So I was just alerted to the online availability of a brief presentation I gave at FEE's Young Scholars Colloquium last year, and I figured it would be worth posting here. I should note that the presentation was basically a response to not having enough student presentations to fill the time and needing one of the interns to jump in to eat space, so I don't pretend that anything particularly groundbreaking was said.
But without further ado, here's the link. My talk starts at 12:30, and discusses pollution taxes. In it, I make the claim that there are pollution taxes, and I'm not actually sure that's true...can anyone think of an example? That aside, I think it's pretty decent presentation, and I hope you all enjoy it!
My climate change presentation from this year's seminar will hopefully be coming online relatively soon -- and with video! -- so look forward to that...
Showing posts with label Pollution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pollution. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
On Clean Coal (Or the Lack Thereof)
[Reposted from University and State]
I have a confession. There's something that's been eating at me for a long time, and I need to get it off my chest before my soul caves in on itself and I break a television in a rabid fury. I HATE THIS COMMERCIAL:
I'm saying this up front: this post is going to be way longer than is reasonable for a response to a tiny commercial. But someone needs to say this, so I'm saying it.
Let's dig a little bit into what's going on here. This Is Reality is a collaborative project between a number of environmental advocacy organizations, but I think it's pretty clear who's ringleading this operation: Al Gore's advocacy group, the Alliance for Climate Protection. So because it would be impossible to direct my ire at all of the organizations behind this commercial (since they all have different positions), and because the website for This Is Reality is filled with links to other Alliance projects, I will point my comments at the Alliance.
The Alliance has two other projects besides This Is Reality which represent its constructive alternative to the use of coal technology to generate electricity: We Can Solve It and Repower America. But to understand what they're talking about, it will be necessary to get some background on how electricity is currently generated. So here it goes:
Electricity demand fluctuates on a daily basis, like this:
At least part of the rationale for the National Unified Smart Grid seems to be the idea that power can be sent from areas with unneeded excess generation to those where the electricity can be used, so that something along the lines of a "law of averages" approach would help to ensure a more stable grid system. But can wind power really be relied on the carry the burden of base load? I'm not sure. Remember, of the flexible space in the area of generation, big baseload coal takes up about two thirds of the generation we need to replace. Solar thermal, which apparently can be effectively (if expensively) utilized for baseload power when combined with storage technology, is being relied on for 26.5% of the space. The 6% each taken up by biomass/municipal and geothermal could ostensibly go towards base load requirements as well. But we need to acknowledge that wind is being asked to do a whole lot of work here, and I'm not entirely sure if that's realistic.
And unlike natural gas and diesel plants, it appears to me that none of these technologies can be dispatched on the scale that would be necessary to completely address jumps in peak demand. You simply can't just demand that the wind blow harder or the sun shine brighter. If a heat wave comes along and the wind is dead along the West Coast while people are blasting their air conditioners like there's no tomorrow, we need a source of on demand power. Natural gas currently serves a very important role in bringing flexibility to the grid. It doesn't appear to me that there's any generation technology with that characteristic in the Repower America portfolio.
A piece of the solution to this problem is provided by the "Smart Grid" component of the "Unified National Smart Grid" plan. This basically mirrors the Department of Energy's vision of the future of the electricity grid, and involves the use of smart metering technologies and communication between utilities and end-users of electricity to allow for "demand response" programs. This would allow utilities to tell their customers in times of system stress or unexpectedly high demand that they should reduce their electricity consumption. Utilities would generally pay customers to do this, and some plans include the ability for utilities to remotely control some of the appliances in their customers' facilities in order to initiate these drops in demand instantaneously. But there's a limit to how effective a demand response program can be. Ultimately, it's an important part of the job of a utility to be able to provide electricity on demand, and relying on customers to put up with unavailability of electricity is simply not a feasible option.
What's needed to make this plan technologically feasible is an effective form of energy storage. This would allow grid operators to build up energy reserves to respond to unexpected changes in supply or demand which could not be remedied by the almost nonexistent responsive capacity of a generation portfolio pretty much entirely dependent on resources which can't ramp production quickly up and down when needed. And that's where the final step comes in.
