fair amount of skepticism is always healthy. But skepticism must be followed by due diligence, that is to say, an articulation of the reasons for skepticism. Otherwise it is simply contrarianism and obscurantism.
  
• We also are, like him, uncomfortable with science by consensus, and this discomfort has support in the history and the philosophy of science itself. Listening to the chair of the IPCC with Al Gore with CNN's Jonathan Mann made me squirm in my seat a little. Pachi sounded like a bureaucrat/propagandist who could tolerate a little dramatization of 'facts' for the purpose of 'raising consciousness.'
• Lastly, we think that any scientific assertion has to have a null hypothesis falsifiable under Karl Popper's definition.

Dean proceeds to ask:

• But is the price of further human progress the end of the world? Have we made war on the Earth itself, as Al Gore suggests and are locked in a relationship of Mutually Assured Destruction? Al Gore does not say this at all and never has.
• Can a tax save the earth from the laws of economics and thermodynamics, as well as close the Gap between the Rich and the Poor? Do the rich nations of the world owe pollution reparations to the poor nations, and do poor nations have an equal right to pollute the atmosphere, at least for a while until they have both sinned the same amount against Gaia? In fact, for a tax to be effective, it has to be designed with the use of economic theory, and theory does suggest that taxes can be used judiciously to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
  
• Is green the new yellow journalism? Is global warming the new Y2K Bug without a deadline? Well, media is always susceptible to yellow, regardless of the issue, and it is up to critical bloggers like Dean to help enlighten us.

Dean then calls our attention to the letter of Freeman Dyson and others "urging adaptation instead of futile attempts to 'fight' climate change with sin taxes." Adaptation is one of the options for mitigating global warming impacts and should always be on the menu, and sin taxes to punish polluters is an entirely different issue.

Economic theory suggests that markets cannot be relied on to bring the most efficient outcome in the presence of so-called 'externalities,' to which the phenomenon of air pollution belongs. If an individual does not consider the effect of his or her action on others, how can that bring efficiency indeed? The post also revisits the problem of the commons first elucidated formally by G. Hardin. But then Dean draws the wrong conclusion:

"An important conclusion about problems involving public commons is that there is no "technical solution" to the basic problem. It's like the game of tic-tac-toe. There is no way to win once all players become familiar with the game. Keeping the "commons" publicly accessible inexorably leads to the destruction of the commons. The only solution is to turn such commons into private property. I don't know how we do that to the global commons."

In fact, economists since Hardin have proposed many effective solutions to the 'commons' problem and a rich theoretical and practical literature has blossomed since then, from where political acts followed. To cite a few:

• Particulate matter pollution, addressed with economic measures guided by technology. In the Philippines, we took lead out of and reduced aromatics in gasoline, reduced sulfur in diesel, enforced emission standards on vehicles and factories.
• Water and solid waste pollution, similar measures.

" I am also not sure yet how Gore's ideas fit into this framework. If the new CO2 tax he is proposing is likened to a sin tax, we only have to look at the continued prevalence of gambling, drinking and smoking to wonder if this is the right way to go. On the other hand, if it spurs the development of new technologies that don't have the problem of discharging CO2 into the atmosphere, could a case not be made for such taxes being beneficial?"

Sin taxes are not meant to eliminate bad behavior, bad to reduce incidence. The reason sin taxes are superior to income taxes is simple: the latter punishes effort, the former discourages 'sin.' In fact, the argument is independent of how the proceeds are eventually spent, but if these are spent for the 'public good,' so much the better.

Notes:

1. I didn't go to Bali thinking I had better use of my time. But the conference did redound to some good.
2. I have no pretensions of being an 'environmentalist,' but with my white hair and limited experience, I have successfully passed myself off as an 'environmental and energy economist' and have contributed to some national legislation.
3. In the summer of 1993. I attended an environmental economics policy course in Harvard at a time when climate science still had a lot of room for doubt. The call at that time was for no-regrets policies, which meant addressing problems with clearer impacts but had the side effect of reducing GHG emissions. Since then, there has been sizable progress in the theory. But that does not mean skepticism is no longer warranted.
4. On the eve of New Year's eve 2000, I missed my train to Grand Rapids from Chicago and had to pay an extraordinary amount for an ordinary room in the windy city.
   
5. In a future post, I will try to discuss the political economy of the issue.