Post-Revolution

I was very sad to hear that Tony Judt, the historian, died recently. He was well-known, of course, for his book, Postwar, his critical statements about Israel, and, most movingly, his struggle with ALS, which ultimately killed him. What I particularly liked about him was his ability, as a good historian should, to draw a line between historical events and ideologies and their relevance to the contemporary scene. This was much in display in his last book, Ill Fares the Land, and in one of his last published pieces, a blog post in the New York Review of Books about Czeslaw Milosz' famous essay, The Captive Mind. He noted that the problem it grapples with -- namely, the temptation among left-wing intellectuals to explain away the evils of Soviet communism -- has become largely alien to younger generations:

Milosz takes for granted his readers' intuitive grasp of the believer's state of mind: the man or woman who has identified with History and enthusiastically aligned themselves with a system that denies them freedom of expression. In 1951 he could reasonably assume that this phenomenon -- whether associated with communism, fascism, or indeed any other form of political repression -- would be familiar.

[...]

Thirty years on, my young audience is simply mystified: why would someone sell his soul to any idea, much less a repressive one? By the turn of the twenty-first century, few of my North American students had ever met a Marxist. A self-abnegating commitment to a secular faith was beyond their imaginative reach. When I started out my challenge was to explain why people became disillusioned with Marxism; today, the insuperable hurdle one faces is explaining the illusion itself.

Judt went on to argue that the Captive Mind that Milosz describes is not a dead concept, however, and compared the rationalizations of Marxist intellectuals to the elite cheerleading in the West for the Iraq War, even among nominal liberals, as well as the continued devotion in elite circles to laissez-faire ideology despite its manifest failures.

For me, though, what stands out about this passage is a perhaps defining feature of our era: the absence of the spirit of revolution, which inhabited the West, and much of the rest of the world too, for over 200 years. There are certainly many people, left and right, who adopt the pose of revolution -- the Tea Partiers, to take one high-profile example -- but it's difficult for me to regard hard-right conservatism, as destructive as it is to the national discourse, as an alternate modernity, as fascism and communism once were to liberal capitalism -- "liberal" being used here in the technical sense of the word. Certainly, the American right is premised on the semi-utopian belief in returning to a small government Eden unblemished by the welfare state, despite the fact that it runs aground any time it conflicts with keeping taxes on the wealthy as low as possible or with preserving entitlements for senior citizens. Still, it's recognizably liberal, in the sense used above -- notwithstanding the fact that the modern conservative movement contains much that is illiberal (again, the Tea Party is a prominent example).

Another way of putting the matter is that Francis Fukuyama had a point with his End of History argument: After the tumult and bloodshed of competing ideologies over the past two centuries, liberal capitalist democracy really has no serious competitors in terms of producing stable, prosperous societies. Dictatorships exist, obviously, but they do not pose existential challenges to liberal capitalism the way that fascism and communism once did. China may be a rising power, but you don't see many countries copying its model for governance.¹ Islamism might be considered a competing system, but my read is that political Islam means different things to different Muslims -- from quasi-totalitarian systems like Iran's to religious nationalist democratic parties like the AKP in Turkey. In any case, outside of majority Muslim countries, it's not a political movement that has much traction, despite the fever dreams of the American and European right.

To return to my original point, I do think we in the developed world are in a post-revolutionary age: A rising sense of individualism has dampened enthusiasm for signing on to mass movements that privilege concepts like the volk or the proletariat over one's own sense of identity, as Judt describes above. Not that mass participation in the political process isn't possible, of course, but it's something we do as an expression of our individuality, rather than the reverse. In some respects, this is a good thing, and a natural outcome of liberal governance; but it also makes good and necessary ideas, like solidarity, harder to realize.

¹ You could point to China's partnerships with, say, Sudan, but those strike me as more alliances of convenience than some kind of ideological front, in the way that NATO or the Warsaw Pact once were. China needs oil, and it'll cut deals, abet any atrocities, &c., with any country that provides it. There's about as much ideology there as when the US looks the other way at human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia.

Climate Change and the Ethic of Responsibility

Quote of the day, or perhaps the century?

"We believe we have compromised significantly, and we're prepared to compromise further," [Sen. John] Kerry said.

It's a statement that can be read as either an indictment of the way in which Democrats have pursued their policy agenda in the Obama era, or as a fundamental truth about the way change is made in a democracy. Here would be a good time to invoke Weber's famous lecture, "Politics as a Vocation," which turns on distinguishing between "the ethic of responsibility" and "the ethic of ultimate ends." The latter is familiar among political activists who want their preferred agenda, and only theirs, to prevail, and will not settle for less. Following the former, however, means acting with an awareness of what the likely consequences of one's actions will be, even at the expense of sacrificing one's own agenda. As Weber puts it:

[A] man who believes in an ethic of responsibility takes account of precisely the average deficiencies of people; as Fichte has correctly said, he does not even have the right to presuppose their goodness and perfection. He does not feel in a position to burden others with the results of his own actions so far as he was able to foresee them; he will say: these results are ascribed to my action.

