By Institute for Energy Research ——Bio and Archives--December 4, 2015
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These climate talks, by themselves, won't fix global warming. They can't do that. They're not designed to do that. The actual goal is much more modest: to add structure and momentum to efforts that are already underway, in legislatures and laboratories and cities and boardrooms around the world, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. [Bold added.]Plumer goes on to explain that rather than a top-down deal from previous climate conferences, the new approach is to elicit bottom-up pledges from individual countries. Sounds more “sustainable” (ha ha), but will it work, according to the computer models that Plumer and other alarmists put so much currency in? Here’s how Plumer answers that question:
These individual pledges, which have already been designed and submitted, are the backbone of any new global agreement; they'll do virtually all the heavy lifting. They also have two notable features: First, the pledges are plausible. They weren't dreamed up by remote UN bureaucrats. They were all freely submitted by national governments, based on what was deemed politically realistic and technologically feasible… Second, these pledges are laughably inadequate to the task of preventing severe global warming…It means we'll likely be zipping past the 2°C global warming mark, which has long been deemed unacceptably risky. Not good. [Bold added.]And so we see a familiar pattern: Political officials and their sycophants in the press telling Americans just how urgent a particular piece of legislation—or, in this case, an international “agreement”—is to fight a huge problem, and then the actual wonks in the corner admit that the remedy won’t solve the ostensible problem, even using their own framework. Call it “global warming theater.”
The declining cost of renewable energy, which has been accelerated by policy, lowers political barriers and makes carbon pricing an easier political lift.…Therefore, economists and other fans of carbon pricing ought to support policies that further accelerate the deployment of renewable energy. (The piece mentions time-of-use pricing for utilities, modernizing grids, the Clean Power Plan, various renewable energy subsidies, and more.)Is this some major new aspect in interventionist thinking? No, Roberts tells us:
“When I first read this, my reaction was, "Yeah, no s***.” This is something clean energy activists and (some) analysts have been banging on about for a long time.”It is absurd to think that any carbon tax low enough to achieve passage will satisfy those who have been preaching that humanity itself faces destruction in just a few decades if governments around the world do not act. Americans should not believe any pundit promising them that if they hold their nose and support a modest carbon tax, then progressives will agree to laissez-faire in the rest of the economy. The progressives themselves have been telling us for years that they will do no such thing.
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The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today’s global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.