- That measures like the Kyoto Treaty, trumpeted by the likes of Al Gore, are nothing more than "political grandstanding" with no potential for effect on the problem, especially when "ratified" by American city councils and the like.
- That the only feasible means of addressing global warming are technological: "The practical conclusion is that, if global warming is a potential calamity, the only salvation is new technology."
Devoted gentle readers who have been following the discussion of technology and the environment between SWNID and JB in CA will find something SWNIDish in Samuelson's latter remark. Not that we would ever draw attention to that, of course.
12 comments:
I'm reminded of the remarks made by the scientific community after the detonation of the first atomic bomb. They claimed, in effect, that the only thing that could save of from this fearsome new menace is science. Now we're being told that the only thing that can save us from the damaging effects of technology is technology. No doubt, now that Pandora's Box has been opened, we'll need to make use of technology in our quest to fix the mess. But the solution to the problem isn't the box itself.
I think that part of our problem here is the tendency to use terms like "pollution" and "environmental damage" to refer exclusively to things created by industry and industrial products, while ignoring the fact that humans in their pre-industrial state on a per-capita basis do more demonstrable damage to their own health and the health of their environment by what they do to eat, cook, move about, and stay warm and dry than do their technological counterparts. With most measures of health and welfare in the developed world on the rise over the long and short terms, who can advocate returning to a pre-technological era? A quick review of literature describing the world's cities in prior centuries is a helpful reminder on this point, as is a trip to any city outside the developed world today.
Samuelson is not a scientist but an economist, BTW. So he doesn't offer himself as the solution to the problem. And to their credit, many scientists involved with the Manhattan Project after the bomb's use declared that science alone could not restrain the use of the bomb. We think that hubris is a misdirected charge.
I find the Pandora's box metaphor misplaced. In the Greek story, what Pandora unleashed were the human attitudinal and behavioral traits that create conflict and injustice. I urge you to defend yourself against the charge that by redefining the source of evil as something external, you have recapitulated the romantic fallacy of the noble savage.
But herein lies Samuelson's question, admittedly oversimplified but nevertheless salient: do we accept massive coercion that will do very specific, predictable and immediate damage to human welfare as a potential protection of uncertain potency against a disputed, uncertain, long-term threat that in the worst case will likely demand no more than the kinds of adaptations that humans have always made with reasonable success? Specifically, do we impoverish people for the low-odds possibility of marginally retarding the rate of climate change?
I don't restrict the meaning of "pollution" to industrial waste. I include everything you include. At the same time, however, neither do I restrict the meaning of "technology" to post-industrial means of controlling our environment. (I learned in high school physics that not every form of technology requires steel and transistors.) So even though I admit that there is a great deal of pollution in pre-industrial regions, I would point out that much (most?) of it is itself due to technology (in the form of primitive stoves, for instance). And I would argue that if (per impossibile) we could replace the pre-industrial technology of developing nations with the modern technology of the West (giving each family 2.2 cars, quintupling the number of coal plants, etc.), we would end up with a whole new set of environmental problems much worse than the first. You simply can't win that game with 6+ billion people to provide for.
I think the real problem here is that I'm having an exceptionally difficult time making my points. When I argue that technology should not be left to its own devices, you infer that I advocate "governmental repression of technological advances." When I argue that society (and not the market) should direct technology, you infer that I think "the government [should] pre-emptively choose the winners and losers in the development of technology." And when I argue that the types of technology we've developed are unsustainable, you infer that I "advocate returning to a pre-technological era."
None of these inferences follows from anything I've said. Consider, for instance, the following possibilities. As a society, we could (1) harness technology by means of governmental incentives rather than by governmental repression, (2) direct technological development by enticing the market to achieve broadly stated goals (e.g., the reduction of auto emissions by X percent) rather than by pre-emptively choosing one technology over another, and (3) cut back on the most environmentally damaging technologies without returning to a pre-industrial state. In none of these cases am I advocating the extreme views you seem to believe I hold. In fact, I tend to think of my overall position as rather moderate given the severity of the situation.
As far as our disagreement on the scientific evidence goes, all I can say is that there's a growing scientific consensus against your skepticism regarding the depletion of resources. And although you're right to note that we still have the same overall amount of iron and aluminum we've always had, the amount per capita shrinks considerably as the population grows. And that, of course, is the measurement that matters when we're talking about bringing the developing nations up to Western standards.
In the end, I'm probably just more skeptical than you that a government-directed push toward specific technological goals will yield as much as will market forces that are already at work. I don't see many examples of that having worked out well in the past. The Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program, with their discrete, war-driven objectives, are not good analogies.
