Hermann Goering on Anthropogenic Global Warming

hjmaiere:

But there are many people not in direct command of political power, who, to one degree or another, secretly imagine themselves disaffected members of the intellectual elite. They vote, they listen to NPR, they buy local and organic, and they honestly believe that the only real problem with government is that it happens to be in the wrong hands. What needs explaining is how they can think this in the face of so much logic and history to the contrary.

Because most people aren't very logical and find that life works better when they allow a trusted sovereign to make the big decisions.  Then they get victimized by the Goerings.  The direction of the pack is chosen by the pack leader, for good or ill (usually ill, since the worst get on top).

I rather dislike digging up topics, but it seems like this one's reached no satisfying conclusion as of yet.

I've pondered over a libertarian approach to a problem like AGW for quite a while, but every solution which comes to mind involves force as a necessary component or is inherently ineffective.

One thing I've recently learned about is the carbon credit card. Everyone is supposed to be given their fair share of the atmosphere for free use, but every further pollution needs to be purchased at some central distribution station. To make sure nobody cheats, every carbon-producing activity must be put on the credit card's record, or else punishment may occur. Of course, the implications of such a measure are, to say the least, disturbing. Total abolition of privacy, probably government (who else could do the job of distributing shares?) control over major parts of one's life, the difficulty of defining a fair share and so on. The atmosphere is treated as a commons in that system, but I'm not sure how else it could be defined.

Voluntary solutions to the problem collide with the principle of incentives. I have an incentive to drive a car instead of walking. Instead of running a carbon-clean business, I have an incentive to purchase as little filtering equipment as possible. Even if some customers consciously bought carbon-clean products only, a substantial part of the population would still enjoy riding V8 trucks and buying cheaply produced goods.

The traditional way of restricting pollution doesn't apply here either. A factory polluting my piece of dirt can easily be traced and sued, but AGW is a result of humanity's combined efforts, if you'd like to say so. Everybody, and therefore nobody, can be blamed. If my island sinks due to rising sea levels, who am I going to sue? Everybody? Nobody.

While AGW summits are popping up every other day, while AGW is slowly becoming a major player in popular conscience, libertarians can't seem to figure out a position to be set against the usual statist propositions. It appears like AGW is the statist torpedo against libertarianism.

Let's think, folks. Real hard.

Agreed, but the statists don't have much of worth to contribute so far either. A lot of their schemes involve immense coercion at high costs for little gain. I think the problem is quite general, rather than specific to libertarianism. We just need to think of a better solution than the nonsense advocated by statists. Something I'm going to read up on this year for my applied ethics course.

-Jon 

Sphairon:

While AGW summits are popping up every other day, while AGW is slowly becoming a major player in popular conscience, libertarians can't seem to figure out a position to be set against the usual statist propositions. It appears like AGW is the statist torpedo against libertarianism.

 

I don't agree. AWG is not much different than other air pollution problems. I think if one wants to come up with a libertatian solution, one should start with "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution" by Murray Rothbard and "Environmentalism and Economic Freedom: The Case for Private Property Rights" by Walter Block. An issue like flooding could be prosecuted as a nuisance. Of course the burden of proof would always be on the plaintiff, and something incredibly more rigorous than anything the IPCC has done would be required to proove beyond a reasonable doubt that any particular polluters caused the flooding of one`s land. And untill it is possible to proove that a polluter`s actions constitute a nuisance, AWG ought to be considered a non-legal issue.

Jon Irenicus:

A lot of their schemes involve immense coercion at high costs for little gain.

As they always do. What's troubling about AGW or the politicized environmental movement in general is the moral urgency environmentalists attach to their demands. "If we don't act now, our children will suffer". I've had conversations with people who have seriously bought into the AGW scheme, and this has become highest priority to them. Cut GHG emissions, whatever be the cost. A person with such a mindset wouldn't object to your point made above.

Stephen Forde:

AWG is not much different than other air pollution problems.

In fact, it is. Here's why:

According to Austrian property rights theory, as far as I understand it, pollution is not considered a legal problem unless it happens on the expense of another person's property. That means I can run a dirty factory in the desert as long as only my property suffers damage. GHG emissions are different as they don't tend to stick to your property, but rather slip into the atmosphere and from there, possibly change the climate situation for everybody (if AGW theory turns out to be true).

