Why Doing Nothing is the Best Climate Change Policy

An April protest in New York City to mark the "National Day of Climate Action" featured blue-clad demonstrators marking the Manhattan coastline if sea levels rose 10 feet during the 21^st century. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to tell the crowd that even the UN's politicized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report estimated just a 23-inch rise in sea levels in its worst-case scenario. In Al Gore's widely popular An Inconvenient Truth, Hurricane Katrina is cited as evidence that warming ocean temperatures are breeding more powerful and devastating tropical storms. But Dr. William Gray, perhaps the country's most well-known hurricane expert, echoes the claims of others in his field that the number of hurricanes in a given year is driven by cyclical ocean circulation patterns and localized effects such as El Niño, not global climate change.

Rampant exaggeration has forced many in Washington to believe the situation is so dire that immediate federal action is necessary to forestall the extinction of the human race. But the ten-year ticking time bomb placed on humanity by Gore and other prominent activists simply does not hold water when weighed against the criticism of experts in the field. The effects of climate change are not so extraordinary that they require any sort of response this second; regardless, most libertarians would laugh at the notion that if we are truly in danger, it would be the feds rushing to the rescue.

Federal regulations are strewn with inefficiency and political expediency. The carbon market of the European Union, while praised as a model for a future US cap-and-trade system, has been embarrassing. In theory, each country in the EU would be granted a limited number of carbon permits, which would decrease every year, thus forcing emitters to either find a way to reduce their CO₂ output or have to pay more to keep their emissions constant. In practice, the market was flooded with carbon permits since no country wanted to voluntarily handicap their own industries. Despite bluster from across the Atlantic about how the US needs to do more on climate change, the US has reduced its per-capita emissions more than the UK, France, Spain, Finland, and Sweden over the last ten years.

While (so far) avoiding an expensive, foolhardy disaster like the EU carbon market, the "climate-friendly" steps taken in Washington are arguably more counterproductive to the prospects of cheap, clean energy in the future. The biggest push among Congress and the Bush administration has been the subsidies for corn-based ethanol for use as fuel. Among the effects of ethanol use is an increase in urban smog, not to mention that ethanol lowers fuel efficiency and is significantly more expensive than the current high price of gasoline. It's not even certain that producing fuel from corn would do anything to combat carbon dioxide output. Meanwhile, other purveyors of alternative energy who lack the political clout of the ethanol industry are heavily disadvantaged, as their competitors receive taxpayer dollars by the bushel. Then why subsidize-is it perhaps to gain the support of corn growers in the important primary state of Iowa? Similar measures to establish sugar-based ethanol plants in the US couldn't have anything to do with the powerful sugar lobby in a swing state like Florida, could they?

Subsidies are usually framed as a means to address the failure of the market to take some factor into account, in this case climate change. But factors outside of climate change are already driving a public desire for a new form of energy production. The rising cost of commodities such as gasoline and heating oil has resulted in a strong public outcry for alternatives. The perceived need for the US to enmesh itself in the Middle East because of its oil supply has prompted a similar call for "energy independence." Add to this the growing (if misguided) sway of the environmental movement and it seems the market for a new source of energy is stronger than ever. The technology is simply not there at present-but it certainly isn't for lack of effort. Whoever can manage to break through will likely become a billionaire and be credited in many circles with saving the world. Are there not enough people signing up for that job? If there are not, would you believe that favoring established industries over technology currently in the embryonic phase will encourage or discourage them?

The temptation to "do something" on climate change appears to have swept through both parties in Washington like a gust of hot air. But a survey of relevant science and prior unsuccessful policy shows that avoiding reckless action is the best formula for strengthening both the economy and the environment. The sort of broad political gesture now favored on both sides of the aisle will likely serve only to delay the introduction of next-generation energy sources that could eventually do away with the problem of global warming for good. Instead, removing subsidies from all forms of energy production-fossil fuels, ethanol, and others-would ensure that political considerations do not prohibit the most effective new technology from reaching the market.