Dear David and Mike,
I wonder about part of this discussion. As Nobel laureate Ronald Coase pointed out long ago, what are referred to as external costs are more clearly thought of as negative interactions among various activities. The doctor's demand for quiet in his consulting room could impose noise control costs on the nearby factory just as clearly as the noise from the factory could impose costs on the doctor's practice. (This was, as I recall, an actual court case cited in the famous Coase article, "The Problem of Social Cost".) Attempts to categorize some actors as perpetrators and some as victims miss the whole point. That point is, Coase teaches, that it is the interaction that causes the costs. Move the doctor's office to another location or move the factory, and the social cost disappears. Therefore, it may be possible to reduce these costs by changing the behavior of either of the actors (or both of them). The policy maker's job is to define the property rights, or other social rules, so as to minimize the losses that stem from the negative aspects of some interactions. In the case of climate change, we can reduce the potential harm by keeping people from building flimsy structures in hurricane-prone areas. And we can also reduce it by curtailing emissions from coal-fired power plants. Both of these activities are raising the total social costs from climate change. The net cost-minimizing solution is almost certainly to do some of both. Trying to cast the problem in moral terms does not just cause confusion. It may lead us to miss less expensive opportunities to reduce the total social harm from climate change. This error seems to me to be one of the main harms likely to spring from the current tendency to treat near-term greenhouse gas emission controls as the only tool, or overwhelmingly the preferred tool, for curbing the potential damage from climate change. This narrow attitude encourages an under estimate of the potential value of adaptation. Indeed, the neglect of SRM is, in a real sense, merely an extension of the neglect of adaptation. Thank you both for raising interesting points. Best regards, Lee Lane ________________________________ From: [email protected] on behalf of David Schnare Sent: Fri 12/12/2008 12:26 PM To: Geoengineering Subject: [geo] Re: Cap and Trade Haters Recommend Incentivizing Geo Gents: I think you are on the wrong track. Incentives are intended to change behavior. One does not pay victims to continue to be victims. One pays the perpetrator to quit perpetrating the bad act. So, one penalizes a person who lives in the flood plain the increased amount needed in the insurance pool to pay for his damages when the flood comes. An incentive to prevent his home from flooding would be to give him a low cost loan to build above the flood plain. Hence, who's behavior do you want to alter. Surely the person living in the flood plain is not the person who's behavior you want to alter, at least with regard to carbon emissions. He may suffer the consequences, but he is not (in the main) the cause of the problem. The correct question is: Who would make money out of geoengineering, and is now causing the problem? Not merely who would benefit from it, but who would actually have an incentive to create wealth out of it. That would be the folks working on planetary scale carbon sequestration. I don't see anyone making money out of SRM. Hence, if you want an incentive for SRM, you need to link it to something else that will make money. Begin from this point for your discussion. David. On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 11:50 AM, John Nissen <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Mike, Perhaps we should try insurance companies, or even better, reinsurance. They are interested in avoiding disasters, however they are caused. Does anybody have good contacts? I have a particular interest in avoiding sea level rise, tidal surges and high precipitation floods, living by tidal Thames. Hey, what about the former mayor, Ken Livingston? (The new mayor wouldn't be interested.) Cheers from Chiswick John ----- Original Message ----- From: Mike MacCracken <mailto:[email protected]> To: [email protected] ; Alvia Gaskill <mailto:[email protected]> Cc: Geoengineering <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Friday, December 12, 2008 4:22 PM Subject: [geo] Re: Cap and Trade Haters Recommend Incentivizing Geo Hi David-Your proposal is just the reason why there is resistance to geoengineering. The idea is to not have geoengineering slow the needed rapid reduction in GHG emissions, but to be in addition to it-for given how rapidly the environment is changing we will need to have geoengineering as well as aggressive mitigation. We really need to find another alternative to incentivizing geoengineering-for example, having funding for it come out of what would otherwise need to be going to defending the coasts against sea level rise-so like an insurance premium of coastal homeowners-you only get insurance if you live along the coasts if you pay an additional amount for geoengineering. Mike MacCracken On 12/12/08 9:13 AM, "David Schnare" <[email protected] <http://[email protected]/> > wrote: You would link it to carbon emissions , allowing greater emissions in direct trade with investment on mass scale carbon sequestration and a premium (lesser but still real emissions allowances) for X years for SRM. On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 7:30 AM, Alvia Gaskill <[email protected] <http://[email protected]/> > wrote: How would you "incentivize" investment in geoengineering? http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU0812/S00286.htm Coalition Warns Governments Against Emissions Cap Friday, 12 December 2008, 3:33 pm Press Release: New Zealand Business Roundtable EMBARGOED UNTIL 1:00PM FRIDAY 12 DECEMBER Climate Change Coalition Warns Governments Against Global Cap on Emissions As the eleven thousand participants in the United Nations Climate Change Conference descend on Poznan, Poland, this week, a coalition of 50 civil society organisations from 38 countries is warning governments against opting for strategies that would "do little to protect humanity against the threat of climate change but would drastically increase the threat of global economic catastrophe." The Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change (www.csccc.info <http://www.csccc.info/> <http://www.csccc.info/> ) of which the New Zealand Business Roundtable is a member, has today released a new report with a stark message to governments about the economic flow-on effect, particularly on poorer countries, of adopting a global cap on emissions. Describing the idea as "economic lunacy", the report's author, Professor Julian Morris, said a global cap would divert resources into "low carbon" technologies and away from more productive uses. "This would slow economic growth and harm the ability of the poor to address the real problems they face every day, such as diseases, water scarcity, and inadequate nutrition", said Professor Morris. The report canvases policy options available to governments and concludes that adaptation, coupled with improving the institutions that enable economic growth, is likely to be the best response to gradual warming. It further suggests that one approach to addressing the remote but possible threat of catastrophic warming would be to incentivise investment in geoengineering, and advises governments 'hell bent' on limiting carbon emissions to consider a tax on emissions rather than a cap and trade scheme. Business Roundtable executive director Roger Kerr said the report, titled Which Policy to Address Climate Change? was a timely and valuable addition to the debate on what constitutes an appropriate response to climate change. "We have long held the view, as set out in the attached submission, that a cap and trade scheme of the type being considered in New Zealand would impose heavy costs on households, businesses and the economy. It is also likely to discourage investment and lead to losses in business confidence and jobs. "It is to be hoped that common sense will prevail in Poznan and that a few European ministers will not succeed in imposing further pain on countries already struggling with much more serious problems", said Mr Kerr. ENDS --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
