The current world political climate is shame-and-blame in order to gain approvals for drastic reduction of CO2. Thus pressure is applied to political officials at every level to show their colors on acting to “fight climate change.”  The so-called Green New Deal will apparently be put as a resolution for the House to vote its approval of the concept.  It seems timely to propose an alternative resolution.

There is no place to hide these days, and politicians who have a rational position on climate science had better legislate on the issue. A common sense legislative motion could read something like this (followed by supporting documentation and references).

Whereas, Extent of global sea ice is within the range of historical variability;

Whereas, Populations of polar bears are generally growing;

Whereas, Sea levels have been slowly rising at the same rate since the Little Ice Age ended 150 years ago;

Whereas, Oceans will not become acidic due to buffering from extensive mineral deposits and marine life is well adapted to pH fluctuations that do occur;

Whereas, Extreme weather events have not increased in recent decades and such events are more associated to periods of cooling rather than warming;

Whereas, Cold spells, not heat waves, are the greater threat to human life and prosperity;

Therefore, This chamber agrees that climate is variable and prudent public officials should plan for future periods both colder and warmer than the present. Two principle objectives will be robust infrastructure and reliable, affordable energy.

Comment:

The underlying issue is the assumption that the future can only be warmer than the present. Once you accept the notion that CO2 makes the earth’s surface warmer (an unproven conjecture), then temperatures can only go higher since CO2 keeps rising. The present plateau in temperatures is inconvenient, but actual cooling would directly contradict the CO2 doctrine. Some excuses can be fabricated for a time, but an extended period of cooling undermines the whole global warming mantra.

It’s not a matter of fearing a new ice age. That will come eventually, according to our planet’s history, but the warning will come from increasing ice extent in the Northern Hemisphere. Presently infrastructures in many places are not ready to meet a return of 1950s weather, let alone something unprecedented.

Public policy must include preparations for cooling since that is the greater hazard. Cold harms the biosphere: plants, animals and humans. And it is expensive and energy intensive to protect life from the ravages of cold. Society can not afford to be in denial about the prospect of the current temperature plateau ending with cooling.

Footnote:

The Trudeau initiative is an example of the alternative to legislating a rational position. It is virtue-signalling by adopting a token carbon price, which will not lower CO2 concentrations, nor reduce temperatures. The tax will enrich government coffers, which is a key motivation for politicians hiding behind this noble cause.

In 2015, gasoline taxes in Canada represented on average 38.5 cents per litre, which is approximately 35% of the pump price. That includes 10¢/litre federal tax, provincial fuel taxes ranging from 6 to 19 ¢/litre, plus sales taxes. Taxing at $10 a tonne starting in 2018 would add a carbon tax on top as shown below:

These pennies added on top will not change behavior, but millions of consumers’ dollars will be skimmed in a hidden way, including rising transportation costs of everything.

If this was anything other than a tax grab, they would do one or both of two things:

• Make the tax revenue neutral by paying the monies collected back to consumers; and
• Make the increases in the carbon tax rate conditional upon rising temperatures as measured by satellites. (as proposed by economist Ross McKitrick)

James Taylor explains current efforts to distract us with a tricky proposal. A ‘Revenue Neutral’ Carbon Tax Is a Costly Myth.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other media outlets are reporting that a bipartisan group of top economic advisors has signed a statement supporting a carbon dioxide tax that returns all revenue to the American people. Prominent signatories include Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, and Ben Bernanke. Expect this to be a big messaging point in the weeks and months ahead for global warming activists.

More atmospheric carbon dioxide and gradually warming temperatures have brought net benefits to human health and welfare. Yet economists like Greenspan and Bernanke, who received appointments from Republican presidents, often make the argument that they are not scientists and they are merely crafting the best economic solution to a problem that most scientists say we need to address. Even if these economists remain unconvinced that carbon dioxide emissions and modest global warming bring net benefits, there are crucial flaws in their argument for a ‘revenue neutral’ carbon dioxide tax.

Here are the three biggest flaws of a ‘revenue neutral’ carbon dioxide tax designed to appeal to Republicans and conservatives:

1. A carbon dioxide tax may be crafted to be government revenue neutral, but it cannot be crafted to be household revenue neutral. The intent and impact of a carbon dioxide tax is to raise the price of coal, natural gas, and gasoline to the point that they are more expensive than high-priced wind power, solar power, and electric vehicles powered by wind and solar. When this happens, consumers will be purchasing wind and solar power that is much more expensive than what they presently pay for coal, natural gas, and gasoline. Consumers will therefore be forced to spend substantially more money on energy and energy-related bills. Yet the wind and solar industries will pay no carbon dioxide taxes, meaning a ‘successful’ carbon dioxide tax that dramatically reduces carbon dioxide emissions will collect little tax revenue and thereafter return little money to the people. This would be ‘revenue neutral’ for government, but households will see dramatic declines in discretionary income as a result of their uncompensated higher energy bills.

