Krugman Says Get on the Bus
May 18th, 2009Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Imagine that you and a group of people want to get from the South Rim to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. A few enterprising members of your group set forth building a ramp leading to the edge of the canyon, pointing north, and pull up in a bus, and tell you to get on. Anyone should be able to see that an effort to launch the bus will lead to a spectacular crash and burn. However, if Paul Krugman were the liberal conscience of the group he might say something like the following:
If we’re going to get real action on jumping the canyon any time soon, it will be via some version of this ramp and this bus. The bus now on the table isn’t the bus we’d ideally want, but it’s the bus we can get — and it’s vastly better than no bus at all.
Still, the bus represents major action to jump the canyon. As the Center for American Progress has pointed out, jumping the canyon would get us to the other side. And by all accounts, this bus has a real chance of being launched from our side in the near future.
So opponents of the plan to launch the bus off of the ramp have to ask themselves whether they’re making the perfect the enemy of the good. I think they are.
After all the years of denial, after all the years of inaction, we finally have a chance to do something major about jumping the canyon. Our bus is imperfect, it’s disappointing in some respects, but it’s action we can take now. And the canyon won’t wait.
Postscript:
This comment by Krugman is simply off base, and in fact opposite of reality:
Not to put too fine a point on it, think about how hard it would be to verify whether China was really implementing a promise to tax carbon emissions, as opposed to letting factory owners with the right connections off the hook. By contrast, it would be fairly easy to determine whether China was holding its total emissions below agreed-upon levels.
A carbon tax would not be applied to “factory owners” but to fossil fuel producers, with the tax applied as far upstream as possible. In both cases compliance requires counting carbon, and it is generally understood that compliance is easier with an upstream carbon tax than an economy-wide cap and trade system. There are plenty of reasons to oppose a carbon tax, but the relative complexity of compliance is not among them.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Hmm. Here are more observations/questions about the same Krugman:
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/
May 18th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Roger, your Grand Canyon metaphor is good. But the same comment can be made about anyone who assumes that emissions reductions might help stabilize climate in our lifetimes. According to IPCC 4th assessment, 100% reductions (in 2007) may get us 350 ppm by about 2100 or so. Yet the assumption that reductions will have near-term impact is widespread.
If the carbon issue is seen as pollution, it is likely insoluble.
However, if we add another “problem” to it, we have more chances for both mitigation and adaptation. This is the problem that soils are deficient in organic matter (leading to floods, droughts, food and water insecurity). And various strands of alternative agriculture have figured out how to turn atmospheric carbon into soil organic matter, fairly rapidly.
I’m not talking about no-till, though that helps in some places. I’m talking about the kind of biological agriculture that Pollan writes about in Omnivore’s Dilemma, where one works with basic biosphere processes rather than against them. It’s accumulating around the edges on every continent. It does not fit the technological paradigms of agriculture as an input-output system.
The problem with carbon is that it’s NOT a problem. It’s a cycle, a biological network consisting of autonomous and self-motivated creatures, many of them microscopic. Technology is not good at enhancing such systems.
Soils even depleted as they are contain more carbon than the atmosphere and forests combined. A slight increase in soil organic matter has far more leverage on the global carbon cycle than emissions reductions, desirable as they are.
However, there are no major ideological or economic or political interests organized in favor of soil organic matter. The possibility remains hidden in part because our technophile policy systems prefer convergent (one size fits all) solutions to divergent ones, silver bullets to silver buckshot to use Steve Rayner’s term. It is outside the purview of most of our major institutions. The biochar possibility has gotten more press because it is recognizable to pyromaniacs, technophiles, and diehard materials handlers.
The way to open ourselves to biological soil carbon possibilities, which vary quite a bit depending on location and environment, is through widespread monitoring (see the Challenge at soilcarboncoalition.org). Just arguing for it won’t do, because as Galbraith noted, the enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas, but the march of events.
Emissions reductions, well motivated as they may be, by themselves are just a gallant cavalry charge into the barbed wire. We need to add to these, the possibility of turning atmospheric carbon into water-holding, fertility-enhancing soil organic matter, using free solar energy without the need for expensive concentration and collection systems. Even poor people are doing this.
