Articles by Gar Lipow

Spoilsports don’t appreciate all the World Bank has done for them

Some of the world's poorest people seem to think carbon trading will destroy their way of life without actually contributing to solving global warming. The highly respected  Institute for Policy Studies seems to think so, too [PDF]. Very odd of them to take such a position. Because, after all, there are no alternatives to carbon trading.

Diverting war spending to green investments is both politically possible and neccesary

Is it possible to divert war spending into green investment? (David is skeptical.) The current military budget for fiscal year 2008 is around 650 billion dollars, not including supplemental requests, which so far have been made every year since the Iraq war started. That $700 billion-plus total compares to the around $400 billion of military spending in 2001. Given the current unpopularity of the Iraq war, would it really be politically impossible to gain public support for reducing our military budget back to pre-Operation Clusterf*ck levels? (I'd like to see much deeper cuts, but let's look a mere $300 billion reduction for the moment.)

Emission prices don’t reduce consumption sufficiently

Recently, I pointed out that emission prices do in fact get passed along to consumers. However, it's important to add that making low carbon alternatives cheaper won't by itself ensure that they are adopted.

My online book Cooling It! No Hair Shirt Solutions to Global Warming documents numerous profitable-but-overlooked energy-saving alternatives. Numerous other people have pointed out the same thing. The Rocky Mountain Institute produces megabytes of examples. Economists refer to the fact that profitable opportunities to save energy tend to be overlooked as "low demand elasticity." You can find out more about why this tends to occur in an annotated bibliography I put together, currently posted as a Word doc at the Carbon Tax center website.

Just to correct some ambiguities, this is not to say that an emissions price won't accomplish anything or is not needed - simply that it is not sufficient. That if we want the problem solved without absurdly high carbon prices, we need to use other policy tools, and not limit ourselves to putting a price on emission.

Social engineering can’t be avoided; why make it benefit only the rich?

There is passionate opposition in some circles to combining "social engineering" with fighting climate chaos. But the fact is, an emissions cut is social engineering. To cut emissions, we are trying to make some of the biggest changes in individual and social behavior ever. Putting 100 percent of that change on the backs of ordinary people by giving away emissions permits that are then sold and incorporated into the prices of consumer goods is also social engineering -- social engineering that transfers income and wealth from ordinary people to the wealthy.