pressure headaches from a climate of change

Today I read a New York Times column by Thomas Friedman with the Nike-esque title Just Do It. He was referring to voting for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that was just passed by House of Representatives 219-212, and is headed to the Senate.

This bill furthers investments in renewable energy and assigns a more realistic cost to fossil fuels to reflect additional unseen costs related to carbon emissions. These fuels and their production have always been subsidized because they were seen as vital to economic growth. The cost of the carbon credits will be determined via auction, and the profits will go to furthering renewable energy projects. Over time the amount of available credits will be reduced.

So the free market, not government, will decide what that additional cost should be, at least to the extent that it is allowed to. To the chagrin of many environmentalists, the fossil fuel industries themselves will have billions of dollars of carbon credits given away to them, artificially lowering the value of all credits to begin with. If anything, the government is guilty of keeping the cost of these credits artificially low.

Friedman's approach to the column was this. He described the cap-and-trade energy bill as:

"...too weak in key areas and way too complicated in others. A simple, straightforward carbon tax would have made much more sense than this Rube Goldberg contraption [me: Yay Rube Goldberg machines!]. It is pathetic that we couldn’t do better. It is appalling that so much had to be given away to polluters. It stinks. It’s a mess. I detest it..."

Then he said to get it passed anyway because it:

1) Will be the first comprehensive American attempt to mitigate, and therefore legitimize the threat of, climate change
2) Will change the paradigm of business to seek out the least-cost and low carbon option, thereby making buildings more and appliances more efficient and helping to preserve forests in the Amazon, and
3) Would have been stronger and more effective without the many compromises accepted to get it passed at all.

However, Friedman then goes on to express dismay at three groups--the Republican party en masse, inappropriately referring to them as the party of "sex scandals and polluters" for their environmental indifference, Obama for staying on the sidelines while Congress dukes out the particulars, and young Americans for getting on Facebook instead of literally getting into someone's face, as if he had no idea what social networking has done for politics in this nation. Look in the White House.

It appeared that someone peed in Mr. Friedman's corn flakes. Extreme = bad. Black and white = bad. This is uncalled for.

As you might expect, this column had a very large percentage of negative responses, but the distribution was not uniform. In particular, there were more climate change deniers and people who have either never heard of Factcheck.org and Snopes.com or who think them to be part of the liberal news cabal than I figured even read the New York Times in the first place.

Upon further thought, I realized that Friedman was so worked up about this bill because to him it must feel like man is about to land on the moon for the first time after years and years of grassroots progress toward that goal, but Republicans are bemoaning the additional tax burden, the President stands aside as Congress fights over continuing the funding, and young Americans are all out surfing obliviously. Friedman was so wrapped up in the magnitude of the moment that he went black-and-white on his readers.

I completely agree that passage of the W-M bill would be a momentous event. It's hard to express how big, but I'll propose the acceptance of the world being round for comparison. Friedman came close to capturing the magnitude of this event but then he got too emotional, downgraded into partisan hackery, and got flamed for it.

To be sure, many of the comments were also hackery. However, some of them did have great points. For one, two of the concessions--dropping the required emissions reductions to 17% by 2020 and 80% by 2050, and giving away carbon credits to fossil fuel companies--were necessary because the Appalachian and Southern United States depend heavily on coal as both a fuel and an economy, and they prefer to research clean coal and sequestration.

Some of these states are Democratic, which made for very strategic bargaining. Likewise, some states with no problem backing alternative energy industries had Republicans vote for it, creating unlikely allies. This is more of a bipartisan issue than many, precisely because it has so many economic implications. Friedman has little ground for grouping all Republican party members together on the issue.

My personal thought is that the representatives favoring this bill are the ones who saw waste regulation coming years ago and acted early to change their constituents' economic situation by incentivizing the growth of new industries and talent. Those representatives were also likely bombarded by "no tax hikes" arguments at the time, but were outnumbered by residents who had a values structure that did not simply revolve around protecting their next paycheck, but future paychecks as well. Now their states host the few growth industries that the United States currently has. They are leaders of the new economy, and they should be rewarded for their bold and risky strokes to gain competitive advantage. It is free market evolution at its finest.

Since both Obama and our government representatives were voted into office after the recession (just to remind bitter Republicans out there), and since House members did not simply vote on this bill along party lines, I presume that the majority of the country agrees. It appears that most of us can indeed envision a positive, clean, and competitive economic future for the United States and are willing to invest in it. And while we evolve, the signals that we are sending to the rest of the world couldn't be clearer--we are moving past oil dictators and doing something about our pollution habit. It is leading by example, and the laggards will know that their time is rapidly approaching.

But there continues to be a nagging question in my mind. Since we're not all on the same ground to begin with, why are we trying to mandate aggressive federal standards when we know that certain regions of the country are unable to meet them? I am for a national mandate to reduce carbon emissions, but not one that is unfair to those who, while they could have conceivably changed their paths sooner, obviously had less viable options than those in the vicinity of geothermal, hydro, or other energy sources.

The answer is a sad one: aggressive standards are what are needed to slow climate change. The original levels set were in accordance with scientific models predicting what would have to happen to stave off the unthinkable.

Believe it or not, I am very much for smaller government. This country is too big, geographically and ideologically, to have one comprehensive policy on much of anything. I believe that the federal government is there for setting a national baseline and spreading resources to poorer areas so that all states can remain productive and happy. I recently realized that this resource acquisition for states is what has been derisively referred to as pork all this time. According to my history notes, it is the very thing that Senators are elected to produce for their states. I guess that leaves them more time to read bills, then.

Despite what I feel about government staying out of the nooks and crannies of this great country, it's clear to me, as it is with Mr. Friedman, that we must now commit ourselves to some long-lasting changes in our energy future. I believe that we are about to do just that with this bill.

This transition to a low-carbon economy is obviously complicated, and anyone who says otherwise likely accepts credit cards. The Waxman-Markey bill is not perfect, but I believe that individual states will do what they have always done and pursue more aggressive goals to further their own competitive advantage.

In the end, it's still up to a free market solution.

By the way, if you are also feeling poisoned from all of the uninformed rancor being spewed about this bill on the internets, please enjoy this fairly even, if self-hating assessment of a complete reading of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill by Alan Durning of Sightline.org. note: Alan's June 10 article was revised on July 10 to account for the extra ~480 pages added between his original post and the passage of the Waxman-Markey Bill by the House, so this is a new link to the updated version.