I guess I'm not quite finished with this after all. I have two observations based on what I've gleaned from our colloquy.
The first is that you and I have no common basis.
Good Evening Karen. I think you make specious argument in many respects. I don't have the time right now to unpack your whole post, nor the inclination. I see a web of dynamic interconnectivity and reciprocal, which does not mean circular, causality, as a fundamental fact of the world and of our existence. My analysis flows from that via an attempted explication of the causal factors. You appear to go for the static analysis.
Where we broke down is that we have no common methodology for addressing the topic of the colloquy.
I would say that’s a fair assessment.
You say words. I say words. Nothing clicks with the other. The topic goes nowhere. You don't process information or present ideas in any way that is familiar to me.
I think that if you really felt that, you would stop posting to me. You certainly wouldn't be asking me complicated questions like How can the disparity between the committee and the GW zealots be explained? If what I say is incomprehensible, just leave it.
Perhaps my writing likewise looks like word soup to you.
Not at all. I mean it does, I enjoy your posts :)
No common methodology for "addressing problems and making decisions". Ergo, it's the methodology, not the ethic, that we do not hold in common.
Indeed. This is where the rubber really, or at the least appears to, really hit the road, from your pov. I will go out on a limb here and say that we share a common ethical foundation, but that our individual understanding of the strength, implications or depth of Ethical power is substantially different. I will also grant that our methodologies differ. Anyway, one thought I will leave you with regarding your conclusion that,
The committee didn't designate a dime towards GW. GW came in dead last. It came in last because efforts to stop GW are throwing money down a rat hole, not cost effective, especially in comparison with all the easing of human suffering that could be bought with that same money.
is to suggest that that's somewhat of a distortion. The article says that At number 30, the lowest priority is a proposal to mitigate man-made global warming by cutting the emissions of greenhouse gases…it also says that...Bjorn Lomborg, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, pointed out that funding research and development of low-carbon energy technologies is ranked at a respectable number 14 out of the 30 solutions considered.
So, mitigating man made man-made global warming by cutting the emissions of greenhouse gases comes in last and funding research and development of low-carbon energy technologies comes in at 14. The article doesn't suggest why we might be doing the latter. Perhaps an editorial bias ? I think it's reasonable to assume that it has something to do with combating GW. So in my view saying that efforts to stop GW are throwing money down a rat hole, not cost effective, especially in comparison to … is more than a little bit of a red herring or a misrepresentation.
To be frank, I think that your conclusion ignores salient aspects of philosophy, science and economic analysis. Meaning, I question your methodology, deeply. The fact is that if you want to understand the economics or cost /benefits of GW, you have to study them. I would suggest strongly that the answer to the above question is not really a good place to start. Either, wrt GW, you have not figured out if this is the right question to be asking to begin with, or your hasty and ill-conceived conclusion, does not map onto the original question that was posed. So, your conclusion rests on a flawed premise. This method of yours, smells of starting with a hypothesis and then finding the data to fit it. A more scientific approach would be to gather the data and then formulate a hypothesis, a more complex endeavor. I suspect that your starting hypothesis is either that GW is not a threat, ie the evidence is insufficient, or that at the least it’s not one big enough to have any money thrown at it. That’s what your conclusion points to.
How can the disparity between the committee and the GW zealots be explained?
The question posed in that article was "where in the world can we do the most good" or to be more precise, “where we can most cost effectively spend an extra $75B. The first thing you should notice about that is that the committee shared a very short term objective, especially in comparison to the length of time involved in mitigating the effects of GW. Perhaps you are suggesting that startup costs are not worth it, but sunk costs are a very big feature of any scientific or technological project of this nature. They are cost effective in the long term, this is a plain straight up economic fact. The article had a short term focus, which might account for the disparity you perceive.
Number 2 on the committees list of recommendations was increasing international trade. I guess I need to point out the 10,000lb elephant in the room hereabouts….that the problem of GW co-arose with increased trade to begin with! This is the kind of thing that a static analysis will miss, surprising to not even see it when the pachyderm is just standing there.
This study represents a comparative analysis between short term options, I gather you dig it, it's proof you are right that spending money on GW is a waste. But what happens if we do nothing. Perhaps the proper question question is “what are the costs of non-action”. You can only determine if the pain of the adjustment is worthwhile if the costs of inaction are greater. We probably agree that we should spend as much as is required to solve the problem - but no more. We can dream on I suppose but that doesn’t mean that starting now isn’t good. According to the science, small atmospheric adjustments achieved now will have significant cumulative effects.
