I am currently a freshmen student enrolled at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and an avid anarcho-capitalist. I am composing an essay where I need to invent or endorse a government policy that would "deal" with global climate change for a scholarship. It pains me to admit that I can't find a solution that is consistent with the property rights. Though it seems like a tragedy of the commons problem like this should have a solution in the extension of poperty rights, I can't devise, let alone eloquate one. I have considered alternate proposals (Abolish the USFG) but I believe that there should be a simpler and more palatable (to the scholarship committee) alternative that doesn’t necessitate denigration of rights. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Also, please no posts about how climate change isn’t happening. I am skeptical that climate change is largely anthropogenic and of the deleterious effects it will have, but I need to answer the question regardless.
Thanks a lot,
William Van Treuren
Hollowhope:I am currently a freshmen student enrolled at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and an avid anarcho-capitalist. I am composing an essay where I need to invent or endorse a government policy that would "deal" with global climate change for a scholarship. It pains me to admit that I can't find a solution that is consistent with the property rights.
I am currently a freshmen student enrolled at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and an avid anarcho-capitalist. I am composing an essay where I need to invent or endorse a government policy that would "deal" with global climate change for a scholarship. It pains me to admit that I can't find a solution that is consistent with the property rights.
i guess it comes down to at what price you choose to trade away your values. your scholarship may see you offered a prestigious academic posting where you'll have to champion keynesianism etc.(against your avid personal views). it's a slippery slope...
Hello.
You could start working on the following scenarios.
1)Climate change is happening but there's absolutely nothing mankind can do about it (the causes, as you said, are not of any importance): any measure would simply be a waste of resources which could be (from an Austrian point of viex) left in taxpayers' pockets or (from a traditional point of view) used for "more pressing matters", disaster preparation and relief being the most obvious. Yet a strong minority vociferously asks for "something to be done": this minority has very strong political links and can put a lot pressure on government agencies. What are we to do in this case?
2)A "carbon tax" is enacted in some countries but others refuse to follow suit, for whatever reason. Climate datas are (as in reality) contrasting and don't seem to support either side's claims. Yet economic datas clearly show a slightly stronger growth and improving lifestyles in those countries which refused to enact the tax while those who introduced the carbon tax show exactly the opposite. Do conflicting datas justify worse economic conditions?
3)After a "carbon tax" is implemented datas are gathered showing that it's not really cutting carbon dioxyde emissions: people are simply paying more to keep up their previous lifestyle. In the meanwhile climate datas remain conflicting: some agencies claim the measure is a success (yet the same quantity of CO2 is emitted as before), other claim the climate trend remains the same, other yet that the situation is improving/worsening. In short the new tax failed to curb emissions. What are we do to in this scenario? Are we to implement more "aggressive" measures? Are we to dump the new tax altogether? Are we to cinrease the tax, hoping it will curb emissions?
Start working on these...
newsom - im not trading away my values, i am seeking an answer to an argument constantly made against my position.
kagumo, thanks, i see your arguements, but i guess i am looking for a way to extend property rights to atmosphere to alleviate this tragedy of the commons. this may not be possible, but there are many more adept minds then mine at this site, so keep the suggestions coming.
thanks,
will
I'd look to some articles that have used 'market' solutions for fisheries where the fishing industry in certain countries has been allowed a share of ownership of the fish, tradable/salable and what not as well. It's been a long time since I've read the articles so specifics escape me as to where they were put in place, but basically you see some of the benefits of a true market and private property rights emerging. The resources increase, overuse stops, etc. If you could implement some similar plan, yes tragically through the government, for the atmosphere, you might get similar results. Also look up the prisoner's dilema, which is basically why all plans up to now have failed, such as carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes.
As an example of such a 'property' based system, say each of the states gives an atmosphere 'share' to each of its citizens. This share gives them a quotal ownership of the atmosphere and they then vote on a board of directors and set standards, independent of the government which serves no other purpose in this scheme, which state businesses have to obey. Note the business owners if they live there own a share too. The citizens and the board then have to balance use of the atmosphere against making it too hard for businesses to operate locally. Do it on a state by state level to encourage a mix of standards and give businesses an out if they simply can't or won't comply with an overly restrictive state. The who the board decides need to pay, pay the board directly, the money either goes directly to the share owners as a dividend of some sort or comes directly off what they owe in taxes. I prefer the former of course.