It seems strange to say, given how often liberals groan at Democratic efforts to find "bipartisan" solutions, but I think you have to view how Kerry, Obama, et al have been going about getting a climate and energy bill in this light. Clearly, an energy-only bill, or a utility-only climate bill that's now being considered, is inadequate -- both in terms of reducing our own carbon emissions and in terms of persuading developing countries to take steps to reduce theirs. It's also clear, though perhaps not to the Democratic leadership, that the moderate Democrats and Republicans that are critical to getting a bill past a filibuster haven't been solid and upstanding negotiating partners.¹ In spite of all that, I doubt that making some valiant, but unsuccessful, stand on a tough climate bill would necessarily translate into electoral victories for Democrats this year, or a better chance at a climate bill of any sort next year. Even a marginal improvement over the status quo has to be preferred to spinning our wheels on this issue over and over again.

Activists, however, aren't wrong in wanting the President and Congress to go further, or in blasting the equivocations and cowardice of those opposed to any sort of carbon pricing. The ethic of ultimate ends, after all, is just as necessary to a well-functioning democracy as the ethic of responsibility. But the future of this planet will be better served by actual, if imperfect, legislation than perfectly good intentions.

¹ Perhaps the most depressing aspect of Lindsey Graham's reversal on the climate bill -- which I feared would happen when he first got involved -- was how predictable it was. Was there anyone who was actually shocked that he bolted from the negotiations at the first sign of conflict?

On the American Power Act

First, let me say, it's got a nice title: It's pithy, has a strong nationalistic tone, but with a wink and a nod to greens that it's really about saving the planet -- much like the bill itself. If the Senate can get this bill done this year, then the APA -- along with the ACA (Affordable Care Act) -- will be two of the pillars of President Obama's legacy.

But of course, that's a big if. There's about 50 different ways that progress on the bill could go awry (and has gone awry already), and only about one way it can go right: If you can get both the staunchly anti-offshore drilling Senators like Bill Nelson and the staunchly pro-drilling Senators like Mary Landrieu on the same page; and you can convince enough coal-state and farm-state Democrats not to bail; and you can convince liberals, not only in the Senate, but in the House, that this is a bill worth passing; and you can bring back Lindsey Graham and a few other Republicans to the table; then maybe you can get it out of the Senate. Then you have to merge that bill with the House bill, pass that in both chambers again, and get the President's signature -- all before the midterm elections in which Democrats are expected to get obliterated. If the Senate didn't have FinReg, immigration, and confirming Elena Kagan to the bench on its plate, getting this done wouldn't be so formidable; but it does, so it is.

Putting the Kibosh on Kabuki

Jon Lackman says it's time for pundits to stop using the word Kabuki as a synonym for "posturing":

Of course, pundits don't care about the real thing. They use Kabuki precisely because they and everyone else have only a hazy idea of the word's true meaning, and they can use it purely on the level of insinuation. They deploy Kabuki because:

1) It sounds funny.
2) It sounds childish.
3) It sounds foreign.
4) It sounds incomprehensible.

Kabuki succeeds chiefly because it makes your opponent sound silly and un-American. And finally Kabuki works because:

5) It sounds Japanese.

As one who has used the word Kabuki in this way, I must say Lackman completely misses the point of what people mean by it in political contexts. It doesn't really have anything to do with Japan per se, but more to do with American distaste for artifice, whether employed for the purposes of art or the purposes of politics. Our national culture is strongly shaped by the legacy of the plainspoken Protestants who settled here -- Puritans, Quakers, and the like -- as well as our origins as a republic, when we dispensed with the artifice of monarchy and tried to develop a government more in line with natural law. As a result, we reward politicians who sound like they're being straight with us and saying what they mean, which is often the opposite of what we usually get in, for example, Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Of course, being plainspoken can be an artifice in itself -- our history is rife with men and woman of privilege, from Franklin Roosevelt to George W. Bush, who passed themselves off as just folks. And then there's Sarah Palin, who has made ignorance about public policy into a badge of honor. Meanwhile, politicians who can't pull it off -- think George H.W. Bush at the supermarket or John Kerry windsurfing -- get hammered as elitist or out of touch.

Political Conflict Isn’t About Free Markets

Yglesias:

The main difference between left and right with regard to property rights is simply that the right is invested in a lot of rhetoric about markets and property rights and the left is invested in different historical and rhetorical tropes.

Who Killed Cap-and-Trade?

Robert Stavins:

But the most important factor—by far—which led to the change from politically correct to politically anathema was the simple fact that cap-and-trade was the approach that was receiving the most serious consideration, indeed the approach that had been passed by one of the houses of Congress. This brought not only great scrutiny of the approach, but—more important—it meant that all of the hostility to action on climate change, mainly but not exclusively from Republicans and coal-state Democrats, was targeted at the policy du jour—cap-and-trade.

The same fate would have befallen any front-running climate policy.