Step 4: Clean Plug-in Cars. When I saw this, I first thought, "Here is where, as they say, the plan jumps the proverbial shark."
The way that Repower America apparently expects to provide added stability to the electricity grid of the future is to basically use plug-in electric hybrids as batteries which can be charged when excess electricity is available, and drawn upon when electricity is needed by the grid. Now, a lot of people are talking about this as an important part of our energy future, and I'm one of them. I think plug in cars are a great idea. But the authors at Repower America are nuts if they think that the adoption of plug-in hybrid cars widespread enough to bring about this kind of energy storage capability would be consistent with their use of the Department of Energy's projection of electricity demand! A large plug-in hybrid fleet (in addition to taking longer than 10 years to materialize) would put an enormous strain on the electricity grid, forcing the already tenuous production of electricity from only renewables to somehow come up with thousands or millions more gigawatts of electricity. Perhaps it could be done; after all, we're not taking cost into account, remember?
But it's at this point where we really have to step back for a moment and ask ourselves, is this really what we think is going to happen? Even if we really want to stop climate change, does it make sense to try to completely eliminate fossil fuel technologies from the electricity generation landscape? Should we really just close the doors on billions upon billions of dollars in infrastructure investment? Is it really the best idea to try to force utilities to stop using coal, natural gas, and diesel to power their grids (or to offer them the money to convince them to do it voluntarily)? OF COURSE NOT!
So now we can finally get to why I hate that frikkin' commercial. There is such a thing as CLEANER coal technology, and we'd better darned well be ready to work towards implementing it! And we'd better keep an open mind towards expanding the use of cleaner natural gas and petroleum generation (which can be more energy efficient than coal) as well! And we SURE AS HELL better start building nuclear plants!
Smaller, decentralized coal plants can be used to provide heat to nearby buildings and homes, typically producing energy efficiencies much higher than can be achieved at large, centralized plants. Natural gas turbines typically operate at higher efficiencies as well, and they can be harnessed for combined heat and power too. By gasifying coal, petroleum coke, and other carboniferous feedstocks for use in Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants, we can also increase energy efficiency, even if we don't use the more concentrated resulting CO2 exhaust stream for Carbon Capture and Sequestration projects. Higher energy efficiency means less CO2 emitted, and doesn't necessarily force us to completely abandon cost-effectiveness. Looking for synergies for the use of waste CO2 could also be part of a solution. By burying our heads under the sand with a proposal to completely eliminate fossil fuel technologies, we draw attention away from these critical possibilities, and ultimately obstruct their development and implementation.
Nuclear power is CO2-free, and also needs to be a part of the answer. We simply can't expect to replace all of our baseload coal capacity without relying on nuclear power to help fill in the gap. To be sure, the increased use of renewable resources will need to be a huge and central part of our energy future. But to expect it to be the only part is flat out ridiculous, and trying to convince the American people otherwise is simply unreasonable and counterproductive.
Like it or not, we need fossil fuel technologies to meet our energy demands. And in addition to the technological feasibility we've discussed so far, and the monetary cost, that's because we're not going to employ the entire frikkin' country and its resources producing renewable generation facilities for the sole purpose of preventing climate change. Perhaps the most grating part of the Repower America plan is its repeated focus on job creation.
Here's something to chew on: When people consume their income, they consume goods and services that are produced by everyone else. If a substantial percentage of people are employed removing our existing infrastructure and replacing it with new infrastructure that serves exactly the same needs as the stuff that was there before, then it means that the people whose products are being consumed by the "green workers" are getting nothing in return for what they created. Imagine that Tom, Dick, and Harry are an economy. Tom produces food, Dick produces liquor, and Harry produces dirty magazines. At the end of the period, Tom, Dick, and Harry each have enough from selling to the others to end up with enough food, booze, and porn to go home happy. Now in period two, the government hires Harry to replace Tom's and Dick's doors with new doors that are no different from the old doors, except they're better for some reason which doesn't directly impact Tom or Dick. Tom and Dick still produce their food and booze, and the government taxes them to pay Harry for his services. Harry ends up with some food and some booze, but not as much as before, and Tom and Dick are in similar situations. And no one has any porn! What a terrible shame! So we can talk about jobs all we want, but what's really important is that at the end of the day, what goes around is what people produce. And if people are producing stuff that doesn't do anyone any good, everyone ends up worse off for it.