Government must inevitably pick some winners and losers in what you suggest. It can't just name the goal and then fund it blindly, because it doesn't have unlimited funds. So it decides to invest a few billions in this new technology instead of that one. Markets and private investors do the same thing, of course, and they do pretty well, arguably better than governments. Central planning never works out as well as we hope.
Yes, it's true that instantly giving 6 billion people exactly what middle-class Americans have right now would be rather taxing on Our Fair Planet. But that's not how it happens, of course. As demand grows, so do incentives to develop technologies to replace tight resources. That's exactly what we're seeing with the market for fossilized hydrocarbons, now that the Chinese are in the game. A hundred years from now, people will be talking about the end of the Oil Age the way we talk about the end of the Bronze Age.
It's also true that the per-capita issue with finite natural resources is an issue if the use of those resources to attain reasonable prosperity remains static. But there's this thing called materials science that is always on the lookout for new ways to make stuff. And there's also the very distinct likelihood that with economic development global populations are going to top off at some point in the not too distant future, and without war, pestilence and famine doing the work. So fifty years from now, there will more people to divide the same finite resources, but there will be more resources in play, and maybe not an apocalyptically large number of people using them, either. This is no zero-sum game.
And it's not the "growing scientific consensus" I deny. I object to the social and economic interpretation of scientific evidence to predict the future. Prediction of the future is by definition unscientific. Maybe there's a growing chorus offing a particular prediction, but the record of humans in making such predictions is pretty shabby. The past, on the other hand, shows some rather distinct patterns of behavior on the part of humans that suggest that the sky isn't falling now any more than it has in the past.
Nothing bugs me about my academic colleagues more than their tendency to use their discipline to do things that it can't do, unless it's to jump on a disciplinary bandwagon claiming that they've reached the final truth of an issue that isn't patient of finality. It happens to all disciplines (in mine it was, until recently, the Synoptic Problem), but only in some cases does it have actual human impact. This is one.
I still don't think you understand what I'm saying. I get the feeling that you're reading somebody else's position into my comments. So I'll try one more time to clarify myself. I'll limit my comments to just one issue.
I said: "[S]ociety (and not the market) should direct technology ... . As a society, we could ... direct technological development by enticing the market to achieve broadly stated goals (e.g., the reduction of auto emissions by X percent) rather than by pre-emptively choosing one technology over another ... ."
You responded: "Government must inevitably pick some winners and losers in what you suggest. It can't just name the goal and then fund it blindly, because it doesn't have unlimited funds. So it decides to invest a few billions in this new technology instead of that one."
My reply: (1) The technologies that win are those that achieve the stated environmental goals. When the government sets X percent reduction in emissions as a goal, it couldn't care less which technology or technologies ultimately achieve(s) that goal, as long as the technology (whether new or old) doesn't transgress any other stated goals. If hydrogen-powered cars meet the goal, so be it. If solar-powered scooters meet it, fine. If nuclear-powered jet packs succeed, good. There's room for all three--and more. If someone thinks he can achieve the goal by inventing a coal-powered soot machine, let him try. The government won't stop him--until he fails to meet it. For obvious reasons, of course, the goals that are set will need to be taylored to specific industries (transportation, energy, construction, etc.), but once set, they would have nothing to do with the promotion of any specific technologies, only targeted environmental standards. And the same goes for any new industries that may arise.
(2) The incentives involve such things as tax breaks for those who meet the stated goals and fines for those who don't. This is not a proposal to invest billions of dollars up-front in specifically-targeted technologies (though there might be times when that's appropriate). The payoff comes later, after the market has entered the picture. That's why I call it an incentive. It's a means whereby the government encourages various industries (and individuals) to clean-up the environment, and to clean it up sooner rather than later.
First, I note that you say "society" in contrast to "market," which does therefore mean "government," as you have noted.
But second, and here's the rub, what makes government defining a goal something that will motivate invention any more than not setting a goal? If it's a worthy goal, there are rewards enough for achieving it. No one has to reward Monsanto for creating seeds that yield more crops per acre. No one had to incentivize them to develop Roundup-Ready crops so that farmers could reduce reliance on toxic herbicides. No one had to provide rewards and punishments to get seed drills to replace plows and discs and so save lots of soil erosion.
Cleaner technologies will sell themselves, as they always have. I can imagine a situation where, say, a new technological development may need regulation of old technology to spur replacement of high capital items like power plants. Or maybe the government buys back older cars to get them off the road. But what's the deal with offering some kind of rewards before the technology exists?
So I've been assuming that you've been talking about the government putting up money to develop technologies, as the financing of research is something that is necessary for technological development. And I've been objecting to the government doing it instead of the market. But if you say that that government needs to provide the rewards for developing clean technologies by setting goals, I have trouble seeing how it could add a significant incentive that isn't already there.