2. Republicans and conservatives are negotiating against themselves, in vain, when they advocate a ‘revenue neutral’ carbon dioxide tax. Democrats, environmental activist groups, and the political Left have made it clear that they will not support or accept a ‘revenue neutral’ carbon dioxide tax. They proved this point in the state of Washington in 2016 when a ‘revenue neutral’ carbon dioxide tax was put on the ballot with support from many establishment Republicans. Democrats, environmental activist groups, and the political Left opposed the ballot initiative, stating they would only support a carbon dioxide tax that authorized government to keep the tax revenues and direct the revenue to causes supported by the environmental Left. As a result – and thankfully – the ballot initiative failed.

3. Even if Democrats, environmental activist groups, and the political Left suddenly began to support a ‘revenue neutral’ carbon dioxide tax, they would only support such a tax in addition to, rather than instead of, expensive, intrusive, command-and-control schemes. As I noted in a recent Heartland Institute Policy Brief, “Prominent global warming activist David Roberts noted in Vox that CO2 taxes ‘are good policy, an important part of the portfolio, but unlikely ever to be sufficient on their own. It’s worth getting a price on carbon anywhere it can be gotten, but climate hawks should not believe, and definitely shouldn’t be saying in public, that a carbon price is enough …’ [emphasis in the original].” I also noted from Bill McKibben, “We need to do everything. Not just a price on carbon, but dramatic subsidies for renewables to speed their spread. Not just a price on carbon, but an end to producing coal and gas and oil on public land. Not just a price on carbon, but a ban on fracking, which is sending clouds of methane into the atmosphere. Not just a price on carbon, but a dozen other major regulatory changes.”

Not only would a carbon dioxide tax be economically destructive, but Republicans and conservatives who are duped into supporting such a scheme will be getting something entirely different than what is being advertised.

See Also Carbon Pricing Angst

Money goes back to provinces, says Trudeau. Trudeau has said that the tax will start at a minimum of $10 a tonne in 2019, rising by $10 each year to $50 a tonne by 2022. “The government of Canada will return all of the money collected back to Canadians,” Trudeau said.  October 23, 2018

Context: As the image shows, alarmist/activists understand Climate Change (man made assumed) as a concept that depends on three assertions being true.  The first one is the science bit, being the unproven claim that humans make the planet warmer by burning fossil fuels.  The second one is the claim from billions of dollars invested into researching any and all negative effects from global warming, from Acne to Zika virus. The third and also necessary leg is the assertion that governments can act to prevent future warming

From time to time it is instructive to hear from those who buy into the first two, but have lost confidence in the policies proposed as remedies. Jeffrey Ball writes at Science Direct, not questioning climate science or feared impacts, but distraught about the failed efforts to do something to reduce emissions.  His article is Hot Air Won’t Fly: The New Climate Consensus That Carbon Pricing Isn’t Cutting It Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Jeffrey Ball, a writer whose work focuses on energy and the environment, is the scholar-in-residence at Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance and a lecturer at Stanford Law School. He also is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Fortune, Mother Jones, The Atlantic, New Republic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Ball, previously The Wall Street Journal’s environment editor, focuses his Stanford research on improving the effectiveness of clean-energy investment, particularly in China.

Carbon Pricing Isn’t Cutting It

In the history of climate change, 2018 will go down as a year when certain facts finally hit home, truths inconvenient for partisans on all sides. Those on the right, at least those who have been arguing that greenhouse-gas emissions aren’t a significant problem, were forced to recognize that those emissions are causing real harm to real people right now. Those on the left, at least those who have put their faith in the promise of renewable energy to cool the planet, had to reckon with the reality that, even as those technologies boomed, carbon emissions continued to grow. And those across the political spectrum who had been calling for what seemed in theory a sensible climate policy—putting a price on carbon emissions—had to concede that their supposed solution isn’t helping much at all.

(My comment: Like so many true believers, Ball casts climate change as a political issue between left and right wings.  Note he does think we can all agree that policies are not working.)

