Today's New York Times features a piece of writing which should be required reading for every American. This is not a piece from his blog, but a "Magazine Preview", which means it's rather lengthy. On an issue this important, the ten pages of length are appreciated.
To anyone who may still doubt that real progress on the climate change issue will "cost too much", we learn that the truth is less than economic Armageddon.
Winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman:
In fact, once you filter out the noise generated by special-interest groups, you discover that there is widespread agreement among environmental economists that a market-based program to deal with the threat of climate change — one that limits carbon emissions by putting a price on them — can achieve large results at modest, though not trivial, cost. There is, however, much less agreement on how fast we should move, whether major conservation efforts should start almost immediately or be gradually increased over the course of many decades.
For those of us with a passion for environmental issues, but a less-than-stellar grasp of economics, the words of a Nobel laureate are very helpful.
I am still digesting the depth of this work, and will say up front that I will need more time than it takes to begin to makes sense of it all. But piece by piece, Krugman speaks in terms a layperson can grasp, and does so with a purpose.
Some senators have recently floated a proposal for a sort of hybrid solution, with cap and trade for some parts of the economy and carbon taxes for others — mainly oil and gas. The political logic seems to be that the oil industry thinks consumers won’t blame it for higher gas prices if those prices reflect an explicit tax.
In any case, experience suggests that market-based emission controls work. Our recent history with acid rain shows as much. The Clean Air Act of 1990 introduced a cap-and-trade system in which power plants could buy and sell the right to emit sulfur dioxide, leaving it up to individual companies to manage their own business within the new limits.
From Cap and Trade, to Swifthack (a.k.a. climategate), Krugman tries to briefly address the important aspects of the most important problem mankind has ever faced. It's sad that he feels compelled to waste space with such basics ("the planet is indeed warming"), but to reach the American masses, these things are necessary steps, I guess.
Artwork by Yuken Teruya |
The Cost of Action
Just as there is a rough consensus among climate modelers about the likely trajectory of temperatures if we do not act to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases, there is a rough consensus among economic modelers about the costs of action. That general opinion may be summed up as follows: Restricting emissions would slow economic growth — but not by much.
The claims about the degrees of cost and benefits are best left to others with more expertise in economics than myself, but it is also good to hear such things from someone who is right so much of the time.
In the interest of keeping this brief, not pushing the fair use rules, and teasing anyone who is reading this to go ahead and read the entire article, this diarist ends here.
Krugman ends with some hope buried beneath the dust and rubble of what our current politicians have created.
So the immediate prospects for climate action do not look promising, despite an ongoing effort by three senators — John Kerry, Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham — to come up with a compromise proposal.
There’s a pretty good chance that the record temperatures the world outside Washington has seen so far this year will continue, depriving climate skeptics of one of their main talking points. And in a more general sense, given the twists and turns of American politics in recent years — since 2005 the conventional wisdom has gone from permanent Republican domination to permanent Democratic domination to God knows what — there has to be a real chance that political support for action on climate change will revive.
We know how to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. We have a good sense of the costs — and they’re manageable. All we need now is the political will.