Furthermore, the implications of CO2 being a main climate driver are staggering. This suggests humans cannot possibly exist without having a harmful effect on somebody's property, as human breathing and almost all industrialized activity require emitting CO2. As Ego pointed out earlier, having children would be equivalent to willingly causing climate alterations. Regardless of whether warming might be beneficial or not, such a proposition provokes a fundamental conflict with the NAP, as humans couldn't keep on living without generating unwanted changes to virtually everybody's property. As I said, everybody's guilty according to AGW.

Stephen Forde:

An issue like flooding could be prosecuted as a nuisance.

And who would be prosecuted? General Motors? OPEC? The international SUV drivers' club?

Stephen Forde:

Of course the burden of proof would always be on the plaintiff, and something incredibly more rigorous than anything the IPCC has done would be required to proove beyond a reasonable doubt that any particular polluters caused the flooding of one`s land.

Even if we assume, for the sake of the argument, the IPCC conclusions to be true, suing a single person or company would be gravely insufficient due to the carbon-bound nature of mankind. You can't just blame an individual for a process caused by many collaborating factors and for that matter, by humanity's combined efforts as well.

That leaves us with two choices:

1) Stick to the status quo and defend the externalization of GHG effects because it would be impossible to call all culprits to account

2) Enforce property rights and bar anyone from alterting the climate, which is impossible due to man's carbon-bound way of life


Possible, if unlikely solutions from my view would be:

1) Homestead the atmosphere. Admit an equal share of the atmosphere's absorbing capacity to every human being which may only be exceeded if new absorbing capacity is purchased from other humans. This is based on the idea of a carbon credit card, however I have been unable so far to figure out how the given limitations on CO2 use could be enforced without totally losing privacy. Basically, I see the same problems as the carbon credit card faces.

2) As with nuclear power plants, demand the owners of GHG emitting facilities store their (bottled?) GHGs on their own property instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. Maybe somebody will find a use for it which doesn't involve altering the climate. You could use it in greenhouses, for example. Of course, major parts of the world economy are based on GHG emitting ways of production because this used to be the cheapest and most convenient way of producing, so the initial shift would be significant. Cars, for example, would have to be converted to other engine types which don't emit GHG gases.

This method doesn't solve the problem of human breathing, if you consider it to be a problem at all. Should human breathing get a free pass to alter climate? I know it sounds silly initially, but if we make one exception, this might cause the whole idea to collapse if we don't put good reasoning behind it. Should natural processes be exempt from restrictions? What, to be graphic, if I pee into somebody's rose garden in spite of better facilities?

Well, I fear I'm getting too much into the absurd. So I'd like to hear your evaluations.

 

 

Sphairon:

Well, I fear I'm getting too much into the absurd. So I'd like to hear your evaluations.

This is basically a reposting:

 

 

 

The issue of anthropogenic climate change is the same in principle to any pollution problem. Anyone has the right to pollute as much as they want so long as they do not damage anyone else’s property or interfere with their use of it. This problem is similar to regular air pollution or water pollution.

 

If there is only a small amount of pollution, property owners will not even notice it, and have no right to complain, since any aggression would have to be noticeable. Some of the pollutants are absorbed by the environment as well. No aggression can take place unless the polluter releases more pollutant than can be absorbed and that will make a noticeable negative impact on the victim’s property. We can call the limit below which no aggression takes place, the threshold of aggression.

 

In terms of justice, numbers do not matter. It is just as much a crime if a whole city pollutes one man’s water supply, as if one man were to pollute a whole city’s. It may be impractical to enforce an injunction on a large scale, but this has nothing to do with justice. A thief will always find it more convenient for him to have your money that for you to. But this has nothing to do with rights, and similarly for large numbers of individuals causing pollution.

 

I would claim that everyone has a right to produce as much CO2 as they please so long as they do not cross the threshold of aggression. The first person to dump CO2 into the air homesteads the right to do so at the same rate indefinitely into the future. The pollution right becomes their property, and they can sell it, trade it, or pass it on to their children.

