Global Warming - Why We Won't Muster An Effective Response

One of the reasons I am operating from the assumption no significant response will happen to slow down global warming is because almost any response by individual countries will be ineffective if it isn't simultaneously adopted in every major industrial country in the world.  That won't happen due to the realities imposed by countries economically competing with one another.  An example is the proposed Carbon Tax intended to encourage a reduction in greenhouse gases.

Here's a hypothetical:

USA.Inc and China.Inc both manufacture widgets.  It costs both $1 to produce each widget.

The US imposes a carbon tax that adds $.05 per widget to USA.Inc's cost per widget.  The US also imposes a border tariff on incoming widgets of $.05 per widget, so USA.Inc and China.Inc, in theory, remain equally competitive within the US.

But USA.Inc is no longer competitive anywhere outside the US, because their fixed cost on every single widget they manufacture is now $1.05 and China.Inc's fixed cost per widget is $1.00.  So USA.Inc's market share outside the US will plummet, while their market share inside the US will remain static, so they will sell fewer widgets.  This undermines their economies of scale, over time driving their fixed costs per widget up even higher.  At the same time China.Inc's market share is rising, they may be experiencing greater economies of scale so their cost per widget may continue to come down over time.

USA.Inc won't just stand by and sink into bankruptcy.  Their only real solution will be to move their manufacturing facilities to another country so they don't have to pay the tax, and only pay the tariff on widgets sent to the US.

So the net effect of a unilateral carbon tax adoption by the US will be more US companies moving operations out of the country, fewer jobs in the US, and a slowed down economy, while boosting the economy of countries that are not addressing global warming.

If we adopt a carbon tax will other nations also adopt one out of the goodness of their heart or to avoid our tariff?  Short answer is No.  It is hard for me to imagine, for example, China's leadership, having suddenly been handed the gift of a huge industrial competitive advantage over wide swaths of US industry would upset that situation.  (Or our Congress doing anything if China suddenly made their industries less competitive).  They would take about it, and might eventually, dawdling around for 10 or 15 years to let their industries get thoroughly entrenched as market leaders, but by that time the damage to the US economy will be considerable, and probably very little will have been accomplished in reducing greenhouse gases.

So in essence to effectively address the problem we have to get much of the world to agree to the solution, simultaneously.   Will Russia, a oligarchy built on oil wealth, or any country whose political stability depends on selling petroleum to the rest of the world, jump on board?   Will teetering governments in developing countries who would have to tell their people they have to wait to achieved the access to stuff they see on electronic media be able to put the whole country on the path of delayed gratification?

I hope to be proved to be an excessively cynical old Grinch, but I put that hope in the same category as my hope to discover the fountain of eternal youth.   

A Republican Congress - Here we go again?

I don't consider myself particularly partisan or ideological, so whoever wins an election I am hoping for the best.  But I must admit having the Republicans take control of Congress (again), in light of the past history of Republican's controlling Congress, doesn't leave much room for optomism about a good result.

In the last 100 years this will be the fourth time Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress.  The first time was 14 years from 1919 to 1933.  The second time was short, one congressional session, from 1953 to 1955 when they rode into power on Ikes coattails.  The third time was the 12 years from 1995 to 2007.

Of course the long periods of time Republicans controlled Congress, 1919 to 1932 and 1995 to 2006 both ended with the US in two of the worst economic crisis in recent history.  The Great Depression and the Great Recession.  As I have noted previously when exploring the striking similarity between those two time periods, Republicans pursued similar policies with similar disasterous results.

However, the two year session from 1953 to 1955 does offer a little bit of hope.  They did manage to pass the 1954 Internal Revenue Code that was the rules of the game for the next 30 years of relative prosperity.  (Of course we did sink into a bad recession a little after the Democrats replaced them).  

But my cautious optomism is tempered by the differences between 2014 and 1953.  In 1953 Ike was the President.  As the hero of WW II Ike was enormously popular.  He was a moderate Republican, which coupled with his popularity and his inclination to compromise tempered the power of Conservatives in Congress.  Today, with Obama the President, the most hardline Republicans seem to control the agenda, and they seem to care more about crushing Obama than doing good things for the country.

