The Post-Normal Times - Putting Science into Context

News that no longer fits into CNN

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:32:37 -0500

As a blogger on environmental science and policy who has actually worked in this field for over 20 years, I have done my share of grumbling about the quality of coverage of this complex subject, but have also come to appreciate just how time consuming it is to provide quality coverage, on a daily basis, and how much we need good journalists who are actually paid to do this full time. So it was with great sadness last night, while winding down from a very long day in which I scarcely even had time to look at the blogs, much less post anything, that I found out CNN just axed the entire science and technology team at CNN. That would be science correspondent Miles O'Brien and six executive producers, among them, Peter Dykstra, who focused on science and environment, and who I had the pleasure to know in person, before he moved to Atlanta. That was a long time ago so I suspect this team is the last of the Turner era CNN crew.

I have watched much less of CNN ever since they followed that infamous white van. But I have been reading Peter's excellent posts to the SciTech blog, and wonder who will be finding and reporting answers to all of the good questions he has raised, now more critical than ever in what is expected to be a post science-war reconstruction period. And, via dotearth, we are reminded of when Miles O'Brien managed to put Sen. Inhofe into context, rather than "balance" a broadly held scientific consensus with denialist rants:

CNN's reason?

We want to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit. Now that the bulk of our environmental coverage is being offered through the Planet in Peril franchise . . . there is no need for a separate unit.

First, Anderson Cooper does a fine job of drawing attention to melting glaciers, or whatever he happens to be standing in front of. But that is not a substitute for quality in depth coverage that viewers will be looking for once they are hooked. Somehow, I can't quite see Cooper providing the same depth of background reporting, in a way that draws more attention to the work of scientists and those affected by change, than to himself.

Second, "integration" at the expense of more specialized in depth reporting and diverse perspectives is an abuse of the concept, and is really just a way to control the narrative and eliminate news that doesn't fit. Which is what you would be getting more of here at The Post-Normal Times, were I able to make a living at it. Exposing the sham arguments made by climate denialists always made good fodder for blogging, and was a relatively easy target. Making sense of various policy proposals for addressing rapid changes, not only in the climate, will be much more challenging, and will only increase the need for skilled science journalists. And also for scientists who can explain what we know and don't know, and the trade-offs between different choices, in plain english.

For more coverage see: Curtis Brainard/Columbia Journalism Review, Janet Raloff/Science News, and, of course, commentary by PZ Myers.

Campaign adventures

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:09:29 -0500

I spent a good part of the afternoon knocking on doors for the Obama campaign, on the other side of the Potomac river in Loudoun County VA - which happens to be Neddie Jingo's neighborhood. It seems that most of the action happened right before we got there. For historical context, and to find out more about "the real Virginia" see the links on the front page of his blog to a series of posts about "The John Mobberly Story." As for my own campaign adventure, I got to see who some of the "undecideds" are. Yes, they still exist, and they say they don't need any more information to make up their minds. Which makes me wonder how they go about actually making up their minds. Whatever...

Yohe and Lomborg "shake hands", sort of

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:22:57 -0500

In my posts (here and here) about the Yohe/Lomborg dust-up, I deliberately avoided larger questions about the role economics has played over the past few decades in framing the debate and in justifying a delayed policy response - that larger topic could easily be a book and I actually have other things to do at the moment. The point was, that even if one fully accepts the tenets of neo-classical economics and cost-benefit analysis, and all of the shaky assumptions that come with it, Lomborg's arguments are crap, and dangerously misleading because he misrepresents the trade-offs and ignores the qualifications. Even though Gary Yohe and Bjorn Lomborg "shook hands" this week, the points they agree on seem rather thin, and Lomborg seems to have conceded a key point, in agreeing "that adaptation, CO2-cuts and R&D in some combination are all necessary to tackle global warming", though he has elsewhere supported a modest carbon tax. Roger Pielke's defense of Lomborg makes no sense but he gets kudos for getting all of the above to chime in on his comment threads, where this was all hashed out in greater detail.