I've not been able to get a statement from anyone advocating massive efforts to stop GW about what the purpose behind that is. Perhaps the purpose is something other than combating human suffering. Dunno. No one will tell me.
The first point is that emissions need to come down absolutely, not in economic terms. The ecosystem doesn’t care whether the action is economically efficient or not, unless you don’t believe the science of it.
The second point is that the costs of non-action are greater. You can only determine if there are are benefits by examining the costs of non-action. I don't see that kind of analysis anywhere in the piece. You perceive an unrealistic level of alarm in relation to GW and simply reify something which doesn’t exist. Neat trick, but way too apparent. The correct comparison is not with $75B in short term spending, but with the cost of inaction and/or the cost of not mitigating the effects of GW, if that’s what you’re talking about. I would also suspect, that the implication, that reducing emissions is a lower priority than distributing pills to the needy, is not really supported by projections of the economic and human costs of climate change. Lives and are Liberty are endangered, unless you're a denier. Which brings me to an important point.
The third one. The value of our earth, water, fire, wind and space. That the value of our ecosystem or the costs of non action were left out of the study, is not a surprise. In traditional economics, even in the short run, these externalities, way too complex to deal with, are just assumed to not exist, how radical is that. How you intend to coming to a decision about GW spending, with that kind of work as a reference point is a mystery to me, a real one. I am all ears.
The truth is that CO2 emmissions have not only domestic, but also global externalities. Witness the notion that whatever we do is pointless, unless China and India do something too. We can all see the "common sense" in this, except that in this case there is no us/them. GW is a global phenomenon that has to be addressed from a common pov. The thing is, suggesting that a price path for carbon be identified, that it be monetized like everything else and turned into a commodity, are often met with howls of indignation, govt intervention, economic doom, yada yada yada, from the people pointing fingers most strongly to the east to begin with. The irony, if it weren’t so tragic, is that insisting that others act, actually rationalizes Global intervention in National economies, while at the same time shying away from owns own responsibilities. Another neat trick. One that takes Chutzpah. Which brings me to ethics and responsibility.
A very solid case could be made that the developed world has been the major contributor to the problem so far, so they should clean up the mess. First. But first in this situation is meaningless. It is a collective problem that requires collective action. I believe that global action is not bound to fail and that the belief that this is necessarily the case, reduces the chances of the right interventions being applied. Hike the gas tax, reduce the govt footprint as a good in and of itself and screw the man in the street with the most regressive tax imaginable. Nothing new there.
Or, if combating human suffering is, indeed, the underlying purpose, then perhaps they, unlike the committee, haven't thought through how ineffective it is to spend a lot of money on GW when there are so many other more cost effective ways to combat human suffering.
Curiously you seem to have missed the part about the importance of funding research and development of low-carbon energy technologies. Climate scientists are telling us that early action will be far more effective than delayed action. For example, conservation is an extremely cost effective method, so at the least this should top your list, unless you think that the science behind GW is all BS as well. Not saying conservation can solve all the problems because it can’t, but it’s not a bad place to start. For one thing it saves you money. But it is not popular which brings your premise, that cost effectivenesss should be the ranking mechanism, into question. It is the cost of inaction that is the problem.
The economy may be able to better cope with action spread over longer time frames, but the ecosphere needs action in the short term. The response time in the energy sector as a whole is limited because consumption is pretty much fixed in the technologies you currently own. If you are looking for radical atmospheric change in the short term, the costs will be large - but you don’t appear to be wanting that large cost. You are in good company, no serious economist thinks that time frame is an effective way to deal with climate change. It is a long term problem. The more gradual the adjustment, the lower the cost, which is why we should get started now, and why we should have started 10 years ago. If nothing is done in the next ten years the pain will be worse when it comes, leading to the possibility of worse pain down the road. The direct economic costs of doing nothing will fall mainly on those that can afford to adjust the least. Do I hear an echo.
Price should drive both conservation and technology development so that the transformation away from carbon based energy can in the short term get in front of long term trends in income and population growth, which might otherwise overwhelm any price driven adjustments. Ecological economics is an infant discipline, we will never have perfect information and the longer we wait to take action, the harder it will be to achieve the necessary reductions to meet any goals. en.wikipedia.org
That took me a while to write, I need to step away from SI for a while. You can have the last word. |