I think back to a couple years ago, after the Fed's announcement of QE3, which was followed by a jump in the stock market, Republicans objected to QE3, sparking comments from some stock traders speculating that Republicans really did not want the country to succeed.  

The Republican objections were partly based on economic theory but mostly seem to rest in their current ideological fixation that Government is necessarily always bad and should never tinker in the markets.   My personal take is that Republicans would be offended by the suggestion they don't want the country to succeed, but from where I sit it appears they have a different idea of success for the country, coupled with a real attraction to simple, easy to understand ideology's so they don't have to deal with facts, which tend to be messy and difficult to sort out. 

In general Republicans represent the people who have done well the last couple decades.  A simple truth of psychology is that for most of us, when things are good, we resist change that moves away from the habits to which we have become accustomed.  This makes people tend to ignore facts that are inconvenient, and the older we get the more resistant we are to change. Two years ago a lot of people were noting that when the camera panned across the audience at the Republican Convention that chose Mitt the delegates were overwhelmingly white and older.  What we have been doing for the last 30 years has worked for them, so they don't want to change it, even if it hasn't worked so well for much of the country.

Another factor is a lot of Republicans work in the defense industry, which is partly why they have done so well personally the last 20 to 30 years, because for nearly 30 years we have been incurring debt primarily to fund our huge defense outlays.  It is very convenient for them to pretend that our deficit is a function of food stamps and welfare so they can ignore the fact we incurred most of our deficit by almost dollar for dollar increases in defense spending coupled with simultaneous tax cuts.

(That's not to suggest there aren't Democrats who aren't set in their ways, but the Republican party seems to rely much more on older folk than the Democrats.)

One of the big differences between the Great Depression and the Great Recession was the Great Recession never got near as bad as the Great Depression.  In part that was due to the GW Bush economic team steering him away from classic theories of Republicans that the markets will fix everything, and pushing him into initiating the (hold your nose) bank bailouts.  After the 1929 stock market crash, Herbert Hoover had three years left as President, and Republicans continued to control both houses of Congress for the next three years.  Hoover and the Republicans sat on their hands believing the markets would correct themselves.  By 1932 around 5000 banks had failed, unemployment was near 25%.  Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats swept the Republican's aside and Republicans were really a minority party for the nearly 50 years, Democrats controlling both house of Congress for 24 straight years in the 50's, 60's and 70's.    It was very clear to most voters whose policies caused the Depression so Republican ideological arguments made little headway (there was even such a thing as a moderate Republican during those years). 

Unfortunately for the Democrats (and the country in my view) after the policy mistakes had been made and we were just beginning to slide into the Great Recession the Republicans began losing control when the Democrats won the house in 2006, and then in 2008 won both houses and the Presidency just as the bottom was completely falling out of the economy.  The Democrats in effect stepped in just in time to take the blame for the mess the Republicans created, at least in some voters minds.  That allowed Republicans to do nothing but obstruct for 6 years to make Democrats look bad, and their obstruction has now rewarded them with control of both houses of Congress again.

There may be some Karma at work here.  There are a lot of indicators that the recovery everyone has been expecting momentarily for the last 6 years is not only not arriving, but the US and world economy are probably going to get worse before they get better.  Maybe just in time for the Republicans to step into control of Congress and take some well deserved blame.

Global Warming - the Politics of Winners and Losers

Accepting the projected rise in sea levels of 216 feet in the next 100 years as at least a useful working number, here are some elevations for the seat of Government for various political entities.

California:  All but two of the major cities in California are at elevations below 216 feet.  Sacramento will be 150 feet under water.  Move the capitol to San Francisco or Los Angeles?  Both will also be largely inundated, as will Oakland, Stockton, Santa Rosa, Eureka, much of San Diego and Santa Barbara.  The only major cities that will not be underwater will be Fresno and Bakersfield.  California potentially has a big problem with rising sea levels.

The United States.   All the major cities on the Eastern Seaboard are barely above the current sea level.  A rise far less than the projected 216 feet will swallow up much of  Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington DC and Coastal cities all the way down to Florida, a State almost entirely lower than 216 feet.   On the gulf New Orleans is already under threat, most of Louisiana will disappear, Shreveport will need dikes to survive.  Houston is at 50 feet above current sea level,  On the west coast Portland will be 50 feet under the inland bay that runs down the Willamette Valley, much of the greater Seattle area will be underwater.