Yohe also makes it clear that Lomborg was able to reach the conclusion that the "constrained 'mitigation alone' option failed the cost-benefit test" because of artificial constraints on the design of the study, and by ignoring numerous inconvenient qualifications that are far from buried in the report by Yohe, Tol, Richels and Blanford. Given that they recognized the implications of these constraints, getting a stupid answer should not have come as any more of a surprise than Katrina, so it isn't clear why they even bothered, A take home message for both economists and climate scientists, is that in science for policy, there are no disinterested bystanders - one needs to be aware of how findings will be used in the policy arena. It also makes the case for me that "framing" - a topic on which there has been a lot of ink in the science blogs, needs to be considered in the design stage of the research, and not merely in how the results are presented.

That said, it is also important to consider the appropriateness of CBA itself as a basis for climate policies, given that it only compares the values of gradual incremental changes to a business-as-usual scenario. It should be clear to anyone who has studied a watershed, or disasters, or history, that most changes, not only those associated with climate impacts, occur in conjunction with extreme and often catastrophic even if predictable events. And unless they listen to scientists, this is also when people have an opportunity to learn and reconsider what their values even are. In other words, if Katrina surprised anyone, it was probably only because it didn't fit the analytical framework normally used to justify public policy decisions. Stephen Colbert put this into plain English when he asked Lomborg “How can you say [a 4.7 C rise in temperature] won’t be a problem if it has never happened? (He didn't answer that but he is invited to do so here on the comment thread.)

Lomborg's pattern of ignoring inconvenient qualifications is far from unusual. Even though those we will call the conventional economists generally acknowledge the limitations of CBA and throw in all of the qualifications, and do now make the case for at least some policy intervention, the line of reasoning inherent in CBA has generally been relied on to justify delay in adopting policies that address climate change, just as it is relied on by Lomborg as a mantle of authority. What is unusual is the amount of media attention Lomborg has received, as the "voice of the reasonable middle", even from people who should know better.

In all of this, science has been little more than a backdrop. I've been planning to blog a set of papers that Eli Rabbett linked to a few months ago regarding the historical context, and will have much more to say eventually. In the meantime, Eli pulled out a relevant quote in a comment he left on my last post on this topic, which makes that case that, instead of refuting scientific evidence that global warming was an immediate concern, the economic framework simply made it practically irrelevant for policy. The paper is From Chicken Little to Dr. Pangloss: William Nierenberg, Global Warming and the Social Deconstruction of Scientific Knowledge by Oreskes, Conway and Matthew Shindell, where they discuss the preparation of an NAS report published in 1983, that never should have made it through peer review:

Chapter 1, written by Nordhaus, Ausubel, and Gary Yohe, an economics professor at Wesleyan University brought in mid-stream as a consultant, focused on future energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. The long and detailed chapter was perhaps the first serious study of the problem that looked at many variables, and did not assume linear extrapolations. It began by acknowledging the “widespread agreement that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions have been rising steadily, primarily driven by the combustion of fossil fuels.” The emphasis here, however, was not so much on what was known, but on what was not known: the “enormous uncertainty” beyond 2000, and the “even greater uncertainty” about the “social and economic impacts of possible future trajectories of carbon dioxide.” This uncertainty provided the basis for an argument that no meaningful action could be taken now. They used the uncertainty to hide the pea, acknowledging the possibility of rapid and damaging changes, but then only considering far off and lesser threats from climate change. Moving the danger far enough in the future meant that it did not have to be confronted, which is what Nierenberg wanted as a conclusion Nor did Nierenberg attempt to deny the legitimacy of the existing science. Rather, he accepted the scientific facts while adopting a conceptual framework in which those facts were irrelevant. The essence of the report is the reframing of climate change as something that policymakers and politicians should ignore, which in the United States at least, for the next two decades, they largely did The actions of William Nierenberg belie that assumption. Nierenberg did not engage his scientific colleagues over the technical basis of their scientific views. He did not produce new or competing claims about how the Earth would respond to increased CO2. In short, he did not try to construct knowledge about the Earth. Rather, while accepting his colleagues’ technical conclusions, he dismissed the interferences that they (and others) had drawn from those conclusions, substituting an alternative framework that insisted that those inferences were wrong. Rather than constructing knowledge, William Nierenberg de-constructed it.

A few convention highlights

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:41:01 -0500

Just a few convention highlights :

Josh Marshall has it on good authority that John Kerry wrote his whole speech himself - here is an excerpt that bears repeating:

I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let’s compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.

Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you’re against it.

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself.

TPM also has a videoclip of the whole thing.

And Bill Clinton said "Thanks but no thanks" to what the last 8 years has given us - excerpt from the NYT transcript:

But on the two great questions of this election -- how to rebuild the American dream and how to restore America's leadership in the world -- he still embraces the extreme philosophy that has defined his party for more than 25 years.

(APPLAUSE)

And it is, to be fair to all the Americans who aren't as hard- core Democrats as we, it's a philosophy the American people never actually had a chance to see in action fully until 2001, when the Republicans finally gained control of both the White House and the Congress.

Then we saw what would happen to America if the policies they had talked about for decades actually were implemented. And look what happened.

They took us from record surpluses to an exploding debt; from over 22 million new jobs to just 5 million; from increasing working families' incomes to nearly $7,500 a year to a decline of more than $2,000 a year; from almost 8 million Americans lifted out of poverty to more than 5.5 million driven into poverty; and millions more losing their health insurance.

Now, in spite of all this evidence, their candidate is actually promising more of the same.

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

Think about it: more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that will swell the deficit, increase inequality, and weaken the economy; more Band-Aids for health care that will enrich insurance companies, impoverish families, and increase the number of uninsured; more going it alone in the world, instead of building the shared responsibilities and shared opportunities necessary to advance our security and restore our influence.

They actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more.

AUDIENCE: No!

CLINTON: Now, let's send them a message that will echo from the Rockies all across America, a simple message: Thanks, but no thanks.

(Bill Clinton on youtube). If you can spare a dime, you might want to help get this ad on the air during the Republican convention next week, from the Campaign for America's Future, saying "Thanks for the memories - we'll take it from here"

And if you missed it, watch, (vs read) what Dennis Kucinich had to say. He was never seen as a realistic contender during the campaign, but I met someone from him home district who told me that much of his base is actually formerly Republican Democrats who he won over when he fought against privatization of the power company, and won. And during the primaries, he was the only candidate to show up in person at a candidates forum at the NCSE annual conference that addressed climate issues. So I think he at least deserves a bit more respect than he has received.

It looks like you can see all of the video clips at the Dem Convention site if you have the right software installed.

More economists weigh in on The Lomborg

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:48:45 -0500

In follow-up to the last post - now both Gary Yohe, and Richard Tol, both co-authors of an economics paper that Lomborg cited, incorrectly, in an article in the Guardian, and that is also the foundation for his "Copenhagen Consensus", conclude that he is misrepresenting their work and deliberately confusing things. For details, see the comment thread on Pielke's post. So Lomborg has no legs to stand on. In theory, that means he is history. But I expect he will continue to repeat what he has been saying, as long as there is anyone listening.

A challenge to economists

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 01:44:20 -0500

Last fall, in a series of posts about what I dubbed The Lomborg I made the case that Lomborg was misusing Cost-Benefit Analysis to say that cuts in CO2 emissions will cost more than they are worth. I also added that "I hope we will hear from some environmental economists on this" - and also get statements from those experts listed as signing off on the " Copenhagen Consensus" – an expert group convened by Lomborg to rank priorities for addressing the major challenges of our time, based on their costs and benefits.

Not that I had anything to do with it but, shortly after that, Nature published a book review by Sir Partha Dasgupta – a well-known and respected economist, that reinforced my point. Which is that, even if you fully accept the tenets of neo-classical economics, Lomborg's arguments are basically crap. And that's without even going into the flaws in his argument about expected sea level rise (which has been repeatedly debunked but, without responding to any of his critics, Lomborg keeps repeating the same thing. This post is not a response to him but to all publications that have given him a platform.)

Now we also have some critical words from Gary Yohe – an economist who was a member of the IPCC, and also participated in Lomborg's “Copenhagen Consensus” project, for which he wrote the principal climate paper, on which Lomborg's conclusions are based. Responding to a Lomborg article in the Guardian, Yohe says:

But there's just one problem: as one of the authors of the Copenhagen Consensus Project's principal climate paper, I can say with certainty that Lomborg is misrepresenting our findings thanks to a highly selective memory.