Of course there are some difficulties. Air doesn't respect state boundries, etc. But the point is I believe they can then be worked out between the various boards and through the courts. The key is establishing legal ownership of the atmostphere but otherwise keeping the government as far out of the picture as possible, and certainly not making up a new revenue generating program. As for other specifics like are the boards paid or not, are the shares tradable and what not, it's debatable. The system would obviously be in its infancy so I'd leave such decisions to you. Importantly though the plan suffers from no problems that don't already plague other plans, and it may even avoid some few by concentrating on at least a form of private ownership rather than communal ownership. In that sense looking up articles here on privatization in previously socialist/communist countries is a good thing to do. This idea for example is sort of along the lines of the ideas floated when the USSR collpased of giving the workers in the mills shares of ownership of those mills to end communism and start a market system. The question in the end is how do you desocialize or decommunize the atmosphere. It's not necessarily the same as merely finding a resource and bringing it in to an existing capitalist system.
Yours in liberty,Geoffrey Allan Plauché, Ph.D.Adjunct Instructor, Buena Vista UniversityWebmaster, LibertarianStandard.comFounder / Executive Editor, Prometheusreview.com
Hi there!
It's always nice to see other people thinking about this issue. As some of you are probably aware, I've been working extremely hard on resolving some of the ethical dilemmas arising from climate change as my undergraduate thesis at the University of Wisconsin. It would probably be excessive to attempt a full explanation of my position, but I suppose I might as well suggest some resources for achieving a better understanding of the kinds of problems that must be dealt with in the context of climate change. First, some things I've written on climate change and related issues (unfortunately, Rob at STR doesn't want to publish any more about climate change because he can't get a good enough handle on the issue, so my publicly available writing on the subject stopped a while ago):
Who Dares Question the Global Warmocaust? ; The Skeptic's Wager ; The Bjorn Ultimatum ; Putting a Price on Injustice
Second, a few essays I've read which do a good job of dealing with climate change and related issues from a libertarian perspective:
Market-Based Environmentalism and the Free Market: They're Not the Same ; and an excellent response, Market-Based Environmentalism and the Free Market: Substitutes or Complements? ; Science, Public Policy, and Global Warming: Rethinking the Market-Liberal Position ; Common Property in Anarcho-Capitalism ; Liberty, Markets, and Environmental Values: A Hayekian Defense of Free-Market Environmentalism ; Another Take on Free Market Environmentalism: A Friendly Critique ; How Free Markets Protect the Environment
In my opinion, the best work on the issue has been published in mainstream journals which require subscriptions or memberships to access. I'll post a list of some of the best ones if anyone can access them, but otherwise I won't bother.
Also, I've written a few papers this semester on issues relating to justice and climate change; if anyone might want to read them, let me know and I'll tell you what they were about.
I actually wouldn't mind a Pigouvian tax on carbon emmisions as long as it replaced our other taxes like the income tax. I think that would be a hell of a lot more efficient than what we have now.
"I cannot prove, but am prepared to affirm, that if you take care of clarity in reasoning, most good causes will take care of themselves, while some bad ones are taken care of as a matter of course." -Anthony de Jasay
I think Yandle's Grasping for the Heavens is quite a good article on how privatization might occur in areas such as the atmosphere, albeit it needs a bit of patience to be found.
Bruce Yandle, "Grasping for the Heavens: 3-D Property Rights and the Global Commons," Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum Vol. 10:13http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/cite.php?10+Duke+Envtl.+L.+&+Pol'y+F.+13http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?10+Duke+Envtl.+L.+&+Pol'y+F.+13+pdf
Will;
I don't see this as trading away your values (opinions will differ, admittedly). I tend to see it -- for you -- as more of a potentially useful intellectual training exercise. It forces you to crawl inside, or attempt to crawl inside, their thinking. This however, isn't why I'm responding.