In other words, a few people are starting to filter across the canyon, carrying their silver buckshot. And they’re not all on the same path, or in vehicles we recognize.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
This is no different that Kyoto. The idea on the part of insiders is to get a system of regulation – any regulation – in to effect, and then worry about what’s really needed later. Of course, the insiders – lobbyists, activists, bureaucrat-fellow-travellers, etc. – know that neither Kyoto nor this bill would actually do anything useful of itself. It’s the legally-binding regulations they want. Once they have them, they can always ramp them up later. It’s the intitial machine they want in place – they can tune it up later at their leisure, and there will be nothing the rest of us can do about it. Or so they think. When the economy starts tanking again due to energy costs, the people will be ready to put heads on spikes, and Washington will be a good place to find likely heads.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Peter D is correct. The current approach of AGW advocates is to suppose we can continue a lifestyle unchanged whose main features are industrialized agriculture, suburban living, malls, car transport. All we have to do is a bit of cap and trade, a bit of technology.
In fact if we really are serious about reducing carbon emissions to levels which will make a difference, all will have to go. We are talking basically organic agriculture complete with composting, and the end of the auto industry, with all its implications in terms of lifestyle.
The movement is not prepared to admit this, or maybe does not know it, and one sees why. It is an end of the lifestyle of the late 20c, and a return to something much more like that of 1920, but computerized. A very very big deal indeed.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:27 am
That stench you smell is science rotting from the inside out.
Doesn’t it seem a bit strange that we have legions of activists demanding that the entire world endure wrenching change, but we can’t be bothered to make the effort to replicate scientific “studies”? Life as we know it must be forever altered, but we can’t be bothered to make sure our thermometers are accurate?
The data from our flawed thermometers and the announded “findings” from studies which have never completed the basics of the scientific method are driving much of the political drive toward this train wreck.
I have a simple proposal. Before scientists advocate for massive social, economic and political change, how about they make the effort to start checking each others work? How about they fix their data bases and the seriously flawed monitoring system? Maybe even add a little quality control to the database management that would bring it up to the standards of the 1980s? Add a little transparency by making their data, code and methodology available for review?
I realize this might add a little work for the climate science alarmists, but the billions affected by their advocacy might think it time well spent.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Right on, Stan! THe unbelievably widespread corruption associated with climate science is absolutely the most shocking thing I have ever seen. If I had not witnessed it first hand over the past 3 years (mainly at ClimateAudit), I probably could not believe it. And I’m a veteran of wars with environmental-extremists and their horrendous abuse of “science.” I have no doubt that if it were not for the ailing economy, the extremists would again prevail with their nonsense science and PR scare tactics. Maybe we have a slight chance for their defeat this time, now that the actions they want to take will smack the average citizen directly in his pocketbook in short order. Let’s hope that they have finally over-reached and pushed the envelope too far. It is truly ironic that if they do succeed, it will likely be their end, also.
May 20th, 2009 at 7:14 am
This is a terrible metaphor because:
1) There is no significant down side to delaying crossing the canyon. There are serious consequences to delaying emissions mitigation, although there is considerable uncertainty just how severe they are.
2) Once the bus leaves the ramp, there’s no opportunity for mid-course corrections or turning back. Emissions mitigation offers both options.
Fundamentally you must recognize the difference between saying “the canyon won’t wait” and Krugman’s “the planet won’t wait.”
May 20th, 2009 at 7:37 am
-7-Jonathan
All analogies are imperfect, you are correct.
The point here is of course not anything general about climate policy, or even specific to climate policy, only to highlight the flawed reasoning that in a debate over action the option before us should be taken simply because it is the only option before us.
If the option before us is unsatisfactory, well, get more options.
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:39 am
[...] who would have the gall to espouse views that he only recently held. Such relativism smacks of kowtowing to political expediency while ignoring policy outcomes or even something even more sinister, maybe even involving the . . . [...]
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:28 am
[...] who would have the gall to espouse views that he only recently held. Such relativism smacks of kowtowing to political expediency while ignoring policy outcomes or even something even more sinister, maybe even involving the . . . [...]