This post from TokyoTom deplores the fact that (TT excepted) supporters of the Austrian School, and for that matter libertarians in general, are almost universally committed to delusional views on climate science. The obvious question is why. As TT points out, there are plenty of political opportunities to use climate change to attack subsidies and other existing interventions. And the fact that the environmental movement has shifted (mostly) from profound suspicion of markets to enthusiastic support for market-based policies such as carbon taxes and cap and trade seems like a big win. Most obviously, emissions trading relies on property rights and Austrians are supposed to like property rights.
On the other hand, given the near-universal rejection of mainstream climate science, we can draw one of only three conclusions
(a) Austrians/libertarians are characterized by delusional belief in their own intellectual superiority, to the point where they think they can produce an analysis of complex scientific problems superior to that of actual scientists, in their spare time and with limited or no scientific training in the relevant disciplines, reaching a startling degree of unanimity for self-described “sceptics”
(b) Austrians/libertarians don’t understand their own theory and falsely believe that, if mainstream climate science is right, their own views must be wrong
(c) Austrians/libertarians do understand their own theory and correctly believe that, if mainstream climate science is right, their own views must be wrong
While (a) clearly has some validity, most of the comments on climate science made here by self-described Austrians and libertarians suggest that either (b) or (c) is true. But which?
The problem is complicated (but also to some extent clarified) by the bewildering variety of Austrian/libertarian sects. Starting as far out on the spectrum as we can go, it seems clear that, if mainstream climate science is correct, neither anarcho-capitalism nor paleolibertarianism can be sustained. The problem with anarcho-capitalism and other views where property rights are supposed to emerge, and be defended, spontaneously, and without a state is obvious. If states do not create systems of rights to carbon emissions, the only alternatives are to do nothing, and let global ecosystems collapse, or to posit that every person on the planet has right to coerce any other person not to emit CO2 into the atmosphere. For paleolibertarians, the fact that property rights must be produced by a new global agreement, rather than being the inherited ‘peculiar institutions’ of particular societies seems equally problematic.
For more moderate libertarians, who accept in principle that property rights are derived from the state, I think the problem is more that the creation of a large new class of property rights brings them face to face with features of their model that are generally buried in a near-mythical past.
To start with, there’s the problem of justice in the original allocation. Until now, people developed countries have been appropriating the assimilative capacity of the atmosphere as if there was always “enough and as good” left over. Now that it’s obvious this isn’t true, we need to go back and start from scratch, and this process may involve offsetting compensation which effectively reassigns some existing property rights.
Then there is the problem that the emissions rights we are talking about are, typically time-limited and conditional. But if rights created now by modern states have this property, it seems reasonable to suppose that this has always been true, and therefore that existing property rights may also be subject to state claims of eminent domain.
Overall, though I, think that acceptance of the reality of climate change would be good for libertarianism as a political movement. It would kill off the most extreme and unappealing kinds of a priori logic-chopping, while promoting an appreciation of Hayekian arguments about the power of market mechanisms. And the very fact of uncertainty about climate change is a reminder of the fatality of conceits of perfect knowledge.
This seems to be the kind of thing Tokyo Tom is talking about. But so far, it seems as if he is in a minority of one. Any others want to join him?
Note While I’d be interested in comments from libertarians on whether they think mainstream climate science is consistent with their views, comments repeating delusionist talking points will be deleted or ruthlessly edited.
John Quiggin 
I am a libertarian who accepts the consensus view of the fact, the causes and likely outcomes of climate change.
I believe that you are trying, on very thin reasoning, to link two views that you dislike.
As I have remarked earlier, this is not worthy of a scholar of your reputation.
@Ken N
Ken, I’m glad that you are a counterexample to my general claim. But, if you think the link is “thin”, why don’t you point me to a significant libertarian or Austrian thinktank or organization that accepts mainstream climate science.
To be a little more pointed, if you’re the same Ken N who posts at Catallaxy, how many of your co-bloggers there accept mainstream science?
Sientific data is not required to refute the hypothesis that global warming is caused by human activity. A very simple example of reductio ad absurdum is enough.
Let us assume, for the sake of the argument, the hypotheses that global warming is caused by human activity and is dangerous. Then the only response capable of reducing the risk is global collective action at a government level. Global collective action at a government level is a problem, and can never be the solution to a problem. Therefore, the initial hypothesis must be absurd.
