Comments Peter B. Meyer has made

The Big MO ...

... momentum is the issue, and waiting a year doesn't cut it ... YES, the major content may have to wait a while, but Waxman can come up with some positives now, especially if OPEC cuts oils and gas supplies further at its March meeting (which I suspect is a foregone conclusion, given current news and noise).

Don't expect constraints on new coal plants at the federal level - the states are doing pretty well on their own. But do expect formalizing commitments to alternative energy and energy efficiency - mainly for buildings, providing construction business and lowering operating costs to homeowners to make it easier for them to pay their mortgages. Those are just too easy to pass up, and very hard to fight against.

Those moves are consistent with Move On's push for the Clean Energy Corps proposed by Center on Wisconsin Strategy, Green for All, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the Center for American Progress Action Fund ... Recognition and formal initiation of the Corps, which would be a minor add-on to the stimulus bill initiative budgetarily but carries substantial symbolic weight, could help stake out important ground this year.
On What does the stimulus fight portend for the climate/energy fight? posted 9 months, 1 week ago 7 Responses

Don't Get Distracted by False Survey Results!

All these data are real - and I'm inclined to want to use available information ... but the results come form how the questions are asked - and that is the problem.

Given an EITHER/OR choice, the respondent picks the answer that seems preferable given the fact that the two cannot be had simultaneously.

Obviously, the worse the economy, survey respondents given a jobs - environment either/or choice will go for the jobs, or the income. Given the choice between "find new sources of energy" and "lower energy use," respondents pick the less threatening option - the first one.

The problem here is not US citizens' attitudes, it is how decision options are presented to them ... and what they "learn" from all the PR about the surveys based on bogus either/or choices (and I include Grist among those unnecessarily giving room to false propositions about "alternatives").On Seeing the light in the Pew poll on Americans' top priorities posted 10 months ago 14 Responses

CO2 Emissions Post 5/2/2007

Twenty months of inaction, capped by the announcement from EPA Head Johnson that the agency had formally decided not to bother to do what the Suprement Court told them to do about regulating CO2 emissions ... and no criminal or civil actions are pending.On Eight years of Bush's environmental actions -- the good, the bad, and the ugly posted 10 months, 1 week ago 5 Responses

Carbon Tariffs - the BIG Threat

Granting 100% of the argument over the importance of China and the problems of Congressional resistance to any climate legislation that does not constrain China (and India and Brazil and ...) along the way, the problem is not necessarily as insurmountable as you imply

The idea of a tariff on the carbon content of imports was floated in the EU and is still being kicked around. Adding the prospect of a US tariff of that sort to one in the EU would threaten the Chinese path of export manufacturing-based economic growth using coal-fired electricity. Such a tariff would be very difficult to administer, but the more importing countries share in its implementation, the more practical it could become. (The costs of establishing carbon contents would be spread more broadly.)

Serious US negotiations with the EU On such a scheme could bring China to the table pretty fast. A tariff scheme would also make a bill much easier to push through Congress, especially since it could be sold as protecting US manufacturing jobs (which it might actually do).

But that process is not likely to be fast enough to generate a major climate bill in 2009. Let's just maximize the "green" content of the economic stimulus package as step one. On Does a serious bill need action from China? posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 11 Responses

First, sell an alternative ...

"Clean Coal" isn't - we know that ... and many who acknowledge and fail to challenge coal's current role in the US energy economy know it as well.

I have yet to see solid evidence that we can get to clean coal. But I also have yet to see solid evidence that all the necessary storage and transmission systems needed for the various forms of renewable electricity to power the current mobile consumers of fossil fuels (automobiles, aircraft, etc.) will enable us to maintain the types of transportation systems to which we -- and much of the rest of the world -- have become addicted. Both paths assume we will acheive technological breakthoughs we have not yet attained.  

If I wanted to make sure that I got support for trying to get to the clean energy future we need, I would NOT start off by creating fear about my plans.

FDR said, "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." Obama and company cannot start out saying, "we have nothing to fear but coal itself." That could generate immobilizing fear.

That fear is what the carbon club has been working overtime to do for decades. You don't overcome that and undo the propaganda damage in one election - or one transition period.

