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TODAY Friday 6 March 1998 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Friday 6 March 1998 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: My Doom, Your Gloom
Even the stupidest person in the public-opinion-analysis business knows that it helps to have Science on your side for almost any kind of environmental argument. And very few of the people engaged in the climate change debate can be fairly called stupid. (Unscrupulous, maybe.)
Of course there's science, and there's Science. The enviros have succeeded in converting the consensus of science that human actions affect climate into the public perception that Science says that the weather is changing. Those who don't like the Kyoto Treaty still try to milk the scientific-uncertainty cow, but she's drying up fast.
Almost as good as Science is Standard of Living, which is the fallback position of choice for the anti-Kyoto people. Well, maybe there is a little global warming or whatever, they say, but let's not be hasty and do anything that will undermine the American Standard of Living. They then calculate, with interesting exactitude, just how much money the average US household will have to shell out in order to let the Chinese win an unfair advantage over a gullible America.
So the Clinton Administration yesterday staged a pre-emptive strike by releasing a report which said that compliance with the Kyoto terms would be non-onerous financially-speaking. There's a chance that energy prices may rise by, say, $70 - $100 a year for an average family, the report said, but there's also a chance that energy prices could go down from the influences of deregulation. Market incentives and emissions trading would also help to limit the pain to somewhere between $7 billion and $12 billion a year, said Janet Yellen of the Council of Economic Advisers.
"Impossibly low," harrumphed the man from Charles River Associates, the presumptive think tank which acts as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the carbon cartel. "A total fantasy," said the Chamber of Commerce. They much preferred a report produced on their side, which predicted a 3 percent decline in GDP by 2010. Ms. Yellen's study said that extra spending to comply with Kyoto would total no more than one-tenth of one percent of GDP by 2010. Robert Stavins of Harvard says both sides are probably wrong.
Politically speaking, it's great to see the Administration wrong-footing the coal and oil lobby. Beat 'em on Science, match 'em on Standard of Living, and see if you can hold your own on The National Interest. As our dear friend Hibernicus suggests, the next step is to engineer the defeat in November of a conspicuously anti-Kyoto US Senator, after which his economic projections can be impaled on a stake and raised above the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
TODAY ON THE SITE
On the politically unpalatable but rationally inarguable value of a carbon tax, check into Andrew Hoerner's excellent rundown of tax websites in our High Fives section.
Recent "Today" columns:
3/5: The Great D. P. Moynihan
3/4: "An Earthquake in Insurance"
3/3: Salmon Farming
3/2: Our Friends the Duck Killers
2/27: Trust El Nino
2/26: That Darn Triple-A
2/25: Cutting a Deal on Endangered Species
2/24: Fire? Again?
2/23: Garbage
2/20: Population Rebellion in the Sierra Club
2/19: The Trouble With Cattle
2/18: Optimistic Feds and the Future of Kyoto
2/17: The New Great Game
2/13: Windmills
2/12: Stuart Eizenstat's Smart Bomb
2/11: Alligator in the Coal Mine
2/10: Inconvenient Public Opinion
2/9: Remember Penn Station
2/6: Adam Smith and Automobile Efficiency
2/5: Clean Water, Naturally
2/4: Roll, Storms, Roll
2/3: Land Purchase Fever
2/2: Groundhog Day in the Persian Gulf
1/30: Trees and Hormones
1/29: Things To Come (2)
1/28: Things To Come
1/27: 'Bye, 'Bye Brazil
1/26: Jaywalking and Jaydriving
1/23: Good Biotech, Bad Biotech
1/22: No More Roads
1/21: Swordfish
To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.