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Kevin,

I agree that reducing growth of emissions by 23% is a far cry from 6% below 1990 and that something is still better than nothing. Along those lines, do you expect to see plan come out before the next election cycle that would result in more significant reductions?

I'm midway through Monbiot's book, and it seems to me that by coming back to "impact on future climate" you're echoing his call to shift the discourse to the actual targets that are needed for measurable changes in temperatures.

While I support that goal (more significant reductions) and the need to change the discussion along those lines, I reject the idea that we should frame national or sub-national policy options according in terms of their impact on climate, as a means of achieving that goal. IMO it's neither appropriate, nor likely to be effective. Can you point to any research that indicates otherwise?

Btw, I'm still waiting for your post on offsets :).

cheers,

I don't know if 'doing nothing' describes the effects. It seems more like 'foresaking years of real economic growth for trival projected global warming reductions.'

I used the real GDP query facility at http://eh.net/hmit/gdp/.

Assuming that these measures had been put into effect in 1980 (25 years before 2005), by my calculations, the four alternatives would have the effect of cancelling:
21 years of GDP growth for the "Full Auction" alternative,
15 years for the "$9 Phased Auction" alternative,
9 years for the "Phased Auction" alternative, and
7 years for the "$5 Phase Auction" alternative.

Hardly nothing.

Kevin, a US program has got to start somewhere. Given the needs for international agreement with China, India and others before the US and EU will start to implement effective emissions reductions, it is unrealistic to think that the US Senate would unilaterally lock the US into anything much more aggressive than this.

The Bingaman proposal is deliberately and explicitly moderate. I'm sure your acquainted with the Sense of the Senate resolution. In addition, the summary of Bingaman's proposal (an annex to the EIA anlaysis), states:

"By targeting an annual decline in emissions intensity, the proposal is designed to first slow emissions growth (over the period from 2012 through 2021), before attempting to stop emissions growth starting in 2022. Ultimately, emissions will need to decline in absolute terms to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, meaning that the rate of decline in emissions intensity will eventually need to outpace economic growth. This proposal establishes a policy framework for achieving a long-term trajectory of emissions reductions in what would necessarily be a phased process."

Mr. Linton, the global atmosphere is an unregulated commons (open-access resource). The fact that use of it as a GHG dump is free certainly doesn't mean that the atmosphere has no value, or that AGW has no costs - even though these are not captured in GDP calculations (just as ecosytem benefits and the over-exploitation of other global and regional common resources are not). In fact, it's our failure to overcome the prisoners' dilemma problems inherent in such resources that has prevented us from finding a way to price the use of the atmosphere. Its use as a GHG dump is certainly pushing the climate in one direction.

Modest incentives, when coordinated internationally, will tend to cure rather than create economic distortions. You have elsewhere stated that we "need to develop the engineering capabilities to damp out unwanted climate changes regardless of their source" - should we also not take our foot off of the high-carbon energy pedal, and does it not make sense to create a user pays program to fund the public investments you seem to have in mind?

Regards,

Tom

The problem with this discussion is that it is premised on the dubious notion that the only method of dealing with climate change is through so-called mitigation.

Contrary to K. Vranes' claim, there are actually more than two choices when it comes to climate policy. First, as he mentions, is to do nothing. Second, as also noted, is to do something that, for practical purposes, will be ineffective for the foreseeable future, such as emissions reductions. However, there is a third way which, in fact, will actually provide substantial benefits over the near to medium term, namely, reduce society’s vulnerability to climate-sensitive hazards that may be exacerbated by climate change. This third way, moreover, will buy time for the world to research, develop and implement more cost effective technologies to mitigate GHG concentrations. It might also raise the threshold at which GHG concentrations could theoretically become dangerous. [The fourth approach is, of course, to blend mitigation and vulnerability-reduction. The trick would be to figure out how to shift the emphasis and resources over time between thee two approaches. I would call this the "adaptive management approach to managing climate change risks". I have a book chapter due out one of these days on this.]