 

The first person to cross the threshold of aggression is a criminal no matter how little he contributed. Everyone who polluted before him is entirely innocent. Anyone who contributes new pollution beyond the first criminal is guilty of any new damage which is caused. The Rothbardian principle of proportionality in restitution and retribution should apply here.

 

If aggression is not the result of one person’s actions, but the result of many people’s actions, whether acting in concert or not, then they are collectively responsible for restitution, and individually liable to retribution. Any new property producing CO2 beyond the threshold of aggression would also have to be matched by a carbon sink which absorbs at least an equivalent rate.

 

One of the upshots of this is that insurance and legal firms would have incentives to actually figure out the REAL extent of anthropogenic climate change. And they would want to figure it out quickly and accurately. Insurance companies would want to know what the chances are that they would have to pay for their client’s pollution if it should happen to cause a rise in sea levels flooding someone’s home, or making someone’s farm arid and useless. Other insurance firms would want to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that damage to their client’s property was caused by some definite polluter to reduce the amount they would have to pay up. The pricing of risks would allow for economic calculation.

 

This is almost the exact opposite to the way current research is done. The IPCC is an inefficient bureaucracy. Assuming only self-interest, all members of the IPCC have an interest in the growth of their organization. If they were to say that the risks of anthropogenic climate change were small, their organization would receive less funding due to the decrease in perceived importance of their work. If they were to produce conclusive and final research quickly, there would be no more need for their services and they would lose funding. They have no incentive to be fair in their assessment, and every incentive to continue dragging their feet, when it comes to indisputable conclusions.

 

If it were not for their work no one would even bother worrying about climate change. We could imagine in the future, there being new bureaucracies set up by governments or the UN to investigate such threats as meteorites striking the earth, or volcanoes erupting and destroying everything. They would function in a very similar way. They would also perpetuate the perceived need for more research to be done by them.

 

 

With regard to children, their parents are considered their guardians and responsible for the pollution they create. Any increase of the population above the threshold of aggression would have to be paid for by the parents either by buying carbon sinks, or pollution rights.

 

Stephen Forde:

 

 

 

If there is only a small amount of pollution, property owners will not even notice it, and have no right to complain, since any aggression would have to be noticeable.

I wouldn't advocate negligibility as a standard of justice. To illustrate that with an example:

A factory sets up near you and pollutes your land just a little. This causes your corn to grow 0,5% less tall. A hundred years ago, nobody may have noticed due to old-fashioned measurement techniques, but today, my customers may be able to track down exactly what I sell them. If they ordered corn that's five feet tall, they don't want corn which is just 4,975 feet tall.

To use a more AGW-related example: My property is a beach. Due to AGW, sea levels rise just slightly, but enough to cover 0,5% of my property permanently. That may be barely noticeable, but it still happens.

Measurability can develop. The question is, do we treat property rights violations according to measurability? If yes, doesn't that just delay the problem?

(But if you meant to say that AGW may have no harmful effect on peoples' property, I agree. If nothing bad happens, we don't need to argue.)

Stephen Forde:

Some of the pollutants are absorbed by the environment as well.

So we treat "the environment" as a commons? Maybe I want my trees to absorb my own CO2, not yours. Should those who own forest property, then, be allowed to emit more CO2?

 

Stephen Forde:

The first person to dump CO2 into the air homesteads the right to do so at the same rate indefinitely into the future. The pollution right becomes their property, and they can sell it, trade it, or pass it on to their children.

I don't quite understand. Why should only the first person get an allowance to emit GHGs? How does "the same rate" correlate with your formerly defined threshold of aggression? If the first polluter happened to be a factory owner who enjoys traveling on his private plane, would that change matters?

 

Stephen Forde:

The first person to cross the threshold of aggression is a criminal no matter how little he contributed. Everyone who polluted before him is entirely innocent. Anyone who contributes new pollution beyond the first criminal is guilty of any new damage which is caused. The Rothbardian principle of proportionality in restitution and retribution should apply here.

Again I'm confused. So all the 20th century people were free to happily emit GHGs, but now, as the threshold mark has been crossed, we need to cut back drastically or be criminals?

 

Sphairon:

Measurability can develop. The question is, do we treat property rights violations according to measurability? If yes, doesn't that just delay the problem?

