There’s an interesting post at The Diplomat that considers whether the U. S. and China, working collaboratively, can end climate change:

The test for U.S.-China cooperation on climate change is rapidly approaching. Both sides have committed “to contribute significantly” to the 2015 Climate Change Conference, to be held in Paris. The plan is for a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol to be adopted in 2015 and to take effect in 2020. Whether or not the Paris conference reaches this lofty goal will be heavily dependent on whether the U.S. and China can come to an agreement on emissions reductions.

To be honest I’m skeptical. Western actions aimed at controlling pollution go back 150 years and intended to improve air quality 70 years. The West has had institutions it could rely on to support these moves, particularly a robust system of civil law. China has a lot of catch up to do and it must do so without the institutions the West exploited for its own strategies. I don’t think there’s a meeting of minds here and compromise offers no model for change. You can’t compromise your way to institutions that don’t exist.

I strongly suspect that China’s first moves in improving air quality will be targeted at particulates, something that will do very little with respect to climate change.

If and when China makes real substantive moves rather than issuing press releases and subsidizing industrial production of alternative energy resources for export, whatever policy China adopts it will be pollution control with Chinese characteristics and I can’t even speculate on the contours of such a program.

Tyler Cowen has a very good post on the issue of reparations for slavery. Here’s the meat of it:

The economic incidence of slavery is a tricky matter (most of what Squarely Rooted argues here is wrong). A lot of whites in the slave trade bought slaves at the going market price and earned the going market rate of return. Of course these same whites were reluctant to free the slaves they had bought and that meant terrible lives for the victims. But the gains of those whites are not mirror images of the losses of the slaves. Thus in some regards slavery was a massive collective action problem with a relatively small number of beneficiaries. Those benefiting would include individuals who first saw the gains from seizing slaves from Africa, and individuals who were good at spotting undervalued slaves and buying them up and exploiting them. That’s a fair number of people but it is far from comprising the overwhelming majority of society in 1840, much less 1940 or 2014, once we consider possible wealth transmission to their heirs.

I think that in order for any move on reparations to meet moral muster it must increase the total amount of justice in the world and that’s a very tricky calculation to make. We tax individuals and spend to aid other individuals rather than taxing groups to improve the lot of other groups.

Of course, if you don’t care about the actual history, costs, or benefits it does make the calculations a lot easier.

As I read this Wall Street Journal op-ed which is an attempt at debunking the claim that 97% of climate scientists believe in catastrophic anthropogenic climate change (human-caused climate change that will have serious adverse consequences) I wondered why it matters whether catastrophic climate change is human-caused or not. Perhaps someone can explain it to me.

I think that whether caused by humans or not catastrophic climate change would require major changes in institutions we take for granted.

My skepticism is more reserved for the policies being proposed.

I have recently received information from a reliable source that some of my neighbors are keeping chickens. Will research farther.

I’ve just published a foreign policy-related post at Outside the Beltway:

Is Europe Turning Right?

Upstart parties gaining victories in European elections are variously described as “far right”, “extreme right”, or even “Neo-Nazi”. However inadequate our language for describing what these parties really stand for, it’s clear that an important development is going on in European politics.

California U. S. Representative Tom McClintock complains about water releases from California reservoirs:

One of the worst droughts in California’s history has devastated more than a half-million acres of the most fertile farmland in America. In communities like Sacramento, “water police” go from door to door to enforce conservation measures. There’s even a mobile “app” to report neighbors to city authorities so they can be fined for wasting water.

With the Sierra snowpack at 4% of normal as of May 20, Californians will desperately need what little water remains behind its dams this summer. Authorities have warned some towns like Folsom—home of Folsom Lake—to expect daily rationing of 50 gallons per person, a 60% cut from average household usage.

Yet last month the Bureau of Reclamation drained Folsom and other reservoirs on the American and Stanislaus rivers of more than 70,000 acre feet of water—enough to meet the annual needs of a city of half a million people—for the comfort and convenience of fish.