Now, it will immediately be countered that talking about costs is well and good when we're thinking about what to make for dinner, but climate change is a matter of justice. And while that would shift the debate away from my objection, which was that it's infuriating that Repowering America keeps harping about its plan's potential for job creation when it's undoubtedly going to make people generally worse off, I'll grant the point. The debate about climate change ultimately does come down to a question of ethics. But as Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer point out in their book, Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming, "The real issue, even ethically, is what will work..." (118). And this plan being pushed by the Alliance simply won't work.
Going a step farther, I defy anyone to give me a legitimate ethical argument which ends in the conclusion, "...and therefore, we must repower America with 100% clean energy in ten years, or else we will neglect our moral duty." I can't believe I'm about to sound like Bjorn Lomborg (*shudder*), but I'm not stopping myself. Watch:
Much of the climate change we can expect in the future is already in the pipeline. Taking a slower approach to reducing emissions, and embracing our need to maintain some carbon-intensive generation, would produce enormous efficiency gains and seriously accelerate progress in other areas of our economy. If we took some of the hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars that we would save by not implementing Al Gore's plan, and put it towards fighting malaria, restoring the rainforests, researching AIDS, promoting better energy efficiency in the developing world, and helping those who will need to adapt to the now inevitable impacts of climate change, we could likely do a lot more good in the world, even from the perspective of dealing with the impacts of climate change. Further, our descendents would likely be richer and better able to deal with their changing climate, and to help those who were not brought along by the rising tide of economic prosperity.
I'm not saying that nothing should be done to fight climate change. But driving our entire economy into the ground in order to fight a problem which is already partly out of our control doesn't seem like it's the best answer from anyone's perspective: even the victims', and even the environment's. We can be more energy efficient. We can use less coal and natural gas and oil. We can learn to harness the sun and the wind and the soil. We can learn to live as responsible members of the biotic community. But we have to learn to do that. And everyone will be better off if we don't rush ourselves into a more impoverished lifestyle to make it happen. Remember, before we were comfortable and well taken care of, the environment was the last thing on anyone's mind; look at China.
And remember, we're saving the world for future generations. Imagine if the industrial revolution had been stopped to prevent mercury poisoning. 'Nuff said.
So in closing, I hate that commercial because it represents a loss of perspective. It takes an important issue and reduces it to a set of overly simplistic talking points. We need to address climate change, to be sure. And that means a shift away from CO2-intensive electricity generation and towards renewables and clean technologies. But taking half of the most reasonable and important responses entirely off the table is irresponsible and counterproductive. It makes it so I end up talking to people who say, "No! No new coal plants!" instead of, "Is the plant going to produce combined heat and power?" And that's a problem, because if they scream about wind and solar, the utilities are going to laugh at them, whereas if they scream about capturing the heat stream for the benefit of the community, they might actually end up having an impact. The commercial makes it so the people who care most about fighting global warming get the absolute wrong idea of how to go about doing that. And that's a darned shame.
Update:
For anyone interested, the current breakdown for electricity generated from renewable resources by technology is as follows: Biomass electricity accounts for about 1.1%, wind for 0.6%, geothermal for 0.3%, and solar for about 0.01%. Hopefully that puts the Alliance's plan in a little better perspective.
I have a confession. There's something that's been eating at me for a long time, and I need to get it off my chest before my soul caves in on itself and I break a television in a rabid fury. I HATE THIS COMMERCIAL:
I'm saying this up front: this post is going to be way longer than is reasonable for a response to a tiny commercial. But someone needs to say this, so I'm saying it.