@Alan, nice Poe!
It’s often pointed out (possibly by Prof Q, I forget) that the origin of the State is not really explained in Austrian/Libertarian theory; it just turns up and starts oppressing people with taxes.
If Austrians could accept that the “spontaneous order” generated by individual interactions could include the formation of social organisations with the power to resolve prisoners dilemma or tragedy of the commons situations, their theory would be a lot richer; but of course it would then lose a lot of political force. A bit like Marxists who don’t fully subscribing to the labour theory of value or the falling rate of profit.
Umm …
Hypothesis: “Austrians/libertarians are characterized by delusional belief in their own intellectual superiority”
Observation: Alan says problem has no solution so problem doesn’t make sense
Conclusion: Hypothesis is looking good
@Alan
Unless you are speaking tongue-in-cheek — and this seems a persuasive inference …
I’m laughing …
What the? “…near-universal rejection of mainstream climate science…”???? References PLEASE? ALL libertarians? ALL Austrians?
Delusionist nonsense, and more ALL CAPS ranting deleted – JQ
More rants deleted
You’re blocked for 24 hours, ABOM
Professor Quiggin says: “Austrians are supposed to like property rights.”
They don’t like intellectual property rights, though, as far as I can tell. Sheldon Richman, a Misesian, seems rather obsessed with the alleged dangers that IP rights, if they continue, might pose to … well, to him and other Misesians:
http://blog.mises.org/archives/010127.asp
Very similar to a post JQ presented a while ago claiming that if you were a climate sceptic then you believed smoking didn’t cause cancer and also believed in evolution.When in fact there are eight possibilities!
@ABOM
I suppose since global warming is a HYPOTHESIS — just like EVOLUTION — then we can turn to GOD to stop the oil leak? Or maybe we can patch up the leak, and the climate, with a few ECONOMIC hypotheses …
chrisl Says:
I don’t think you got this bit quite right. Maybe if you wrote some of it in ALL CAPS it would be more convincing.
A couple of years ago when the Global Warming Swindle propaganda movie came out, John Humphreys had a post about the movie on the Thoughts on Freedom blog. I pointed out an example of where the GGWS fabricated data to support their case and pointed out that if AGW skeptics didn’t want to look like creationists they should dissociate themselves from that piece of junk.
I thought that not supporting fabrication of data would be a no-brainer; the Libertarian response that I received was pathetic. John Humphreys suggested that I was overstating the problem. I got the usual torrent of abuse and rubbish from quite a few Libs (including David Leyonhjelm – who is a significant figure in the LDP). It took about 40 posts for a Lib to suggest that fabricating data is, in fact, bad.
@Ken Miles
My own suspicion is that the right of centre willingness to go the delusional road on this issue reflects what they take to be the consequence of accepting the science — more state-based intervention. As this is political anathema but hard to resist if one accepts the consensus, the temptation is to attempt to derogate the science, precisely so one can continue to avow the cultural shibboleth of minimal governance.
One can see here a parallel with Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection. The theory is of course, robust, but with minimal dumbing down it can be (and was) adduced in favour of eugenics programs and informed the Nazi-state’s policies. Religionists also opposed it because it struck at the Biblical account of creation which was an existential matter for them.
SJ You got me there…. of course I meant creation
Like I’ve been saying for a while, as soon as you can safely and surely disengage “Global Warming: The Science” from “Global Warming: The Crazy Moonbat Anti-Industrial Cult”, you might win a bit more trust from these pesky libertarians. As the recent vituperation heaped upon Levitt has shown (for something that is simply not a big deal in my opinion), the matter has taken on a religious fervour that any rational person should find disturbing.
I can remember posting a while back with a list of notable libertarians (of whom Ron Paul was one, somewhat surprisingly) who accepted that global warming was a serious problem that required some action. It’s nice that JQ mentions the slashing of subsidies and other interventions – but strangely the debate only seems to revolve around new taxes, most likely so that the socialists who have hijacked the environmentalist movement can fund their ever expanding social programs.
Many also tend to doubt that government intervention in the matter is going to produce a good outcome, which is more or less my view. Why libertarians should have to accept plans that offer no promise of resulting in significant gains in the fight against climate change is beyond me – I’d hardly call it delusionism.
