Category Archives: Energy and enviroment

The invisible hand of letting people know who’s boss

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Edward links downblog to a piece by Ronald Bailey in Reason magazine. My precis of Bailey’s thesis runs something like this. Having children, per se, isn’t so expensive. Educating them, on the other hand, is very expensive. This is because the levers of a modern, free market, rule of law, enforcement of contract society are complicated and you need a lot of training in order to know which lever to pull, and when. In actuality, lack of training generally leads to denial of access to said levers and hence a lifetime of poverty, and no one wants that for their child. Hence the expense of education deters prospective parents from actually going ahead and having children; this is the ‘invisible hand of population control’. And it’s a good thing! This is because no one wants a tragedy of the commons situation, like you’ve got in all those poor countries.

I can see the following problems with Bailey’s argument, in no particular order, and not worked through, since this is not an essay:

(1) There’s your local commons, and then there’s the global commons. Further, population and global resource depletion need not be coupled; the small population of a developed society may take more in the way of resources from the world than the much larger population of a less developed society;

(2) The length, complexity and cost of education need not be coupled to the total skill demand in a society; to take a picturesque example: piano tuning is a difficult skill to acquire, but it’s easy to imagine a society that generally prefers simpler instruments and has no pianos at all;

(3) In actuality, the length, complexity and cost of education is often to do with status display; in many (most?) societies, education is a positional good purchased by the parents;

(4) The cost of education need not be the only, or even the main deterrent to having children; it’s possible to find low birth rates in actual societies where most (or even all) formal education is state provided (and hence, obviously, the cost of that education is shared between all taxpayers);

(5) It’s fairly well established (I think) that freedom is not something that necessarily flows from rule of law and enforcement of contract; it’s possible to have a society where many citizens have relatively little freedom yet all contracts are honoured;

(6) In the context of (5) above, we should probably ask what Bailey means by ‘economic freedom’; his gist seems to be ‘those freedoms enjoyed by the better off’;

(7) A society where a majority composed of not so well off people is deterred from raising children – and where, by contrast, a few well off people have lots of children – is not necessarily a very nice society. I’d suggest there might be gentler ways of avoiding tragedy of the commons situations.

On being the right shape

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Obsessing over strategic geography has a rather… twentieth century feel to it. Few now worry about the control of the Suez Canal, or the rights of warships to traverse the Bosphorus; far-flung scraps of land once valued as coaling stations and choke points are now important chiefly as tax havens and political distractions, and the various growths of Railway Imperialism have largely decayed back into the soil on which they were imposed. But there are a couple of areas that still pursue this approach to life. One, of course, is the subject of pipeline politics, amply discussed by m’colleagues, for example, here. Or here. Or here.

The other doesn’t get quite so much attention: Continue reading →

gaseous Goodhart

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China’s top climate change negotiator wants the Chinese export sector to be excluded from their targets, and “consumers to pay” instead. This is not good news.

For a start, the tactics. It means accepting the principle of letting some special interests off. We know, after all, that there will be the mother of all lobbying wars about this, all wanting their pet interest group to be left out. Therefore it’s best to hold a firm line as long as possible, minimising the damage. Also, even if this isn’t just special pleading, the output (no CO2 target for much of Chinese industry) is identical to the effects of special pleading. So it’s worth treating it as such until proven otherwise.

After all, if it proved to be honest, you can always make a gracious concession later; but you can’t take back concessions you made earlier so easily.

Secondly, there is no end to this argument. If they claim a right to export all they like and bill the customer for the CO2, then for this right to be effective, they must also have a right to import capital goods – machine tools, Siemens power stations, that kind of stuff. Wham, half the German engineering sector wants a note from mum too. What about the primary exporters? And come to think of it, if it’s the consumer’s fault, some of that responsibility must rest with the people who lent them the money…which for the dollar zone was the People’s Bank of China, State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

More seriously, it’s a really bad idea on the substance. The mechanism of action is something like this – imports containing a lot of embodied CO2 would be taxed and would cost more, so people would buy less carbony ones, and Chinese exporters would stop producing so much CO2. But it’s a very long set of tongs; too many moving parts. Unless the energy used in the product is a hell of a lot, the tax component won’t be that great compared to the range of prices for that kind of product. The exporter might not notice, or might attribute the drop in sales to something else.

