David Brooks puts his policy preferences on dealing with carbon emissions into Alexander Hamilton’s mouth:
Well, I ventured, if you’re skeptical about our own policies, Mr. Founding Father, what would you do?
Look at what you’re already doing, he countered. The United States has the fastest rate of reduction of CO2 emissions of any major nation on earth, back to pre-1996 levels.
That’s in part because of fracking. Natural gas is replacing coal, and natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide.
The larger lesson is that innovation is the key. Green energy will beat dirty energy only when it makes technical and economic sense.
Hamilton reminded me that he often used government money to stoke innovation. Manzi and Wehner suggest that one of our great national science labs could work on geoengineering problems to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Another could investigate cogeneration and small-scale energy reduction systems. We could increase funding on battery and smart-grid research. If we move to mainly solar power, we’ll need much more efficient national transmission methods. Maybe there’s a partial answer in increased vegetation.
Some quick notes and then I’ll counter with my own. There’s something that non-science types like Mr. Brooks simply refuse to understand. There is no Moore’s Law of batteries (there may soon be no Moore’s Law period but that’s a subject for another post). Investments in batteries may pay off in one year or ten years or never.
IMO geoengineering is an area crying out for an X-Prize sort of competition. That would be tremendously better than a government program which would inevitably benefit the politically connected.
And why do people always mean “roads and bridges” when they talk about infrastructure spending? Roads and bridges tend to be constructed based on an expectation of a 30-50 year cycle. Would you really bet that a new road will have a life expectancy of 50 years? Power grid investment is a much better bet, it’s something that’s necessary for all of the green energy schemes the Brookses of the world posit, and private companies won’t build a better grid any more than they will build roads.
Here’s how I’d prioritize things. I think that the biggest sources of carbon emissions are:
- U. S. transportation
- Chinese heavy industry
- The Chinese construction industry
With me so far? I don’t think we can do anything about (c). My first step in reducing the emissions in (a) would be stop subsidizing it. After that I’d impose a stiff carbon tax (mostly for geopolitical and stewardship reasons).
We can actually do more about (b) than we care to think. The Chinese aren’t running all those coal-fired power plants for fun, you know. They’re generating exports. If you want to reduce China’s industrial carbon emissions, stop importing Chinese stuff.
I am curious. Do people have no problems with attempts to transforms the Earth going awry?
Here is a little secret about the “engineering” part of geoengineering:
Engineering advances are made through correcting past mistakes. This is why old technologies, materials, and methods are usually much safer. It will take multiple mistakes to get geoengineering correct. For people who think that CO2 is pollution, I would think that destroying the atmosphere multiple times would be a problem, but I guess not.
Where is the Bellman when you need him?
When I say “geoengineering” I tend to mean small things like artificial trees or other improved scrubbing methods rather than big things like sulfur dioxide injection but, then, I’m a risk mitigator.
And why do people always mean “roads and bridges†when they take about infrastructure spending.
Because the people that talk about these kinds of things have little or no knowledge of (a) how roads and bridges are built, (b) what the expected life-cycle of such infrastructure is, or (c) how to learn (a) or (b). They’re still thinking of footage of men building roads through national parks in the 1930s with shovels and pick axes, and can’t get past that. They don’t WANT to get past that.
Here’s one for you. I got to talking to someone about the Apollo Program a few weeks ago. The guy told me that while it was a tremendous accomplishment, he thinks the money should have been kept here (apparently cash went straight into orbit) and should have been spent on our decaying infrastructure.
I didn’t bother correcting him. The man is 68 years old, so he can’t claim he wasn’t around then. Apparently he completely missed the construction of the interstate system* at that time, among other things. People really pay no attention to what is going on around them, other than what they’re told to believe and/or want to believe.
* My father worked on many interesting projects in his career building roads and related infrastructure. Two of the big ones are working at what’s now the Kennedy Space Center in the early 1960s, and helping build the lake, canal and road infrastructure for what is now Disney World. But he was most proud of some of the work he did on parts of the interstate system. Partly it was that he was proud of some of the particular work (which was difficult at the time), but also proud of having been part of a great undertaking for the betterment of the country.
Hamilton was an economic nationalist. He would not agree to put any restrictions on U.S. manufactures that were not equalized by a corresponding tariff.
I’d suggest that the focus on roads and bridges relative to the grid has mostly to do with labor intensity. Second, rent seeking. I don’t have figures on labor intensity but having watched construction of each, and been an owner in several infrastructure companies (roads/bridges/concrete water pipe) I bet I’m correct. I think the rent seeking aspect is obvious.
As for Chinese imports………good luck with that. And a carbon tax? Certainly a case can be made in the abstract. But right now the disposable income life of the majority of consumers is being drained by health care and ObamaCare, current and required tax increases to pay for entitlements and public pensions, and food (for which there of course is no inflation…..snicker). An additional drain from carbon taxation, which means transportation – cars, trains and planes – utilities, and general manufactured goods, especially chemicals. Read: a broad and a heavy burden sapping the consumer dry. I don’t see it, all for highly speculative and very long consequences, and a balance of the world who will just slide in and start generating their own CO2 as we slide out of those activities.
Would you agree to tax the breeding couple that effectively doubles its carbon footprint with 2 kids? How about we stop subsidizing baby-making and education?