Fran,
It need not mean more intervention. There are plenty of areas where intervention could be backed off in a way that would produce net gains all round and even produce net benefits in reduction of CO2.
There probably has been an element of reflexive response here. I think this is hardly a surprise after the decades of the increased taxes and regulation that were meant to solve many, if not most of our ills. It was certainly my first reaction.
@Andrew Reynolds
When I saw the title of this thread I laughed. I knew Andy and Sea Bass would turn up (with his three word cliches) -and ABOMs been thrown in the klink!
This time Sea Bass has excelled himself with …the following gem
“socialists who hijacked the environment movement”…
I think you mean scientists Sea Bass. Real scientists. I dont know who hijacked your mind Sea Bass but its pretty far gone.
@jquiggin
“…if you think the link is “thin”, why don’t you point me to a significant libertarian or Austrian thinktank or organization that accepts mainstream climate science.”
No, JQ, you are the one making the sweeping statement which, because of its generality, requires a large amount of evidence.
“To be a little more pointed, if you’re the same Ken N who posts at Catallaxy, how many of your co-bloggers there accept mainstream science?”
I am, and have no idea. I do not know any of them personally and know almost nothing of their views on AGW. I am really not very interested in the subject, which has long ago become a political and not a scientific one. My entry into this discussion was because I dislike broad condemnations of people because of a particular view they have on one subject.
I would react the same way to a suggestion that all social democrats are just interested in ruling other people’s lives. Some are, but it is not a universal proposition.
I just don’t think that global warming is going to have negative consequences on the economy.
Sure, some areas will see some negatives from this, but much of the earth is extremely cold. Siberia could see a real boon from global warming.
” If states do not create systems of rights to carbon emissions, the only alternatives are to do nothing,”
This is not true. If carbon emissions cause global warming, then we could say that carbon emissions are an act of agression which floods my beach front property in Florida. So I have the right to seek redress, just as I have the right to seek redress if you drop a bomb on my beachfront property.
On the other hand, the pro-global warming aliance that might arise in an ancap society, made up of Siberian property owners, might be happy to pay the restitution for me.
Thats how you know its an ideology not individual opinions – (ALS – variety). Just say some key words “government” “regulation” “climate change” and they act in unison.
They talk the talk of individual freedom but when it comes to ideas most in catallyx walk the walk of “groupthink”. Woe betide you if you even so much as suggest the government should legislate on anything!
PLus there are very few women in there (Catallyx). Its just an observation ive made, but there could be something behind it. Over to the sociologists on that one…
Maybe it’s a case of an apparent correlation being caused by a third variable: do libertarians perhaps tend to be rather old?
Yes Fran, I said in tongue-in-cheek fashion what you said plainly. I have dropped even more ridiculous nonsense into discussions at Marohasy and Joanne Nova. I soon found that I could not plumb the depths: they swallowed every bit of nonsense I posted, provided I appended “which disproves global warming.”
The coal and oil industries have enough money and the libertarians have enough political clout to ensure that the world will keep burning their products until there is none left.
I am carbon neutral in my life. I have done my bit (not that it was difficult) so now I am going to move somewhere that has a reasonable chance to survive with a civil society intact.
@Andrew Reynolds
Care to cite some? I’m also troubled by your use of the word, even. If it doesn’t produce very substantial, early and ubiquitous declines in emission of CO2e then the program serves little useful purpose.
Thanks for the acknowledgement, though it’s hard to avoid concluding that this, along with the broader questions of lifestyle and entitlement were/are the driving force behind the efforts of the filth merchant footsoldiers. if you’re 50 and think of retirement as the metaphoric version of sipping pina coladas in Acapulco, the idea of someone slappuing the drink from your hand to benefit people you don’t care about in Africa or Bangladesh and in the future after you’ve died probably doesn’t sound so good. You have a material and existential investment in disbelieving the science.
Since rightwingers care about themselves in particualr and not much at all about those parts of humanity outside their narrow circle of people and tend to be leary about cultural difference in general, it’s not surprising that an idea that speaks of global collaboration to protect humans in places they can’t find on a map and may never have heard of has near zero appeal, and will ensure that a disproportionate share of the critics of mitigation will be conservatives, libertarians of the US kind and reactionaries in general.