To put it differently, if the government says reduce emissions by 50% in 10 years, why does their saying that make it more possible that such a thing will be achieved? Will the threat of a fine or an offer of a tax break produce a technology that wouldn't have been discovered otherwise? How?
I'm not trying to be obtuse. I just don't see how this would change the situation appreciably.
Since you "don't see how [my proposal] would change the situation [regarding toxic emissions] appreciably," I thought I'd give you an example from recent history to illustrate the point.
In the early 1920s, there were three types of "anti-knock" fuel available that had high-enough octane to power automobiles: "thermally cracked" gasoline, regular gasoline with ethanol as an additive, and regular gasoline with lead as an additive. The engines available at the time could run on any of the three.
The favorite among the scientific community and, in particular, those at the cutting edge of research was gasoline with ethanol. They noted that the ethanol would result in a cleaner-burning mixture (free from smoke and disagreeable odors), and that it was plentiful and easy to make.
By the late 1920s, however, the market had chosen leaded gasoline over the other two because it was cheaper (though not by much) to produce. It made this choice over the protests of the public and the scientific community who feared widespread detrimental effects from lead poisoning.
It was well-known at the time that lead was responsible for such maladies as birth defects, blindness, brain damage, kidney disease, convulsions, cancer, and, of course, death. Indeed, 15 employees involved in the very development of leaded gasoline lost their lives (and their minds) in 1924.
Because there was such a public outcry, the Coolidge administration temporarily suspended the production and sale of leaded gas and called for a study of the issue in 1925. As you might expect, the commission was stacked with industry insiders. Yet, to their credit, they complained that the seven months the administration gave them to assess the situation was not nearly long enough to detect any symptoms of lead poisoning. But that didn't keep them from concluding that there were "no good grounds" for prohibiting the use of leaded gas. (Nowadays we would say, "there is no scientific evidence for prohibiting its use.")Apparently they weren't worried about the widespread evidence of blood-cell stippling among service station workers. At the same time, however, they did acknowledge the very real possibility of serious health problems resulting from leaded gasoline if its use were to increase markedly in the future. Thus, they recommended that lead additives should be allowed, but closely monitored.
The Coolidge administration's response to this report was to propose a voluntary standard that corresponded to the maximum amount of lead then in use by any of the existing producers and ignore the commission's recommendation to monitor the situation. In other words, the administration deferred to the market to take care of the problem. The industry, on the other hand, spent its time funding research designed to show that high levels of lead in the bloodstream was harmless and, in fact, normal. As a result, the toxic effects of lead increased exponentially in the following decades as the market concentrated on prosperity over health.
Current studies estimate that during this period, seven million tons of lead escaped into the atmosphere and raised our exposure to it from between 300 to 500 times the background level. Sixty-eight million children alone suffered from toxic exposure. And untold millions of children and adults alike suffered from "lower-level" effects such as hyperactivity, distractibility, hearing loss, reading disabilities, lower IQs, delinquent behavior, reproductive disorders, and early death.
Not until the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970, did society, through governmental means, attempt to direct the market toward safer lead emissions through legislative incentives. And when it did, remarkable progress was made, and made in spite of the delay tactics of the auto and oil industries (both in and out of court). By demanding a gradual reduction in overall lead emissions, starting in 1975, the EPA forced the auto industry to develop the means necessary to lower the output of lead. It eventually complied. What it came up with was the catalytic converter, a device that cannot function in the presence of lead. That put pressure on the oil industry to produce a usable grade of unleaded gasoline. These new technologies, together with others, allowed both industries working together to meet the EPA’s goal of a 99% reduction in lead emissions by 1986.
The moral of this story--in case it's not perfectly clear--is that a major, well-known environmental problem that was ignored (and even exacerbated) by the market for over fifty years was solved in little more than a decade by strong governmental incentives (in the form of legal directives) that demanded a market-driven solution, without determining ahead of time which technologies should be developed in order to address the problem.
OK, that's definitely a good example of what you're talking about. It does have to do, however, with making rational choices among several technologies that calculates all costs involved in their implementation.
My point has never been to say that there is no place for goverment regulation, only that there are valid, competing human interests that must be taken into account and that the conditions that enable the choice of cleaner means are mostly technological.
I suspect that present business and social conditions tend toward a different approach to issues like this by many business concerns. Corporations don't want to sully their public image or risk civil litigation by making choices injurious to human health. But it's manifestly true that some still do that very thing, and government does serve a legitimate and sometimes efficient function in regulating industries. Still, such regulation can only be meaningful if done within the boundaries of available technology and with a realistic analysis of costs and benefits. Would we tell people that they must stop using electricity because all means of producing it have negative environmental impact of one sort or another?