I tend to see most of the IPCC/UN/Environmentalist crowd as motivated primarily by political, rather than scientific agendas. I've come to this conclusion not because I feel that Global Warming isn't happening -- it clearly is -- or as clearly as I can make out. No I think science has little to do with their motivations because of their proposed "solutions." Hybrids? Economic suicide? Carbon taxes/credits? Huh? Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic anyone?
No mention, No mention of true potential long-term solutions. Things like solar power (orbital, not terrestrial), or the HE3 fusion cycle. Both examples of energy technologies that respectively can, or very likely can, eliminate the need for carbon-based energy economies. Given the amount of coin that they seem to want thrown at the problem, the cost of developing these technologies would be ... trivial.
But that's just me. I could be wrong.
I think the worthwhile question in all of this is as follows:
If, through our own voluntary actions, individuals alive right now were contributing to global climate change which would cause harm to people in the future, what would be the right thing to do about it?
Say what you want about the flaws in particular policies. If we think that people in the future have the right to not be victimized by our actions, then it is clear that the baseline recommendation should not be doing nothing. We should be offering alternatives that we do agree with. And if we don't think that people in the future have any such right, then that's what we need to be arguing.
So as I see it, libertarians are generally having the wrong discussion. If we're talking about proper responses to problems like climate change, it doesn't matter whether the scientific basis for concern about global warming supports the concern we see in the public sphere. What matters is that global warming could be happening, and as economic thinkers and political philosophers, we need to be able to say what should be done in either case. Only when we realize this can we properly deal with the role of uncertainty in the process. Perhaps the burden of uncertainty should be placed on future generations, which would absolve us of considerable responsibility. And perhaps the burden of uncertainty should be placed on us, which would suggest a more precautionary approach. But if libertarians put their heads in the sand and align themselves with the most grotesque of conservatives, then they will simply be condemned to fade into irrelevance.
And that's what's been happening: widespread conservative-style ignorance of facts which offend libertarians' sensibilities. The enormous majority of the skeptics' arguments are either based on faulty reasoning, or on controversial, speculative or debunked science. The first category includes, among seemingly countless others, the observation that Greenland was once habitable, the time lag between historical temperature shifts and CO2 concentration increases, the proportion of total CO2 emissions which come from human sources, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, the relative atmospheric CO2 concentration compared with other eras in the Earth's history, and the observation of stratospheric cooling, all of which are in no way problematic for the mainstream's views. The second category includes, again among others, the heat island hypothesis, Lindzen's solar iris hypothesis, Svensmark's, Friis-Christensen's, Lassen's, Soon's, and Balliunas' solar hypotheses, Gray's ocean circulation hypothesis, and the countless observers who cite unnamed and unknown sources of natural variability as the primary driver behind the warming we have observed.
But the weakness of the standard skeptical position is made much worse by the fact that most of the people who defend it don't even make an attempt to find out what the mainstream views are. Having devoted a considerable portion of the past two years to studying this issue, I can assure you all that being a skeptic about the IPCC's claims is fully tenable, but I honestly don't think I've ever heard any skeptical non-scientist make the arguments that would make skepticism a well-grounded position. Further, while skepticism is tenable, the strength behind the mainstream arguments is extremely high, and it is almost inconceivable that they will ever be shown to be as fatally wrong as skeptics seem to suggest. Does anthropogenic CO2 have the potential to warm the atmosphere? Yes, absolutely. Has it been responsible for at least some of the global temperature change which we have observed over the past century? Yes, almost without question; especially in the last 40 years. Can future temperature increases be expected from a business-as-usual attitude? Very probably yes. It is only in asking whether we can expect the kinds of increases predicted by the IPCC, and whether we should be concerned about climate change, that skepticism is defensible. Otherwise, I suggest that people stop listening to one-sided propaganda.
But even if all fears about climate change are debunked, and the global warming scare goes the way of the ice age scare of the 70's, libertarians will not be the winners for their mindless contrarianism. People will still rightfully ask what libertarians would say if there were such a problem as climate change, and what better time to figure out an answer to that question than now? It's time that we started dealing with this issue, and save our credibility as legitimate thinkers before it's too late.