No single event can be attributed to climate change, but scientists cite a lengthening list of unfolding events, from wildfires in California to drought in Europe to rising waters along Bangladesh, as evidence of the effects of a warming world. Even the administration of US President Donald Trump, which has rolled back myriad climate policies, noted in a November report, the latest legally mandated US National Climate Assessment, that the effects of climate change “are already being felt in communities across the country”—from intensifying flooding in the nation’s northeast region, to worsening drought in the southwestern part of the country, to rising temperatures and erosion that are damaging buildings in Alaska.

(My comment:  Ball does not acknowledge rebuttals and challenges to the recent NCA document that merely repeated claims from previous editions, and echoed the feverish exhortations from IPCC SR15.  But this  paragraph was aimed at the skeptical on the right, while soothing the believers on the left.  Let’s now get into the meat of it: Is the government stopping it?)

Renewable energy isn’t stopping that. It represented 70% of net new power-generating capacity installed globally in 2017, a stunning share that reflects falling costs and rising penetration.  Yet for all that growth, renewable energy still provided only an estimated 14% of total global energy in 2017, up about 1 percentage point from its share in 2000, because fossil-fuel energy capacity also has been increasing. Indeed, even as renewable-energy capacity hit an all-time high, energy-related carbon emissions did too. They rose 1.6% in 2017, following three years in which they were flat, and they are expected to have risen further in 2018.

Emissions are increasing even though more governments than ever before have imposed prices on carbon emissions, either levying a carbon tax or instituting a cap-and-trade system of pollution permits so that those who emit greenhouse gases have a financial incentive to reduce them. That is little wonder, given that less than 1% of global carbon emissions are subject to a price that economists peg as high enough to meaningfully curb them.

This past June, in an essay in Foreign Affairs, “Why Carbon Pricing Isn’t Working,” I cataloged evidence that carbon pricing is failing to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions around the world—from Europe, where the policy took significant hold, to California, where leading policymakers have embraced it, to China, which is in the early stages of ramping up what will be by far the biggest carbon-pricing regime on the planet. I argued that, though in theory carbon pricing makes sense, in practice it is failing, for two reasons: structurally, carbon pricing tends to constrain emissions mostly in the electricity sector, leaving the transportation and building sectors largely unaffected; and politically, even those governments that have imposed carbon prices have lacked the fortitude to set them high enough to significantly curb even electricity emissions. As a result, I wrote, “a policy prescription widely billed as a panacea is acting as a narcotic. It’s giving politicians and the public the warm feeling that they’re fighting climate change even as the problem continues to grow.” Not just ineffective, carbon pricing is proving counterproductive, because “it is reducing the pressure to adopt other carbon-cutting measures, ones that would hit certain sectors harder and that would produce faster reductions.” Among those other needed measures: phasing out coal as a power source except where it is burned with carbon-capture- and -sequestration technology, which minimizes its emissions; maintaining, rather than closing, nuclear plants; making renewable energy cheaper; and mandating greater energy efficiency.

Would that the half year since that essay was published had proven its assessment too harsh. Unfortunately, recent events and analyses have only bolstered it. Since the summer, and in the lead-up to the latest global climate-policy conference, this month in Poland, studies exploring carbon pricing’s shortcomings have begun piling up. They now amount to a new and sobering climate-literature genre.

Belief in carbon pricing was strong in 2015, when policymakers from some 190 countries issued the Paris Agreement, calling for measures to keep the increase in the average global temperature “well below” 2°C above preindustrial levels and for “pursuing efforts” to keep the rise below 1.5°C.6 Unlike prior climate agreements, notably the Kyoto Protocol, which nearly two decades earlier had pressed for emission cuts only from developed countries, the Paris Agreement included specific emission-reduction pledges even by China, India, and other developing countries, which now produce the bulk of global emissions. But the pledges countries made in Paris were voluntary rather than mandatory, and most were relatively weak. Even if countries made good on them, it was clear, the world would not cut emissions anywhere near enough to avoid crashing through the 2°C threshold.

Coming out of Paris, carbon pricing was a presumption. In 2017, a group of leading economists backed by the World Bank and called the High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices announced that meeting the Paris temperature targets would require carbon prices of US$40 to $80 per metric ton of carbon dioxide by 2020 and of $50 to $100 per ton by 2030.  But in May the World Bank reported that, though the percentage of global greenhouse-gas emissions subject to carbon prices had risen to 20%, only 3% of those emissions were priced at or above the important $40 level.  In other words, fewer than 1% of all global greenhouse-gas emissions are priced at a level likely to constrain them.