Look at the three quotes. They say no more about the certainty of coal in our energy future than any scientist's claim about fusion power.
   CHU has hope and confidence that we can solve the problem
   JACKSON describes the problem coal presents and wants to "move American ingenuity" towards solving the problem -- which could mean abandoning coal for a better alternative.
   SALAZAR talks about funding demonstration projects -- and the Bush Administration could not find a cost-effective demonstration project to support before we were in a budget bind, so I doubt he'll find much to support.

Pro-coal? I'm not convinced ... but they are not coming out as anti-coal and immediately losing the votes of all the Congresspeople from the coal states on having ANY green investments at all in the stimulus package.

Careful on language and language designed not to arm the opposition too soon? -- definitely.

Good politics -- and plenty of room to educate.On What Obama's green team has to say about coal posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 26 Responses

Comparing Fuel Costs ...

Sean, you're right, of course, on relative cost of fuel -- especially renewables.

My point is that the financial rationales for new energy plants tend to use current prices of fuel as the yardstick for projecting costs -- even though they may be predictably rising steadily over a multi-decade facility lifetime. Coal has done that over time, and its cost/btu has been rising relative to that of oil over time.

Its relative price will continue to rise as coal is 'sold' harder are a replacement for scarcer (and foreign) petroleum, even if there is no accounting for the higher environmental damage of burning coal. (That is, the more successful the "clean coal" movement, the higher the price of the fuel!)

This, then, is a further argument against new coal-fired plants ... and one that is sometimes easier to make in a politically, not empirically, driven debate.On Another rate increase in the name of cheap coal posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 27 Responses

Under Pure Capitalism, it IS Theft

That is the correct label for a government intervention that lowers the sales and profits of a private firm, given the strict ideology.

There is also no country in the world that has even operated under pure capitalism (Even the US in the pre-financial collapse Bush II years failed by a long shot.)

This sort of finding is not particularly news and has been uncovered time and again in work by organizations such as the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy and even yours truly, looking at Kentucky.

What's different here - and it's happening with increrasing frequency - is that the report is by an "objective" source, one that does not have any sort of environmental axe to grind.

But there's another point to be made: the estimates on cost savings for the 2012-2025 period show a pretty narrow range. That's not enough to account for a rise in the price of coal comparable to what we've seen in the past few years. So the estimate is effectively assuming a constant price!

Then, when you look at the cost savings estimated with and without cap & trade, you see that the numbers imply the assumption that C&T will roughly double the cost of coal-fired power. I want to do some digging to see where this assumption comes from ... as well as the assumption about additional jobs associated with having C&T (which makes no sense to me).

Still, nice to see "objectivity" on the right side.On New study: Efficiency investment better for Virginia economy and ratepayers than coal plant posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 3 Responses

I'll skip the insults ...

For now, but I won't forget them in reacting to your posts.

FIRST, why should I bother to reply to your quotes? Did you assume I disagreed with them from the outset? Or that I disagree with them now?  As critiques of the markets we have been watching, they are valid. So what?

What is "growth"? Your definition (no clear, but I am inferring) is that "growth" implies a four letter word, MORE, and that the word always carries a negative connotation. Strange assumption.

More Happiness (Bhutan)? More health (not health care), more well-being (not possessions)? More freedom and control over our lives and how we live them?  Do you oppose these "mores?"

Would you oppose them if people were willing to pay to have more of them? Even if they did not cause any more ecological damage -- and might even repair some past damage?

If "yes," then we cannot communicate, if "no" then you have no case against "capital markets" in general - even as you have defined them - if those are the "products" whose production the markets serve.

SECOND, you conclude with the declaration that,

"The difference between building a factory because the people putting up the cash are hoping to increase the their own private fortunes, and building a factory because you believe that the products produced will be conducive to the long term welfare of the community is not that hard to understand."

-- until you can define "the community" in that sentence, the alternative is so ill-defined as to make it impossible to understand the difference.

-- and, then, until you can provide a broad scale basis for (a) transfering the existing factories from their current ownership and control to another form and assuring that the alternative will not provide for itself (as would be the case in any managers who want to hold their jobs, even if only to avoid the social stigma associated with losing them in a system of otherwise equal incomes) and (b) collectively accumulating the resources (I dare not call them 'capital' or even 'funds') with which to build new factories during the period of transition from what we have now to the preferred structures you have proposed, those of us trying to generate change in the real world are forced to ignore your proposals in our daily work.

That is unfortunate, since broader visions of the possible - of preferred alternatives - are very valuable when trying to generate change.On Institutions, motivations, and assumptions in economic analysis posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 17 Responses

Continuing our dialogue ...