Just taxing fossil fuel at the point of sale, already, has the huge advantage that it falls directly on the user, who has the most control over how much gets used, and it’s explicitly and unmistakably down to the fuel.

Further, how many SKUs (Stock-Keeping Units – individual products) does the Chinese export sector produce? It’s got to be in the tens of thousands at the least. Under this proposal, each one would have to be carbon-audited accurately and regularly and assessed for taxation on that basis. It is far from clear whether the importing state or the exporting state would do this. Just taxing fossil fuel, already, involves less than a dozen SKUs, which happen to be bulky, smelly, heavy, or black and dusty, and therefore difficult to hide on a big scale.

And every manufacturer would have a fine incentive to lie about the CO2 emissions associated with their product; if you can bring yourself to put melamine in the milk, you can surely lie about your electricity bill. It’s the worst Goodhart’s Law violation I’ve seen for a long time.

But here’s the really weird bit. Whether the CO2 tax is applied at source as a fuel tax or a cap-and-trade system, on crossing the border like a tariff, or at the point of final sale like VAT, the economic upshot is essentially the same; goods subject to it would cost more than goods not subject to it, and goods subject to it that contained more CO2 would cost more than ones with less.

Either yer man is hoping that the importing states wouldn’t bother to impose the tax, or else his argument is actually indistinguishable from the one he’s trying to shoot down – that there should be a tariff on goods from states that don’t implement a CO2 tax.

Alternatively, he’s just talking his book, setting a negotiating marker in a cost-free fashion. In which case, time to pick it up and run it back.

If this leaves you in need of an optimism fix, have a look at this GSFC feature. The “shorter”: ozone depletion would have made it unsafe to go out in the sun for as long as five minutes essentially everywhere by 2065, but we, ah, fixed it. (Via German ScienceBlogs; if you speak German there’s also a fascinating interview with Paul Crutzen here.)

More on ETS success

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Various commenters suggested that the 3% cut in EU CO2 emissions was essentially down to the recession. Here’s a chart from the report I linked to, which gives a rather different analysis. I don’t have the underlying figures, so there are limits to how far I can critically engage. But the take-out is that fuel-shifting or saving driven by CO2 pricing and renewables development were much bigger contributors than change in industrial capacity utilisation, and better reliability at British and Spanish nuclear power stations was a surprisingly big factor.

Contributions to net CO2 emissions change in Europe

Europe Cuts CO2 by 3% in 2008

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Perhaps no surprise with the doomflow of neganews slinking catlike through your windows, but it looks like the EU cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by 3% last year. Worldchanging quotes an analyst report that reckons this is attributable to the European emissions trading system. I’m not so sure; what about all the cliff-diving?

However, the target of 80% reduction by 2050 means an annualised cut of 1.95%. Who would argue with a fair wind?

Gas row latest: forceful European diplomacy

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In a joint letter, Martin Říman, the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, and Andris Piebalgs, European Commissioner for Energy, have warned Moscow and Kyiv that the credibility of Ukraine and Russia as reliable partners would be irrevocably damaged should gas supply to European consumers not be immediately resumed.

I am sure that Sergey Shmatko and Yuriy Prodan, the relevant ministers, are trembling in their boots at the prospect. Totally sure.

Eurabia Fans: Not just stupider than you think…

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Stupider than you can imagine. Evidence, the map over at this fine post from Sadly, No!. Read the whole thing, but as well as introducing the best title for a blog post ever, they’ve caught “Gates Of Vienna” pretending that in the future, Europe will be divided into Islamic states (with incredibly silly names), Russian protectorates, and the Russian empire, due to teh demographic menace.

Yes, that’s right – they think Russia doesn’t have a demographics problem. They also think that although Iceland will become an Islamic state, Switzerland and, for some bizarre reason, the Czech Republic will remain “neutral”. And Germany will re-divide, with the old Federal Republic sliding into Islamic rule and the old DDR being a Russian protectorate.

Either that, or they’re using a map that’s still got East Germany on it. It feels a bit like mocking cripples to take the piss out of people who are obviously so ill-equipped to take part in any kind of debate, but, what the hell! Read the whole thing and don’t forget to bring your fisker.

