Libertarians and Climate Change

[psychictv]

Having said that, remember that during the industrial revolution, massive polluting was coincidental (but not a coincidence) with increasing lifespans as that allowed general increase in wealth as well as non-farming specialization, which helps increase the rates of technological advance.

What's the connection you're proposing here?

Businesses are routinely driven out of California, and a significant driver of that process is the California EPA that seems to be manned by zealots who are incapable of considering the unintended consequences of their actions.

And yet we still have a higher per-capita GDP in CA than states like Nevada, Utah, or Texas where some of those businesses are moving.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per_capita_(nominal)

And surely you have noticed that countries with the toughest environmental restrictions like the U.S., or E.U. member nations, are pretty prosperous places compared to the third world nations with lax environmental protections.

 

[Francesca R]

What's the connection you're proposing here?

I can't speak for Beerina, but I would characterise it as growth that is bad for the environment is still better than no growth. And when a society is poor, and newly industrialising/urbanising and generally getting richer from a very low base (like--the equivalent of a couple of dollars income a day per person), looking after the environment is a luxury it can not, and should not be required to afford.

And surely you have noticed that countries with the toughest environmental restrictions like the U.S., or E.U. member nations, are pretty prosperous places compared to the third world nations with lax environmental protections.

This is my point. They don't get to be able to consider their environment until they are rich.

 

[Chaos]

Rather than sit back as people start another bash Libertarians thread, I'll respond.

In theory, Libertarians don't have a problem with stopping contamination of shared things like air or waterways. After all, remember it's about doing whatever you want with what you own, not with things you don't own (or don't completely own, if you want to maintain a fractional share ownership of common things like that.) And the rules governing this (hopefully advised by science) are a fine area for democracy.


Having said that, remember that during the industrial revolution, massive polluting was coincidental (but not a coincidence) with increasing lifespans as that allowed general increase in wealth as well as non-farming specialization, which helps increase the rates of technological advance.

So one should be very careful when passing environmental regulatory laws, and keep in mind that a "filthy but throbbing economy" could very well be better for the people than a "clean but hampered" economy, as actually measured by studies of longevity, health, wellness, number of wii games, your pick.

Screw that. I´d rather be poor fifty feet above sea level than rich fifty feet below sea level.

What you write translates as, "Yeah, well, the world may come to an end, but as long as I´m enjoying the spoils of causing it to end that´s fine by me". In other words, typical Libertarian shortsighted selfishness.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Screw that. I´d rather be poor fifty feet above sea level than rich fifty feet below sea level.

As previously noted, your feet are an avaiable asset for resolving this problem. Inability to adapt can be lethal.

I suggest you look up the town of Pozzuoli, Italn (Sophia Loren's home town) and consider the Roman era city/town underwater in the local bay. Funnily enough, lots of people still live in the general locale, above the water line.

DR

 

[davefoc]

...
What you write translates as, "Yeah, well, the world may come to an end, but as long as I´m enjoying the spoils of causing it to end that´s fine by me". In other words, typical Libertarian shortsighted selfishness.

I didn't know exactly what Beerina meant, but based on the way I took it, it seemed very reasonable to me.

A balance needs to be drawn between protecting the environment and the general welfare. A general, anything that reduces pollution is in net good is a great view, if that is your religion. But if one gives a crap about people one understands that people may on occasion opt for material wealth over the promotion of your environmental religion.

I say this as a person that thinks Republican efforts to prevent the regulation of strip mining bordered on a criminal conspiracy between the polluters and the Republicans. And who in general thinks that a lot of environmental efforts have been very important to the quality of life in the US. But environmental legislation that is enacted by true believers in the religion of environmentalism without consideration for the costs of their regulations can do enormous harm to the lives of people. And that I thought was the point Beerina was making.

 

[psychictv]

A general, anything that reduces pollution is in net good is a great view, if that is your religion.

Or, you know, if you simply look at the facts. No religion is required.

Here's a look at the economic benefits alone, from the first google result for "benefits of reduced air pollution" (without quotes).
"Benefits of air pollution regulations in USA rose steadily from 1975 to 2000 from $50 billion to $400 billion (from 2.1% to 7.6% of market consumption)."

But if one gives a crap about people one understands that people may on occasion opt for material wealth over the promotion of your environmental religion.