This has always been the paradox of California. California doesn’t have enough native supplies of water to support a large population. Ultimately, California will need to choose among agriculture, the environment, and the large population. I think that subsidizing agriculture and preserving the environment should be the priorities rather than subsidizing a population larger than the land’s ability to support but, then, I don’t live in California.

In his op-ed in reaction to the revelations of official Chinese cyber-espionage against the United States Eliot Cohen makes an error that all too many American elites do:

If this is the game of nations, played by old rules (old, as in 17th- and 18th-century, at least), there is no point in focusing on individuals. “It’s business, not personal,” as they say in the mafia movies. At some point we may want to have dealings with people we have identified as crooks and malefactors, so in most cases, there’s no need to make it harder for us to do so.

Which is why the law is not the best instrument here. This is about our coming to terms with the existence of an unscrupulous mercantilist state of unprecedented size, wealth and power. It does not accept our legal norms — and in any case, given the revelations of Edward Snowden, we sound foolish standing on those grounds. That being so, action that bites — inflicting some pain on sizable Chinese companies that benefit from stolen information, for example — makes a lot more sense than pretending that U.S. jurisdiction is both universal and legitimate. Even the attorney general cannot believe that it is.

That reflects a misconception. We are absolutely, positively, totally unable to influence China’s behavior. It is too large and the authorities have too many levers that they’re ready, willing, and able to throw.

However, we can change our own behavior and, if we elected to, we could change the behavior of American companies. Rather than thinking about changing Chinese behavior we should be thinking about how we can change our own behavior to make us more secure against Chinese depradations. If we’re unwilling to do that, we should quit our belly-aching and accept them as the cost of doing business.

There’s a very sensible post at Motley Fool that points out something that’s recognized too infrequently—that people’s beliefs about the future are influenced if not determined by their own past experiences:

Your view of history is heavily influenced by your own experiences. But just like the Navy, your own experiences are an incomplete view of the world, arbitrarily blocked by when and where you were born — the equivalent of reconnaissance planes with limited fuel range. There are important events sitting outside your viewpoint that, if you experienced them, would totally change how you view the world.

Take what the stock market did in your teens and 20s. There’s a body of research showing that events experienced in your youth shape how you’ll feel about a topic for the rest of your life. And depending on when you were born, stock market performance has ranged between dreadful and phenomenal during your teens and 20s:

It’s not just stocks. Baby Boomers came of age during a period of very high inflation and the absolute ascendancy of American industry. Those born in 1970 didn’t. That has implications for different views between the two groups not only for investing but consumption, lifestyle, and any number of other things.

This is not a case of right or wrong. It’s a case of experience, judgment, and preference. There’s no arguing about tastes.

I always try to assume the best about people. I realize that’s unrealistic. If I didn’t I would be continually disappointed. I feel a moral obligation to assume the best until proven otherwise rather than the other way around. All this by saying that I assume that those who opposed extending emergency unemployment benefits did so because they believed it would incentivize a return to work. It hasn’t:

The case against extending unemployment benefits essentially boils down to two arguments. First, the economy has improved, so the unemployed should no longer need extra time to find a new job. Second, extended benefits could lead job seekers either to not search as hard or to become choosier about the kind of job they will accept, ultimately delaying their return to the workforce.2

But the evidence doesn’t support either of those arguments. The economy has indeed improved, but not for the long-term unemployed, whose odds of finding a job are barely higher today than when the recession ended nearly five years ago. And the end of extended benefits hasn’t spurred the unemployed back to work; if anything, it has pushed them out of the labor force altogether.

Of the roughly 1.3 million Americans whose benefits disappeared with the end of the program, only about a quarter had found jobs as of March, about the same success rate as when the program was still in effect; roughly another quarter had given up searching.

Isn’t it about time to try something else? There is no dearth of possibilities. The obvious conclusion to draw from the real life experiment we’ve conducted is that people aren’t returning to work because there are no jobs for them. Among the possible remedies are extending emergency unemployment benefits possibly forever if the alternative courses of action aren’t to our liking, starting a WPA-style jobs program, or removing the barriers to job creation. Those are just a few of the possibilities.

I get no sense of concern or energy on this subject from either side of the aisle.