Internationally:  Of our two greatest rivals in the last half century, Russia and China, Russia's seat of government is in no direct physical danger from rising sea levels.  Moscow is at about 550 feet above sea level.   Beijing on the other hand is about 150 to 200 feet above sea level, below the maximum projected rise of 216 feet.   London is only about 78 feet above the current sea level, Paris about 115 feet.  Berlin 112 feet.

Much of Central and South America will be relatively unaffected, the seats of Government for many countries are far up in the mountains.  Buenas Aires is only 82 feet however, while Brasilia, on the other hand is nearly 4000 feet.

So What?  So what does this suggest about how the world will respond to rising sea levels.  It seems to me that a lot of people are going to be desperate and angry as the sea level starts swallowing up their homes and businesses.  It is going to create enormous political unrest.  It would be a very difficult, potentially explosive time in the best of circumstances, but it will be exacerbated by the disruption of Government institutions being displaced.  It could be a time where what many of us hoped would be the rising tide of democracy will become a rising tide of militaristic despotism.

Ironically, Central and South America, whom the rest of the world has often viewed as one of the most politically unstable areas of the world, could become the worlds most politically stable areas, along with Central Asia.

Next:  Why we won't muster an effective response to global warming.

I've Become Obsessed with Global Warming - part 1 of ?

I'm in Cambria this afternoon, a little coastal town that is not as famous as the big nearby tourist attraction, Hearst's Castle, about 8 miles up the road, but a delightful coastal community.  This area in San Luis Obisbo County is one of the areas that is suffering from severe drought, so bad they have closed the bathrooms at Hearst Castle to save water and brought in port-a-potties.  But Cambria is still a peaceful bucoloic place to spend some time.  We saw Dolphins cavorting around the surfers when we went out to watch the Sunset last night.  Actually the Dolphins had probably found a school of fish under the surfers so were mostly hunting but they look cavorting ish much to the delight of the tourists on shore watching the sun go down behind the clouds.

I'm neither a global warming fanatic, nor a global warming denier.  I accept that the science suggests we are probably heating the world up with our industrial development and lifestyle.  Sure we don't even know what we don't know, but you have to make decisions based on the evidence available, at least if you want to behave conservatively in the true sense.  If you pick at the weaknesses in the evidence so you have an excuse to deny the most likely explanation for all the evidence, you are not practicing good decision making.

But for many years I wasn't really inclined to pay too much attention to global warning.  It is pretty clear to me a political solution is not going to happen since trying to control global warming by cutting back emissions pits the haves with developed economy's against the have nots with billions of people who want to enjoy something like the standard of living the haves have.  Even within the haves there is conflict between the people that take the long view and the people that don't want to upset their advantageous current economic situation.  So a unified world response is not going to happen.  The weather will change in some undetermined manner, rainfall patterns will change in some undetermined manner, and there will be winners and losers.  But, I've thought, we here in California, blessed with so much diversity, will be able to adapt to the changes.  So it was pretty low on my list of concerns.

Then I saw the National Geographic article a while ago about how much the sea level will rise if all the ice caps melt in Greenland and Antarctica.  The science guys who study melting ice and such things said it would all melt in 100 years if melting continues at the rate it has been occurring, and that would bring the sea level up 216 feet.

Presumably it won't be the sea level jumping up 216 feet on January 1, 2114.  It will be sort of like compound interest, rising little bits at first then accelerating over the years, but it still would be an astounding change to our physical environment.

In the article, and in other sources I have seen they talk about the disaster rising sea levels would cause in Bangladesh, but 216 feet, or even 26 feet would threaten coastal areas all over the world.  When I was 20 years old 100 years seemed an unfathomably distant future.  Now at 67 it seems much shorter.  100 years ago my grandparents were in their teens.   Coupled with the fact the science is imprecise, it could happen sooner (or later) but what if, for example, it rose 25 feet in the next couple decades?

