Climate Change and (in)action

It's tough for me to put out a wonky discussion of Climate Change, since it involves the hard sciences, which is a lot harder for laymen to understand than economics or other social sciences. It's easy enough for Climate Change deniers to dig up some wacko academic who disputes the common wisdom of the field and has a PhD, but I think one has to look at what the consensus is among scientists in that field, and it's pretty clear.
But I come back to this line of reasoning: there's a good possibility that Al Gore is right, and that Climate Change will keep accelerating, that we'll continue to see year after year set new records as hottest on record, that polar ice caps will melt putting Bangladesh under water, that deserts will grow and more of the planet will become uninhabitable, etc etc. If the worst of the predictions are correct, we're going to be REALLY sorry we didn't act, because every year we wait the problem gets harder to solve.

Now of course it's possible that the scientific consensus is wrong- after all, there was once agreement that the world was flat, and that diseases were caused by witchcraft. If that turns out to be the case, we'll have lowered carbon emissions for no good reason. Well, even that isn't right, because I think everyone agrees that carbon emissions leads to unhealthy air to breathe, smog, etc so there's some benefit even if Climate Change scientists are wrong.

So think about the relative downside of going the wrong way on either side: either we do nothing and confront a catastrophe, or we do too much unnecessarily and waste resources we could have used for other economic growth. Which one is worse? Seems pretty obvious to me. And to top it all off, the odds of Climate Change being real seem much better than the odds that it's not, seeing as nearly all climate scientists agree that it's real.

The Whacked Out Right (posted by DT)

It's a tough time to be a liberal right now- demoralizing. Trying to step back though, we've learned something amazing about radicalism in the 21st century.

After Democrats won the 2008 election, the Republican party moved way to the Right. This was a surprise to some, and many predicted they would have years in the wilderness, as it seemed so clear that they had lost because they had already moved too far right for the electorate.

But a funny thing happened. They've just pulled the whole conversation and the country rightward right along with them! Yes, there's still plenty of great political debate, but now the Right has set its positions so far out there that the center keeps moving in their direction.

So here in 2010 we're debating seriously:

• Is Keynesian economics viable, or did Herbert Hoover have it right after all?
• Should we should hold BP accountable for spilling oil or is that a "government shakedown"?
• Are federal economic policies based on improving lives of the middle class, or should the total focus be on getting easy money to the Rich so we can hope they'll create jobs?
• Why should America take care of its vulnerable people?
• Torture of suspected terrorists (this debate seems over, actually, and I'm on the losing side- Americans are totally fine with a limitless police state when it comes to defending the country from Arabs)

In my email correspondence with my Nut Case Righties, the latest thing is one of them sent around an article from the "Globe" supermarket tabloid about Obama being born in Kenya. Nothing is too far out for these guys, and I'm supposed to have a debate about where the President was born. I'd like to debate about how to eventually balance the budget or what to do about Global Warming, but I can't because we're still stuck on a religious belief in no taxes and a refusal to believe scientists who say Global Warming is real!

If I've learned one thing the last year and a half, it's that nothing lasts long, and I guess liberals will be back. But it's demoralizing right now.

Father's Day Blogging (posted by DT)

Well I figure that on Father's Day I should be allowed to spend time ignoring my children briefly so that I can blog on all the things rattling around in my head lately. Here goes the roundup:

• The Gulf Oil Spill: Fascinating turn of events last week when Republican congressman Joe Barton of Texas decided to switch up the tone of the congressional hearing with BP's president and actually apologized for the White House "shakedown" of the oil giant in pressuring them into putting up $20 Billion for future reimbursements of those hurt by the spill. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100617/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_bp_s_ally Barton was quickly pressured into an apology of his own, but this kind of thing reminds me of someone's definition of a gaffe that I heard a while back: a gaffe is when a politician accidently says what he really thinks. Exactly. There are significant numbers of politicians who may say they believe in "taking responsibility" and "free markets", but they really seem to just want what Business wants. Corporate Welfare is no problem as long as the money is going to wealthy corporations and not diverted to poor people or immigrants. And now I see that congress is debating a measure that would raise the liability cap on oil spills from $75 million to $10 billion. Wait a minute: why is there a liability cap on oil spills at all??? If we believe that corporations, like people, should take responsibility for their errors, why shouldn't BP pay back every dime that is lost by every fisherman in the Gulf? How could anyone be in favor of capping their liability after they destroyed a huge swath of US coastline? What has BP done to deserve our protection?
• Gun Nut Nonsense: Jeff Jacoby's op-eds in the Boston Globe are usually a good bet to get me roiled up. This one www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/20/the_instrument_of_crime_remains_only_an_instrument/ is no exception. Jacoby writes that guns are merely the instrument of crime, not the cause, and makes analogies to crimes committed using camcorders (to illegally record women in a bathroom) and cars so ask why we would limit guns when we don't limit cars or camcorders. Well, for starters, how about because handguns have no purpose other than to kill people? Cars, knives, and camcorders have many legitimate and socially useful purposes- we have to put up with horrible vehicular homicides and drunk driving in order to make use of all the good things that cars provide. But what are guns doing for us? Not much. And furthermore, society does put restrictions on car use- we license drivers, take away their driving privileges if they drive badly, and have laws prohibiting driving while drunk. These seem somewhat equivalent to laws limiting use of handguns. Now I have no illusions that significant gun control is coming- in spite of what the NRA and the Right Wing Nut Machine would have you believe, there is no secret Democratic plan to take away guns because the votes aren't there- but that doesn't mean I concede the point on the merits. The lack of gun control laws in our country is crazy and unjustifiable, but it's not going to change any time soon.
• In my correspondence with some rabid right wingers, we've continued to go over the old ground around stimulus spending and its usefulness. One data point I hadn't considered much is the fact that federal stimulus spending isn't really injecting lots of extra money into the economy as much as it's replacing state cutbacks. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-13/economy-in-u-s-slows-as-states-lose-federal-stimulus-funds.html States have to balance their budgets, but the recession has decreased tax revenues, causing massive budget cutbacks. Much of this was ameliorated this fiscal year by federal stimulus, but as that winds down and the economy hasn't really returned to health, state cuts are expected to be bigger than ever for next fiscal year. This doesn't bode well for the recovery at all, and is a good reason for additional stimulus. Unfortunately, that won't happen because the Tea Party types won't let Republicans vote for more deficits, and Democrats are too spineless to do it on their own. If we have another "double dip recession" this year, though, Democrats will have only themselves to blame for their pathetic display. Meanwhile, I'm still left debating whether stimulus was a good idea at all, when most legitimate economists say it kept us from another Great Depression.

Lessons from Recent Disasters (posted by DT)

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, on the heels of the coal mine disaster in West Virginia, makes me think about government regulations. I think this also applies to Wall Street regulation to some degree.

Businesses hate government "red tape". Workers hate red tape. I work in a (state) government-regulated facility, and I hate the government's red tape. It is incredibly inefficient, forcing businesses everywhere to jump through often silly hoops to show the regulators that they're safe in some way.

Of course, we all feel we work for organizations that are fully incentivized without government help to avoid a major catastrophe. If someone dies in my facility because of our negligence, we would be in huge trouble, and we don't need government regulations to show us that. Similarly, mine owners and oil well owners probably argue that they don't need so many regulations to keep their facilities from killing workers or destroying a region because they care about quality too.

But then we get these two disasters, and we need to step back and remember that this is why governments throw up so much red tape. How many mine workers are alive and well thanks to "red tape" that forces them to have safe rooms and fans and gas detectors? How many oil spills have been avoided thanks to governments forcing drillers to put in redundant safety features that stop wells from blowing out?

This Gulf spill is a complete catastrophe for the region. 1000 miles of coastline may be destroyed for years to come. The fishing industry may be completely wiped out. So the next time an oil company complains about too much bureaucracy making it too hard to create jobs, we have to remember this- all that bureaucracy protects us, and we cut corners at our collective peril.

Cape Wind (posted by DT)

Thank goodness the feds have finally approved Cape Wind, allowing a complex of windmills in Nantucket Sound even while allegedly despoiling the view from Nantucket and Hyannisport.

If liberals/ environmentalists really want to be taken seriously, we have to support renewable energy in our backyards. Ted Kennedy's work to block Cape Wind was an outrageous shande, and here's to hoping it's really the end of the delays.