In the context of carbon emissions and global warming, it remains clear that Kyoto-style initiatives would for the short term merely throw industrialized economies into recession while letting developing economies emit CO2 at ever-growing rates. And for the long term, any effect these initiatives would have on global warming would be marginal, if any such effect can even be had.
I have been and continue to be supportive of the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto Accord for reasons you suggest.
I do think, however, that the administration should be working harder to provide an alternative proposal. And that should include such things as outlawing the ongoing sales of lead additives by U.S. corporations to developing nations (something the market is currently encouraging).
Does that mean I would go as far as outlawing electricity if it were shown to have only negative environmental effects? No, but I would enact legislation that would require a gradual reduction in electrical use (along with providing tax incentives, etc.) over a specified period of time, in order to force an otherwise complacent market into action.
I'm as distrustful of government as you are. But I'm also as distrustful of business as I am of government. To my mind, we need to treat each as a kind of check and balance on the other so as to maximize the benefits of both. And the best way to do that is to use the strengths of each to counter the other's weaknesses.
The best way to bring that about, I believe, is for government to function as the steering wheel of society and business to function as its engine. Why? Because the strength of (self-)government is in its ability to satisfy human needs from the top down, whereas the strength of business is in its ability to satisfy those needs from the bottom up. And lest we worry that government has the upper hand on business in this arrangement, remember that the political process--in which business participates--provides an external check on government.
I should have made clearer in my above comments that the market is currently encouraging the sales of lead additives to the developing nations. The way I phrased it makes it sound as though the market is encouraging the discontinuance of those practices.
If developing nations are buying lead additives (and having breathed air in developing cities, I'm sure it's full of just about everything that can kill a person), I believe that it reinforces the point that technological development is necessary to create the prosperity that makes it a rational and economical choice to protect the air and water.
There's a quandary here: if developing nations are allowing the sale of leaded gasoline, why don't their governments stop it? The arugable answer is that they've made a choice between competing interests for the distribution of their scarce resources. The alternative is for rich nations to impose their will on poor nations by sanctioning nations that allow the sale of leaded gasoline. That's what we did with DDT, with the ruinous result of escalating rates of malaria.
Today I experienced a microeconomic example of economic environmental incentives. It's garbage day at the SWNID household. At our curb sat (a) a trash can with ordinary trash; (b) a trash can with some metal window grids that we were throwing out; (c) or municipal recycling bin. This morning, container (b) was empty while (a) and (c) were still full. The reason: there's a direct economic incentive to gather metal, and some enterprising scavenger came through the neighborhood and did part of the city's work for it.
Notice that he left all the stuff in the recycling bin. What the city recycles doesn't have enough value to pay for the effort to collect it. It also probably doesn't have the environmental impact to justify putting heavy trucks on the road to collect it. But that's another topic, and I'm now rambling.
It's curious that you would interpret the quest for technological development as the solution to lead pollution in developing nations rather than its cause, given that, as of yet, there is no solution, only the pollution. (That sounds like a slogan. I could run for office.)
You state that the alternative to developing nations choosing leaded gasoline as the result of a cost-benefit analysis is for rich nations to impose sanctions on them. But, as usual, there is a third alternative. The rich nations could simply discontinue the production and distribution of lead additives. No imposition, no sanctions, no lead. (Another slogan. I'm gaining momentum.)
To my knowledge, that's what happened with DDT. Nobody imposed sanctions on developing nations to rid them of it. Rather, the developed nations simply scaled back on their production and distribution of DDT to developing nations. And not, I might add, with the result of abandoning the Third World to malaria. As the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) noted, "Contrary to popular belief, USAID does not "ban" the use of DDT in its malaria control programs. From a purely technical point of view in terms of effective methods of addressing malaria, USAID and others have not seen DDT as a high priority component of malaria programs for practical reasons. In many cases, indoor residual spraying of DDT, or any other insecticide, is not cost-effective and is very difficult to maintain. In most countries in Africa where USAID provides support to malaria control programs, it has been judged more cost-effective and appropriate to put US government funds into preventing malaria through insecticide-treated nets, which are every bit as effective in preventing malaria and more feasible in countries that do not have existing, strong indoor spraying programs." When We desist, the Rest resist. (What a solid campaign! One more slogan ought to do it.)
Finally, I find it very odd that metal scraps don't go in your recycling bins. Out here, that's standard practice. The city requires recycling and has local businesses compete for the collection rights. Government imposes; business disposes. (Victory is imminent. Want to join the ticket?)
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