It’s hard to imagine Inhofe getting up to take a position on the standing of String theory or how the Egyptians built the pyramids, or Black Sea Deluge Theory even though there is scientific debate on these things because really, these don’t touch actual policy. Nobody’s lifestyle is affected and no asset values are impinged upon. The opponents of mitigation use scientific palaver because they have to if they are to stymie policy, rather than because they are fascinated by intellectual rectitude. Luntz recognised that years ago.
And there you go.
The fact that almost every climate scientist believes in global warming is irrelevent…
but the fact that all these dreadlocked, vegan, anti-capitalist hippies also believe in global warming is more than enough reason for the average logic-challenged Austrian to reject the science!
Fran,
Good to see the cardboard cut out view you have of your fellow humans is still there. Why not throw a few more rocks at it? Perhaps I can retaliate by blaming you for all of the monstrosities committed by your fellow left wingers over the last century and we can have a really productive discussion.
@Crispin Bennett
Monbiot has about half the story right, and ironically it’s the only part of the story that many ?sceptics? also have right. Climate change qua ideology has completely swamped climate change qua scientific theory. Whereas scientific theory can be falsifiable by peer review, ideology is stubbornly resistant to change my any means.
My hunch is that the overwhelming majority those who were sceptics in the correct sense of the word have by now been convinced that the weight of scientific evidence supports the reality of AGW. Those who remain will not be converted by any amount of evidence.
Rather, those who would wish to change the position of others should be looking at psychology, in particular at creating an honourable path from one position to the other.
“To be a little more pointed, if you’re the same Ken N who posts at Catallaxy, how many of your co-bloggers there accept mainstream science?”
Me.
“why don’t you point me to a significant libertarian or Austrian thinktank or organization that accepts mainstream climate science.”
Sadly, I can think of none.
Sorry, I’m not a co-blogger, I’m a Catallaxy regular and a libertarian.
It’s because they weren’t wrong about socialism, they were right about the Soviet Union, therefore they aren’t wrong about anything else they accidentally happen to form a belief about before they have thought about it too much, i.e. if they see someone they perceive as a greeniesocialistbleedingheartloser going on about something then it’s bound to be wrong because they have filtered what’s been said by relying on previous successes. I.E they are committing the error of fighting the current battle with solutions learned in the last war. And anyway, they don’t like dreadlocks so it must be wrong. QED.
There’s no common thread to these cultural associations, they are arbitrary. In another age the same types might rage against socialist eugenics because they don’t like moustaches or something, not because the racial theories are bogus. There’s no real explaining it, one can only describe it.
@gerard
I know that you’re being sarcastic, but I would imagine that these dreadlocked, vegan, anti-capitalist hippies (and their variants) don’t really care much about the science either, or have not done their own research. They just relish the opportunity to prance around in polar bear suits like a bunch of morons, causing disruption and basking in their own smug sense of moral self-satisfaction.
I don’t think continually speculating about the roots and links of the illogic of libertarians and anti-science delusionists serves any purpose at all. The resultant discussions generate heat but no light. Once people are heavily comitted to an illogical belief system they are immune to any empirical and logical argument.
It’s better to limit oneself to arguing and discussing amongst those who are actually committed to empiricism and logical analysis… and to better educating the next generation to understand the difference between knowledge and belief.
Let this apparent Austrian sect of one say I think John raises some valid criticisms of ‘the movement’ in general and some shortcomings I’ve been aware of for some time. The notion of AGW, if true, has highlighted those shortcomings and perhaps therein lies a natural antipathy or skepticism of the notion altogether. Personally I’m agnostic about AGW, but can still appreciate the challenge to some theoretical underpinnings it presents if it turns out to be true, current decadal cooling aside. Simply problems like peak oil and general environmental degradation can see some uncomfortable tradeoffs arise between the tragedy of the commons vis a vis the tragedy of the many privates. Having recognised that, I’m unconvinced by the headlong rush by the usual suspects to impose their particular quant preferences on us all( the divine whims of elected kings). In that I’m not prepared to ditch the infinite variability and smoothness of price for whimsical and lumpy quantitative diktats. The former works relentlessly and continuously every minute of every hour of the day when the latter has flexed off, is sleeping or on long service leave.