Unfortunately, I think he's right. There's a weird kabuki quality to policy debates in Washington, in that they must follow certain formal conventions, divorced from actual content. The health care battle was a classic example: Democrats propose A; Republicans denounce A as socialism; conservative Democrats say they'll will only support a bipartisan, watered-down version of A -- call it A* -- which the Republicans also denounce as socialism; lather, rinse, repeat. And never mind that A, A**, A***, &c., were once supported by Republicans back in the day. Things turned out well in the end, of course, (about which more later) but this is no way to discuss public policy.

So Much for Question Time

Lots of bloggers are cheering President Obama's impromptu debate with House Republicans in Baltimore today: Besides the thrill of seeing Obama parrying the usual GOP attacks with aplomb, the whole exchange was reminiscent of the highly entertaining Prime Minister's Questions in the UK. But it looks like that won't happening again, as the GOP is now regretting having cameras at the meeting. Even if they did allow cameras in the future, though, I doubt that the sort of unscripted debate we saw today could survive in the American media landscape. The cable news networks seem to like reducing debate to dueling talking points, and pundits and politicians for the most part oblige. And while Obama dove into the debate with enthusiasm, too many politicians, Democratic and Republican, aren't well-prepared to do what he did: It's not merely about intelligence or rhetorical skills, but about refusing to reduce things to sound bites and talking points. There's a reason most Presidential debates, for example, feel more like a press conference than an actual contest of ideas.

The Federalist and the Filibuster

When talking about the filibuster, it should be noted that the Articles of Confederation, which preceded the Constitution, were eventually thrown out in part because it had a supermajority requirement in order for Congress to do anything. Alexander Hamilton excoriated the defenders of this practice in Federalist 22:

To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. [...] The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy.

Hamilton obviously had in mind war or insurrection when talking about emergencies, but one could argue that fiscal crises, from ballooning health care costs to California-style budget problems, also qualify.

Hamilton also attacked the Articles of Confederation for their undemocratic character, as members of Congress were apportioned on the basis of states, not population. But of course, the only way to get the Constitution ratified was to have a state-based legislature, along with a population-based one. So now we have a Senate that, over the years, has become increasingly captive to a supermajority requirement. It's like the Articles of Confederation had never even been repealed.

Take It to the Floor of Congress, Look into the Core of Rotten

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised at the State of the Union last night. Certainly, President Obama's ability as an orator was never in doubt, but it was heartening that he didn't take the "Clinton and school uniforms" approach of abandoning his major initiatives, but instead tacked on ideas like the spending freeze to his calls for financial regulation, clean energy, and health care reform. Taking a jaunty, defiant tone also helped him recast the narrative from one of "spineless Democrats" to one of "obstructionist Republicans," which was heartening, no doubt, to many liberals.

Having said that, as Larry David might put it, the details of Obama's speech are still troubling, and no amount of great rhetoric can change that. Health care is still alive, but there was no deadline and no rejection of a watered-down version of reform. Clean energy is still alive -- Obama's call for a "comprehensive" climate and energy bill is obvious code for cap-and-trade -- but so much of the energy section of his speech was devoted to sops to nuclear, coal, and offshore oil drilling, it was clear who has the upper hand in the argument. Financial reform is still alive, but the measures Obama's proposed aren't enough, frankly to limit the corrosive influence of the banks on the rest of the economy. And all of these proposals are still hostage to the Senate filibuster.

Then there's the question of the effectiveness of the stimulus and what to do about unemployment in the next year: Obama acknowledged that the stimulus, while effective to an extent, hasn't reversed the awful jobs situation, and that more efforts are necessary. But the proposals he outlined are pretty small-bore, for the most part. Not that small-bore isn't worthwhile -- I especially liked his call to further reform student lending -- but the unemployment situation is bigger and likely more intractable than the administration seems to realize, even as the economy grows. Hence Obama's spending freeze proposal, while not the centerpiece of the agenda, still clashes with the imperative to get people back to work.

I could comment a lot more on the speech, but I'll just say that it seems to have put an end to the temporary meltdown of the Democrats after losing the Massachusetts special election. In other words, it's brought us back to the status quo ante -- which was not a great place to be to begin with.

Title fixed.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons. From 2009 address to Congress (couldn't find a CC version of the 2010 SOTU).

Ceding the Argument

During the Bush years, there was a saying that went something like this: Republicans can't govern, and Democrats can't get elected. We may have to revise that second part, as it seems like Democrats can't govern either.

The Democrats' freakout over the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts last week was awful enough, and the possibility that they might yet give up on health care reform now, after having come this close making it a reality, is still a live one. Even worse than that, though, is President Obama's bizarre spending freeze proposal for non-security discretionary spending -- Paul Krugman notes that "the best thing you can say in its favor is that it’s a transparently cynical PR stunt." Now, I've tried to temper my enthusiasm for Obama with the knowledge that he's always had a strong centrist, gradualist streak to him, and that liberals hoping he would be their champion were bound to be disappointed. I've occasionally written what in retrospect were fanboy-ish posts about him, to be sure, but I don't think I've ever let it get the better of me.