The general approach is outlined, among other places, in a paper titled, “A Climate Policy for the Short and Medium Term: Stabilization or Adaptation?”, which can be found at . Following is its abstract:

“An evaluation of analyses sponsored by the predecessor to the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) of the global impacts of climate change under various mitigation scenarios (including CO2 stabilization at 550 and 750 ppm) coupled with an examination of the relative costs associated with different schemes to either mitigate climate change or reduce vulnerability to various climate-sensitive hazards (namely, malaria, hunger, water shortage, coastal flooding, and losses of global forests and coastal wetlands) indicates that, at least for the next few decades, risks and/or threats associated with these hazards would be lowered much more effectively and economically by reducing current and future vulnerability to those hazards rather than through stabilization. Accordingly, over the next few decades the focus of climate policy should be to: (a) broadly advance sustainable development (particularly in developing countries since that would generally enhance their adaptive capacity to cope with numerous problems that currently beset them, including climate-sensitive problems), (b) reduce vulnerabilities to climate-sensitive problems that are urgent today and might be exacerbated by future climate change, and (c) implement “no-regret” emission reduction measures while at the same time striving to expand the universe of such measures through research and development of cleaner and more affordable technologies. Such a policy would help solve current urgent problems facing humanity while preparing it to face future problems that might be caused by climate change.”

Major reasons as to why reducing vulnerability to these climate-sensitive hazards now would provide greater benefits than reducing climate change through the foreseeable future is that, first, the problems due to these climate-sensitive hazards (such as hunger, malaria, water shortages) are urgent even today while the contribution of climate change to these hazards is generally smaller than the contribution of non-climate change related factors. [Coastal flooding is probably an exception to this rule, but it is more cost-effective to adapt to the threat of coastal flooding than to effectively reduce coastal flooding – for details, see the paper itself]. Second, measures to reduce current vulnerabilities to climate-sensitive problems would also reduce future vulnerabilities due to climate change [which is necessarily a subset of the former]. For example, measures to better treat and/or prevent malaria should be equally effective whether the malaria is caused by climate change or non-climate change related factors. Similarly for the other climate-sensitive hazards.

One would probably come to the same conclusion were one to ask the following question: would spending $262 -$462 billion on emission reductions provide greater benefits than spending it on reducing vulnerability not just to climate change but, more generally, to climate?

Sorry, the link to the above noted paper vanished!. Here it is (I hope): http://members.cox.net/igoklany/EEv16_Stab_or_Adaptation.pdf

Your link dropped, Indur: http://www.vulnerabilitynet.org/OPMS/getfile.php?bn=seiproject_hotel&key=1140130107&att_id=837

Does your echoes of the CC paper find some magic way to impel the world to actually put in place sustainable development and hunger alleviation programs (presumably by increasing investment in developing countries)?

What new, unique policies does it give to redistribute wealth to the developing world that won't go there now? How would this magic come about, what enforcement mechanisms does it propose, what timetables?

This truly would be a breakthrough paper if it showed how to break the gravity-like momentum of economic and political history. I wish this paper wider distribution than its current channel so it can get to policy briefs so it's new and compelling strategies can be debated.

Indur, I suspect that you understand that your "third way" of "adaptation" is largely a way of doing nothing, but at significant taxpayer expense.

Domestically, private economic actors will voluntarily adapt to whatever climate they face and expect to confront - just as they do for other changes in the physical, financial and legal environments. They do not need the government to pay for them to "adapt" is some manner that the government deems best.

In principle, the best thing that the federal government can do on the adaption side is nothing, and to stay out of the way - other than to provide free access to all data gathered by the government concerning the changing climate. I have yet to see a case made justifying government spending on adaptation, although I suppose that one can be made as to specific public infrastructure needs.

But instead of adaptation in the developed economies, are you talking about a specific program of aid targetted at helping vulnerable third-world countries that you somehow think will be effective despite all of the institutional failures there? Such an effort, while indeed laudable, would be plagued not merely by the corruption and institutional failures in the developing world, but also by the same free rider problems that have so clearly hindered reaching and enforcing global agreements on mitigation.

While conservatives until quite recently have been willing to throw away hundreds of billions on short-sighted, poorly planned and clearly counterproductive existential "wars" (for transitory political gain and for the benefit of politically well-connected statist corporate interests), I have seen little appetite for long-term investments with our allies in fixing problems in the developing world (and no recogition that Kyoto has tried to establish mechanisms to encourage investment in the third world, by suspending for the time being any GHG compliance obligations and through the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation projects).

Is funding adaptation in the third world seriously on the conservative agenda in the US, or is this simply a buck-passing exercise, designed to avoid doing anything about climate change?