Let's dig a little bit into what's going on here. This Is Reality is a collaborative project between a number of environmental advocacy organizations, but I think it's pretty clear who's ringleading this operation: Al Gore's advocacy group, the Alliance for Climate Protection. So because it would be impossible to direct my ire at all of the organizations behind this commercial (since they all have different positions), and because the website for This Is Reality is filled with links to other Alliance projects, I will point my comments at the Alliance.
The Alliance has two other projects besides This Is Reality which represent its constructive alternative to the use of coal technology to generate electricity: We Can Solve It and Repower America. But to understand what they're talking about, it will be necessary to get some background on how electricity is currently generated. So here it goes:
Electricity demand fluctuates on a daily basis, like this:
Source: http://www.reliant.com/en_US/Platts/art/CEA_offices_fig1.gif
That's not actually an observation of demand; in reality things are a lot choppier. But the basic point you should take from it is this: during the work day when people are running lots of electricity-intensive equipment (and particularly in the summer and winter, space heaters and air conditioners), there's a rise in the amount of electricity demanded. You'll notice that there's a minimum amount of electricity that is always needed but the grid at any time of day. This daily minimum amount of power is called the "base load." And there's also a cyclical daily hump in electricity demand, called the "peak load."
Currently, base load is predominantly generated by large, centralized coal and nuclear plants (and some hydroelectric plants). These are by far the cheapest fossil fuel plants to run in terms of marginal cost per unit of power generated. But they have an important and inherent limitation: they can't ramp their output up and down very quickly. So they just chug along, producing the daily minimum amount of power around the clock.
Peak load can't be met effectively by these large scale plants, and that's where we find "peaking" or "cycling" plants. These are predominantly natural gas plants with some diesel reciprocating engines thrown into the mix. Natural gas plants are like enormous jet engines, and reciprocating engines are like giant motors; they can both be ramped up and down relatively quickly, and are therefore better suited for handling intraday fluctuations in demand, even though they cost more to operate.
So remember: Base load is the electricity that the grid needs around the clock, and it's produced in huge coal and nuclear plants (as well as hydroelectric plants). Peak load is the electricity that the grid needs to meet intraday fluctuations in demand, and it's produced in smaller natural gas and diesel plants. It all works out so electricity generation comes out looking like this (chart from 2006):
Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/ Sources_of_electricity_in_the_USA_2006.png
As you can see, coal generation makes up about 50% of our current electricity production. So now I think we can turn to the Alliance's proposal, from its Repower America project: "100% clean electricity within 10 years." What's going on here? Exhibit A: There is no such thing as clean coal. Exhibit B: We want 100% clean electricity within 10 years. Exhibit C: America currently generates about 50% of its electricity from coal plants, and a large majority of its baseload power.
So how, exactly, do they plan to eliminate all of the coal generation capacity in America in 10 years (never mind all the other fossil fuel generation which likely gets the label of "unclean" as well)? Repower America has a four part plan. But before trotting it out, let's look at exactly what they're trying to do, using their own graphics:
...Yea. So here it goes:
Step 1: Energy Efficiency. Now, the Repower America authors rightly cite a Department of Energy document forecasting an increase in American electricity demand by about a quarter of current use over the next two decades. To counter this, the authors propose that 28% of future electricity demand be cancelled out by efficiency gains. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt (I don't feel like fact-checking this one), and suppose that this can be done. We're saying, then, that we can keep electricity demand essentially flat over the next decade while this transformation is supposed to take place. So now we're sort of at square one: we're supposing that energy efficiency will not make the problem any worse, but we haven't made things any better yet. I don't even want to begin to think about how much it would cost to eliminate 28% of American electricity demand with energy efficiency measures. We're not talking about changing light bulbs or installing better windows. But more power to them if they can do it. Okay then, we're at flat electricity demand for the next ten years; three steps left to replace coal!