So why does Obama's recent pivot to the budget deficit seem like, frankly, a betrayal of what he campaigned on -- not to trade in the type of gimmicks that he rightly lambasted John McCain for offering? In part, my frustration is less with Obama than with Congress: Before 2009, I don't think I fully understood the pathological nature of the US Senate, which seems to view assuaging the egos of its members as more important than addressing the problems of our country. But rather than accepting the setback of losing the supermajority while still holding fast to its agenda, the Obama administration has, essentially, given up -- and not just given up, but apparently bought wholesale into Republican arguments about the deficit and the economy. It's as if we're back in the bad old days of the Bush administration, when Democrats kept playing a game of "Me too!" with the GOP, a game they could only lose.

That's why this past week has turned into such a crisis for the Democrats: It's not merely the lack of progress on their agenda or continued high level of unemployment, it's the ceding of the argument to the Republicans -- which, given the one-dimensional nature of their policy agenda, is really disturbing. I've been disappointed over the size of the stimulus, the treatment of the banks, the declining prospects for clean energy legislation, &c., but recognized that Obama and the Democrats were working within tight constraints -- including members of their own party. Now I'm not even sure what the rationale for the Obama administration is anymore. Perhaps he'll turn things around tonight at the State of the Union, but I'm not optimistic.

Social Cohesion and Natural Resource Limits

It's not about the environment, but this FT column raises some important points about the ability of societies to live within limits:

Some observers blame that on Japan's obsession with maintaining cultural harmony; many Japanese point to the fact that they live in an island with constrained resources. Either way, this emphasis on sharing pain in an equitable manner is likely to shape how the government tries to impose public spending cuts in future years.

[...]

However, in the US, the government has less experience of dividing up a shrinking pool of resources. Instead, in a land built by pioneers, Americans prefer to spend time thinking about how to make the pie bigger -- or to find fresh frontiers -- than about making shared sacrifices.

The attitude described here -- unlimited entitlement to resources -- is an important one to understand, since it pervades everything from budget deficits, as discussed in the link, to energy use. If you want to touch a nerve in some people, for example, argue that high gas prices are a good thing: I once heard a radio program where Christopher Steiner, author of $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better, was a guest, and it was shocking to hear the vitriol that many of the callers were directing at him. The temerity of the man, for suggesting that cheap gas isn't a God-given right!

On the other hand, it's not as if this attitude doesn't appear among liberals and enviros in America as well. Folks who think buying a hybrid or other low-carbon gadgets makes them green, while not thinking about the larger patterns of development and energy use that have driven the growth in global warming pollution, aren't doing themselves, or the planet, any favors. Not that addressing global warming requires us to adopt a hairshirt approach to the problem; but turning the question of sustainability into one of consumerism is just a cosmetic change, and leaves the deeper question of entitlement untouched.

Another thing to consider, which is also mentioned in the FT column, is not only societal attitudes, but the capability of the political system to address urgent issues and, if necessary, make "shared sacrifices." Obviously the dysfunctions of the Senate that many liberals have been lamenting lately contribute to this. As I noted on my short-lived Tumblr experiment, it's simply perverse that a political party need only 50%+1 to control a chamber and set its agenda, but require a supermajority to actually accomplish anything. And if the result of today's special election in Massachusetts is that instead of there still being solid majorities in both houses of Congress for increasing access to and controlling the costs the health care system, there's simply failure, that will only heighten the perversity of the situation in Washington.

Cutting Through the Climate Fog

Chris Hayes makes the case for focusing the climate change debate on -- wait for it -- climate change:

But overall, the public opinion data on climate point to a deeper problem with the way the capping of carbon has been sold, both by Democratic lawmakers and progressive activists--that is, as a bill that seems to have nothing to do with catastrophic climate change. "Make no mistake: this is a jobs bill," President Obama said about the House-passed version of cap and trade (the name of which--American Clean Energy and Security Act--manages to avoid mentioning climate).

[...]

This is all true, of course, so far as it goes: cap and trade will create strong incentives for innovation in an economy that badly needs them and will begin re-engineering the fossil fuel economy in a way that will surely create net job benefits. Over time, if we stick to it, it will also delink our foreign and military policies from the pursuit of oil. But those aren't the main reasons to pass the bill. Stopping the planet from melting is.

Fundamentally, keeping climate change from getting out of control is a moral imperative, not only for our sake, but for the sake of our descendants and those who live in poorer and more vulnerable parts of the world. But making moral appeals for public policy, especially where the benefits are diffuse and the costs are often direct, isn't done much by our elites anymore, even those on the left. Tony Judt's recent lecture on social democracy touches on this:

For the last thirty years, in much of the English-speaking world (though less so in continental Europe and elsewhere), when asking ourselves whether we support a proposal or initiative, we have not asked, is it good or bad? Instead we inquire: Is it efficient? Is it productive? Would it benefit gross domestic product? Will it contribute to growth? This propensity to avoid moral considerations, to restrict ourselves to issues of profit and loss—economic questions in the narrowest sense—is not an instinctive human condition. It is an acquired taste.