... and I thank Steven and Roger for engaging with me ...

Steven, you are right, of course, that our current patterns are deplorably destructive, but in the usage of economics, the term "creative destruction" applies to the replacement of something old with something presumably better. One of the highest skilled crafts at the dawn of the 120th century was that of buggy whip making. The craft was destroyed, and creatively, by technologies that - at least at the time - appeared to offer promise of a better world. So, today, the "creative destruction" of the relatively well-paid rural work in coal mining and coal power plant operation would be a step forward as we see it if those jobs were supplanted by some in solar and wind and hydro power generation and others in improving energy efficiencies. That IS creative, but in getting to such moves, we must recognize that we are also being destructive of the livelihoods and lifestyles of people and communities, and we need to provide for them in the transition. (Which, by the way, the early 20th century US economy did not do for the buggy whip makers.)

Roger, you call me on a key point, and it is a good question to raise. The logic of cost-benefit analysis presumes that the entire set of impacts of two or more alternatives can be reduced to a single metric: a ratio of costs to benefits. That means that all the complexity of social, economic and environmental effects, good and bad, have to be measurable on a common scale. That scale in the US is dollars, in the UK it is pounds, in the Euro zone, yet another currency, and so on ...

I do not believe you mean to measure the "costs of soil depletion" in monetary terms, but that is what you imply if you use the term cost-benefit analysis. Please don't pollute your effort to weigh the pros and cons of alternatives using language that implies a reductionism I am sure you do not accept. Just say you are weighing alternatives or the impacts of alternatives, but avoid the economics term. Then you do not have to explain yourself when you attack the assumptions and oversimplifications that are built into the CBA you have already told me you do not accept. (My concern here is not your explaining yourself to me or the other readers of grist, but to a less receptive audience is a more adversarial context.)

I share your antipathy toward the religion you have aptly labeled "economism," Roger. It's why I left the field as I got my PhD in it ... I didn't have the beliefs necessary to remain in the fold. But to hope that capital markets will disappear is unrealistic. Without them, even public infrastructure would be vastly more difficult to finance. They are, IF properly regulated, a means of aggregating funds for projects that are bigger than any one person, or community, or year's worth of tax revenues could otherwise afford to undertake. We need some version of them if we do not want dictatorial control of all surplus funds.On Institutions, motivations, and assumptions in economic analysis posted 11 months ago 17 Responses

A FOSSIL Carbon Tax - it would help, but ...

I cannot quibble with the Hansens' science ... I am not qualified to do so. So I shall assume its validity. But their summary action agenda and the claims they make for it are another matter.

Move to terminate coal-fired electricity plants. YES, but the alternatives are not clear ... and many of the renewable alternatives require a new structure for the electricity grid for which the Hansens' proposals make no provision.

Carbon Taxation - fine, but let's be clear on what we're taxing.
   -- We are NOT taxing all carbon generating processes if we tax oil, gas and coal at the port, wellhead, or mine shaft. (Did you ever light a campfire?)
   -- We're taxing fossil carbon. We're also taxing petrochemicals and other industrial materials made from oil, gas and coal, some of which may not be carbon emitting, depending on the production processes involved.
   -- We are NOT taxing biofuels, that some have argued are causing deforestation and thus removing badly needed carbon sinks.
   -- We are NOT necessarily providing a progressive new tax: many of the poor live in badly insulated housing and drive old inefficient cars, so their proportional share of the carbon tax dividend may not cover the tax they pay. (This is especially true if they rent their homes, since their landlords have no incentive to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings. Since those with available capital can spend to reduce their energy consumption while those that do not have such funds available cannot, this problem will get worse, not better, over time.)

The Hansens claim that, "Fourth generation nuclear power (4th GNP) and coal-fired power plants with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at present are the best candidates to provide large baseload nearly carbon-free power (in case renewable energies cannot do the entire job)." They then call for a program of investment in those technologies.

