<div dir="ltr"><div>Regarding California's "Green" status, professor Rachael Salcido, of the McGeorge School of Law, gave a fascinating presentation Nov. 3 this year at the U of I Law School, discussing California's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:</div><div>"Government Structuring in the Face of Climate Change" </div><div><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1779738952314203/">https://www.facebook.com/events/1779738952314203/</a></div><div><br></div><div>I was lucky to have a brief conservation, after her presentation, with professor Salcido, regarding carbon fee and dividend approach to addressing global warming, leaving the marketplace to sort out the problem, as opposed to a more regulatory "command and control" approach.</div><div><br></div><div>I mentioned to professor Salcido the Niskanen Center libertarian approach to global warming, which surprisingly does not fall under the denialist or "do not worry it's exaggerated" spin.</div><div><br></div><div>It's a breath of fresh ideological air to discover a thoughtful libertarian who does not deny the overwhelming scientific evidence that global warming is occurring primarily caused by human activity, and suggests an economically conservative approach to address the problem. Read below:</div><div>---------------------------------------</div><div>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarian-principles-climate-change/">https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarian-principles-climate-change/</a></div><div><br></div><div><span class="gmail-date">April 6, 2015</span> </div><h1>Libertarian Principles & Climate Change</h1><p></p><hr><span class="gmail-byline">by Jerry Taylor</span><span class="gmail-byline"><br></span><div><p>Most libertarians who engage in the global warming debate contend—vehemently—that anything short of “just saying no” to mainstream science and public policy to address climate risk is a gross violation of nearly every principle libertarians hold dear. An examination of the arguments forwarded by anti-warming libertarians, however, finds no trace of libertarian principle at all. While it’s perfectly fine for libertarians—or anyone else for that matter—to discuss climate change without reference to an ideological playbook, there is nothing within libertarian philosophy that adds weight to the Right’s reluctance to address climate risks. Let’s consider the arguments my libertarian friends are wont to offer in this debate.</p><p><strong>The science does not justify addressing climate risks.</strong> It should go without saying that how one feels about individual rights and liberties has nothing to do with how one interprets the scientific literature regarding atmospheric physics. Consider <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2015/04/03/what-evidence-would-persuade-you-that-ma/" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">a summary of the evidence</font></a> for concern about warming from <em>Reason’s</em> science correspondent, Ronald Bailey (one of the few DC libertarians who takes climate change seriously), and presumably <a href="http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/db079461-fa1e-4567-a03e-9c63c4733ea0/epw-letter-to-mccarthy-over-inaccuracy-of-climate-models.pdf" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">the best summary</font></a> conservative Republicans in the Senate can muster for skepticism about the same (a summary no doubt drawing in part from information offered up by libertarian activists who disagree with Bailey). As my friend Sheldon Richman has argued, <a href="http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/06/12/11/fffoundation.htm" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">how does a commitment to liberty inform how one feels about who has the stronger argument</font></a>?</p><p>Libertarians are free to referee the scientific debate in any manner they wish. They are not free, however, to argue that ideological priors should have anything to do with that call. The fact that the implications of climate change are politically uncomfortable should not color how libertarians assess the underlying science (a trait, historically speaking, <a href="http://niskanencenter.org/blog/where-does-hostility-to-science-come-from/" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">more common amongst conservatives than libertarians</font></a>).</p><p><strong>Restricting greenhouse gas emissions will harm the economy and put tens of thousands of jobs at risk.</strong> Why would libertarian principle compel us to care? If party A is harming party B, the fact that party A will be poorer were they to cease and desist should be neither here nor there. This argument would not resonate with libertarians in other contexts, <a href="http://law.case.edu/faculty/adler_jonathan/publications/adler_climateproperty.pdf" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">so why should it resonate here?</font></a></p><p><strong>Mitigating climate risks will produce fewer benefits than costs.</strong> Since when did libertarian principles dictate embracing utilitarian calculations in the course of deciding whether to protect property rights? If party A is harming party B, the contention that A gains more than B loses in the course of that transgression should not encourage libertarians to green-light rights violations.</p><p><strong>Restricting greenhouse gas emissions will increase the size of government</strong>. According to libertarians, the purpose of government is to protect rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. If greenhouse gas emissions infringe on those considerations (as they most assuredly do if the scientific consensus regarding climate change is correct), libertarian principles demand that government should act to enjoin those rights violations.