Climate change and liberal democracy

Bjorn Lomborg writes powerfully in The New Economy about the policy choices we face with climate change.

Misusing the inaction argument

"One commonly repeated argument for doing something about climate change sounds compelling, but turns out to be almost fraudulent. It is based on comparing the cost of action with the cost of inaction, and almost every major politician in the world uses it.

The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, used the inaction argument when he presented the European Union’s proposal to tackle climate change earlier this year. The EU promised to cut its CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020, at a cost that the Commission’s own estimates put at about 0.5 percent of GDP, or roughly €60bn per year. This is obviously a hefty price tag – at least a 50 percent increase in the total cost of the EU – and it will likely be much higher (the Commission has previously estimated the cost to be double its current estimate).

But Barroso’s punchline was that “the cost is low compared to the high price of inaction.” In fact, he forecasted that the price of doing nothing “could even approach 20 percent of GDP.” (Never mind that this cost estimate is probably wildly overestimated – most models show about three percent damages.)

So there you have it. Of course, politicians should be willing to spend 0.5 percent of GDP to avoid a 20 percent cost of GDP. This sounds eminently sensible – until you realise that Barroso is comparing two entirely different issues.

The 0.5 percent-of-GDP expense will reduce emissions ever so slightly (if everyone in the EU actually fulfills their requirements for the rest of the century, global emissions will fall by about four percent). This would reduce the temperature increase expected by the end of the century by just five-hundredths of a degree Celsius (nine-hundredths Fahrenheit). Thus, the EU’s immensely ambitious programme will not stop or even significantly impact global warming.

In other words, if Barroso fears costs of 20 percent of GDP in the year 2100, the 0.5 percent payment every year of this century will do virtually nothing to change that cost. We would still have to pay by the end of the century, only now we would also have made ourselves poorer in the 90 years preceding it.

The sleight of hand works because we assume that the action will cancel all the effects of inaction, whereas of course, nothing like that is true. This becomes much clearer if we substitute much smaller action than Barroso envisions.

For example, say that the EU decides to put up a diamond-studded wind turbine at the Berlaymont headquarters, which will save one ton of CO2 each year. The cost will be $1bn, but the EU says that this is incredibly cheap when compared to the cost of inaction on climate change, which will run into the trillions. It should be obvious that the $1bn windmill doesn’t negate the trillions of dollars of damage from climate change that we still have to pay by the end of the century.

The EU’s argument is similar to advising a man with a gangrenous leg that paying $50,000 for an aspirin is a good deal because the cost compares favourably to the cost of inaction, which is losing the leg. Of course, the aspirin doesn’t prevent that outcome. The inaction argument is really terribly negligent, because it causes us to recommend aspirin and lose sight of smarter actions that might actually save the leg.

Likewise, it is negligent to focus on inefficiently cutting CO2 now because of costs in the distant future that in reality will not be avoided. It stops us from focusing on long-term strategies like investment in energy R&D that would actually solve climate change and at a much lower cost."

The larger question for me on global warming is how we square ourselves with the policy failures of efforts like the Kyoto protocol and engage more effective efforts through more genuine public-private partnership.

I am not encouraged that we will see that kind of genuine partnership anytime soon, given the left-wing celebration of strong-arming public policy questions, these days.

The most promising climate change measures are coming from the market, at this point, I'm convinced. It is not for the failure of good intentions among environmentalists leveraging for regulation. It is because of the general failure of regulatory approaches like Kyoto to deliver when more genuine collaboration is needed to tackle problems like global warming.

It will take some years of failure with this more regulatory approach for liberal demoracies to adopt policies that support more genuine, collaborative private-public partnerships, which are the only efforts that have much change of success.

And thank goodness for a liberal democracy where our policies can be honestly debated and discussed so that our efforts can be focused on solving problems rather than defending our failures.

That broader marketplace of ideas, and not power or even the rule of law, is the brilliance of liberal democracies. And thank goodness we are able to take that fact of liberal democratic life for granted.

Liberal education

A fascinating look at educational opportunity in developing countries at the Economist.