My point is that there needs to be some objective nuisance. How much of a nuisance is a continuum problem, similar to the question of how much work must be done to homestead a good from nature. There is not necessarily a specific point. Any standard will be somewhat arbitrary in this regard. But in theory, there is a point which seperates an invasive amount from a non-invasive amount of pollution. The exact boundary would have to be decided by judges.

Sphairon:

So we treat "the environment" as a commons?

I'm not sure what you mean exactly. But yes, in general when people say "the environment", they are refering to unowned resources.

Sphairon:

Maybe I want my trees to absorb my own CO2, not yours. Should those who own forest property, then, be allowed to emit more CO2?

It depends. How did they come to own the forest? If they just fenced it off, they are not entitled to a greater CO2 easement. The trees would have been there anyway, and they didn't take any positive action to make them more productive. The absorbtion which the trees produce is entirely a natural occurance. They are not responsible for the benefit which the trees give by absorbing CO2 and so they have no claim to it. In a similar way, if someone owns a volcano which erupts and wipes out a city, this is entirely a natural occurance which they are not responsible for. If they planted all the trees producing a carbon sink, this earns them an easement to emit more CO2. And if someone cuts down a forest which is sinking carbon, this constitutes a polluting activity.

Sphairon:

I don't quite understand. Why should only the first person get an allowance to emit GHGs? How does "the same rate" correlate with your formerly defined threshold of aggression? If the first polluter happened to be a factory owner who enjoys traveling on his private plane, would that change matters?

The first polluter earns an easement. Suppose that A, B, and C are pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and this causes no damage to anyone's property. All of their actions are peaceful. Now D comes along and pumps some CO2 into the atmosphere. A's property gets flooded as a result. Now, the combination of all of their pollution is sufficient to cause damage, and each necessary but not sufficient by itself. Now, who is the aggressor? And what system of rules should be put in place to prevent this kind of scenario for whatever pollution issue it may be?

There are already several positions on this. The George Reisman position is that no one in this scenario is an aggressor. The damage done to A should be treated as if it were caused by a force of nature. I would recommend reading their articles here at mises.org because they do a really good job at smashing the environmentalists.

There is the conventional environmentalist position. Global warming is a crime against nature, and a sin of all polluters. Government regulations and carbon taxation are the only remedies.

There is a blogger here at mises.org, Donny with an A, who does a really good job attacking Reisman's ethical arguments. His positions is more Lockean. He argues that everyone should get an equal share pollution easement. Putting it into my own words, this is calculated by dividing up the global pollution rate threshold before aggression equally amoung the entire earth's population. Hopefully I'm not mischaracterizing his position. Anyone who pollutes more than their fair share is a criminal. I would recomend reading his blog postings. There quite interesting.

My position I see as being barely an extention of Rothbard's arguments on easements. I think that A, B, and C have all earned easements to pollute, and D is the only aggressor. He is the late comer and his pollution was in combination with all prior pollution, the sufficient cause of damage to A's property.

Sphairon:

Again I'm confused. So all the 20th century people were free to happily emit GHGs, but now, as the threshold mark has been crossed, we need to cut back drastically or be criminals?

I'm not claiming to have any knowledge of how much CO2 the planet can absorb or even if humans can even alter the climate. This entire thing is a hypothetical if-then argument. But if the threshold is reached. The next polluter without an easement is a criminal.

As a side remark, some of these issues you bring up are already addressed at least implicitly in the literature which I recommended two posts earlier. I prefer in discussions like these, when the other person focuses on possible logical errors which I have made or on flaws in the theoretical foundation which I am attempting to build upon.

Yes, Sir. I have to confess I was unaware of the plentitude of material available even on Mises.org on the subject, therefore admittedly in a less than satisfying state to begin an argument. Especially the works of Reisman appear to be pretty extensive.

Thus, if you don't mind, I'll leave it at that and begin reading more intensely on the matter before raising any more questions about arguments which might have been resolved already.

Thanks a lot, however, for the reading recommendations, and for the patience involved in answering my requests.

Just to clarify, my position is not that the Lockean view is correct, only that it seems to capture something important, which is that people who only emit a little bit of CO2 seem like they shouldn't be held to blame for climate change, even though CO2 might be causing climate change.

 

Get used to it! Adapt!