Should we develop alternative fuels?

Until someone convinces me otherwise, I'm going to go with "no" -- at least if by "fuels" you mean carbon compounds that are used to release energy through combustion. Combustion of carbon compounds produces carbon dioxide, which aggravates global warming. If we're running out of oil, let's just run out, start driving less, flying less, doing less of things that produce greenhouse gases, and doing the remainder more efficiently. Or else let's find replacements that don't involve "fuels" in the sense I described: try electric cars that run on power from wind, solar power, hydroelectric power, nuclear power, etc..

From an environmental point of view, running out of oil is a good thing, an opportunity to slow down climate change, and are we now to try replacing that oil with other combustibles? When opportunity knocks, close the curtain and pretend you're not home?

If the government is going to subsidize anything, let it subsidize alternative sources and uses of electric power, or solar heating, or something like that. Why subsidize products that are going to aggravate our environmental problems?

Pigou and the Anthropophagi

Why does the salmon here cost more than the chicken? There ought to be a tax on chicken.

Why?

On chicken and meat and eggs and dairy products.

Why?

Because farm animals are bad for the environment.

How?

They contribute to global warming.

How?

They produce methane, which gets in the atmosphere and adds to the greenhouse effect.

People produce methane, too, you know.

That's why I think there should be a tax on people also. Cannibals need more vegetables in their diet anyhow.

The Pigou Club on YouTube

This video was posted several months ago by Razela (i.r.l. Jamie Bernstein, but not apparently Leonard Bernstein's daughter of the same name) on YouTube, as a response to a video by Bill Richardson asking for ideas about energy.



She also has a blog with embedded videos, but I couldn't find this one on her blog.

Carbon Taxes

Apparently, the public in most countries supports Pigovian carbon taxes, but economics students (at least those at Gettysburg College) don't.

More about Morality and Global Warming

In response to my previous post it has been suggested, as I expected it would be, that global warming is a moral issue because it concerns our moral obligation to future generations. I disagree, because I don’t think that those who oppose action on global warming are any less concerned about future generations. They just disagree about the best way to serve those generations. The disagreement is an economic/scientific/technological one and not a moral one. As usual, each side has tried to make the issue into a moral one by claiming that the other side has ulterior motives. For some interested parties, no doubt, there are ulterior motives, but the same is true of almost any political disagreement.

There is almost certainly a tradeoff between economic growth and action to reduce global warming. There is room for considerable disagreement about the terms of that tradeoff, but it would be foolish to deny that a tradeoff exists. Future generations are the ones who will benefit most from economic growth. People who oppose action on global warming argue that the negative impact of such action on future generations by reducing economic growth will exceed the positive impact by reducing global warming.*

On the margin, of course, they are clearly wrong, provided that all the relevant functions are continuously differentiable. If there is some positive chance of harm from global warming, then there is some cost that is worth paying in order to reduce global warming. The optimal Pigovian tax is nonzero. It is, however, reasonably argued that some of the relevant functions are not well-behaved. If there is a “critical mass” involved in reducing global warming, the cost of attaining that critical mass may not be worth paying. Or if there is a cost to the precedent of, for example, instituting a Pigovian tax, then even a small tax may be detrimental. I don’t find these arguments convincing, mostly because I think that the expected benefits of effective action against global warming (averaging over the entire range of possibilities) are extremely high, but it is a reasonable matter for dispute (at least theoretically).

The big problem with viewing any issue as a moral one is that it more or less ends the discussion. Those who disagree with you will never be convinced, because their morality is different from yours.

*Another way to put this discussion is that economic growth, properly measured, is by definition the only thing that benefits future generations. Proper measurement would require subtracting the harmful impact of global warming. The question, then, is whether action on global warming would ultimately increase or reduce properly measured economic growth.

Not a Moral Issue

According to Al Gore, speaking at the Oscars a few hours ago, global warming is “not a political issue; it’s a moral issue.” He’s wrong.

Viewing global warming as a moral issue is like viewing inflation as a moral issue. Telling people it’s immoral to overuse carbon-based fuels is like telling people it’s immoral to raise prices. WIN buttons didn’t help with the inflation problem in the 1970s, and the environmental equivalent of WIN buttons won’t help with the global warming problem. The problem in responding to global warming is one of coordinating our response, and that is precisely a political problem.

Unfortunately it’s a very difficult political problem. President Carter was ultimately able to solve the US inflation problem relatively easily by appointing Paul Volcker as Fed Chairman and letting Volcker take the heat for the necessary adjustments. By making money scarcer, Volcker’s Fed provided the incentives that induced businesses (and labor unions) to coordinate their pricing policies. Dealing with global warming will require much wider coordination (it can’t be done one nation at a time), and there is no existing mechanism to provide an independent scapegoat for the pain that may be involved.