The yawning gap in education within developing countries

"GLOBAL public spending on education rose from a median 4.5% of GDP in 1999 to 4.9% in 2006, according to a new report by UNESCO, the UN's education agency. The poorest countries invested 3.5%, compared with 5.6% by the slightly richer middle income countries, and 5.3% by developed countries. But spending money wisely also matters. Huge inequalities exist between the richest and poorest within many countries. In India, a 17-22 year old in the richest quintile has had an average of 11.1 years in education, compared with only 4.4 years for those in the poorest quintile. This gap is also big in Peru and the Philippines. The difference in Bangladesh is similar to that in Nicargaua, a much richer country, showing it is using resources more effectively."

Check out the article for a fascinating graphic breakdown of average number of years of education in each country.

Education is one of the central matters of concern to me that keeps my liberal commitments honest. It is plainly clear to me that liberal education, meaning the development of the conscience and intellect, is one that is best done consistent with liberal principles, meaning ones that respect independence of thought and action, freedom of choice and conscience, free and honest substantive engagement and learning, and an honest attempt to address inequities while acknowledging that inequalities of effort, commitment, and merit are inevitable in any society, and especially a liberal society that does and should reward merit.

Socialism is not liberal, in this context, insofar as it, inherently violates the consciences and judgments of independent actors in a liberal democracy. A commitment to one's neighbor is neither mutually exclusive with a democracy that respect freedom of conscience and choice and it is best facilitated by that kind of freedom that better acknowledges that coerced commitments are not real commitments at all and that free commitments are the only ones likely to deliver the highest quality opportunities for all people.

Public education in developed countries and developing countries, as conservative free market economist Milton Friedman and liberal poverty economist Amartya Sen both argue, are ones that must occur consistent with liberal principles, meaning a respect for freedom of conscience and choice by rich and poor alike.

Public education, hence, must become more liberal and democratic, meaning more free and self-determined, for real progress to occur on this front and almost all fronts of liberal democratic progress. School choice and commitments to educational opportunity for all children are necesary for this kind of progress. Government-funded education is a compromise on this principle that is worthy in many instances. But it is not the ideal that a more genuinely liberal democratic education - that is voluntarily provided and funded by independent schools, teachers, and administrators and chosen freely by independently-acting parents and students - has to offer.

The compromise of this principle by government funding to assure educational opportunity should not be confused with a more genuinely liberal education, that is freely chosen, engaged, committed to, and funded, to develop free and independent consciences and intellects.

Force is generally inconsistent and mutually exclusive with a genuinely liberal education, except in the case of real physical danger to those involved. It's use should be minimized and avoided as much as is reasonably possible and voluntary efforts should replace compulsory efforts as long as we take the principles of a liberal education and liberal democracy seriously.

This is not just a matter of abstraction. Such education is critical to undermining the oppressive hold of repressive and illiberal governments and institutions around the world. North Korea is no more liberal for its leftist dictatorship than Saddam Hussein was conservative for his right wing authoritariasm, and both, rightly, are most powerfully challenged by citizens with liberal commitments. And liberal education - meaning education that embraces a commitment to free and independent conscience and intellect - is necessary to debate, criticize, and undermine the illiberal commitments of governments organized around force as a governing philosophy rather than by a respect for individual conscience and choice. And those liberal commitments are fundamental to almost all of the most important quantity and quality of life indicators for people around the world.

Freedom makes possible both the safety and substantially better quality of life enjoyed in liberal democracies, and education is fundamental to developing the commitments, including and especially a commitment to reason as the foundation for understanding and resolving important problems in a culture, that guarantee that more people live, live longer, healthier, more decent, more honest, worthwhile lives. Almost all serious quality of life indices correlate broadly with stronger liberal commitments. And liberal education is the fundamental commitment that makes possible others within a culture.

This is one of the most critical questions for the 21st century and future of liberal democracies. The stakes are too high to take liberal education commitments less seriously than they deserve and to guarantee the freedom of conscience and choice that are fundamental to the development of robust liberal democracies that offer better lives for all of us.

This is the commitment of a liberal conscience. That all people should have better lives. No matter who or where they might be.

Ideals and what I can live with

I generally agree with this argument. Though I do not cry when courts affirm individual liberties when they are not explicitly given expression in the law.

Gay Marriage and the California Courts

Griswold v. Connecticut is not based on an explicit protection for privacy in the Constitution. But I do think the individual liberties involved warrant some kind of legal affirmation, even as I prefer that affirmation to come from democratic politics.