By the way, I do not concede that mitigation is a poor investment; until we actually hit the wall, there is always a potential benefit to be gained by turning or taking one's foot of the gas (if not hitting the brakes). The corporations that participate in PEW and that testified last April to the Senate share that view, and are looking for some type of long-term pricing signal for purposes of planning for investments in power plants, etc. What is the lightest hand of government that makes sense?

This whole climate change discussion is controlled by people who want to make money trading carbon.

Look, there is no doubt something is happening, but there are 6.5 billion reasons why there could be something else causing it.

However, there is no evidence in the past record of CO2 changes causing temperature changes. There is plenty of evidence that temperature changes cause CO2 changes, but we know that will happen (the warm coke effect) and we don't know that's not what's happening today. Since CO2 changes do not happen before temperature changes in the geologic record, how can anyone with any intellectual fortitude say CO2 changes cause temperature changes????

Ask the alarmists. All you get is hostility.

We are being scammed.

ToykoTom, your very dubious, exceedingly personal, and no-facts-presented characterization of an important world-wide situation, as here, "While conservatives until quite recently have been willing to throw away hundreds of billions on short-sighted, poorly planned and clearly counterproductive existential "wars" (for transitory political gain and for the benefit of politically well-connected statist corporate interests), ... " leads me to think that you bring the same severely wrong approach to your 'science'.

You no longer have any creditability with me.

TT: “I suspect that you understand that your ‘third way’ of ‘adaptation’ is largely a way of doing nothing, but at significant taxpayer expense.”

… as opposed to mitigation which would do even less and cost even more!!?? [Smile]

[Don't forget that there is substantial overlap between the universe of taxpayers and energy consumers.]

TT: “Domestically, private economic actors will voluntarily adapt to whatever climate they face and expect to confront - just as they do for other changes in the physical, financial and legal environments. They do not need the government to pay for them to "adapt" is some manner that the government deems best.”

Response: I partly agree with you here. Private economic actors will indeed undertake voluntary actions to adapt to climate change but government can also help adaptation efforts. Just as government can advance mitigation through R&D into energy/sequestration technologies, it can also advance adaptation (and vulnerability-reduction) by laying the groundwork for improving and developing new adaptation and vulnerability reduction technologies, etc. You need to ask yourself why is it OK for the former (mitigation) to be supported and subsidized but not the latter? Perhaps the real answer is that government should do neither. That at least would be a principled position. But if it’s willing to do one of these (say, mitigation), then the question needs to be asked: which approach is likely to deliver the biggest bang (in terms of reductions in climate-related damages) for the bucks invested. [This assumes that the objective of climate change policy is indeed to reduce its risks rather than a means to other ends.] Of course, it wouldn’t make sense to put all our eggs in one basket. Accordingly, a diverse portfolio of adaptations, vulnerability-reductions and some mitigation would be indicated.

TT: “In principle, the best thing that the federal government can do on the adaption side is nothing, and to stay out of the way - other than to provide free access to all data gathered by the government concerning the changing climate. I have yet to see a case made justifying government spending on adaptation, although I suppose that one can be made as to specific public infrastructure needs.”

Response: I see data-gathering and continual analysis as an essential part of the infrastructure to enable adaptation (and an adaptive management approach to climate change) but to enable that one needs monitoring (from space as well as on the ground), data handling and distribution systems, all of which, believe it or not, are expensive exercises, and a good case can be mounted that they are global public goods and should be supported through collective efforts. In addition, the infrastructure for adequately addressing public health, agriculture, etc., could be improved in some places (and developed in others). Such efforts would address not only climate-sensitive problems but also provide other benefits, including all the benefits pertaining to healthier and more economically developed populations. [BTW, I view infrastructure as consisting not only of concrete, wires, hardware and software to link computers, etc., but also the system of institutions that creates the human capital needed to develop, improve, operate and maintain the physical/IT infrastructure(s).]

Regarding corruption and institutional “failures” in developing countries, I don’t see these problems being diminished more if one deals with mitigation rather than adaptation. What gives you confidence that corruption and institutional failures will not plague CDM and JI? And do you think that there will be less fraud in a system where there is more money in play, and where verification of emission reductions is problematic? [Consider, for instance, the baseline games the EU and Russia are reportedly playing with respect to Kyoto. Also, if I remember correctly, Enron and Ken Lay were among the early supporters for carbon emissions trading – I am sure for altruistic reasons.] In fact, I would put addressing these problems (of corruption, poor institutions and fraud) ahead of addressing climate change per se since they would help advance economic development, which is, I am always told, one of the reasons why developing countries are more susceptible to even moderate climate change and which, as noted elsewhere including the above-referenced-paper, is, in and of itself, a method of advancing both mitigation and adaptation. I also note that addressing these problems is not really a matter of providing funding. But because, they involve institutional change, they cannot be accomplished rapidly, if at all. [Hey -- I don’t have answers to everything!]