Lomborg claims that our "bottom line is that benefits from global warming right now outweigh the costs" and that "[g]lobal warming will continue to be a net benefit until about 2070." This is a deliberate distortion of our conclusions.

We did find that climate change will result in some benefits for developed countries, but only for modest climate change (up to global temperature increases of 2C - not the 4 degrees that Lomborg is discussing in his piece). But developed countries are relatively prepared to handle climate change's effects - they tend to be in colder areas, and they have the infrastructure to mitigate severe depletion of resources like fresh water and arable land.

That is precisely why our analysis concluded - and Lomborg ignores - that climate change will cause immediate losses for developing countries and the planet's most vulnerable, millions of whom are already facing challenges that climate change will exacerbate.

Downplaying the threat of climate change allows Lomborg to focus on his claim that "unlike even moderate CO2 cuts, which cost more than they do good, we should focus on investing in finding cheaper low-carbon energy." He attributes this finding to our analysis as well, but again he overlooks a key element of our work.

Of course the world needs to make significant investments in cheaper, low-carbon energy. But making those investments without also implementing a constraint on emissions would fail to address the problem. ...

To make things even more confusing, Roger Pielke in turn cherry picks Yohe's remarks to say that he doesn't see where Yohe's conclusions differ from how they are represented by Lomborg, citing the Yohe et al analysis which concludes “[g]lobal warming will continue to be a net benefit until about 2070.” But he ignores Yohe's qualification that that only applies to developed countries, and assumes temperature changes within two degrees by that time, rather than the four degree plausible scenario that Lomborg is reacting to, commented on in another Guardian article by Oliver Tickell. Since the expected temperature change by the end of the century under a business as usual scenario is 3.5 degrees, Roger can't figure out the discrepancy, but if you click the links, you will find that Oliver Tickell was responding to a recommendation made by Bob Watson, the former chair of the IPCC and now Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, that the UK should plan for a 4 degree C change in temperature, which has a 20% chance of occurring by the end of the century.

As Lomborg notes, the IPCC projection is between 1.8 and 6, Celsius. The sea level rise projection is 18-59 centimeters. But he fails to note that the IPCC projections explicitly exclude consideration of "rapid dynamical changes in ice flow", or melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Lomborg's basic pattern is to simply pick conservative or mid-range estimates, without any justification, and to ignore the qualifications. But there are many good arguments as to why the IPCC analysis, and science in general, tend to err on the side of being conservative to begin with. And there is a good argument why even the economic damage estimates such as those presented by Yohe et al are likely to be a serious underestimate, as was explained by Paul Baer, in his discussion of The worth of an ice sheet. All worthy of further comment.

For now, I would simply like to challenge all economists is to get on the bandwagon, and make as big of a fuss about Lomborg as they did about an infamous paper that added up the “values” of ecosystem services to $33 trillion...

Here's the drill

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:18:05 -0500

I was a bit miffed that anyone would make a campaign issue out of opening up California and Florida to offshore drilling. As I recall*, drilling was suspended in those areas by Ronald Reagan, when Bush Sr. was running for president. The only credible explanation for stopping it in those places, and not in Alaska, which is much more critical from an ecological perspective than most of California – as beautiful as it's coast is, was because California and Florida have more electoral votes. Property values probably also had something to do with it.

I'm not a budget wonk but, allow me to suggest another motive, besides satisfying the desires of the oil companies. Revenue from offshore oil and gas is the largest source of non-tax government revenue. Not that today's disenchanted so-called “principled” conservatives have ever been concerned with government revenue.** However, once a Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lease sale is included in the 5 year plan that MMS is required to develop, the projected revenue can be included in the federal budget. If this process is expedited, as MMS is clearly seeking to do, Bush – and the Republicans could present a “balanced budget” for the coming years, in time for the November election, even if the figures are wishful thinking. Even if they don't get elected, the wrecking ball will have been set in motion to paralyze the next administration when the projections aren't realized.

This kind of maneuvering is not without precedent. A bit of googling turned up this Sierra Club press release from October 2005 which states:

In addition, there will be a major vote, likely following the Columbus Day recess, on the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and possibly on lifting the moratorium on off-shore oil drilling. Drilling proponents in Congress are trying to use the Budget process to advance these controversial issues. Congress has included anticipated revenues from lease sales in the Arctic in the Federal Budget Resolution, even though the revenue projections are inflated to 80 times the current average.