I find this a formula for massive risk-taking that could - and should - be avoided.
   -- We know that small scale renewables work, and that wind, water and solar power generating capacity has been increasing efficiency over time with minimal public investment. Why turn away from them? Why not give them funding?
   -- Why assume that technologies that do not now exist, and all of which pose risks of catastrophic failures (or diversion of dangerous products) will be a panacea?
   -- The answer to the first question of why not fund renewables helps explain why the new nukes and CCS are not appropriate objects of public investment: economists' analyses of the efficient ways to spend public resources to address the need to generate non-carbon-based power come to a conclusion based on past experience with subsidizing technologies: it is likely to be very inefficient.
   -- WHY? Simple: how do you pick the right technologies to support when you have no idea what investment and investigation will uncover in the way of approaches to the problem? You can't pick because you don't have the data.
   -- So, I agree that investment in new technologies is badly needed ... but I don't want to see any single group picking the tehcnolgoies ... putting all our eggs in that one basket.    

Let's make sure that we provide a subsidy of sorts - or a guarantee of massive profits in the future - to those who can solve the power generation problem, let's modernize the power grids and transmission lines in the US - and across the globe - to facilitate use of decentralized generation, to transmit from windy and tidal and desert zones where we can generate power but not move it to where it is used, and let's make sure we reward those who might come up with ways to move electricity down transmission lines with less line loss - lower power needs to move those electrons. Then we are diversifying our portfolio of electicity generating options.

But let's also remember that there might be other power sources out there, and leave room for them. (What are they? I don't know ... do you? -- but that's why we need a diversified approach!)

We're going to pull out of the economic mess a failure to remain diversified in financial investments has created for our supposedly smartest financiers. The toxic debts remain and will continue to do damage, but they will gradually dissipate as drags on the economy.

It's not as easy to pull out of the ecological mess we've created by having an undiversified power system, too reliant on fossil carbon.

The last thing we can afford is to risk a similar lack of diversification in our hoped-for alternatives. Let's create massive incentives for invention and innovation - but under no conditions should we bet on any one or two technologies to save the planetary conditions that have nurtured us so far. On An open letter to the president and first lady from the nation's top climate scientist posted 11 months ago 48 Responses

Thanks to the Three of You

good comments, all ... let me respond a bit ...

Roger, the more sophisticated economic models allow for the possibility that welfare declines with excess possessions or wealth, but most analysts buy into the assumption your criticize. You're right there, to be sure. However, I disagree with your automatic equation of a healthy stock market and growing GDP. There are many cases of stock markets rising with growing unemployment or falling productivity. Finally, I disagree completely with your closing presumption that there exist ANY conditions under which "cost/benefit analysis will leads us to make truly intelligent economic choices." The LOGIC of CBA weakens its potential to offer good analysis.

AlexSV, there is no economic change of any variety that does not involve "creative destruction" and the job loss in some sectors as others expand. Thus your argument is 100% accurate: short term job loss should NEVER be a reason for inaction.

Steven, your comment on the minority of "outrageously conspicuous consumers" is valid if the minority you refer to is the population of the USA relative to the rest of the world. While we have had massive new concentration of wealth in the past two decades in the US, the consumption binge permeates the economy as a whole -- and the wealth yare not the ones who borrow to consume at levels their incomes cannot support. On Institutions, motivations, and assumptions in economic analysis posted 11 months ago 17 Responses

Byrd? ... That's the Word?

EASTERN coal is the stuff most likely to be exported, since the Illinois and and Appalachian basin bituminous coal has more BTUs per tons than the western subbituminous ... this means more BTUs per ton shipped across the Pacific. So, Sen Byrd is happy to see exports if they mean employment in W.Va. But what does his objective have to do with subsidized leases out west? Why do you think he cares?? (I'm assuming, of course, that his position on climate change, whatever it is, plays second fiddle to his concern for economic activity in his home state ...) On American taxpayers help pay for coal sent to China posted 11 months, 1 week ago 7 Responses

"voluntary simplicity" - term? - threat?

... all to often seen as a threat - and perceptions shape realities.

"voluntary" -- we are all told that engaging in wage labor, looking for a job, and accepting the conditions of the workplace are voluntary acts. But most workers feel some degree of coercion in the workplace (even I did as a professor). So the term is not benign but carries an image of threat and of coercion to many.

"simplicity" -- if we are a complex society, it follows in the minds of many that the simpler ones must not be as technologically advanced. The less advanced societies most visible to TV viewers (and the rare readers who remain) are of third world countries with dire social, economic, medical and other problems. Wow, that's scary!!

So, whatever the intent and style of social interactions of its adherents, the very term carries a threatening image to the uninitiated. David's point is well taken.

