Shorter Jim Manzi

Posted by on . 9 comments.

Assume that global growth will continue as it has in the past, despite changing weather patterns, falling agricultural yields, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees upending geopolitics. Assume that temperature increase isn’t occurring faster than assumed in the 2007 IPCC (even though data indicates that it probably is). Assume that the lives of billions of the world’s poor don’t much matter because they don’t produce very much (so long as the average citizen of the world is ok, and by ok we mean consuming about as much as expected, we’re all ok). In that case, there is no need to act to reduce emissions. Now, go burn some coal!

It isn’t “sloppy, sentimental and self-righteous” to point out that those who don’t produce much output are still humans. And it isn’t particularly rigorous to look at your model of output and assume that everything will be as it’s always been despite climatic changes entirely unprecedented in recent geologic history.

Comments

  1. Jim Manzi says:
    June 27, 2009 at 10:43 am

    Ryan:

    I don’t think that’s quite fair. I assume that growth continues IF there is no AGW damages, then reduce this growth by a very aggressive estimate of the damages that AGW is projected to create.

    Yes, I am not assuming that warming occurs faster than does the IPCC.

  2. serial catowner says:
    June 27, 2009 at 11:05 am

    Manzi’s problem is pretty simple- he can see the mote in the climate-change eye but can’t cast out the beam in his own eye.

    To be specific- what about the 5% of our GDP we spend on healthcare that we wouldn’t be spending if we had universal single-payer? If 1% of the GDP makes Manzi twitchy, shouldn’t 5% make him jump up screaming and demanding a change?

    But wait, there’s more! Spending money building renewable energy sources is an investment in future efficiency. Spending money insulating is a form of savings, one that even the bean-counting Manzi has presumably made in his own dwelling.

    Imagining that spending money building windfarms is a drag on the economy because people will have less to spend on SUVs is, to put it mildly, insane.

    Arguably, not any more insane than imagining that the effects of AGW will be “marginal”, or imagining that there ever has been or ever will be an economy free from the effects of “ham-fisted attempts to substitute political allocation of resources for markets”. But, insane nonetheless.

  3. Jim Manzi says:
    June 27, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    serial catowner:

    In the posts under discussion, I laid out the exact assumptions, sources for these assumptions and calculations that I used. Are you going to bother trying to actually address those before calling my assertions “insane”?

  4. Karl Smith says:
    June 27, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    Ryan -

    Doesn’t concern about the world’s poor cut both ways. Climate change will impact them more severely but so will reductions in growth rates.

    Not only should poorer countries have a higher marginal value for consumption, but their potential for growth is much faster, as they are farther from the technological frontier.

    Would it make more sense to provide climate change assistance to poor nations? For example, could we provide flood control assistance to Bangladesh that could not only alleviate some of the concerns associated with climate change but also help to tame the effects of the Monsoon cycle?

    The central question is if we devoted 1% of US GDP towards poverty alleviation would that do more or less good for the world’s poor than W-M?

  5. serial catowner says:
    June 27, 2009 at 5:57 pm

    Jim- actually, no. When I clear away the underbrush in the post Ryan linked to, I find you assuming that a 1.5% (WTF, call it 2.5%) drag on the economy will produce a 5% amelioration. And that’s not good enough for you?

    What economists frequently and painfully lack is a sense of proportion. In the post linked to this is exacerbated by viewing the future as a straight-line projection of the past.

    This kind of thing always reminds me of an article I read back in about 1970 in the NYRB. They wanted to debunk Maoist China, and spent most of one issue proving that India’s economy was growing as rapidly as China’s.

    Now, for all I know, they were right. It seems perfectly possible that the people of India are no worse off than the people of China. Still, nobody seems to be very worried that India’s holdings of dollars may pose a threat to our economy.

    To be quite honest, nothing in the post Ryan linked to made me want to spend the afternoon reading other posts like it. I’m sure you are very intelligent and your conclusions seem reasonable to many people. Every once in a while, though, you should ask yourself if you’re becoming one of the scientists who “proved” the bumblebee couldn’t fly. Happens to all of us eventually.

  6. Doug says:
    June 28, 2009 at 9:11 am

    Serial, shouldn’t we still be looking for a way of producing 10% amelioration for 1% growth drag? It’s going to piss me off when W-M fails in the Senate but when it does, there may be a lot of room for improvement in the successor bill and there certainly will be room for improvement in the dialogue.

  7. serial catowner says:
    June 28, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    There’s no free lunch. Wanting 10% of goodies for 1% of investment is like people who go to college because of all the money they expect to make. Not only do they not get an education, but they almost never make enough money to remedy that character defect.

    Basically, Manzi was playing a little game about costs, as though we had a choice.

    That’s not the situation we’re in.

  8. Doug says:
    June 29, 2009 at 8:06 am

    Serial, why is hoping for a more productive solution like a free lunch? If the purpose is to lower emissions and a better bill can do that more efficiently, why is it wrong to want the better bill? Mind you, I don’t know if there is one, but I’m pretty comfortable saying at least that W-M looks like an administrative debacle. I doubt the extra 1000 or so pages are meaningless and extra pages in legislation, where relevant, are almost always counterproductive.

  9. serial catowner says:
    June 29, 2009 at 10:03 am

    I’m commenting here in general. As an older person, without any children, this all in a sense is academic to me. W-M clearly won’t solve the problem. If more isn’t done, probably the 2020s will be a decade that will make the 60s look like a preschool picnic by comparison.

    That said, wanting a “better bill” is simply “down the primrose path”. That’s basically what Manzi is doing here- oh, sure, he’d be in favor of solving AGW if it was cost-effective. Other people would offer other goodies, but they all have the same final effect- stop any bill from passing. Not exactly a 10% return on a 1% investment.

    MacAffee did a big study recently and determined that the most likely way to get a computer virus was to click on anything that claimed to be “free”. It’s actually pretty good advice in general.