What price (or set of prices) I hear you say? Well firstly the price that acknowledges the fundamental right (in a Rawlsian sense) that all men are created equal and as such should face a level playing on price. ie not because some whimsical quant on LSL suddenly decided it would be a green, morally uplifting idea if because I was a good boy and saved my pennies and could afford to jump the financial hurdle of $20k+ solar feed in system, I’d get $1.5k of freshly created REC for the needy folk at Goldman Sachs to trade, an $8k handout and you all get to subsidise my excess power output to the tune of 44c/kw/hr. I don’t think Rawls had exactly that in mind somehow. If Mises and Hayek weren’t also suitably enamoured, they certainly had some deep skepticism about undeserved private property rights being created with the printing press as we well know. They had every right to be looking back at the GFC and all that funny money creation. In a $50trill world economy nowadays, around $543trill of derivatives and futures gets traded annually. No prizes for guessing who gets to enjoy a large slice of that if they’re too big to fail at doing what quants do best. Fresh with bailout property rights, every employee at Goldman Sachs from the CEO to janitor earned over half a mill dollars in the last 9 months trading the usual. To that the quants now want to add carbon credit to the mix. You know, where the green froggy company comes round and changes your light bulbs and shower heads, does some quick average sums and nicks off with the credit you created forever more. Never mind if a week later you fill the place with downlights and change the shower heads back or simply sit under the shower twice as long. One must respect quant whimsy, private property rights and give credit where credit is due.
My general conclusions? Austrians are right about money and credit creation and ‘level playing field price’ and by inference whimsical subsidy. What they haven’t got and JQ rightly critiques, is the true meaning of the level playing field in a Rawlsian sense. It comes with a couple of sensible caveats. It’s true that the vast majority of us should face a level playing field on price and by inference marginal taxation(particularly EMTRs), but it needs to be a carefully constituted one and that involves the acknowledgement of the State’s role in achieving that, as well as the Rawlsian treatment for the upper and lower ends of the spectrum. That’s essentially the third way. Level playing field for the vast majority, income support for those at the bottom and an annual nett wealth tax for those at the top that have enjoyed much of the benefits of the State, albeit a sensible letout for the last should they hold it in trust for current and future generations. The overall design of that constitutional marketplace should address current shortcomings, in particular the lack of countervailing market power for our natural environment. On several major counts carbon credit creation and trading does nothing for me in this regard. Quite the contrary and hence that broader Austrian skepticism seems entirely justified. For the quants AGW appears to me to be their gotcha moment on the underlying environmental problem, but in their haste to revel in some personal defining moment, are oblivious to any critique of what they’re proposing. The evidence of that is all about them but I fear in their rush of blood, they’re about to betray very the principles and people they purport to stand for. In that they need to understand the rise of what I’d label as the moral badge wearing ‘Graduarts’ classes and their increasing ability to claw back and override any past progressivity in income taxation/benefits and become the new rent seekers extraordinaire. I’m an Austrian skeptic in that regard and believe there’s a third way.
@Avid You’re dead right on the need for consideration of psychology (I would say mass psychology). Most people who produce all the talk about this stuff are geeks of one stripe or another, and therefore don’t understand how tiny a part ‘evidence’ really plays in creating opinion at a large scale.
I’m not so sure about the ‘honourable path’ (though I like the phrase). The people who need convincing (the population at large) rarely feel much need for consistency. Moment-to-moment incoherence is the norm, as is well-enough understood by commercial and political campaign people.
Unfortunately the ideology that is the biggest danger to action on AGW isn’t denialism but consumerism. And more is spent on generating consumer desires (and, maybe more importantly, fears) than is ever going to be available to persuade on AGW.
As far as I know, most of the regulars at catallaxy & thoughts on freedom accept that humans are probably contributing to global warming. That includes Jason Soon, TerjeP, JC & myself to start with. But these witch-hunts are a bit silly.
I’d prefer to respond to the continuing confusion about what libertarians believe. I find it strange that libertarian ideas can be so easily dismissed by people who proudly don’t understand them. Rational ignorance I understand; but that should lead to indifference, not mocking contempt.