Oil Demand Elasticity

In the light of the story in column 5 of today’s Wall Street Journal, I’d like to amend my application for membership in Greg Mankiw’s Pigou Club. To quote my earlier position,

I have to confess that my rationale is not 100% Pigovian. It seems clear to me that, even if Al Gore is only a little bit right about the causes and consequences of global warming, the optimal Pigovian tax is extremely high – much higher than what would be politically feasible (in the US) even in my wildest dreams. Energy demand is just not elastic enough, even in the long run, and the social costs of global warming are too high. So, for practical purposes, I see any increase in energy taxes more as a nondistortionary tax than as a Pigovian tax. There is a standard argument that taxes don’t do any harm if they don’t change behavior; in this case, changing behavior is gravy. (As for global warming, well, I’m just glad I’m going to die in another 40 years or so.)

“Energy demand is just not elastic enough, even in the long run…” After today’s news, I’m not so sure:

Oil consumption fell in the developed world last year for the first time in more than 20 years…

Never mind the rest of the article; the first half of the headline is enough. I thought oil consumption might fall eventually, but I was sure it would take a big recession to accomplish that. But instead here it is: good, old-fashioned demand elasticity. Make energy more expensive, and people just buy less of it. I feel like a kid who is old enough not to believe in Santa Claus but then sees a man in a red suit climb out of the fireplace.

I still think the optimal Pigovian tax is considerably higher than anything that might conceivably be politically feasible in the US. But I’m willing to say now that this is more a problem with the US political climate than with the enormity of the economic problem surrounding climate change. The economic problem is still a big one, but perhaps not so gargantuan as to be unsolvable. And I guess I can be a true Pigovian now, rather than a Ricardian masquerading as a Pigovian.

I temper my newfound optimism, however, in a couple of ways. First, as implied above, given political reality, I do not think a Pigovian tax would be sufficient to solve the problem (especially when you recognize that the US – indeed the whole developed world – is only part of it). Second, I’m not quite sure this guy in the red suit is really Santa Claus: a lot of what has happened recently is a shift of energy-intensive production from the developed world to the developing world, and most of the products are still consumed in the developed world, so it’s not clear how much of this ostensible reduced demand is really just a geographic shift in where the energy is used to satisfy existing final demand. Still, I didn’t expect to see anyone in a red suit coming out of the fireplace, so I’m pretty impressed, even it’s just Uncle Joe who decided to do something crazy after the 20th eggnog.

Join the Club

In reaction to this, I’m ready to join Greg Mankiw’s Pigou Club (people who support Pigovian taxes on carbon-based energy to deal with global warming – or other detrimental external effects of energy consumption – in an efficient way). There are a few reasons I might not be accepted, though:

1. I’m not sure that anonymous bloggers are qualified for admission.


2. I have to confess that my rationale is not 100% Pigovian. It seems clear to me that, even if Al Gore is only a little bit right about the causes and consequences of global warming, the optimal Pigovian tax is extremely high – much higher than what would be politically feasible (in the US) even in my wildest dreams. Energy demand is just not elastic enough, even in the long run, and the social costs of global warming are too high. So, for practical purposes, I see any increase in energy taxes more as a nondistortionary tax than as a Pigovian tax. There is a standard argument that taxes don’t do any harm if they don’t change behavior; in this case, changing behavior is gravy. (As for global warming, well, I’m just glad I’m going to die in another 40 years or so.)


3. I’m not sure Greg Mankiw reads my blog regularly enough to catch this post.

The argument commonly advanced against Pigovian taxes is that we cannot measure the relevant quantities well enough to ascertain the optimal tax. For example, in the (Toronto) National Post article linked at the beginning of this post:

The problem with a Pigovian gasoline tax is that it means using the same tools that failed planners everywhere over the past century. None of this stuff is measurable. What is the planned reduction in gasoline consumption? And what's the price to be set at? How high will the tax have to go before it changes behaviour enough to reduce demand? Will the government just wing it and see what happens? Will the alternative behaviour be any better or create new externalities and unintended consequences? What does government do with the money collected -- except launch a program of subsidies and spending to run alternative economic initiatives?

Since I’m convinced that the optimal tax is much higher than what is politically feasible, the uncertainty about the exact number is not a problem for me: I just advocate the highest tax possible. More generally, though, one might always set some reasonable lower bound and argue that the tax should be at least that high. The Post’s argument, as I commented in Greg Mankiw’s blog post (linked at the top), is essentially saying that government is generally incompetent, so whenever there’s a problem that the private sector can’t fix, the only reasonable approach is to ignore the problem. And then I proceeded to apply the same logic elsewhere:

The problem with using government-supplied police officers to protect citizens from crime is that it means using the same tools that failed planners everywhere over the past century. None of this stuff is measurable. What is the planned reduction in crime? And what are the wages of police officers to be set at? How much of this so-called police protection will have to be supplied before crime is sufficiently reduced? Will the government just wing it and see what happens? Will the police forces be any better than criminals, or will they create new externalities and unintended consequences? Where will the government get the money to pay these police officers?

I realize that a few anarchists won’t regard this as a reductio ad absurdum, but I’m not an anarchist myself. The debate does continue, however, and you can read it in the subsequent comments to Greg Mankiw’s post.

Inconvenient Weather

Now do you believe in global warming?