The trouble for us anarcho-capitalists is precisely that, even if global warming is occurring, and even if it is largely caused by humans, we still would prefer for government to do little or nothing about it. For Austrians, there is the additional consideration of subjective valuation. In any case, we must be concerned with specific harm to individuals or their property, and not with the environment in general. If a person's plants are harmed by air pollution from the local manufacturing plant, for example, then specific harm has been done to a specific person, and a lawsuit against the plant for restitution is well justified.
Thus, similar criteria must be applied to potential global warming problems. Specific harm to people or their property attributed to specific people. If governments have any job in this, it is simply to acknowledge, not create, property rights, and allow their courts to resolve those conflicts, just as they are supposed to do for other kinds of conflicts.
Roy Cordato is especially good in covering this stuff.
Libertarian, I'm not sure what kinds of counterexamples you could be talking about.
On the first point, CO2 in the atmosphere intrinsically possesses the capacity to absorb heat. If all other things were held equal, and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 were increased, one would expect to see a positive radiative forcing on the atmosphere. That's all I meant by saying that CO2 has the capacity to warm the atmosphere.
On the second point, we have seen steady increases in global average temperatures over the last few decades, during a period in which natural factors likely would have produced a net cooling effect. Further, the vertical distribution of warming is consistent with a greenhouse gas forcing, and inconsistent with a natural source (the upper atmosphere has cooled, which would not make sense unless heat were being trapped near the surface, like it would be expected to with a greenhouse warming). Combine these points with the fact that climate modelers cannot reproduce historical temperature patterns without taking into account anthropogenic influences and greenhouse gas forcings, and it seems unfair to say that climate science is based on biased conjecture.
In both cases, I'm not sure what sort of counterexamples you could come up with. I suppose you could show me that CO2 in fact does not possess the properties that all scientists (including climate change skeptics) acknowledge it having, and I'd have to drop the first point. But given that conclusions about the human influence on the climate system are not derived from any one piece of information, but rather from a comprehensive assessment of all of the available evidence, I'm not sure how you could provide a counterexample. This is especially true of what I said, which is that humans have had some influence on the climate system, which is actually a much weaker claim than is endorsed by the mainstream community, which asserts that humans have very likely caused the majority of the warming we've observed.
The best way to argue against the consensus, I think, is to dispute its predictive abilities. If the climate system were more chaotic than modelers give it credit for being, then the potential for the butterfly effect to influence the future would be significant. If modelers have tuned their models to the data sets they were meant to reproduce in an illegitimate fashion, then the models would clearly be unreliable for making predictions. Or if the proscribed variables or intracellular characteristics of models are unacceptably inaccurate, the same thing would be true. But those aren't the reasons that you hear for skepticism. They should be, but apparently people are too wrapped up in propaganda and misinformation to actually critique the real science behind the consensus.
[Edit: Macsnafu, I want to reply to your post, but I'd rather put it off until tomorrow. Sorry!]
You should be able to apply the principles in Rothbard's Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution to an anthropogenic climate change scenario, in which damage to someone's person or property is the result. Who could emit what amounts of CO2 would then come down to the homesteading of CO2 emission easements, which would have to be settled through courts. Of course proving that human activity is changing the climate beyond a reasonable doubt in a court would be extremely difficult given that it's mostly junk science used as an excuse for more government, which is the main reason why the anthropogenic-global-warmingists are so opposed to such an approach (gods forbid they should actually have to prove some actual justification for the mass acts of violence they propose). A government policy of leaving it to the courts to strictly enforce private property rights, coupled with an end to government subsidization of fossil fuels (both through direct economic support and through the use of the military to protect oil company assets overseas and prop up "friendly" dictatorships), an end to regulations which prevent the construction of nuclear power plants, and a complete sell-off of "public lands" so that such land can be put to use (e.g. for solar and wind power production), should work well enough for your paper.
Corporations are an extension of the state.