Google also turned up this bit of analysis by Richard Fineberg (pdf), pointing out that “If the entire $5.0 billion in [projected] lease bonus revenue is not realized, the federal portion of that shortfall must be added to the increase in the federal deficit caused by the reconciliation package.”

And MMS has already started preparing a new 5-year plan – for which it has requested comments by September 15, specifically asking:

Although OCS oil and gas leasing is typically conducted through an extensive, long-established process, are there alternative ways to ensure appropriate consultation and to streamline our leasing procedures? Should the OCS Lands Act be amended to allow changes in the 5-year plan without starting the process all over again in cases of acute supply or demand shift affecting national security?

In other words, expect an amendment to the OCS Lands Act to be attached to something Congress will have to vote on, in September or October, to legitimize amendments to the existing 5 year plan, that MMS is already hard at work on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Disclosure: at that time, I was the research assistant for a committee and three panels at the National Academy of Sciences, that were engaged in a review of the Minerals Management Service Environmental Studies Program. After Bush Sr. was elected, that same committee was asked to determine whether the scientific information was adequate to support leasing decisions in California and Florida. It was not, and California and Florida have been off limits to new lease sales ever since. I have no idea whether there has been any change in the quality and relevance of studies undertaken since then but note that, at the time, the committee also made a point of highlighting numerous studies conducted by previous NAS committees, which had had little if any effect on program decisions. To its credit, MMS did actually sponsor some of the first studies regarding the contribution of onshore OCS facilities to the loss of Louisiana's wetlands. Those were among the exceptions.

Now, if I could only remember the name of the MMS official who, in an offhanded comment, said that, if only there were another gas crisis, there would be no need to produce environmental studies because people would just want the gas... Which would back up what Naomi Klein is saying.

**For more on the ideology of “starving the beast”, there is an excellent discussion this week at the TPM book club regarding The Predator State - a new book by James K. Galbraith that I am adding to my reading pile, along with The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank.

Priceless

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:51:45 -0500

It seems lazy to just post clips from the Colbert Report but Stephen nailed the abuses of cost-benefit analysis on Monday night, in the Word segment, "Priceless", and I'm in France... [note: the video clip doesn't seem to be working - hopefully Comedy Central will fix it soon]. The short version: "A human life is 6.9 million dollars. Gaming the system to protect industry from safety regulations: priceless."

A billboard at CDG airport says getting lost in Paris is also priceless - which is true, but this time I got lost in Brittany and found a megalithic tomb. I'm not sure if it was facing the Atlantic or "La Manche" - the French name for what I have, until now, known as the English Channel. Back in Paris, on Bastille Day, a soldier riding a tank in a military convoy on its way back from the parade, saw my companion's Obama button, smiled, and flashed a "V" sign, which says a lot about what has happened to America's image. I did a few other things but on the blog, I try to stick to environmental science and policy stuff. Speaking of which, right now, I'm hiding in a farmhouse in another region, and working on a presentation I was invited to give next week at a seminar in Germany, on water and biodiversity - more on that later. Since I will be stopping in Berlin on the way, and will finally get to see what is left of the iron curtain, I may have to also revisit the idea of a Post-Cold War Reconstruction (will unfortunately miss the Obama rally in Berlin). I may also get around to posting some comments of my own on cost-benefit analysis.

[corrected and revised, 4:48 pm]

Melting pot?

Thu, 15 May 2008 10:46:37 -0500

Stephen Colbert weighs in on the McCain's "better way" of addressing human induced climate change, which may literally turn the entire world into a melting pot. It is indeed, a national, or what I would call human security issue, but, as Stephen so eloquently points out, if calling it that would bring it into McCain's domain of expertise, lets call some more things national security issues (e.g., the economy - which he admitted to not knowing much about, and the sociology of Iraq - where he does not know the difference between Sunni and Shia).