I'd also add that emphasizing the moral dimensions of climate change could help focus public opinion on the matter. It's well known, for example, that while Americans are generally supportive of doing something about climate change, their views are heavily influenced by all manner of factors, including partisanship, the economy, and even the weather. And it's not just America, either: this graph (via Kate MacKenzie) shows that people in England have a muddled view of the problem too:From a policymaker's perspective, both the things that people think the government is not doing enough of and the things they're doing too much of are necessary -- as is carbon trading, which barely registers with most people. But of course most people aren't thinking of these things as parts of an overall policy, and we shouldn't expect them to. We can, however, make the case that we have a responsibility to do something about climate change; and that, while some shared sacrifice may be involved (though not as much as the doomsayer right believes), it would be wrong for us to shirk this responsibility. That, I think, most people can understand intuitively.

Notes on a Scandal

The controversy (see also here and here) over the stolen¹ emails of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia has been tragically amusing: Amusing because of the way denialists have been huffing and puffing over something which, even in the most generous interpretation, doesn't alter the overwhelming nature of the evidence for climate change²; and tragic because that same huffing and puffing will likely further muddy the discourse on climate change in this country, which is saying something.

If you want a real scandal, however, check this out:

Large sums promised to developing countries to help them tackle climate change cannot be accounted for, a BBC investigation has found.

Rich countries pledged $410m (£247m) a year in a 2001 declaration - but it is now unclear whether the money was paid.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has accused industrialised countries of failing to keep their promise.

The EU says the money was paid out in bilateral deals, but admits it cannot provide data to prove it.

This could be really damaging -- trust between rich and poor countries is strained as it is, and the failure of the rich countries to account for the money pledged could potentially blow things up at Copenhagen, where establishing rich country aid for poor countries is a major point of contention. This is also why having a legally binding climate change treaty of some kind is so important: When you're dealing with financial transfers on the order of €100 billion a year (as the EU proposed recently), you need to have mechanisms in place to ensure that the money is going where it's intended.

¹ Let's not lend to the people who broke into the CRU's email system any of the lovable moxie associated with the term "hacker," shall we? This was theft, pure and simple.
² Though the underlying science is not affected, I agree with George Monbiot that CRU officials haven't been handling the controversy all that well.

"Beckons you, to enter his web of sin..."

Does anyone seriously think Al Gore is going to become some kind of "Greenfinger" character -- that is, use his wealth to turn the world into some kind of eco-dystopia? One could be forgiven for thinking that after reading this terrible NYT piece about Gore's investments in clean energy. As Dave Roberts ably observed, the article can be boiled down to two propositions, each of which contradicts the other:

1. Some people (read: A right-wing congresswoman and a former aide to James Inhofe) say that Gore is hyping up the threat of climate change in order to profit from his investments in green technology.
2. Gore says that he donates all profits from his investments to his nonprofit group, the Alliance for Climate Protection.

That's a thin frame, needless to say, on which to hang a story. (Unless Gore is lying, but the NYT article gives no indication that he is -- probably because he's not.)

In fact, Gore's investments aren't even the most interesting thing about Al Gore. For that, you'll have to look at the latest Newsweek, which has a fascinating profile of Gore and how his views on climate change have evolved over the years. In particular, he seems to be coming to the position that reforming agricultural practices so that more carbon is sequestered and fewer methane emissions are released could be the most profitable near-term strategy for tackling climate change, moreso even than cutting carbon emissions in the commercial and industrial sectors. Of course, since most of the worst offenders in agriculture (and also forestry), in terms of GHG emissions, are in developing countries like Brazil and Indonesia, convincing them to change their ways will require some buy-in on our part: Carbon pricing, obviously, but also a re-evaluation of our own practices that contribute to the problem. Cutting down on, say, meat consumption, as Nicolas Stern recently suggested, would be one place to start.

Blog Action Day 2009: Lindsay Graham and the Climate Football

I want to believe that Lindsay Graham, per his recent op-ed, is going to come through on supporting the Kerry-Boxer climate bill in the Senate. Indeed, Joe Romm and David Roberts, both of whom no one could accuse of being naïve about politics, are hailing Graham's stance as an important step in moving climate legislation forward, and could potentially net as many as six other Republican votes. That could be enough to bring in moderate Democrats from farm and coal states leery about voting for Kerry-Boxer as well.

Even so, I can't shake the fear that Graham is going to pull the football away at the last minute. Like John McCain, Graham is a conservative with a reputation for heterodoxy that is vastly out of step with his actual voting record. Perhaps the definitive profile of Graham is this 2005 Washington Monthly article by Geoff Earle, which argued that, during the height of the George W. Bush era, Graham often strayed from the Republican Party line on certain high-profile issues, but in a way that ultimately served the purposes of the Bush administration and the GOP:

Consider his role in the Abu Ghraib hearings. With his tough questioning of Rumsfeld, Graham earned a rare Washington commodity: credibility. In the end, however, he put that credibility to use in bolstering the position of the secretary of defense. On "Meet the Press," Graham pointedly refused to say Rumsfeld should step down, a position he has maintained ever since. During those crucial early days, Rumsfeld's ability to maintain unified GOP support in the Senate was essential to his political survival. Had Graham flipped, the White House's continued loyalty to Rumsfeld would have been made far more difficult, if not impossible. Graham's even-handed posture "did a lot to end a period that was corrosive and dangerous for the administration," says Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.).