</p><p><strong>Future generations will be far wealthier and better positioned than we are to address climate change.</strong> If present generations are imposing costs on future generations, then this is an exercise in transferring wealth from the (relatively) rich people of the future to the (relatively) poor people of today. <a href="http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regulation/2004/4/v27n1-4.pdf" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">Why should libertarians embrace those wealth transfers</font></a> when they are found to be objectionable in other contexts?</p><p><strong>Environmentalists are trying to shut-down capitalism by controlling energy markets.</strong> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/This-Changes-Everything-Capitalism-Climate/dp/1451697384/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428153004&sr=8-1&keywords=naomi+klein" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">To whatever extent this is true</font></a>, it is neither here nor there lest libertarians wish to make <a href="http://skepdic.com/adhominem.html" target="_blank"><em><font color="#000080">ad hominem</font></em></a> argumentation a matter of ideological principle. The underlying motives of <em>some</em> environmentalists in the climate debate have nothing to do with whether climate change is happening, whether it is caused by industrial emissions, or whether it is imposing significant harm or the risk of significant harm. Period.</p><p><strong>It is unclear who has property rights in the atmosphere so there is no point in talking about rights violations associated with climate change.</strong> This is a sophisticated dodge but one that takes us down a rabbit hole. Are we to seriously entertain the idea that manufacturers “homesteaded” rights to the atmosphere during the industrial revolution? That would <a href="http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2006/11/cj26n3-3.pdf" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">seem to run into John Locke’s admonition</font></a> to “leave enough and as good for others when taking from the common.” If producers don’t have property rights to the atmosphere, that means they are either held by individuals or by the state. Given that it is <a href="http://www.criticalreview.com/crf/jf/6%202_3_politics%20or%20scholarship.pdf" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">impossible to imagine the former</font></a> (at least, in any functioning manner), that leaves us with the latter. Accordingly, where exactly in libertarian philosophy is it written that it’s OK to destroy private property or put lives at risk as long as it’s done through the vehicle of the public commons?</p><p>I don’t mean to argue that libertarians should be taken to task for forwarding arguments outside of their ideological hymnals. One could make a strong argument, after all, that libertarians have little to offer to the environmental debate <a href="http://www.criticalreview.com/crf/jf/6%202_3_politics%20or%20scholarship.pdf" target="_blank"><em><font color="#000080">as libertarians</font></em></a>. But if one wishes to carry the banner of “principle” in this conversation, those principles <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2443030" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">do not sit comfortably</font></a> with the arguments forwarded by many self-described libertarians. And they certainly can’t be marshaled against those who maintain that <a href="http://1uad6j1oqspx17mxgkjacp15.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/The-Conservative-Case-for-a-Carbon-Tax1.pdf" target="_blank"><font color="#000080">some action to address climate change is necessary</font></a>.<br></p></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 8:27 AM, Nicholas Gier <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ngier006@gmail.com" target="_blank">ngier006@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><font face="georgia,serif">Greetings:</font><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br></div><div><font face="georgia,serif">For those who don't take the Daily News appended is my biweekly column. The version below is for the Sandpoint Reader next week, and the 1,800-word version (attached) will appear in Pocatello's Idaho State Journal this Sunday.</font></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br></div><div><font face="georgia,serif">There are a lot of people who don't know about CA's come back and TX's decline. CA still has a lot of problems, so I've replaced the DNews "thrives" with "makes progress."</font></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br></div><div><font face="georgia,serif">You can read all my articles on the Third Way between Communism and Capitalism at <a href="http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/ThirdWay.htm" target="_blank">www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/<wbr>ThirdWay.htm</a>.</font></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br></div><div><font face="georgia,serif">Happy Thanks Giving to All,</font></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br></div><div><font face="georgia,serif">nfg</font></div><div><br></div><div>
<p align="center" style="background:white;text-align:center;line-height:150%"><b><span style="margin:0px;color:black;font-family:"georgia",serif"><font size="3">Green California Makes Progress while Petro State Texas Falters</font></span></b></p>
<p style="background:white;text-align:left;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;font-family:"georgia",serif"><font size="3"> From 2015 to 2016, according to
the Bureau of Economic Analysis, California’s Gross Domestic Product rose 4.1
percent, while Texas dropped 1.4 percent—right at the edge of recession. Once
again conservative economists have been proved wrong: high taxes in the U. S.