To be clear, libertarians don’t believe something is good just because you add the words “property rights”. If you changed the name of “Medicare” to “the Medicare property right”, libertarians wouldn’t suddenly like it. Fiat property rights, like IPR or carbon permits, violate pre-existing physical property rights. They might be justified on other grounds, but let’s not pretend they are inherently libertarian.
Second, it is not true that the alternative to government action is no action. Libertarians are not going to stand completely still for the rest of their lives or refuse to deal with other humans. The alternative to involuntary coordination of humans is voluntary coordination of humans. Voluntary coordination will not be perfect… but then, nothing is. Some libertarians would prefer to live with voluntary mistakes rather than trust that the involuntary outcome will be better (the an-caps, mises types, objectivists & other radicals) while others will suspend their voluntary preference in some instances when the consequences are dire enough.
But that distinction aside, it is difficult to progress any discussion if the starting dichotomy is between “government” and “give-up”. With that choice, it’s no wonder that many people look straight to government to run our lives. But that isn’t the real choice.
@Fran Barlow
“Care to cite some? I’m also troubled by your use of the word, even. If it doesn’t produce very substantial, early and ubiquitous declines in emission of CO2e then the program serves little useful purpose.”
The link from TokyoTom that JQ included in the main post list several such measures. Of course, given that nearly all of them involved cutbacks in your Beloved Government, I wouldn’t be surprised if you just ignored them. Similarly, what evidence do you have that all these Kyoto Protocols and ETS’s will have any discernible effect? Most of them seem to involved miniscule reductions in temperature over the next 100 years, something in the order of a fraction of one degree celsius. The only advantage is that it is hoped they will spur investment in better technology – but why you should need more taxes and wealth redistribution to accomplish that goal is a mystery.
“Since rightwingers care about themselves in particualr and not much at all about those parts of humanity outside their narrow circle of people…”
*Facepalm*
(Now I know exactly the type of person with whom I am dealing) Libertarians are not rightwing, and the notion that the left has some monopoly on compassion is simply absurd. Wanting more government programs (funded by other people’s money) does not make you a better person. Sure some “rightwingers” are selfish, but a lot of people are. And although a lot of lefties talk the talk, when it comes to walking the walk a lot of them can’t keep up.
Meika has hit the nail on the head;
“There’s no common thread to these cultural associations, they are arbitrary. … There’s no real explaining it, one can only describe it.”
In summary;
(A) There are no clear links.
(B) The resultant discussions generate nothing of value.
It is too easy to fall into simple fallacies about cause when entertaining such questions as;
“Why are libertarians almost universally committed to delusional views on climate science?”
I would argue (perhaps rather radically) that “cause” does not exist except as a linguistic and logical shorthand. We perhaps would do better to look for correlations and then for “laws” in the sense that physics has discovered (seemingly) universal laws. Such laws link phenomena in mathetically precise ways or at least in statistical patterns.
Without going to far into it, the first plank or two of my argument against “cause” singular would be to do with the fallacy of the single cause and the “fallacy of independence from universal interconnectedness”.
Maybe someone needs to sociologically analyse the frequency of correlation of such beliefs and views. (Perhaps it’s been done. Anyone know any studies?) Then we can indeed at least see better descriptions of such phenomena as Meika suggests.
Crispin Bennett is also spot on when he says “Unfortunately the ideology that is the biggest danger to action on AGW isn’t denialism but consumerism. And more is spent on generating consumer desires (and, maybe more importantly, fears) than is ever going to be available to persuade on AGW.”
I may now be playing semantics to cover my quasi-philosophical ass, but I would say that whilst consumersim may not be the single cause of AGW it is surely heavily correlated with it; as in population times consumption of carbon generated energy per head.
@Ken Miles In the post that launched that “swindle” discussion, I said there were problems with the film, and I said that I thought they over-stated their case. When you mentioned one of the problems, I agreed it was concerning… but made the point that it is wrong to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because Al Gore made mistakes in his film, that doesn’t mean everything he said was wrong. My responses to you were always polite.
The science isn’t the same as the scare.
Some people who accept the science then (wrongly) go on to accept the scare, and accuse non-scared people of being creationist delusionist larouchiate truthers.
Some people who reject the scare then (wrongly) go on to reject the science, and accuse the believers of being hippy, anti-capitalist, fear-mongering troglodytes.