Carbon-pricing regimes are spreading, and some are being toughened, but neither is happening quickly enough to make much environmental difference. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), parsing the numbers somewhat differently than does the World Bank, calculates that 76.5% all energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in OECD and Group of 20 (G20) countries either aren’t priced at all or are priced below 30 euros per metric ton of carbon dioxide, a level the OECD calls “a low-end estimate of the damage that carbon emissions currently cause.” That “carbon gap,” in OECD parlance, has narrowed by just 1 percentage point in each of the past three years—hardly a relevant climate win.

It is against this backdrop that critiques of carbon pricing have begun to accumulate. One of the more notable was published in August by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose head, Christine Lagarde, has been an enthusiastic supporter of carbon pricing. She called in 2017 for this response to carbon dioxide: “Price it right, tax it smart, do it now.” As the IMF’s new working paper makes clear, most carbon prices thus far imposed haven’t been right, relying on carbon taxes hasn’t been terribly smart, and, if “it” means a serious response to climate change, the world isn’t doing it now.

The authors of the IMF study used a model to project how carbon prices at two levels by 2030—$35 per metric ton of carbon dioxide and $70 per ton—would affect emissions in the G20 economies. (Few countries have imposed a carbon price anywhere near even the lower of those numbers.) The IMF model clarifies why the world’s largest economies find it so economically and politically difficult to impose a robust price on carbon, just how inadequate were the pledges most countries made in Paris, and how wrenching it will likely be even for countries that made relatively significant Paris pledges to follow through on those promises.

Carbon pricing, as I noted in Foreign Affairs in June, “works well for industries that use a lot of fossil energy, that have technologies available to them to reduce that energy use, and that can’t easily relocate to places where energy is cheaper.” That is why it tends to bite first in the electricity sector. The IMF model underscores this, concluding that the major determinant of how significantly a given carbon price will curb emissions in a given country is the extent to which that country’s electricity sector relies on coal. A $70 carbon tax, the IMF model projects, would cut emissions by significantly more than 30% in coal-dependent China, India, and South Africa; by some 15%–25% in such countries as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom; and by less than 15% in coal-light France and Saudi Arabia.9 (That helps explain why, among all these countries, only France has imposed a carbon price above $40 per ton. And even France has difficulty raising the effective price on carbon, as the recent Yellow Vest protests, which led France to suspend a proposed fuel-tax increase, show.)

That carbon pricing hits hardest in coal-reliant places helps explain its political difficulties. The IMF’s modeled carbon tax is particularly regressive—meaning its cost falls particularly heavily on the poorest—in China and the United States, the world’s two top carbon emitters.  (Electricity access in these two coal-heavy nations is broad, meaning the poor there tend to spend a greater portion of their income on carbon-intense power than do the rich.) Although both countries are experimenting with carbon pricing, it is little surprise that the prices in both remain low. In California, carbon prices are higher than in other parts of the United States that have implemented them, but California gets only a small amount of its electricity from coal—and most of that is imported from other states—which bolsters the point. The IMF analysis also helps clarify why China, the world’s top coal burner, proffered a relatively weak Paris pledge. Some governments are trying to counteract the regressive nature of carbon pricing by layering on structures to return all or some of the resulting revenue to consumers—a worthwhile idea. But even those structures have faced opposition in coal-reliant jurisdictions.

Even some countries whose Paris pledges were more robust are likely to have difficulty following through on them. Those pledges “might imply increases in energy prices (and burdens on vulnerable groups) that push the bounds of political acceptability,” the IMF paper notes. A meaningful reduction in carbon emissions, the IMF concludes, would require backstopping countries’ Paris pledges in two ways: by imposing carbon-price floors—levels below which countries decree that their carbon prices will not fall—and by imposing policies other than carbon pricing that force deeper cuts. Inoffensive carbon pricing alone won’t cut it.

Even extraordinarily high carbon prices are failing in important ways to spur significant carbon cuts. A piece published in Energy Policy in late June by Endre Tvinnereim and Michael Mehling explores the uninspiring example of Sweden. The small Scandinavian country has, according to the World Bank, the highest carbon price in the world, at $126 per ton, based on current currency-exchange rates.4 Yet in the quarter century between 1990, when Sweden introduced its carbon tax, and 2015, carbon emissions from Swedish road transportation fell only 4%. Meanwhile, sales in Sweden of new internal-combustion vehicles continue to rise, imposing what the authors call “carbon lock-in” from vehicles likely to remain on the road a decade or more. What’s needed, they argue, are bans on the sale of new internal-combustion cars, bans of the sort that have been proposed in such countries as China, India, France, the United Kingdom, and Norway. Pricing carbon “is useful,” they write, “but far from sufficient to achieve deep decarbonization.”