and Europe do not kill economic growth. For example, social democratic Sweden is growing faster than conservative Britain 3.4 to 2.3 percent.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%;font-family:"georgia",serif;font-size:12pt">California has the most diverse
economy in the nation with 14 out of 50 advanced industries making significant
contributions to its solid growth.<span style="margin:0px">
</span>Texas, the 12<sup>th</sup> most diverse economy, has only five of those
50, and three of those are related to petroleum. Low prices here have hit the
Texas hard, and</span><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%;font-family:"georgia",serif;font-size:12pt"> Governor Greg
Abbot is asking most state agencies to cut 4 percent from their budgets to meet
revenue shortfalls.</span><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%;font-family:"georgia",serif;font-size:12pt"> </span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%;font-family:"georgia",serif;font-size:12pt">California
took a huge hit during the Great Recession because of the collapse of the real
estate market. Like in so many states, the legislators were required to balance
the budget with large spending cuts. With voter approved tax increases
California is now running a surplus and has restored education funding. </span></p>
<p style="background:white;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;font-family:"georgia",serif"><span style="margin:0px"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">At $67,458
Californians have the third highest mean income in the nation. Texas ranks 25</font><sup><font size="2">th</font></sup><font size="3">
at $49, 927, and Idaho is 40</font><sup><font size="2">th</font></sup><font size="3"> at $43,341. A critic would say that
California has a much higher cost of living, but when that is factored in
Texans still earn about $5,000 less per year. Furthermore, Texas has the
largest number of workers (550,000) earning the minimum wage. In stark contrast,
some California cities will require employers to pay up to $15 per hour by
2021. </font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%;font-family:"georgia",serif;font-size:12pt">The critic persists:<span style="margin:0px"> </span>Texans should
take home more pay because of lower taxes. Texans pay no income taxes, while
Californians pay some of the highest in the nation. <span style="margin:0px"> </span>When all taxes are taken into account, the
picture changes significantly. <span style="margin:0px"> </span>A full 60
percent of lower and middle income Texans pay taxes at a higher rate than
Californians in the same bracket, while Texans in the highest 40 percent pay
far less. The top one percent pays 48 percent of California’s taxes.</span></p>
<p style="margin:16px 0px;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px"><span lang="EN" style="margin:0px;color:black;font-family:"georgia",serif"><font size="3">From 2009 to 2014 Texas led the country in job growth,
creating 20 percent of all new jobs. Half way through 2015, however, California
took the lead with 465,700 jobs in contrast to Texas’ 286,000. </font><span style="margin:0px"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The Golden State has made up for all the jobs
lost in the Great Recession, and has the sixth fastest job growth rate in the
nation. </font></span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%;font-family:"georgia",serif;font-size:12pt">With large immigrant populations
both states struggle with high poverty rates and income inequality. Texas
actually has a lower poverty rate, and California, even with its progressive
income tax, has slightly more income inequality. <span style="margin:0px"> </span>A state official admitted that</span><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%;font-family:"georgia",serif;font-size:12pt"> there are “two Californias: a wealthy
coastal economy, in contrast to a struggling inland economy.”</span></p>
<p style="background:white;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;font-family:"georgia",serif"><font size="3">In 2014, according to Kids Count,
California ranked 26</font><sup><font size="2">th</font></sup><font size="3"> in the nation for child health, while Texas
stood at 47th. The most alarmingly health statistic for Texas is its maternal
death rate. In 2000 17.7 mothers out of 100,000 died, but that number climbed
to 35.8 by 2014.</font><span style="margin:0px"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">In 2011 deep cuts were
made in women’s health funds and 53 clinics were closed. Minority women were
hit hard with black women making up 29 percent of the deaths. </font><span style="margin:0px"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The Republican “War on Women” is real.</font></span></p>
<p style="background:white;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;font-family:"georgia",serif"><font size="3">In stark contrast is the decline
of maternal deaths in California. They went down from 21.5 per 100,000 in 2003
to 15.1 in 2014.</font><span style="margin:0px"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">The key to this
improvement was the expansion of clinics devoted to women’s health.</font><span style="margin:0px"><font size="3"> </font></span><font size="3">European comparisons are illuminating and
embarrassing. For 2014 Germany and the United Kingdom had 4.1 and 6.7 maternal
deaths respectively.</font></span></p>
<p style="background:white;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;font-family:"georgia",serif"><font size="3">California has the greenest
utilities and the most efficient energy use. Since 1975 per capita energy use
in the Golden State has remained the same, but it has climbed 50 percent in the
rest of the country. CERES of Boston ranked three California utilities as the
greenest, and Massachusetts, Oregon, and Connecticut were not far behind.</font><span style="margin:0px"><font size="3"> </font></span></span></p>
<p style="background:white;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;font-family:"georgia",serif"><font size="3">Governor Jerry Brown’s goal of
bringing down green gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 is well within reach,
so he now proposing that 40 percent below those levels be attained by 2030. California
has set a goal of producing one third of its electricity by renewables by 2020,
and by 2015 it had already reached 26 percent.</font><span style="margin:0px"><font size="3">
</font></span><font size="3">Barring federal intervention by coal and oil-loving Republicans,
California should reach its goal of 50 percent by 2030.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%;font-family:"georgia",serif;font-size:12pt">Utilities
across the country are firing their boilers with natural gas, and fewer and
fewer coal fired plants are being built. The inevitability of cleaner and
renewable energy gives new meaning to the phrase “the ash heap of history.”</span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%;font-family:"georgia",serif;font-size:12pt">Nick
Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.</span></p><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<font size="3"></font><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="m_343869768422835925gmail-m_-4348547674539891365gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="width:auto;height:auto"> <div> <div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-size:10pt"><div><span style="font-size:13.33px">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. </span><br style="font-size:13.33px"><br style="font-size:13.33px"><span style="font-size:13.33px">-Greek proverb</span></div><div><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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