This was certainly the case in 2006, during the fight over the Military Commissions Act. Graham, along with McCain and John Warner, were the lead negotiators with the Bush administration over the bill -- ostensibly to prevent it from giving the President carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with detainees in Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere. In the end, however, Graham and company gave the administration the bulk of what it desired, then helped defeat Democratic amendments that would have prohibited torture, upheld habeas corpus, and provided other protections. Since then, Graham's record in the minority has been indistinguishable from that of his fellow Republicans, up to and including his conduct during the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings.

Now, It's certainly possible that Graham has seen the light on climate change and will become a support of climate legislation, not only in words, but deeds. Romm quotes an E&E News article which indicates that he has, and he will -- the only sticking point he, and other potential Republican votes, seem to have with Kerry-Boxer is increased support for nuclear power and offshore oil drilling. If that's the case, it'd be a small price to pay for ensuring that the framework for a clean energy economy gets up and running. (Let's also note here that Lisa Murkowski of Alaska now also appears to be on board with Kerry-Boxer, so Graham's support might actually be paying off.)

I'm still skeptical, however, for the reasons stated above. But there shouldn't be any reason why conservative political philosophy, as I understand it, would prevent Graham, et al from taking action on climate change. Certainly right-wing politicians in other countries, Europe in particular, see no contradiction between belief in small government and preventing the devastation of the Earth's climate. Only the ignorance and moral cowardice that characterizes much of the American right today prevents the Republican Party from being responsible partners in addressing perhaps the most important issue of our time. Indeed, already the conservative movement is trying to browbeat Graham into submission; hopefully, they won't succeed.

This post was written as part of Blog Action Day, and this year's topic is climate change; though honestly, if hadn't told you that, would you have noticed?

Are There Free Market Solutions to Climate Change?

Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias both recently asked whether conservatives' professed belief in free markets hobbles their ability to take climate change seriously. Yglesias points out that there are plenty of free market climate change policies (e.g., eliminating fossil fuels subsidies, green tax shifts, etc.), but conservatives often denounce even these as socialist:

Now of course in the real world it’s going to be impossible to legislate a pure free market “tax shift” policy... But if people started from the premise that emissions need to be reduced, and then debated the extent to which this needs to be done in a free market way versus some other kind of way, then compromise would be easy to reach.... But that’s not what we have. Not because market-oriented approaches are inadequate to the challenge but because too many of the key institutions that espouse market-oriented approaches are run by people who are too corrupt, incompetent, immoral, stupid, or cowardly to get their side to take the problem seriously.

Drum agrees, but argues that even free market policies aren't equal to the scale of the problem:

Conservatives know that if they actually fess up to the full scope of the global warming problem, they're eventually going to have to accept some pretty serious government intervention to halt it. Things like fuel economy standards, green research and development programs, moratoriums on coal-fired plants, tax incentives for conservation, new building efficiency standards, and much, much more. There's nothing wrong with any of this stuff, but there's no question that it's a considerable amount of interference in the market.

I think the question that needs to be asked here is, "Compared to what?" To take one item from Drum's list, for example, building efficiency standards are a subset of land use regulations, which are going to exist whether there's a public interest in environmental protection or not. That is, I don't see much of a difference between a regulation that says that a building's insulation have must an R-value of X and a regulation that says only single-family detached homes can be built in such-and-such parts of town. One can argue about the wisdom of land use being regulated in certain ways (witness the recent liberal-libertarian exchange on urban planning -- see here and here for highlights), but once it's granted that governments can regulate how buildings are constructed in a given community (and I think most people would agree with that), it's not a big leap -- still less a leap into socialism -- to include energy consumption in those regulations as well.

That being said, it's not necessarily the case that more regulation is better when it comes to climate change, or any other issue, for that matter. Yglesias, for one, has argued repeatedly that the greatest infringement of economic liberty today is not marginal income tax rates or product safety regulations, but local restrictions on land use that prohibit dense, mixed-use development. And all things being equal, I want regulations that maximize individual choice and minimize transaction costs or perverse incentives -- in other words, a green tax shift is preferable to, say, an alternative fuel tax credit. Not that I necessarily oppose such programs, but policymakers should be cognizant not to let the regulations they do enact become more trouble than they're worth.

So perhaps we can say that there are no laissez-faire solutions to climate change -- no one expects private industry to, on its own, care about the effects of their fossil fuel consumption on future generations; moreover, a large portion of our carbon footprint is bound up in our infrastructure (e.g., transportation and electricity), which was never in the private sector's hands to begin with. But we can definitely say that policies that take what is best about free markets (in not dictating every little action, for example) have a major role to play in our response to climate change.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

If I trafficked in Grand Unified Theories of anything, I'd probably start with the argument that the tobacco industry is the true cause of all that is wrong with America. It's been established, for example, that Big Tobacco created the myth that Rachel Carson's advocacy against overuse of DDT was directly responsible for millions of malaria-related deaths in Africa and Asia. In turn, the intellectual infrastructure it developed -- both for the DDT myth and for defending tobacco itself -- became an essential part of the campaign to obfuscate the evidence for global warming, and indeed, an essential part of the right-wing think tank universe.