The authors are right that policies beyond carbon pricing are needed. But clarity about the goal of such policies is key. Some recent critiques of carbon pricing, at least implicitly, construe success in fighting climate change as requiring the near-total replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy. Plenty of evidence, however, suggests that structuring the climate fight primarily as a pursuit of renewables is neither realistic nor particularly smart.

The goal in fighting climate change is not to end the use of fossil fuels. The goal is to fuel the world while cutting carbon emissions essentially to zero. That will require dramatically lowering the cost and thus boosting the penetration of renewable and other non-fossil energy sources. It also will mean ensuring that the large quantities of fossil fuels that are all but certain to continue to be burned for decades to come are burned using technologies that slash the amount of carbon dioxide their combustion coughs into the atmosphere.

The policies necessary to achieve these twin ends will be complex. A meaningful carbon price would help them, but in most of the world there is little evidence policymakers have the stomach to impose one. Climate change is real. Fighting it demands—from everyone involved—more than rhetoric. That this message is getting across is a good sign.

My Concluding Comment

The graph illustrates the problem very clearly. Since 1994 there have been 24 Conferences of the Parties (COP), along with numerous other meetings. These UNFCCC discussions have utterly failed to reduce CO2 emissions. Yet from 2020, emissions have to drop dramatically, if we are to stand a chance of keeping global warming below 1.5°C.

According to IPCC SR15 this will require an annual average investment of around US$2.4 trillion (at 2010 prices) between 2016 and 2035, representing approximately 2.5% of global gross domestic product (GDP). The cost of inaction and delay, however, will be many times greater. (sic).  Note:  This is referring to increasing investments in renewable energy from current US$335B per year to $2.4T.  Present global spending on Climate Crisis Inc. is estimated at nearly US$2T, not limited to renewables.  So this would double the money wasted spent on this hypothetical problem.

After reading Ball’s assessment it is obvious that carbon pricing will only reduce emissions by crashing national economies.  The fear of CO2 leads directly to discussion of stopping modern societies in their tracks.  Talking about policies that “bite” this or that sector equates to intentionally dictating economic decline, industry by industry.  And Ball suggests that ever more intrusive bans and regulations must be added on top of higher carbon prices in order to save the planet from our way of life.

This analysis has been preceded by numerous doomsday deadlines over the decades which we have passed and not suffered in the least.  Can we finally dismiss the illusion that we humans control the temperature of the planet?  Can we stop the crazy schemes to cut our CO2 emissions, and appreciate instead the greening of the biosphere?

Rational public policymakers can not presume the climate will be unchanging in the future.  Our experience teaches that there will be future periods both warmer and cooler than the present.  History also shows that cold periods are the greater threat to human health and prosperity.  Instead of wasting time and resources trying to control the future weather, we should be preparing to adapt to whatever nature brings.  The priorities should be to ensure affordable and reliable energy and robust infrastructure.

See Also IPCC Freakonomics

Susan Shelley writes an article with the same title at Los Angeles Daily News Climate activists versus affordable housing.  Excerpts below in italics with my bolds.. I also added some pertinent cartoons by the irrepressible Californian Lisa Benson.

In what may signal the beginning of the end of alarmism over climate change, a group of civil rights activists is suing the California Air Resources Board. The issue is CARB’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by effectively limiting new housing construction. The lawsuit says this is driving up the cost of housing, worsening poverty and particularly victimizing minority communities.

The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Assembly Bill 32), signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, committed California to a goal of reducing statewide greenhouse gas emissions. The California Air Resources Board was required by AB 32 to write “scoping” plans every five years detailing how the specified GHG reduction targets would be met.

The 2017 scoping plan includes “guidelines” for new housing that the lawsuit calls “staggering, unlawful and racist.”

The group that is suing is called The Two Hundred. It’s a Bay Area organization made up of longtime civil rights advocates who have spent decades fighting against discrimination. They say CARB’s new GHG housing provisions have a “disparate effect on minority communities,” which is illegal and unconstitutional.

CARB’s provisions “increase the cost and litigation risks of building housing,” intentionally worsen traffic congestion and raise fuel and electricity costs, the activists contend.

The lawsuit says CARB’s scoping plan calls for new housing in “California’s existing communities (which comprise 4 percent of California’s lands).” The idea is to reduce “vehicle miles traveled” by limiting sprawl. But the civil rights activists say this is leading to resegregation of California’s urban areas as older affordable housing is demolished to make way for high-density housing that is unaffordable.