Nice framing. You could use that reasoning to justify any criminal activity.

But environmental legislation that is enacted by true believers in the religion of environmentalism without consideration for the costs of their regulations can do enormous harm to the lives of people.

Can you give any such examples where environmental regulations have done enormous harm to the lives of people?

 

[psychictv]

And when a society is poor, and newly industrialising/urbanising and generally getting richer from a very low base (like--the equivalent of a couple of dollars income a day per person), looking after the environment is a luxury it can not, and should not be required to afford.

Why not? What about cases where the environmental alternative isn't much more expensive than the dirty alternative, or where it actually provides further economic benefits by creating new jobs and industries? It doesn't make sense to compare currently developing nations to the industrial revolution since they have the benefit of not having to make the same mistakes that were made in the past.

They don't get to be able to consider their environment until they are rich.

It's not "their environment", just the environment.

 

[Chaos]

As previously noted, your feet are an avaiable asset for resolving this problem. Inability to adapt can be lethal.

I suggest you look up the town of Pozzuoli, Italn (Sophia Loren's home town) and consider the Roman era city/town underwater in the local bay. Funnily enough, lots of people still live in the general locale, above the water line.

DR

Why should I, who contributed an infinitesimal part to this mess, bear the burden of everybody´s irresponsibility? Why should not everybody bear the burden of preventing sea level change?

Or in other words - are you going to give me half of your high-altitude property for free, since between the two of us you caused half the global warming that got mine sunk?

 

[Undesired Walrus]

So one should be very careful when passing environmental regulatory laws, and keep in mind that a "filthy but throbbing economy" could very well be better for the people than a "clean but hampered" economy, as actually measured by studies of longevity, health, wellness, number of wii games, your pick.

Except when you put out huge amounts of C02 it doesn't become the problem of one economy, but many. After a while, it becomes the world's problem, and that of those in poorer countries who hadn't pumped all that C02 in the first place and disproportionately suffer.

 

[David Wong]

Man, it'd be so much easier to take them seriously if they didn't use idiotic language like "religion of environmentalism."

Yes, it's a "religion" if I want you to stop poisoning the air I breathe just so you can get rich.

And they wonder why we make fun of them.

 

[theprestige]

Government coercion is immoral. War, pestilence, famine, and death -- those are all fine, but Jesus, Mary, and Joseph spare me from the immorality of government coercion to prevent those.

To be fair, I think the actual libertarian position is that governments often cause all those other horrible things, and that therefore, as a rule of thumb, its preferable to limit a government's power to coerce whenever possible, as a way to avoid the other things on the list.

 

[daenku32]

The free market would solve it because we would adapt to changes or rationally choose greener options as time goes by, or global warming would happen because that is our free choice under capitalism, and what would be immoral is government coercion. Libertarianism doesn't need to solve anything.

Having said that, remember that during the industrial revolution, massive polluting was coincidental (but not a coincidence) with increasing lifespans as that allowed general increase in wealth as well as non-farming specialization, which helps increase the rates of technological advance.

So one should be very careful when passing environmental regulatory laws, and keep in mind that a "filthy but throbbing economy" could very well be better for the people than a "clean but hampered" economy, as actually measured by studies of longevity, health, wellness, number of wii games, your pick.

It's in cases like these where libertarianism is one huge collectivist system. So, the argument is that we the market happen to ignore AGW. Therefore, the results of AGW is of our own doing and therefore just. This totally ignores the fact that those who wanted change were overruled by those with majority power (power that is highly undemocratic), and that many island nations will simply be drowned, along with much of the coast line in developing nations, none of which hardly contributed nearly as much to the problem as those who freely chose to ignore it.

I threw in Beerina's post as well. Essentially, regulation that prevents cancer in the workers should be ignored because there is net societal benefit by having these workers exposed to carcinogens. Oh, and that village down river as well. What is that if not collectivism?

 

[ZenFountain]

Libertarianism is the ultimate feel good philosophy. Anything that does not compute, such as free markets solving climate change without pesky government interference, is simply denied, wished away or obscured in flimsy rhetoric.

 

[Francesca R]

Why not? What about cases where the environmental alternative isn't much more expensive than the dirty alternative, or where it actually provides further economic benefits by creating new jobs and industries?