Now it appears that the tobacco industry had a hand in deep-sixing health care reform in the early 1990s, in part through collaborating with Betsy McCaughey on her infamous smear job of President Clinton's plan. There appears to be some ambiguity about the exact nature of the collaboration, but at the least it seems that McCaughey, while writing "No Exit", was receiving input from tobacco lobbyists -- who were helping to orchestrate a right-wing media blitz against the Clinton plan.

Now obviously there's a lot more to recent political history than just Big Tobacco, but it is rather surprising how much influence the industry has had on the growth of sophistry and bullshit in Washington in the last few decades.

The Political Tipping Point for Cap-and-Trade

So a recent poll found that about 60% of Americans support a cap-and-trade program to reduce global warming, even if it meant that their monthly electric bills went up by $10; but if they went up by $25, then about 60% of Americans would oppose cap-and-trade. This naturally raises the question: What would the price of carbon emissions have to be in order to raise the average American's electric bill by those amounts -- that is, what is the effective ceiling for the price of carbon emissions, after which support collapses?

First, let's lay out some facts. According to the Energy Information Administration, in 2007 the average American household consumed 936 kWh (3.19 million BTU) of electricity per month, which, at an average retail price of ¢10.65/kWh, translates to an average monthly bill of $99.70. Now, of the sources of electricity that come from fossil fuels, about 49.9% comes from coal, 20.3% from natural gas, 1.2% from petroleum liquids (e.g., fuel oil and kerosene), 0.4% from petroleum coke, and 0.1% from other sources (e.g., propane).¹ Let's assume, for the sake of this exercise, that our average American household receives electricity from all possible sources, and in exactly the proportions listed here. (I'm not listing other sources like nuclear and hydro, as they obviously have no carbon emissions.)

We also have to consider the specific carbon content of each of these fuels; some are dirtier than others. EIA provides a handy table for this, from which I present the emission coefficients for the five types of fossil fuels just mentioned:

Coal:² 215.2 lbs_CO2/MBTU
Natural Gas: 117.08
Petroleum Liquids:³ 162.77
Petroleum Coke: 225.13
Other Gases:⁴ 132.98

Now, with all that laid out, let's do some number crunching. Factoring the consumption proportions above into our hypothetical average American's monthly electricity consumption, we get this:

Coal: 0.499 * 3.19 = 1.59 MBTU
Natural Gas: 0.203 * 3.19 = 0.65
Petroleum Liquids: 0.012 * 3.19 = 0.04
Petroleum Coke: 0.004 * 3.19 = 0.013
Other Gases: 0.001 * 3.19 = 0.003

That divvies up the fossil fuel portion of our hypothetical average American's electricity consumption. Now we find out how many carbon emissions that produces:

Coal: 215.2 * 1.55 = 342.17 lbs
Natural Gas: 117.08 * 0.65 = 76.1
Petroleum Liquids: 162.77 * 0.04 = 6.51
Petroleum Coke: 225.13 * 0.013 = 2.93
Other Gases: 132.98 * 0.001 = 0.13

All told, that's about 428 lbs of CO₂. Next, we do the same thing we did before with consumption, only now with the money spent on electricity:

Coal: 0.499 * $99.70 = $49.75
Natural Gas: 0.203 * $99.70 = $20.24
Petroleum Liquids: 0.012 * $99.70 = $1.20
Petroleum Coke: 0.004 * $99.70 = $0.40
Other Gases: 0.001 * $99.70 = $0.10

That totals $71.69. If we divide this set of numbers by the last set, we get ratios which, when multiplied by 2,000 lbs, gives us the price per ton of CO₂ for each of these fuels. Now we can attempt to answer our original question, so let us ask what would happen if we set a surcharge on carbon emissions in the following amounts (note that these figures are the portions of our hypothetical average American household's bill spent on the various fuels):

	$25/tCO2	$50	$75	$100	$125
Coal	$54.03	$58.30	$62.58	$66.86	$71.14
Natural Gas	$21.19	$22.14	$23.09	$24.05	$25.00
Petroleum Liquids	$1.28	$1.36	$1.44	$1.53	$1.61
Petroleum Coke	$0.44	$0.51	$0.47	$0.55	$0.58
Other Gases	$0.10	$0.10	$0.10	$0.11	$0.11
Total	$77.04	$82.39	$87.73	$93.08	$98.43
Addition to Bill	$5.35	$10.70	$16.04	$21.39	$26.74

I'll have to go back to get the exact prices that correspond with the increases cited in the poll, but the results seem pretty clear: It seems the price of carbon emissions could go up to $50/tCO₂, and a strong majority of Americans, according to the poll, would still support a cap-and-trade plan; it would have to go over $75/tCO₂ to raise bills by $17.50, where we might expect opinion to flip from support to opposition; and it would have to go well over $100/tCO₂ in order for Americans to turn firmly against cap-and-trade. To put things in perspective, the initial price of carbon emissions under the Waxman-Markey bill is expected to be around $15/tCO₂.