A better solution, the group says, is to build homes on land that is outside the current urban boundaries, but CARB’s 2017 scoping plan is preventing that. Its “guidelines” are helping to block new housing developments.

CARB tried unsuccessfully to get the lawsuit thrown out. Fresno County Superior Court Judge Jane Cardoza issued an order in October allowing it to go forward.

Unless there’s a settlement, the courts will decide whether “California’s climate change policies, and specifically those policies that increase the cost and delay or reduce the availability of housing, that increase the cost of transportation fuels and intentionally worsen highway congestion to lengthen commute times, and further increase electricity costs, have caused and will cause unconstitutional and unlawful disparate impacts to California’s minority populations.”

Not to mention their impact on everybody else.

There are four “GHG Housing Measures” at issue. They attempt to limit “vehicle miles traveled,” set a “net zero” GHG standard for new housing developments and add a “CO2 per capita” measurement to local “climate action plans.” There’s also a set of policies to encourage “vibrant communities.”

CARB says these “GHG Housing Measures” are only “guidelines,” but the lawsuit calls them “unlawful underground regulations” that were imposed without a formal rulemaking process.

Something else that CARB skipped, the lawsuit charges, is the legally required economic analysis that “accounts for the cost of these measures on today’s Californians.”

Yes, civil rights activists are demanding that climate regulations meet the law’s required standard of cost-effectiveness.

But California’s climate regulations can’t meet any standard of cost-effectiveness.

As the lawsuit explains it, “California’s reputation as a global climate leader is built on the state’s dual claims of substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously enjoying a thriving economy. Neither claim is true.”

The statewide economic growth numbers are misleading, the lawsuit says, because the averages are boosted by capital gains in the wealthy Bay Area tech sector, while most of the state struggles with low wages and high costs. And while Californians were paying too much for housing, fuel and electricity in order to achieve greenhouse gas reductions, other states actually had greater GHG reductions without doing anything.

“California’s climate policies guarantee that housing, transportation and electricity prices will continue to rise while ‘gateway’ jobs to the middle class for those without college degrees, such as manufacturing and logistics, will continue to locate in other states,” the lawsuit states.

This is something new in California. Civil rights activists are attempting to hold climate activists accountable for worsening the housing crisis and increasing poverty.

Maybe it’s the political climate that’s changing.

Susan Shelley is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group. Susan@SusanShelley.com. Twitter: @Susan_Shelley.

Introduction:  HuffPost Gets Huffy over CBO Analysis

In a baffling repudiation of the federal government’s own scientists, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last week said that climate change poses little economic risk to the United States in the next decade.

The statement, which went so far as to highlight dubiously positive effects of rising global temperatures, poses a potential hurdle for future legislation to curb surging greenhouse gas emissions, experts said, and amounts to textbook climate change denial.

What CBO Actually Said

The US Congressional Budget Office released the document Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2019 to 2028 (Title is link to pdf)  It consists of 35 policy options of which #35 is Impose a Tax on Emissions of Greenhouse Gases. The discussion is as follows (text in italics with my bolds).

Background

The accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere— particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), which is released when fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and natural gas) are burned and as a result of deforestation—contributes to climate change, which imposes costs on countries around the globe, including the United States.

Many estimates suggest that the effect of climate change on the nation’s economic output, and hence on federal tax revenues, will probably be small over the next 30 years and larger, but still modest, in the following few decades. Among the more certain effects of climate change on humans over the next several decades, some would be positive, such as reductions in deaths from cold weather and improvements in agricultural productivity in certain areas. However, others would be negative, such as declines in the availability of fresh water in areas dependent on snowmelt and the loss of property from high-tide flooding and from storm surges as sea levels rise. Uncertainty about the effects of climate change— and the potential for unlimited emissions to cause significant damage—grow substantially in the more distant future.

Scientists generally agree that reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases would decrease the magnitude of climate change and the expected costs and risks associated with it. The federal government regulates some emissions in an effort to reduce them; however, emissions are not directly taxed. A well-designed tax that covered most energy-related emissions would be expected to reduce emissions.

Greenhouse gas emissions are typically measured in CO2 equivalents (CO2e), which reflect the amount of carbon dioxide estimated to cause an equivalent amount of warming. Under current law, emissions are projected to decline from 5.4 billion metric tons of CO2e in 2019 to 5.2 billion metric tons of CO2e in 2028.