But among the routine partisan knockabout, there’s a gem – this UPI article on demographics, which finally offers Randy McDonald some relief in his role as the NATO-standard debunker. Martin Walker notes the French demographic turn-around, but the especially interesting bit is that he actually has some numbers on the rate at which immigrant groups’ TFRs converge with the norm.

The birthrates of Muslim women in Europe have been falling significantly for some time. In the Netherlands, for example, the TFR among Dutch-born women rose between 1990 and 2005 from 1.6 to 1.7. In the same period for Moroccan-born women in Holland it fell from 4.9 to 2.9, and for Turkish-born women in Holland from 3.2 to 1.9.

In Austria, the TFR of Muslim women fell from 3.1 to 2.3 from 1981 to 2001. In 1970 Turkish-born women in Germany had on average two children more than German-born women. By 1996 the difference had fallen to one child and has now dropped to 0.5. These sharp falls reflect important cultural shifts, which include the impact of universal female education, rising living standards, the effect of local cultural norms and availability of contraception.

There is, as they say, no crisis. However, this doesn’t overturn something else we occasionally point out on AFOE, which is that whatever happens in Europe, the demographic transition is worldwide. Unlike my dear colleague, I personally think this is a damn good thing in the light of energy, environmental, and international security issues. I’d much rather be K-selected than r-selected.

The global trend is down, very sharply down. In all, 80 countries around the world, comprising almost half the Earth’s population, are now experiencing a birthrate that is below replacement….With a few exceptions like Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, Haiti and Guatemala, the countries still experiencing strong population growth are all in sub-Saharan Africa. Depending on its birthrate, the current 750 million are likely to become between 1.5 billion and 3 billion by the end of this century. And if European, Latin American and Arab birthrates continue to decline, then Islam as well as Christianity will be a predominantly African religion, with some outposts in Europe.

Which raises the question, what kind of Islam will that be? The rise of African Christianity has been a force for conservatism and fundamentalism in the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church; but the rise of African Islam looks likely to be a phenomenon of the city, what the Lounsbury calls the “Pious Middle” class. In this context it’s interesting to note that several African countries already have political parties that have adopted the language of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party; it’s not impossible that this Islamic Christian Democracy might find its niche in African cities.

Shifting Tectonic Plates

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The American continent is about to get its first high-speed train. Where?

Argentina.

Argentina on Tuesday signed a contract with a consortium led by Alstom of France to build the first high-speed train in the Americas, linking Buenos Aires with the cities of Rosario and Córdoba in three hours, nearly a fifth of the current journey time.

Patrick Kron, Alstom’s chairman and chief executive, said construction would start before the end of the year and last for four years. Alstom, which designed and built France’s TGV, Spain’s AVE and South Korea’s KTX, is providing the rolling stock, signalling and maintenance to the Veloxia consortium, which also includes Iecsa and Emepa of Argentina and Spain’s Isolux Corsan.

The total project, financed by French bank Natixis, will cost some $3.7bn and Argentina will issue 30-year debt. Alstom’s share of the project is worth around $1.7bn. The project is five to eight times cheaper than similar ones in France or Spain, Alstom says.

How long before Sarko shows up to offer them a nuclear power station? Alstom and Areva: two great French quasi-state industries that taste great together. And Argentine railway bonds – now there’s Edwardian for you…

Oh Dear Oh Dear

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The Georgians may have lost two more UAVs in the escalating crisis between them, Abkhazia, and Russia (in so far as the latter two are distinct). At least, the Abkhaz side is claiming that their “anti-aircraft forces” shot down two drones, presumably Georgian ones; the Georgians deny it, which is interesting because they were keen to publicise the last such incident. Back on the 20th of April, the Georgians lost another UAV to a MiG-29 fighter – subtext, to the Russians, as no-one seriously believes Abkhazia operates an independent air force and certainly not one equipped with modern fighters. (They claim to have some Czech-made L39 fighter/trainers.) You can see the video here, complete with MiG-29 and missile.

Shootings-down of aircraft are always overclaimed, so it’s possible that everyone is wrong. The Russians suggested that the video actually shows a “NATO MiG-29″ (which isn’t actually impossible – Germany has some left over from the DDR), but no-one is convinced. If today’s statement is true, one has to wonder what the Georgians are up to as well – the drones in question are rather expensive Israeli Elbit Hermes-450s, and Georgia has only a couple of dozen. If they are deliberately testing the other side or seeking a provocation, they must really mean it.