Keep in mind, however, that there are a lot of heroic assumptions being made here: For one, the proportions for fossil fuel consumption are going to vary significantly for actual households, rather than hypothetical ones, based on where one lives; some places are going to be more carbon-intensive than others. I'm also assuming that the introduction of a price on carbon emissions will result in no transition from fossil fuels to alternatives: Were the price to go permanently from $0 to $25/tCO₂, say, or $25 to $50, it would be ridiculous to believe that that wouldn't spur more investment in nuclear, hydro, efficiency measures, or renewables, or fuel-switching from coal to natural gas. And of course, one should never invest too much in a single poll.

I welcome any comments or corrections to my analysis here; I'm pretty sure someone has done this already for an older version of this poll, but I couldn't find it on the web.

¹ Sources: here and here, data from 2007 -- I'm basically subtracting out the commercial and industrial sectors in calculating these proportions.
² Average of carbon content for Anthracite, Bituminous, Sub-Bituminous, and Lignite.
³ Average of carbon content for kerosene, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, and jet fuel. Not sure how the latter is used to make electricity, though. It may just be the way EIA classifies it: Jet fuel may be a petroleum liquid, and petroleum liquids are used to make electricity, but that doesn't mean jet fuel is used to make electricity -- not to my knowledge, anyway. I considered leaving it out, but I doubt doing that would change the final analysis much.
⁴ Average of propane, flare gas, and LPG. Again, I may have screwed up here in calculating an average carbon content -- this is the Other category, after all. But again, any adjustments would likely have no effect on the final analysis.

Morality and Public Life

Matt Yglesias, reflecting on the state of political discourse today, laments the "cynicism and immorality" in the Washington political elite:

For example, Senators who genuinely do believe that carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to a global climate crisis seem to think nothing of nevertheless taking actions that endanger the welfare of billions of people on the grounds that acting otherwise would be politically problematic in their state. In other words, they don’t want to do the right thing because their self-interest points them toward doing something bad. But it’s impossible to imagine these same Senators stabbing a homeless person in a dark DC alley to steal his shoes. And what’s more, the entire political class would be (rightly!) shocked and appalled by the specter of a Senator murdering someone for personal gain. Yet it’s actually taken for granted that “my selfish desires dictate that I do x” constitutes a legitimate reason to do the wrong thing on important legislation.

Part of this, I think, is due to a defect in human nature: It's well-known, for example, that while people can instinctively grasp that, say, pushing someone in front on a runaway trolley is wrong, they become less certain if asked to divert a runaway trolley in order to save five people, though it would mean killing another person. In other words, once you take moral considerations out of the realm of the immediate and visceral, it becomes easier to weasel your way of commitments that you would otherwise honor. Yes, you could argue, I understand that carbon emissions lead to global warming and thus to increased suffering for much of the human race; but I'm not alone in contributing to the problem (look at China!); and I can only do so much to fix the problem; and I must look after the interests of people actually existing now, not potential future people; etc. One reason why I think Hurricane Katrina was a turning point in how Americans think about global warming was that it drove the point home for many that global warming is not an abstract issue, but something that threatens our way of life.*

Matt's other point, about the rather petty nature of most politicians' self-interest, is a harder nut to crack. I'm inclined to believe that the job of politician (as opposed to the jobs of activist, advocate, wonk, etc.) tends not to attract people with idealistic personalities -- the kind who set out to accomplish something and get in the history books. That is, to be an effective politician -- the kind who wins elections -- you need to be, first and foremost, a good salesman. If you happen to have an earnest belief in the ability of government to make people's lives better, that's well and good; but it's not a requirement. I don't know if that's a good explanation, but my sense is that the notion that people enter politics out of a desire for making lasting change is off the mark in many cases.

* Standard disclaimer: No, Katrina was not "caused" by global warming, but global warming does create circumstances in which Katrina-like storms become more prevalent.

How a Fact Becomes a Myth

Because I can't leave this issue alone, check out this post by Brendan Nyhan detailing the similarities between the Birthers and the advocates against health care reform. Notice, if you will, how the standard climate denier arguments also fit this pattern:

1. Take a complicated issue that people don't understand (e.g. presidential citizenship reqirements and Hawaiian birth records or the complex health care reform bills pending in Congress).
2. Advance a disturbing hypothesis about the issue that will appeal to your side of the aisle (e.g. Obama isn't a legitimate president; the health bill will take away your freedom).
3. Misconstrue available evidence to construct arguments supporting your point.
4. Promote these myths widely. If you are successful enough in doing so, the media will feel obligated to report on them. Coverage will then frequently be presented in an artificially balanced "he said," "she said" format, giving further credence to your claims.
5. When your arguments are debunked, claim that the media is trying to silence you to prevent the truth from being revealed.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 until various elites (e.g. John Boehner on health, Lou Dobbs on Obama's birth certificate) start claiming you have raised legitimate questions about the issue of interest.

Most recently we've seen this pattern with the right quoting the cost of the Waxman-Markey bill as being several thousand dollars a year for the average family, even though most studies, including the ones cited by the GOP, say that the costs will be far more modest, or even negative.