Option

This option would impose a tax of $25 per metric ton on most emissions of greenhouse gases in the United States—specifically, on most energy-related emissions of CO2 (for example, from electricity generation, manufacturing, and transportation) and some other greenhouse gas emissions from large manufacturing facilities. To simplify implementation, as well as to provide incentives to deploy technologies that capture emissions generated in the production of electricity, the tax could be levied on oil producers, natural gas refiners (for sales outside the electricity sector), and electricity generators. The tax would increase at an annual inflation-adjusted rate of 2 percent.

Revenues—Option 35 Impose a Tax on Emissions of Greenhouse Gases (Billions of Dollars)

Effects on the Budget

According to estimates made by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office, implementing this option would increase federal revenues by $1,099 billion from 2019 through 2028. On average, about 5 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions would be taxed each year over that period. Taxed emissions would be roughly 4 percent lower than projected under current law in 2019 and 11 percent lower in 2028. Despite the projected decline in emissions over the 10-year period, tax revenues would rise over time because the additional revenues caused by increases in the tax rate would more than offset the decrease in revenues caused by the decline in taxable emissions. A tax that was somewhat higher or somewhat lower than the $25 dollar per ton tax considered in this option would generate a roughly proportionally larger or smaller amount of revenues.

A tax on greenhouse gas emissions would reduce taxable business and individual income. The resulting reduction in income and payroll tax receipts would partially offset the increase in excise taxes. The estimate for the option reflects that income and payroll tax offset.

The estimate for this option is uncertain for two key reasons. First, the projected amount of emissions released in the absence of the tax depends on estimates of future economic activity and future changes in the relative prices of various fuels and energy technologies, both of which are uncertain. Second, even if projections of future emissions under current law are accurate, estimated reductions in emissions stemming from the tax are uncertain, in part because they depend on the development of new technologies and on individuals’ and firms’ reactions to the changes in prices that the tax would induce. CBO’s estimates of reductions in emissions rely on past responses to such changes, as reported in the published literature.

Other Effects

An argument in favor of this option is that it would reduce U.S. emission of greenhouse gases and would do so in a cost-effective way. In particular, the tax would reduce emissions in a more cost-effective manner than regulations because such a tax would create uniform incentives for businesses and households throughout the economy to reduce their emissions. The tax would increase the cost of producing carbon-intensive goods and services in proportion to the amount of greenhouse gases emitted as a result of their production and consumption. Moreover, those cost increases would trigger corresponding increases in the prices of consumer goods. As a result, the tax would provide incentives for businesses to produce goods in ways that yield fewer emissions (for example, by generating electricity from wind rather than from coal) and for individuals to consume goods in ways that yield fewer emissions (for example, by driving less). Specifically, this tax would motivate emission reductions that cost less than $25 per ton to achieve, but not those that would cost more than $25 per ton.

Although the effects of climate change on the U.S. economy and on the federal budget are expected to be small in the next few decades, the effects are much more uncertain—and potentially far larger—in the more distant future. Many scientists think there is at least some risk that large changes in global temperatures will trigger catastrophic damage, causing substantial harm to human health and well-being as well as the economy. Moreover, greenhouse gases are long-lived, affecting the climate for many decades after they are emitted. As a result, delaying actions to limit emissions reduces the possibility of avoiding potentially harmful future effects. Because this option would take effect in January 2019, it would help avoid the compounded problems that might be caused by such delays.

An argument against a tax on greenhouse gas emissions is that curtailing U.S. emissions would burden the economy by raising the cost of producing emission-intensive goods and services while yielding uncertain benefits for U.S. residents. For example, most of the direct benefits of lessened emissions and associated reductions in climate change might occur outside of the United States over the next several decades, particularly in developing countries that are at greater risk from changes in weather patterns and an increase in sea levels.

Another argument against this option is that reductions in domestic emissions could be partially offset by increases in emissions overseas if carbon-intensive industries relocated to countries without restrictions on emissions or if reductions in energy consumption in the United States led to decreases in foreign fuel prices. More generally, averting the risk of future damage caused by emissions would depend on collective global efforts to cut emissions. Most analysts agree that reducing emissions in this country would have small effects on climate change if other countries with high levels of emissions did not also cut them substantially (although such reductions in the United States would still diminish the probability of catastrophic damage and could spur other countries to cut their emissions).

An alternative approach for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in a cost-effective manner would be to establish a cap-and-trade program that set caps on such emissions in the United States. Under such a program, allowances that conveyed the right to emit one metric ton of CO2e apiece would be sold at open auction. The overall number of allowances in a given year would be capped, and the cap would probably be lowered over time. If the caps were set to achieve the same cut in emissions that is anticipated from the tax, then the program would be expected to raise roughly the same amount of revenues between 2019 and 2028. In contrast with a tax, a cap-and-trade program would provide certainty about the quantity of emissions from sources that are subject to the cap (because it would directly limit those emissions), but it would not provide certainty about the costs that firms and households would face for the greenhouse gases that they continued to emit.

