Tuesday, September 10, 2013
On Economic Freedom and the Environment
According to a recent study by the Cascade Policy Institute, countries (165 of them were analyzed) that scored higher in terms of economic freedom (as measured by the Heritage Economic Freedom score) not only had cleaner environments, they also did much better in terms of energy efficiency and carbon intensity (they specifically found that countries which intervened less in economic activities actually used less energy and produced fewer carbon emissions per unit of production)...................................................................................But we really kinda already knew this, right, the fact that East Germany was significantly more polluted than West Germany, the fact that North Korea is significantly more polluted than South Korea, the fact that countries like Indonesia with their burning of cow dung, charcoal, and palm oil are some of the worst polluters on the planet, etc.?.........................................................................................And neither does it take a MENSA grad to understand the reasons for this. In a free market system, competitive forces are constantly at work and the end result is that businesses are constantly being prodded to produce more with less and that one of the main mechanisms for this is the utilization of denser forms of energy. Of course these businesses also want to please their customers and for the most part consumers also demand that the products themselves be more energy efficient......................................................................................The moral of the story here? I would probably go with, think before you regulate.
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16 comments:
Come on, Will. At least get your facts straight. Since you mention burning, you must be talking about CO2 pollution. Let's look at the countries you mention. Germany (east and west are now combined. They come in at #7 in annual CO2 emissions, S Korea is #11, N Korea is #44 (oops, it is not worse than S Korea) and Indonesia is # 16. Certainly not the biggest polluters in the world. (source)
Wait. Since you talk about burning dung, charcoal, palm oil, maybe you are talking about per capita pollution. Per capita accounts for the population differences between the countries. On a per capita basis, S Korea comes in the highest at #25. (Oops, it is a bigger polluter than the North again), Germany is #38, N Korea is #110, and that country with all their shit burning (Indonesia) is #130. (source)
Maybe the moral of the story is check your facts!
CO2 is NOT a pollutant, Jerry. To say that it is is a bastardization of the term. AND I was talking about carbon emissions per unit of production. Obviously if a country isn't producing anything then it doesn't have an overall high level of CO2 emissions BUT they have DO shitty air because they have shitty filters (more particulate matter, more sulpher dioxide, more mercury, etc.) on their coal plants and are incredibly inefficient. As for the cow dung, etc., it burns in a far dirtier manner (it releases black carbon particles that end up in the ice in the Arctic and it is this that is probably causing the increases in the earth's surface temperatures, NOT CO2) than oil and natural gas. You didn't know that?
According to Kirk Smith, director of environmental health at Cal Berkeley, about 1/3rd of all black carbon emissions (i.e., the bad kind) come from inefficient cook stoves used in the developing world and that by switching to cleaner burning oil-based products such as propane and butane we could cut these emissions dramatically. Interesting, huh?
A little clarity would help instead of wild ass statements.
Oh, and as far as cleaning up the air goes -- when I moved to LA in the 70's, most days you could not see the mountains about 7 miles away. Now we can see them every day. Air regulations are the reason we can see them. Regulations cost money and that is why businesses are against them.
What are my wild-assed statements, Jerry? You think that developing countries have less pollution than we do? I suggest that you try living in an African village someday and try and breathe the air there sometime (or in an early America city when there was horse manure lining the streets and people were burning wood 24/7) . You're spoiled. We're all spoiled by the level of prosperity that free markets and inexpensive fossil fuels have given to us and you (or maybe not you but environmentalists) seem to think that we can somehow revert to some back to nature paradise that never existed. And I never said that there shouldn't be ANY regulations or that I wasn't in favor of a limited EPA (which, yes, did a lot of good early on but which is now trying to demonize one of the principle building blocks of life and engaging in overkill). That, my friend, was a total straw man.
We should not underestimate regulatory practice. A study by
Yale U and Harvard Business School
is full of charts, regressions and interpretations in that regard. So much so, that I just scanned a bit, finding tidbits such as the US is 25th in energy use/GDP (Bangladesh is 24th!), while their
Regulatory Regime Index is US 14th
and Bangladesh 68th. Based on their study, they conclude:
"..the countries that have the most aggressive environmental policy regimes also seem to be the most competitive and economically successful. We also find that a stringent environmental regime relative to income may speed up economic growth rather than detract from it."
I kinda think that there are some intervening variables here that would preclude anyone saying that an aggressive regulatory burden (which always disproportionately hampers smaller businesses) "speeds up economic growth".......I would also ask you to look at the carbon trajectory (and again, CO2 ISN'T a pollutant) of those countries that ratified Kyoto and the U.S. which didn't. We actually came closer to achieving the goals than they did!!
Jerry: I am willing to guess that LA with its population growth and more cars has not had its carbon footprint go down since the 1970s. Am I wrong?
If I am right, then harmless carbon has increased in LA while actual harmful pollutants HAVE been restricted. Thus, clear air.
Gauging a country's pollution levels strictly on CO2 emissions is ridiculous (Indonesia is the world's 130th worst polluter, for example, a nation that is rapidly cutting down their rainforest and putting massive amounts of particulate matter into the air and eventually into the arctic ice for a rapid absorption of heat). CO2 is what the world's vegetation relies upon for photosynthesis and humans would rapidly become extinct without it. And this whole notion that a tweaking of it from 27 thousandths of 1% to 39 thousandths of 1% is somehow something that we should be drastically altering the world's economy on is quite bizarre, I think.
You hit the nail on the head, dmarks. At one point the EPA actually DID focus an pollution and to everyone's betterment it would be if they returned to that.
Yes. Jerry's clear skies: the result of soaring carbon output, and reduction in real pollutants. I guess this is one we can agree on.
Yes, dmarks (or whatever you are calling yourself these days), I am glad we agree on the benefits of air regulations.
Common ground rocks.
We seem to agree on ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. A single tree can sequester up to 48 lbs of CO2 a year, yet the planet loses 20,000
square miles of forest each year.
Some curious HS kid could look up
the data on CO2 production from the
main sources, the average number of trees in an acre of forest, the total acreage of world forests, maybe throw in seawater CO2 absorption-work up a computer model and and enter the Science Fair. (Unless he is at a private
school which teaches creationism)
Will said: "You hit the nail on the head, dmarks. At one point the EPA actually DID focus an pollution and to everyone's betterment it would be if they returned to that."
Yes. Real pollutants, like mercury, sulfur, benzene, etc. The type of stuff that is getting ignored in the chase for harmless CO2.
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