For a more detailed analysis of McCain's speech, see Romm's 4 part series, in which he reminds us also that it is because of McCain and his fellow conservatives that the United States is now a bit player in the wind industry that the United States invested in heavily in the 1970s, which is presumably why McCain made his climate speech in front of Danish wind turbines:

President Reagan cut the renewable energy R&D budget 85% after he took office and eliminated the wind investment tax credit in 1986. This was pretty much the death of most of the US wind industry. While President Clinton worked to increase funding for wind, the Gingrich Congress blocked that effort beginning in 1995. President Bush is another conservative who fail to see the importance of wind power in the need for consistent support of the tax credit.

(Note to the youth climate movement: please stop blaming boomers and environmental groups. Howz about "we" work together on this...)

And that McCain's pledge to support an adaptation strategy is at odds with his small government rhetoric. Romm also argues that his proposed offsets approach would not accomplish very much. I personally think it depends on how it is done, and think carbon credits can be an important way to generate the kind of revenue that will be needed to support a transition, and development strategies that incorporate adaptation and help to reduce poverty. Lastly, (part 4) McCain doesn't seem to be able to bring conservatives along with him, so it is unlikely he would actually be able to do anything if elected.

Asking the right questions

Mon, 12 May 2008 09:31:52 -0500

So, are cyclones that strike densely populated coastal areas that are losing their wetlands sent by God as punishment for sin? Or are they the consequences of human induced global warming? And did Al Gore really say that? (no) Can the media, get anyone to pay attention to them, or to anything important, without a smoking gun? and will they always find one even if it has to be fabricated? Which, of course, provides a smoking gun for the blogs, this one included.

Or perhaps this all just nonsense, intentionally generated to distract the public from the incapacity and even in some cases unwillingness of some governments to respond to extreme events? Which is the very definition of a disaster and, supposedly, the reason we form governments. And I'm not just talking about Nargis. (For more on Nargis see this NYT article- thankfully, aid does slowly seem to be trickling in, and there are organizations that have somehow managed to have a presence. And this one by Andrew Revkin about the dangers of living in a Delta and why people do it anyway, and lack of preparation.)

The real stories about the so called "climate skeptics, or Katrina or Nargis, are much more complex than a "who dunnit" tale, with many shades, not necessarily all grey. Ben Wisner has written some reflections on attention to disasters, in context of the response to Nargis and other kinds of calamities that are all around us, in which he makes a case for the need to better understand such nuances, if we are to respond more effectively. We can talk about restoring mangroves later.

Just don't inhale

Tue, 06 May 2008 13:20:52 -0500

I'm only posting this video because I haven't been able to get this song out of my head since Revere gave it new meaning... Way back when, the Tom Lehrer album on which this song appears was among the few my parents had other than classical music, and before I was old enough to start my own collection, so it got overplayed. But this is the first time I have actually seen what he looked like in performance. It is even funnier now. In retrospect, it also does a better job than we seem to be doing now, of linking pollution to human health.

Taking a holiday from reality

Tue, 06 May 2008 09:42:13 -0500

Why not a total gas tax holiday? As I said previously, good luck trying to reinstate it in the fall. And as Stephen Colbert explains, it is always summer somewhere, and soon, it will be summer everywhere! If this thing flys, it will just prove his point, that willingness to go against the experts proves one is ready to be president in this country. And mine, that experts still have a thing or two to learn about communicating with people, and informing policy. But with a little help from the blogosphere and more than one late night comedian, they seem to be doing better this time than when Bill Clinton raised the gas tax by a nickel in 1993, and then lost the Democratic majority in Congress, so we shall see... If nothing else, this lunacy will, perhaps, get a few more voters to consider the trade-offs we are all making, or are forced to make, since we all get stuck with the policies of whoever is elected, not to mention the consequences.

More on the gas tax

Sun, 04 May 2008 14:56:49 -0500

Given the talent that mainstream journalists always seem to have for finding "experts" on both sides of an issue even when there is a solid of a consensus as one can ever expect to get from science, and from anyone who has done an honest review of the evidence (e.g., on human induced climate change), I was shocked to learn that, at least on the NewsHour, they weren't able find a single expert to argue for a gas tax holiday. Gregory Mankiw cites an e-mail from Len Burman:

Yesterday I was on the NewsHour to talk about the gas tax holiday. I asked if there was another guest and the producer said, "We tried, but we couldn't find anyone to argue the other side (that the gas tax holiday made sense)."