I definitely think a culture that affirms individual liberties is a stronger and more reliably mature liberal democratic culture. But I'm not in a hurry to revisit every court decision that affirms liberties based on our liberal democratic traditions.

What matters to me is that America and all liberal democracies take their liberal and democratic traditions more seriously and strengthen their commitments to free and self-governing socieities, independent of courts. Democratic outcomes - referendums, initiatives, legislative decisions, and the individual attitudes in the culture, generally - are better barometers of that commitment. Court rulings, generally, I think, offer protections for freedoms when majorities are not prepared to support them. That is a precarious way to affirm liberty, long term. But it is not a mortal sin. And challenges to majority rule based on principles of individual liberties and constitutional principle is a long and proud tradition in American juris prudence and the history of liberal democracies.

I don't know if majorities support the rights of Aghani women to vote and get an education. I certainly hope they do or will come to such a commitment. But I have no issue when Afghani courts interpreting that Afghani constitutional principles affirm such rights even if they do not explicitly make such affirmations or if majorities do not support them. They may be reversed. They also happen to be on the right side of the question.

Democracy is ideal. Court decisions that come down on the right side I can live with.

The truth will set us free

Thomas Sowell has some very nice perspective on the current economy and its would-be political saviors.

'Jolting the Economy'

From that column:

"Amid all the political and media hysteria, national output has declined by less than one-half of one percent. In fact, it may not have declined even that much-- or at all-- when the statistics are revised later, as they very often are.

We are not talking about the Great Depression, when output dropped by one-third and unemployment soared to 25 percent.

What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them.

For that, the politicians need lots of hype, and that is being generously supplied by the media.

Whatever the merits of trying to shore up some financial institutions, in order to prevent a major disruption of the credit flows that keep the whole economy going, what has in fact been done has been to create a huge pot of money-- hundreds of billions of dollars-- that politicians can use to give out goodies hither and yon, to whomever they please for whatever reason they please.

No doubt we could all use a few billion dollars every now and then. But the question of who actually gets it will be strictly in the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It is one of the few parts of the legacy of the Bush administration that the Democrats are not likely to criticize.

Much as we may deplore partisanship in Washington, bipartisan disasters are often twice as bad as partisan disasters-- and this is a bipartisan disaster in the making.

Too many people who argue that there is a beneficial role for the government to play in the economy glide swiftly from that to the conclusion that the government will in fact confine itself to playing such a role.

In the light of history, this is a faith which passeth all understanding. Even in the case of the Great Depression of the 1930s, increasing numbers of economists and historians who have looked back at that era have concluded that, on net balance, government intervention prolonged the Great Depression.

Many of those who have, over the years, praised the fact that this was the first time that the federal government took responsibility for trying to get the country out of a depression do not ask what seems like the logical follow-up question: Did this depression therefore end faster than other depressions where the government stood by and did nothing?

The Great Depression of the 1930s was in fact the longest-lasting of all our depressions.

Government policy in the 1930s was another bipartisan disaster. Despite a myth that Herbert Hoover was a "do nothing" president, he was the first President of the United States to step in to try to put the economy back on track.

With the passing years, it has increasingly been recognized that what FDR did was largely a further extension of what Hoover had done. Where Hoover made things worse, FDR made them much worse.

Herbert Hoover did what Barack Obama is proposing to do. Hoover raised taxes on high-income people and put restrictions on international trade, in order to try to save American jobs. It didn't work then and it is not likely to work now.

Perhaps the most disastrous of all the counterproductive policies of the federal government was the National Industrial Recovery Act under FDR, which set out to do exactly what the politicians today want to do-- micro-manage businesses."

The empirics on this are pretty clear, actually, to objective observers who have not bought into the hype. This downturn is not a depression. And even the romanticism of the New Deal legacy reflects a poor and terribly incomplete understanding of the Depression. This was straightforward consensus among economists before the disillusionment with the Bush Administration. I very much doubt that the current politicial moment will sustain a substantial and long-standing change in that consensus.

Because the facts just do not support the revision.

In fact, if there were a period where the facts will flatly contradict an important ideological lens on events, this is as good as period as any.

What matters is what is true, not what I can make a case for. That is the nature of empirical observation and conclusions.

And the truth, mark my words on this one, will set us free.