The criticism fails to address the perceptual realities of those who are not as enlightened as we might want them to be. Now, how do we change them in non-threatening ways? What do we have to offer to provide meaning and a sense of accomplishment to them that does not involve the pursuit of (new, expensive, but too-often shoddy) possessions???  
On Deep Christmas thought posted 11 months, 1 week ago 13 Responses

Language is Important,, Roger Brown

It can confuse, and it can clarify ... it can motivate and it can constrain.

Now I understand Roger Brown's argument far better, and I appreciate the clarifications.  

My main objective is generating the needed change in the economic practices of the US -- and the rest of the global economy -- to constrain the already inevitable climate changes we have already wrought.

When I see/hear terms like "voluntary simplicity" I see/hear language that appears threatening to the very people I want to motivate to act in the ways they must if my objective is to be attainable. (They don't believe the "voluntary" term, having spent their lives "choosing" - in a voluntary sense? - to be employed in order to acquire goods that they have been taught to pursue in order to have satisfying lives. They associate "simplicity" with pre-industrial societies, or, worse yet, with the worst images of poor third word conditions they see on TV.)

Catch phrases have one meaning in a subculture (or discipline - Economese is NOT English) and possibly very different ones in another. We need to use language carefully, recognizing that the people with whom we need to communicate to get the change we need may misunderstand us.

Let's just talk about "satisfying lives" of "satisfying lifestyles," not "voluntary simplicity." We can legitimately ask about satisfactions -- and they'll be low. People put in a lot of time to get that toy (boat, car, gadget) and then discover their work pobligations do not let them have the time they need to enjoy their new possession ... it is opten a source of DISsatisfaction, not satisfaction ... we build on that, we ensure those contradictions are recognized, and then we can offer lifestyle alternatives, and other means of getting the satisfactions that today are mostly pursued through acquisition of goods. (Since that pursuit is so often unsatisfactory or unsuccessful, an alternative might be welcomed...)

We share an objective, but I am concerned about how pur language can undermine our ability to get others to join us in the actions that move us towards that goal.On Does economics even look at the real world? posted 11 months, 1 week ago 25 Responses

Cap and Dividend?

We link pieces of discrete policy by our language as if we have to ... and that shapes our thinking.

CAP - because we need to, and let's recognize that the more successful the cap is in promoting reduced emissions investments and actions, the less revenue there will be from making emissions permits available. (Notice, please, that I have accepted the assumption that we need a cap - a simple, but very high, tax might do the same thing. It, too would lead to questions about uses of the revenues.)

DIVIDEND - A false and crude expression for the objective of minimizing the pain from the cap on those that have to pay for power. Key reminder here: those consumers of power and emitters in the course of their daily activities are NOT all households. They include businesses ... some of which we are intentionally targeting as the payers of the dividends, but others are, perhaps, to be recipients.

Neither of these terms has anything at all to do with new PUBLIC INVESTMENT in infrastructure, new technologies, etc. The sources of those funds could be completely independent of the cap & dividend program -- and capping is a good idea whether or not the public sector is involved in the new investment.

When we discuss what to do with the revenues from selling the emissions rights under a cap, we are mostly confounding two objectives (a) equity, in terms of the impacts of the caps on people, and (b) efficiency, in terms of augmenting the impact of the caps on emissions by stimulating new investment in more environmentally benign energy alternatives.

I don't have a single answer, but I have what may be illuminating questions:

(1) To what extent could the funds from the cap be used to directly aid the poor in reducing their energy usage? In much of the US, one-time weatherizing of homes could hold down the costs to low income families as well as additional annual LIHEAP assistance funds, but vastly more efficiently: the investment could lower power usage and thus bills over time.

(2) To what extent do we want to raise energy costs to the non-poor, who have more alternatives for action, in order to stimulate their demands for more energy efficiency or cleaner energy sources? "No Pain, No Gain" -- but this means we may want to make sure that not everyone is made whole by the dividends.

(3) To what extent does the national economy at a particular point in time need some public sector stimulus? (Case in point, US, December, 2008.) If a stimulus is needed, then 100% debt-financed public green infrastructure investment - and/or some new incentives for green innovations by the private sector - serves both economic stimulus and environmental protection objectives
simultaneously, so why use Dividends for this purpose?

You get the idea ... the key is asking the good questions ... and then framing a policy. On Where will the money for public investment come from? posted 11 months, 1 week ago 10 Responses