Do you have any examples? Because things are not usually like that. More likely it is: "Build and operate a fairly dirty and unsafe facility or don't have one". I think your choice is largely false and a red herring.

It doesn't make sense to compare currently developing nations to the industrial revolution since they have the benefit of not having to make the same mistakes that were made in the past.

Another way of viewing this comparison is to note that they have made tremendous mistakes by not having developed already. The last thing you should be doing is recommending some growth-retarding strategy that may be kinder to the environment.

 

[Francesca R]

Why should I, who contributed an infinitesimal part to this mess, bear the burden of everybody´s irresponsibility?

Whoa. What a libertarian/fundie comment. . . .

 

[Francesca R]

Man, it'd be so much easier to take them seriously if they didn't use idiotic language like "religion of environmentalism."

Yes, it's a "religion" if I want you to stop poisoning the air I breathe just so you can get rich.

This started well, but then . . . . you went and made environmentalism sound like religious dogma. Not sure if you wanted to do that.

 

[Chaos]

Whoa. What a libertarian/fundie comment. . . .

Huh?

The trouble with the approach I commented on is that, in the example given, the high-altitude landowners reap all the benefits of polluting while having none of the drawbacks, while for the low-altitude landowners it´s the other way around.
Sure a better approach would be, since both high-altitude and low-altitude landowners have done plenty of polluting, to have both high-altitude and low-altitude landowners either pay to prevent the consequences, or share whatever is left after the consequences have taken place.

 

[Beerina]

I hope I wasn't one of the libertarian bashers you were referring to and I hope you don't count it as libertarian bashing to notice that some libertarians tend to unrealistically minimize externalities.

This is true. However, others tend to overestimate the value of externalities (e.g. preservation of species) because it supports an interventionist narrative, a behavior denied them due to the failure of the class warfare and heavy-handed socialist narratives in the 60s and 70s. By the way, as an operative theory, this has yet to be disproven with a counterexample.

I think that is exactly correct, however if one discounts the value of publically held property such as air and water, in favor of privately held property, a kind of private property religion is created and I think that is what constitutes some forms of libertarianism.

I submit it's demonstrable that valuing private property ownership at extremely high levels is directly linked to the general welfare of people in a society, as actually measured by actual statistics of health, longevity, "and number of wii games".

To rephrase what I said earlier, if you truly care about The People, then you want this. If you truly care, and value science.

Yes, and I think this is one of the things that is out of whack in the US today. And especially in California. Bureaucracies have been set up with the goal of reducing pollution as an over arching goodness without the need to make cost/benefit analysis of their decisions. Businesses are routinely driven out of California, and a significant driver of that process is the California EPA that seems to be manned by zealots who are incapable of considering the unintended consequences of their actions.

It's fascinating, actually. I've been listening to Dr. Dean Edell podcasts, and they include the commercials. Apparently he's California-based, so they include the local station's commercials, too.

There was an interesting ad that apparently the former CEO of eBay is planning to run for guvinator next year. "Higher taxes, jobs fleeing the state, blah blah blah."

I wonder if in the back of every big government type's mind is the scurrilous thought that, "Well, if'n only we could seize control over the entire planet to force all rules the same!" ...so they can't flee us anymore.

 

[Francesca R]

I submit it's demonstrable that valuing private property ownership at extremely high levels is directly linked to the general welfare of people in a society

On this rationale, libertarians ought to certainly support tradeable emission permits.

 

[Beerina]

One should indeed be very careful--particularly about imposing income losses today that are believed to benefit those who will be around tomorrow. In many instances, the benefit of hindsight affords the realisation that the exact opposite of that is the better strategy (It would have been a shame if capitalists around Lancashire, England had decided not to build choking smelly textile mills in the 18th century so that we could have cleaner air today).

I prefer to treat it as a black box scenario.

Scenario 1: X people with Y lifespan + (box 1) + time = ?

Scenario 2: X people with Y lifespan + (box 2) + time = ?


One of the two has an X and Y that are greatly improved after time, compared to the other.

"Well!" the scientific person would say. "We want that one."

But that box is a bunch of smelly, stinky, polluting factories. The other box is very light industry or no industry at all. There are no heavy factories with advanced smokestack scrubbers in the 1800s.

So if you define caring about The People as whatever gets them the greatest increase in length and quality of life, decade after decade, century after century, then you choose the box accordingly.