There are denialists, and there are alarmists… but the trick of saying “believer = alarmist, therefore wrong” or “skeptic = denialists, therefore wrong” is inappropriate and seemingly designed only for the purpose of insults or preventing discussion.
@Sea-bass
I had read the link data but none of the measures proposed by TT would have any significant impact on CO2 emissions. Indeed, arguably, they might make them greater. The stuff about driving newer technology was vague and no clear vehicle for doing this was specified. It was mere handwaving.
You favour trade in labour power and capitalist property relations as sacrosanct rather than as some temporary circumstance imposed by backwardness. You favour measures that would leave working people less able to resist the value of their labour power being driven down. What other category than right wing would you like to be in?
You don’t get my support debauching the language.
What we have is the idea that our fellow human beings demand our concern because they are human. Rejecting as you do, the idea of equitable collaboration, your view of the value of other human beings reflects their capacity to be articles of trade or their control of property, which unlike humans, you do respect, after a fashion.
other people’s money … sheesh … laughing …
The “money” is the property of working humanity, whose socially valuable work made it possible. That substantial parts of it were misappropriated before becoming state revenue changes its status entirely. It’s amusing how your dogmatic and fundamentalist attachment to property has enabled this fantasy.
@Andrew Reynolds
You could, but you’d be wrong and misdirecting, in part because the standing as leftists of the people you allude to is extremely weak.
Well said, and not said often enough. I know many libertarians will deny that they think our particular institution of private property is a natural kind. Maybe it’s just a fetish. Either way, the obsession reeks of superstition.
I can think of a few prominent left libertarians who accept the science and talk about libertarian responses to it: Kevin Carson and Dean Baker spring to mind (I predict at least one response claiming that left libertarianism is an oxymoron).
@Sea-bass
An Austrian telling other people off for basking in smug moral self-satisfaction… it’s just too delicious.
“in part because the standing as leftists of the people you allude to is extremely weak.”
Yet a few shared policies between libertarians and the right wing isn’t a weak correlation?
Right and left are inadequate labels. One is either more or less liberal/illiberal, and you need at least two axes on which to judge a political position.
I’ve just been reading http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/11/03/myefo-figures-reveal-policy-disaster-that-is-cprs/ and it strikes me that all the name-calling above is pretty futile if the the Crikey argument is correct and the ETS really is a way of handing taxpayers’ money to the carbon-based industries without getting any real reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Do right vs left and palaeolibertarians vs clear-headed Swiss economists shed any light on anything?
@James
Until the latter 1980s, it hadn’t occurred to me that being a libertarian and not a leftist was possible.
I don’t think the economic explains the arbitrary connections in culture. (Black Sea Deluge: Contrarians have no opinion on it because it does not impinge on their pocketbooks) It may explain how clubs and football codes compete, and succeed and fail but it does not explain why when one boy picks up the ball and runs with it in the first place. Nor even why others think it’s cool and decide not to be contrary and follow him.
Of course once they do follow it’s become more and more economic in impact.
To be contrary is to be just as human, as it to bleat together like sheep about the flooding rains, and the price of fish. But the contrariness per se is not explain by economic factors. Proximate, not ultimate. I suppose the relation between these tensions give us history, fashion, personality, stories, reasons, wants and purposes which soon enough become the sand around Ozymandias’ feet. Or water over our heads.
“And the fact that the environmental movement has shifted (mostly) from profound suspicion of markets to enthusiastic support for market-based policies such as carbon taxes and cap and trade seems like a big win. Most obviously, emissions trading relies on property rights and Austrians are supposed to like property rights.”
There, I am afraid, they have a serious point, because that “market based” and “property rights” thing is the dead parrot version, beautiful plumage and all. It forgets the dying bird. To destroy free operation and substitute a set of similar transactions on state artefacts, using legal fictions and derivatives as a substitute for independently existing real things with profit driven incentives on those rather than true free market operations, is no more a boost for or compromise with their principles than a Fascist corporate state is an outworking of free markets. “[P]roperty rights are derived from the state” is a contradiction in terms, visible once you analyse the two concepts; at most a state can protect and assist property, but it cannot be the fons et origo as – by definition – property is the extension of the self. As libertarians point out, the US constitution cannot be the source of the rights it purports to protect but at best their guarantee, and the same applies here. And see John Humphreys’s comment.