I live on the ridge that forms the eastern boundary of the City of Berkeley looking out at the San Franscisco Bay.  So I pulled up a google map of the bay area and set it on the terrain setting to have access to the elevation markings.  If the sea level rises 216 feet the economic engine that is the bay area today will no longer exist.  The houses on the ridges that surround the bay will be looking at a much bigger bay that has swallowed up all the commercial areas.  From the financial district in San Francisco, to Silicon Valley to the I-880 stretch of development in Oakland, it would all be under water.  Even 26 feet would swamp all the Bay Area airports and much of the crucial economic infrastructure

When I expanded the map I saw that at 216 feet Sacramento, and Davis, the town I lived in for 30+ years will be under 150 or so of water.  Stockton will be gone, Fresno will be the bay front property at the southern end of a second inland bay.  Much of Napa and Sonoma County will be underwater, the northern end of the expanded bay will be about Geyserville and St. Helena.

Most of Los Angeles and much of San Diego will be seafloor.  On the west coast Portland will be largely underwater, and much of Seattle.  The whole eastern seaboard, including Boston, New York, Washington DC, Baltimore, Charleston, and most of the State of Florida will be underwater.

Rising sea levels would have a massive economic impact on the United States.

So now I go to some nice relaxing beach resort like Cambria and I find myself looking around imagining what is going to be underwater, both in the near future, and in the longer term.  I pull up topographical maps to see how far up the canyon that brings Santa Rosa Creek down through town will the sea intrude.  I imagine which houses up on the hill are going to have great view, which houses are going to be isolated on little islands surrounded by the intruding sea.  I speculate on where the business district down along Santa Rosa Creek will go as the sea swallows up the current business district..

The California I've known all my life is going to be reshaped in ways that affect people I know and love today, and I want to know what it will look like.

Next:  The politics of global warming - who wins and loses from rising sea levels.

The Irony of Obamacare

As we approach the congressional mid-term election the media conversation is all about how the Republicans are well positioned to come out of the mid-terms with control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the period from 1996-2007.

The last time voters trusted Republicans with the keys to Congress they managed to set the table for the biggest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, and for dessert they invaded Iraq, an action that has destabilized the entire middle east, creating a quagmire of violently competing interests from which it is beginning to appear we will never be able to extract ourselves, and which it is beyond question we are not going to resolve.

How have the Republicans managed to convince voters to turn back to their leadership?  Most of the issues they flogged on the road to victory from 1995-2007, fear of the gay menace and immigrants, trust Wall Street but don't trust Government, have become losing issues with many voters.  Although Obama walked in the door in 2008 with impossibly difficult problems on the economy and in the middle east, the Republicans have managed to convince many voters Obama is the reason those problem aren't solved.  But Republicans can't make a lot of headway using those issues because too many voters remember that it was Republicans that made all the really bad decisions that blew up the economy and got us into Iraq.  But, the Republican fingerprints on the first big thing Obama did, enact a law to set up a framework to provide health insurance to all, are not so obvious.  So the biggest issue the Republicans have tied their hopes too the last couple years has been Obamacare.

Obamacare is a perceived as a bureaucratic mess (and this voter shares that perception to some extent).  Ironically Obamacare is mess mostly because of the Republicans in Congress were so intransigent, so stubborn and uninterested in dealing with the fact our health care system was the most expensive and least efficient system in the world, that they refused to support any kind of health care reform unless every possible lobbying group with campaign dollars was appeased.  

That universal medical coverage for all citizens is a good thing is a no-brainer (a fact currently highlighted by the Ebola fears).  Even arch conservative Richard Nixon had recognized that it was necessary for a smoothly functioning modern state 45 years ago.  Free market principles that work for efficient production of refrigerators or cars don't work for Medical care.  But Republicans were so dead set against any plan of "socialized medicine" Obama perceived the only way he could get some sort of Universal Health coverage enacted was to use a "Republican" model (Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan) and cut deals with lobbyist for people making piles of money off the old system at every turn to get enough votes to get the law passed.

Obamacare is successful in one huge respect.  Voters now recognize the value of universal medical coverage.  Most Republicans no longer dare talk about repealing Obamacare but Republicans have been pretty successful at spinning reality to convince voters the bureaucratic snafu's associated with Obamacare are all Obama's fault.  That their strategy may put them back in control of both houses of Congress is historically nonsensical.  It's like giving a kid an ice cream cone for blaming his brother trying to clean up a broken window, forgetting it was he that threw the rock that broke it.  