TT: “I do not concede that mitigation is a poor investment; until we actually hit the wall, there is always a potential benefit to be gained by turning or taking one's foot of the gas (if not hitting the brakes).”

Response: Nor do I believe that mitigation is necessarily a poor investment. Read what the abstract in the earlier post says. The real issue with respect to mitigation at this time is: how much and at what cost (beyond what is obtainable via “no-regret” measures)? And my analysis suggests that we, indeed, have time to turn away from the wall, and we can do it more economically if we delay a drastic turn, particularly if we keep working on making mitigation technologies more cost-effective over time. But given today’s technologies, we will today get greater risk reduction through the foreseeable future via vulnerability reduction. [BTW, you can get to the paper itself, if you google “Goklany recent papers” (in quotes), and scroll down on the first hit.]

Finally, regarding what conservative (and other) administrations have or have not done for adaptation I would recommend the following link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/30/AR2006123000941_pf.html It leads to a December 31, 2006 article in the Washington Post headlined: “Bush Has Quietly Tripled Aid to Africa.” [Obviously, the Bush Administration did it sufficiently quietly that it has been virtually unnoticed. I’m sure placing it on a New Year’s Eve (Sunday) was a brilliant PR move.]

My analysis in the aforementioned paper leads me to suspect that this Administration’s malaria-related efforts alone will have done more to reduce malaria than if climate change were halted.

Dan Hughes:

I`m happy I had some credibility with you, and sorry I lost it.

I take your point that my comment to Dr. Goklany was a bit on the personal side, but I fail to see it as exceptionally so. As to the merit of my comments, you may wish to consider Dr. Goklany`s response.

Dr. Goklany:

Thanks for your lengthy response. I`ve also had a chance to look at your paper. I`m happy to see that you acknowledge that the need for the adaptation investment is chiefly in the developing world.

My points remain that (1) the same issues plaguing issues of international coordination of a mitigation program also affect investments that would be designed to straighten out governance in the third world (compounded by the fact that elites will oppose reforms that undercut their ability to manipulate states for their own purposes), (2) given the lack of appetite in the US to tackle mitigation (which would focus on the smaller pool of developed nations, plus China and India), it is difficult to see the political will forming in the US to push strongly for multilateral development reforms and aid.

While you did not address this, I think it is fair to contrast the willingness of the Administration to spend enormous sums on ill-defined and poorly-planned and conducted wars (especially as the rumor mill spins now about a possible large-scale attack on Iran) with its unwillingness to focus on multilateral and long-term problems requiring global cooperation, including the adaptation measures that you advocate (and with which I suspect we fully agree).

However, I would quibble with your analysis about expenditures in tackling adaptation versus mitigation. If we are discussing direct federal expenditures on developing mitigation technologies or on adapatation activities, then the cost and benefits of these can be directly compared.

But the federal government should be investing not in technologies, but in legal infrastructure (tax vs. cap and trade) that pushes mitigation responsibilities onto private parties.

Dan:

I have to apologize for not responding to your comments from the 11th earlier (at 11:08 PM). I seem to have missed them when I read the exchanges on this site previously. Clearly, speed reading has its shortcomings.

I’ll respond to your questions although, methinks, I detect a trace of irony in them.

You ask if my paper has “some magic way to impel the world to actually put in place sustainable development and hunger alleviation programs (presumably by increasing investment in developing countries)?”

You are correct in implying that the paper specifies no magic way for getting people to adopt adaptation. As a policy analyst all I ever do is present options and analyses as to why certain options are better than others. It is up to the policy maker (or, in this case, the reader) to select which of these options (or mix of options) makes most sense or, more often than not, is least distasteful. Accordingly, all my paper does is point out why I believe that over the next few decades certain paths (vulnerability-reduction or, more broadly, development itself) would reduce damages due to climate variability and climate change more efficiently and effectively than would mitigation alone, and to note the interdependence between advancing sustainable development and reducing climate-related damages. The paper also points out briefly what ought to work. [Elsewhere, I have noted what wouldn’t work, e.g., by retarding vulnerability reduction and development, but that would have meant an even longer paper.]