‘Until now, people developed countries have been appropriating the assimilative capacity of the atmosphere as if there was always “enough and as good” left over. Now that it’s obvious this isn’t true, we need to go back and start from scratch…’
Stipulating the first for the moment for the sake of argument, the second is a non sequitur. All that would follow is, merely going back to the point where “enough and as good” ceased to apply.
“Then there is the problem that the emissions rights we are talking about are, typically time-limited and conditional. But if rights created now by modern states have this property, it seems reasonable to suppose that this has always been true, and therefore that existing property rights may also be subject to state claims of eminent domain.”
That is best read as a reductio ad absurdum: things like that, with reservations of that sort on them, are not property at all but mere licensed favours (see above for what property intrinsically must be). An Indian giver makes no gift. The whole attitude behind those quoted sentences is deeply embedded as a basis or justification in Social Democracy, so called, yet it begs the very questions involved. There is a great emptiness in that attitude (a phrase known to Roman Catholic theology, and apt here).
Apart from a little scepticism (in the true sense, in that I believe there are some real problems but that we truly do not yet have a sufficient grip on them and that there are likely to be other, more specific, suitable solutions we cannot find until then), I suppose that a true free market would indeed find its way there as a result of true costs of fossil fuel resources rising with peak coal and oil, and as a result of other technologies like better nuclear coming in (e.g. thorium breeder reactors – though I am coming to the view that their technical problems with neutron economy etc. are still high, and may need fast/slow breeding using beryllium as a neutron multiplier, which only works with fast neutrons to get more slow ones). As for specifically reducing atmospheric carbon, none of the above games with economic structures would drive any of the possible technical methods for that – a saving is not a gain but only buying time for other approaches, and, as my father used to say, “we will never get rich taking in each other’s washing”. At present the only technically practical methods involve making and sequestering charcoal from renewable sources (i.e., using nitrogen fixing plants rather than fossil fuel driven artificial fertiliser to make up nutrient losses), as in Terra Preta/biochar. The only economic mechanism to get there is, one way or another, directly or indirectly and embedded, to buy the bloody stuff – and that means funding the buying at some level, even if that is folded into the costs of mandates. So the whole present exercise is just manufacturing rent seeking opportunities under the facade of property and market operations, and futile for the purported public purposes to boot.
Oh, and per James’s comment, I also follow Kevin Carson’s stuff and have posted there.
@Jarrah
Those few that you share are the definition for the class: right wing. That’s not the same as saying that all rightwingers are the same. Some like your kind take a more liberal view on at least some matters of social policy — views I’d certainly share in almost all, if not all cases.
But whether one is a leftist or rightist doesn’t really take serious account of questions surrounding how one deals with matters of lifestyle, though it would be illogical and utterly antithetic to macro policy for a leftist to be, for example, hostile to the rights of homosexuals or in favour of moralistic drug laws, whereas these things sit quite comfortably in the rightist view of the world.
What defines a leftist is his or her attitude to the question of empowering working people. A “leftist” who lacks a coherent vehicle to support that end, or even worse, strikes at that vehicle, is no leftist at all, whatever rhetorical appeals he or she might make or names he or she might adopt.
Names are not nothing, and the fact that one calls onesself “socialist” or “liberal” or “democratic” may give a clue to one’s sentiment, but that clue may be misleading. In Australia, we have a Liberal party that is really a conservative party. We have a Labor party that has very little to do with labor and which presents itself as the best vehicle for protecting the interests of the propertied elite against working class claims. We have a “National” party that is about rural porkbarrelling and which is also conservative.
The second “s” in USSR stood for “socialist” but of course there was nothing like workers rule there. Stalin called his party “communist” but of course he suppressed it (the Comintern) internationally in 1943 as an obstacle in the fight against Nazism, showing that the party was a mere figleaf for his own interests a sham organisation.
The “s” in NSDAP also stood for the same thing and that was at least equally implausible as they had smashed the workers movement and were ruling in concert with the big German industrialists. The “D” in GDR for Democratic by which we understand “Stalinist” as it also is in every other Stalinist state using the term (along with “people’s”).
It’s what you do and with which people you can work and to what ends that define one’s political character.