Mankiw is the economist who founded the Pigou Club, which advocates raising the gas tax. In light of the current uproar, the manifesto is worth revisiting.

McCain's proposal is as predictable as Republican proposals to solve the crisis by opening ANWR to drilling, but, has Hillary Clinton really joined the assault on reason? Did she really ask members of Congress whether they are "with her or against her" on her gas tax proposal? Pressed on this by George Stephanopoulos this morning, did she really just dismiss the arguments against her proposal as "elite opinion" as she sidestepped the question? TPM Election Central has the direct quotes:

"I think we've been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion behind policies that haven't worked well for hard working Americans," she said.

A bit later she added: "It's really odd to me that arguing to give relief to a vast majority of Americans creates this incredible pushback...Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that don't benefit" the vast majority of the American people.

An ordinary voter begged to differ, however. Stephanopoulos turned the mike over to a woman who said she supported Obama and said she makes less than $25,000 a year.

"I do feel pandered to when you talk about suspending the gas tax," the woman said, adding: "Call me crazy but I actually listen to economists because I think they know what they've studied."

I don't always listen to economists either - I grew up arguing environment vs economics with my economist father, at the family dinner table, Italian style. But that was a long time ago, and sometimes, on some things, they are actually right. Since then, I even studied a bit of it myself....

Meanwhile, Obama on Meet the Press, speaking from experience, confirmed that suspending the gas tax won't actually lower prices. Which is what happened in Illinois after he supported doing this at the state level. Hopefully, some enterprising journalist will ask both McCain and Clinton to explain how their gas tax proposals are consistent with their positions on addressing climate change, or whether they will shelve those at the first sign of a deepening energy crisis. I have generally refrained from taking sides since we need both of them not just to win in November, but to get anything done. But Hillary is really starting to sound desperate and is digging herself into a big hole with this one. Its sad.

One way to kill the ICC

Thu, 01 May 2008 16:11:27 -0500

On second thought, ~~suspending~~ eliminating the gas tax is one way to stop the construction of the InterCounty Connector (ICC)! But it still won't reduce gas prices. One way to do both of those things would be to get more of the Transportation Trust Fund dedicated to funding mass transit so that more people would have options other than driving. So far, we haven't heard much on this from the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination. But, buried in a pool report from an Obama press event, David Roberts just found this:

The irony is with the gas prices what they are, we should be expanding rail service. One of the things I have been talking bout for awhile is high speed rail connecting all of these Midwest cities -- Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis. They are not that far away from each other. Because of how big of a hassle airlines are now. There are a lot of people if they had the choice, it takes you just about as much time if you had high speed rail to go the airport, park, take your shoes off.

This is something that we should be talking about a lot more. We are going to be having a lot of conversations this summer about gas prices. And it is a perfect time to start talk about why we don't have better rail service. We are the only advanced country in the world that doesn't have high speed rail. We just don't have it. And it works on the Northeast corridor. They would rather go from New York to Washington by train than they would by plane. It is a lot more reliable and it is a good way for us to start reducing how much gas we are using. It is a good story to tell.

More kudos for Obama if he can seize the opportunity inherent in the uproar over gas prices to put forth a bold proposal that would actually accomplish something useful.

Endless gas tax holiday?

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:10:41 -0500

When McCain, and then Clinton, started to call for a summer holiday on the gas tax, my first thought was, if it was actually suspended for the summer, good luck to whoever tries to reinstate it in the fall. That is because prices hover around the breaking point and therefore would just rise to fill the gap. Krugman has a concise textbook explanation, worth searing into the brain:

Why doesn’t cutting the gas tax this summer make sense? It’s Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied. Cut taxes, and all that happens is that the pretax price rises by the same amount. The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers....

...The Clinton twist is that she proposes paying for the revenue loss with an excess profits tax on oil companies. In one pocket, out the other. So it’s pointless, not evil. But it is pointless, and disappointing.

Kudos to Obama for not pandering on this one, and for turning it into a teachable moment. If he sticks to it and still manages to get the nomination, he will have demonstrated his ability to not just tell voters what they want to hear. Still probably easy compared to any attempt to reinstate it later. I know this is pushing it but, by that logic, it is conceivable that the price would stay the same even if the tax were raised....