Comments cneal has made

T4America

You guys should look into - and direct your readers to - the T4America coalition. They're an outgrowth of Smart Growth America with big foundation backing to make sure that the stimulus - and the subsequent Transportation Bill reauthorization - go in more progressive directions.

Their website is also equipped with action alerts. It's important for legislators to hear from their constituents about these issues - a few letters, phone calls, or e-mails can make a big difference.

http://t4america.org/

vigorousnorth.blogspot.com A field guide to the wilderness areas of American inner cities.

Grist needs a "contact your leg" feature

I wish that Grist had a "Contact your legislator" feature to go along with blog posts like this one. I'd presume that many Grist readers live in districts with Dem representatives; on a relatively obscure appointments issue like this one, a few phone calls from REAL CONSTITUENTS (not lobbyists) could tip the balance for a lawmaker.

I'll be calling my newly-elected Rep. Chellie Pingree, but I'm only one voice, and Grist could leverage a lot of activism by providing a simple sample letter, a few talking points, and a "Send a letter to your Legislator" form at the bottom of posts like this one.

Check out DemocracyInAction.org for some good web-based advocacy tools. I use Convio at the nonprofit where I work, which is a similar service, but more expensive and geared towards fund-raising.

vigorousnorth.blogspot.com A field guide to the wilderness areas of American inner cities.

Agreed.

I had the same reaction as G.E. Flat rebates can preserve the right incentives.

Even if the rebates aren't flat, the utilities themselves are still going to be paying over $5 a ton for credits, which will be a strong incentive to use low-carbon energy sources on the supply side.

Electricity consumption is relatively price-inelastic - that is, prices (or rebates) generally won't affect consumption that much. But electricity production should be more responsive to changes in the carbon credit market - especially given the rising prices of fossil fuels and the broadening availability of renewables.

vigorousnorth.blogspot.com A field guide to the wilderness areas of American inner cities.

straw man falls

This lawyer has built a straw man and knocked it down, but her characterization of cost-benefit analysis is way too simplistic. I suspect that her problem isn't with economists - it's with people who don't agree with her or share her flower-child values in general.

First of all, economists frequently do account for Henzerling's "small shiver of joy upon seeing spring's first warbler, the glimpse of the infinite in a summer storm." Excuse me... I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

As I was saying: a good cost-benefit analysis do account for these feelings that people have for environmental goods, even if those goods are things that they themselves will never experience - polar bears and the Great Pacific Garbage patch, for example. It's called contingent valuation and it was first used in the sentence against Exxon for the Valdez. And a good cost-benefit analysis also accounts for general values of egalitarianism by using cost-of-living adjustments to state values of goods in the developing nations in equitable terms.

And what about discount rates? First of all, cost-benefit analyses frequently present their conclusions with a variety of different discount rates, as a way to reflect different prioritizations on the future. Second, if discounting the future is so wicked and anti-environmental, why does everyone (including environmentalists, and including the author) do it?

Remember that economics is a social science. Economists didn't just invent the discount rate: they observed it as a fact of life. Given the choice of $1,000 now or $1,000 to your grandkid fifty years from now, very few people will choose the latter. There's inflation, for one thing, and there's the opportunity cost - if you really want to be altruistic, you'll take the money and buy an interest-earning government bond for your offspring. And there's the plain fact that people prefer instant gratification - even environmentalists who shiver at warblers.

Long story short, if the discount rate weren't real, we'd all be hoarding cash under our mattresses, and we'd be paralyzed at the checkout line, wondering if we might need to save this dollar to buy coffee at some later time when we might be thirstier.

She's also falling into the old enviro trap of demonizing money. Again, though, she forgets that money isn't an invention of economists - it's an invention of society. Money is how we express value for things. Even environmentalists do it - if you value national parks, you express that value by paying the admission fee. Lots of enviros  monetize nature by donating big money to the Nature Conservancy. Others express their value for clean air by paying a premium for a hybrid.

Ultimately, cost-benefit analysis is a powerful tool because it provides us with a way to consolidate lots of different opinions, values, and viewpoints into easily-understood monetary terms that everyone can understand.

I suspect that the real problem she has with these analyses is the fact that they incorporate values and opinions that she doesn't share - and that those values actually influence regulation and policy decisions. This is a common frustration among a lot of shrill environmentalists, but it's also a big reason why environmentalists, in general, are considered shrill.

Public consensus is tough, no doubt about it. But even if I generally agree with your environmental values, Ms. Heinzerling, I still don't think that you deserve to discount or dismiss the opinions of others who disagree.

vigorousnorth.blogspot.com A field guide to the wilderness areas of American inner cities.

Market expectations

And check out this quote from the Star-Telegram article, on the "clean coal" plant's reliance on carbon credit schemes:

"It is widely anticipated in the industry that federal standards putting a price on carbon emissions, probably through a cap-and-trade system, will be instituted by 2010."

I see this as the best news in this story. We don't  need actual regulations on the books to make companies make good decisions: as long as we can give them the credible expectation that some sort of regulation is coming soon, they'll build cleaner plants in anticipation. And, as more of these investments get made, the utilities themselves will have more and more self-interest in establishing global carbon limits.

vigorousnorth.blogspot.com A field guide to the wilderness areas of American inner cities.

SoCal in 2050

The US Chamber of Commerce has a darker vision: by 2050, SoCal will be freezing cold, and its residents will be stranded without oil or any viable alternatives. They'll run along abandoned freeways to get around and keep warm. It's like "The Day After Tomorrow," but without the Army helicopters coming to the rescue at the end. It's a world out of gas.

Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XevRKc82soI

vigorousnorth.blogspot.com A field guide to the wilderness areas of American inner cities.