Nor does the paper list policies to redistribute wealth to the developing world or offer enforcement mechanisms and timetables to ensure adaptation happens. First, redistributing wealth can at best only lead to temporary gains for the developing world. It might even be counterproductive since a significant portion of the economic development in developing countries is due to trade, tourism and transfer payments from developed countries. In the long term, this wealth has to be created by those who would enjoy its fruits; otherwise there will be no wealth to redistribute. Second, to the extent that costs of adaptation policies are borne by their beneficiaries, there is little need for command-and-control mechanisms such as enforcement policies and timetables. On the other hand, if you are suggesting that adaptation costs would be borne by the developed countries in order to advance adaptation in developing countries, I would say that this is no less likely (in the long term) than funding mitigation in developing countries (through CDM and JI). In fact, to the extent, that adaptation turns out to be less expensive and produces quicker visible results than mitigation, it is more likely to be funded.

TT:
My paper doesn’t allocate expenditures between governmental and non-governmental entities because it’s an analysis of the global costs and global benefits based on global impacts assessments. I think it makes more sense, given what little we know about these matters, to first figure out the most effective and efficient approaches before getting into greater details.

Regarding your statement that the federal government should be investing “not in technologies, but in legal infrastructure (tax vs. cap and trade) that pushes mitigation responsibilities onto private parties”, I think it’s appropriate for the federal government, in my opinion, to invest in science, monitoring, research and development, but not necessarily in specific technologies. As you probably know, the history of synfuels development is not encouraging, and there are several reservations about an ethanol policy that would increase the amount of land under cultivation and possibly increase food-related costs not only in the US but worldwide, thereby negating – at least partly – two reasons why we should be concerned about climate change.

Indur, thank you for your response. Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.

1. It seems we agree completely that the federal government should not be funding specific technologies - the government is not in a position to choose the best technologies for lowering or sequestering carbon, so specific funding will be largely pork-barrel. What do you think of Mark Bahner's proposals for technology prizes, such as for non-Tokamak fusion?

We have discussed previously that there are public goods arguments that can be made to support government investments in climate-related science, monitoring, research and development. Can you flesh out your position? Are levels of spending higher than today justified, and should the balance be different? Should the government be making investments in mitigation technologies focussed on lowering temperatures, as these are unlikely to attract private investment?

2. Conceptually, I do not agree that gross comparisons of mitigation and adaptation approaches are justified, given that (1) the problem stems from the nature of the atmosphere and climate system as open-access commons and (2) the costs of adaptation are largely private.

While recognizing that commons problems are dynamic and not static, there is a cost-benefit analysis to be made in deciding whether it is worth the expense to adopt measures that regulate or privatize the commons. If the threshold is reached, the measures should be adopted - and one does not include in the calculus the later costs to the users' side of the subsequent, and now private, transactions between users and suppliers.

In the case of climate change the cost-benefit calculation is both very complex and intertwined with multi-level prisoners' game, distribution and public choice/corporate statism aspects.

3. It sounds like you agree with me that corruption and poor governance in the developing world presents very similar and equally difficult issues, and that effective mitigation or adaptation cannot be expect except as development progresses.

However, with the exception of China and India, the developing world need not be included in present measures aimed at mitigation (other than a device to include them later), and public adaptation measures can focus largely on the developing world.

I appreciate your call for more development/adaptation aid, but my points remain that (1) the same issues plaguing issues of international coordination of a mitigation program also affect investments that would be designed to ensure effective governance in the third world, and (2) given the lack of appetite in the US to tackle mitigation, it is difficult to see the political will forming in the US to push strongly for multilateral development reforms and aid.

Thus, like Al Gore, you seem to be a voice crying in the wilderness - at least, there does not seem to be any strong support from conservatives for your position, except as a rhetorical foil to Al Gore. Perhaps you will be able to come in from the cold, given the change in Congress.

Many of you are missing a very important point in this analysis -- the reduction in GDP and welfare benefits are off of the reference case, which is a GROWING GDP. If the reference case shows the economy grows by, let's say as an example, 100% between now and 2030, and the analysis shows a 5% decrease in GDP from the reference case, that indicates that growth is projected to "only" be 95%. This is a far cry from seeing a decrease in GDP from today's values as has been characterized in this dicussion. This is a point that is often missed in this debate.