But it does say something about who ultimately is responsible for stupid acts by Congress.  If voters really want to know who's screwing up the government many will see the culprit in their bathroom mirror.  

Postscript - One reader felt the last sentence did not connect with the rest of the article.  The point I was trying to make (unsuccessfully perhaps) was that in the end if Government is screwing things up, the solution will usually only be found when enough voters examine their preconceived notions about issues, immunize themselves from emotional name calling and exaggeration, and figure out for themselves the nature of reality. 

The Welfare Conundrum

If any kind of government handout is truly free it undermines productive activity.  The social safety net becomes a hammock people many people will rely upon for a life without responsibility.

Those who live in this situation for long periods of time sometimes become convinced they are victims in life, that nothing is their responsibility, that the world is conspiring against them.

On the other hand our free market is not very good at finding productive activity for all members of society.  It leaves many young people without opportunity, and often discards older people.  

Republicans and Democrats both tend to dismiss the complexity of the problem. Republicans are hostile to government assistance to folks who have little, suspicious that everyone without a means of support has only themselves to blame.  Democrats refuse to acknowledge that some of those without means of support are in that position because of concious decisions not to be bothered with the restraints on their fun activites that are sometimes required to successfully support yourself. 

To me the answer is pretty obvious.  We need a government run assistance system that doesn't just hand out money, it requires payment for the benefits in the currency most people without means of support have in abundance - time.

The time requirements could involve public service, volunteering for non-profits, advancing educational achievement.

There would still be folks who tried to work the system, so a structured system that progressively requires more time and committment the longer the person receives public benefits would provide incentive for people to get away from the public trough and into self sufficiency so they will have more control over their life.

Republicans - The Party of Ideas

In early July (2014) the New York Times Sunday Magazine had a long feature article about all the new think tanks full of Republicans developing new substantive ideas.  The Republican's have evidently woken up to the fact just saying no to Democratic ideas isn't enough for voters, outside the reddest of red states.

After reviewing the ideas discussed in the article it is apparant the Republican notion of new ideas is to take problems the Democrats have been harping about for years and find "Republican" solutions.

Conservative Republicans have the same deeply flawed approach to addressing policy problem that left wing Democrats have.  Both ends of the political spectrum start with an narrow view of reality then build their policy ideas based on the their false notion that their view of the world reflects the totality of reality.  For Republicans its "business good, government bad."  For the left wing its "business bad, government good."

The left wing of the Democratic party has had a hard time being taken seriously the last few decades but the right wing of the Republican party is still a force in American politics.

However Republicans have a lot of history to overcome before I will spend my time seriously considering their new ideas.  

Back around the end of World War I Republican's used support for Prohibition, coupled with "fresh" ideas about cutting taxes and regulations and enacting business friendly laws to sell voters on trusting them and grab and control Congress, which they held from 1919 to 1933.  We went through a business boom where the stock market went wild, the housing market went wild, the rich got richer and the rest got poorer, then the 1929 Stock market crash ushered in the Great Depression.  But the time the Republicans lost control of government in 1933 the country was on its knees.

Voters remembered that, so Republican's were a minority party for the next 40 years, but as those voters died off the Republican parties influence began to rise again.  By the 1980's the conventional wisdom (still unquestioned today) was that the Republican party was again "the party of ideas". In the mid-1990's they used their glossy list of nice sounding new ideas to gain control of Congress and over the next decade or so enacted many of the same ideas they sold the country on back in 1919 (dragging along Democratic politicians who knew which way the wind was blowing).  Again we had a steady diet of tax cuts, business friendly laws, and cuts in government's ability to regulate economic activity.  Securities markets took off, the price of housing took off.  A quote from a 1980's movie that "greed is good" went from ironic in the movie to a hallowed truth in Congress. 

As voters finally ushered the Republican Congressional majority out the door in 2007 we were sliding into the biggest financial collapse since the the Great Depression, the greatest concentration of wealth in the hands of a few since the Great Depression, the housing market had become a casino for speculation, and unemployment had risen to levels not seen for decades.

History suggests Republican's are much better at marketing ideas than actually coming up with workable ones.

I just don't want to waste time on ideas from either end of the poltical spectrum that grow out of simplistic views of the world rooted in an emotional commitment to a particular ideology.