Footnote: Additional CBO Response to HuffPost

In a lengthy statement to HuffPost, the CBO referred to three of its own past reports, including one that said, “Even under scenarios in which significant climate change is assumed, the projected long-term effects on GDP would tend to be modest relative to underlying economic growth.”

“Although CBO has not undertaken a full analysis of the budgetary costs stemming from climate change, it has recently analyzed the potential costs of future hurricane damage caused by climate change and coastal development,” read an excerpt from one report highlighted in the statement. “All told, CBO projects that the increase in the amount of hurricane damage attributable to coastal development and climate change will probably be less than 0.05 percent of GDP in the 2040s.”

The agency’s report attributed differing climate predictions to “the imperfect understanding of physical processes and of many aspects of the interacting components (land, air, water, ice, and all forms of life) that make up the Earth’s climate system.”

My Comment

The US Congressional Budget Office is required to examine any reasonable and feasible policies to reduce the government’s operating deficit. In that context, it looked at pricing carbon emissions and projected revenues and economic effects. Arguments for and against the policy option were summarized accordingly. Alarmists are intolerant of arguments against their preferred objective to keep fossil fuels in the ground. On the other hand, CBO weighs likely negative economic effects against the unlikely prospect of concerted international cooperation to reduce emissions.

Abe Greenwald writes in the Commentary The Paris Climate Discord Not in my wallet. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Global-warming activists predicted that Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement on climate change would claim innocent lives. Trump pulled out over a year ago, and the death toll from the American snub stands at zero. In France, however, violent protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to mitigate climate change have killed one person and injured 227.

On Saturday, French mobs were protesting a tax hike on fuel. And they, not Macron, are directly to blame for the death and destruction. But the fact that these massive demonstrations happened at all—that they involved some 283,000 protestors—shows how little anyone really worries about climate change.

Macron is trying to get France off of fossil fuels. The French government recently raised diesel taxes by seven euro cents and had planned to raise the gasoline tax by four euro cents. But it turns out that people—not just Americans—care deeply about melting ice caps and rising sea levels only under specific circumstances. Namely, when they can be blamed on the greed and stupidity of their political enemies. They find that they suddenly care a lot less when addressing climate change means shelling out a few extra euro cents. So the French came out in droves, lit bonfires, tore up some buildings, blocked streets, and chanted slogans.

Last year, Trump fought back against critics of the Paris withdrawal by saying, “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” But he might have represented the citizens of Paris, too. “We no longer know what kind of car to buy, petrol, diesel, electric, who knows?” said one protester interviewed by the Guardian. “I have a little diesel van, and I don’t have the money to buy a new one, especially as I’m about to retire. We have the feeling those from the countryside are forgotten.”

Another protestor said that “the fuel tax was just the final straw.” He went on: “All we can do is show that people are angry, that they are not alone and that they can do something about it. I hope there is no violence, but people are angry. I can understand why, for years they have voted for things and nothing has changed for them.” The protestors, known as gilets jaunes, for their signature yellow vests, enjoy 79-percent support among the French working class, according to IFOP.

Meanwhile, as Parisians turn against the core ideas of the Paris agreement, Americans are worked up over the Trump administration’s seeming indifference to a new U.S. government report on climate change. The Fourth National Climate Assessment was prepared by “300 leading scientists,” according to CNN. And like all sober scientific documents, it’s packed to the gills with apocalyptic predictions for the coming century.

The U.S. economy could lose 10 percent of its GDP; crops will shrink, much ocean life will die off, and more people will have less food. Illness will spread, pollution will get worse, floods and wildfires will increase, and, naturally, many people will die. Now, imagine the public response in our own low-trust, grievance-obsessed nation if the Trump administration actually instituted a policy that required every American to pay up to keep that theoretical future at bay.

There’s a curious contradiction in climate activism. On the one hand, we’re told that the effects of climate change are already happening all around us—that we no longer have to wait for signs of devastation. On the other hand, huge resources swing into action to lay out disaster-movie scenarios of a dystopian future. If the effects of climate change are already so evident, why go to all the trouble of scaring us about what’s going to happen? Maybe because even sympathetic people don’t really believe—in their marrow—that anything alarming is currently happening. If they did, perhaps they’d give up their cars and shrink their lifestyles on the spot. But as it stands, they scream for government intervention and then protest when called to share in the cost.