I think it'll be useful, before moving on, to quickly adjust the figures to take out the influence of energy efficiency, to normalize the contributions to actual energy produced (which should roughly match up with today's total demand). In the Repower America Scenario A, solar photovoltaics, biomass/municipal, and geothermal will be relied on for 4% of electricity production each, wind for 37.5%, and solar thermal with storage for 18%. Notice that today, these technologies combine for only 2.4% of total production. If the Alliance gets its way, we have a lot of work to do in 10 years, and it's going to be expensive! So on now to step two, where we find out how they're going to produce all that power without fossil fuels.
Step 2: Renewable Generation. And I quote: "Generate 100% of US electricity from truly clean carbon-free sources. Renewable energy generation technologies like solar thermal, photovoltaics, wind, geothermal and biomass have been adding clean reliable power to the grid for more than a decade...It is now time to dramatically ramp-up the contribution of renewables to the energy mix." Now, conspicuously absent from that list is hydroelectric power, and for good reason: there really isn't much potential for expansion there (and there are also some important environmental concerns associated with the dams that are used to generate it), and the authors accordingly hold hydroelectric generation constant in their analysis. Even more conspicuously absent is a word barely mentioned in the Repower America plan: "Nuclear." Even though nuclear electricity generation produces no CO2, is projected to increase substantially in coming years, and is currently the only major existing large-scale alternative to coal for baseload power, the authors hold nuclear generation constant as well.
We'll touch on this point again later, but for now, it will be useful to once again jiggle the calculations. So let's cancel out the influence of nuclear and hydroelectric generation, which account for roughly a quarter of total electricity production today and in the future according to the Repower America scenarios. What's left is the current influence of renewables and the fossil fuel generators: coal, natural gas, and petroleum; together they account for about three quarters of the total power generation, and we'll call this the "flexible space" (since apparently we're holding the other quarter fixed). In the future, renewables will ostensibly fill this entire space, even though they only fill about 3% of it now. Currently, the space is two-thirds filled by coal, a quarter filled by natural gas, rounded out by a 2% contribution from petroleum. In the Repower America plan, we get solar photovoltaics, biomass/munipal, and geothermal each on the hook for 6% of the flexible space, solar thermal for 26.5%, and wind for 55%.
I want to focus on the fact that "Other Renewables" make up a whopping 2.4% of electricity generation today. In spite of all the hype, this is not actually all that surprising, as there are three main hurdles facing renewable energy generation technologies today. 1) They are generally more expensive than conventional methods of generation; 2) It is often the case that the ideal places to generate electricity from renewable resources are not the places where people live, and it is expensive to build transmission lines that can carry electricity over long distances; and 3) The generation characteristics of many renewable technologies are such that electricity is either not produced consistently and reliably, or production cannot be coordinated to respond to demand. Because we're dealing with a one-dimensional analysis (that is, preventing climate change is clearly the only thing that matters to these people, no matter the cost), we'll just throw out (1) for now. Who cares what it costs! But how does Repower America respond to (2) and (3)? We need to go to the last two steps to find out.
Step 3: Build a Unified National Smart Grid. Because renewable energy is often produced far from demand centers, Repower America proposes to build a giant system of transmission lines across the entire country in order to ensure that renewable energy can be integrated into the grid. Remember, kids: cost is no object; we're fighting climate change! So now, and I quote: "It will allow us to connect solar power in Arizona with manufacturing centers in Ohio or allow us to use evening wind power on the East Coast to support late afternoon peak demand in Nevada." So what're we looking at for a price tag? American Electric Power drew up a proposal for something like this at the behest of a group of wind power advocates, and projected the cost at $60 billion (or about a half of a percent of US GDP, or six months in Iraq). But I should note that AEP's plan was based on producing enough transmission capacity to allow wind power to reach a 20% share of America's electricity needs; I'm not sure the transmission system they've described could handle the kinds of transfers that would be needed to make 100% renewable energy feasible. But remember, cost is no object, and this apparently can be done.
So now we're a little closer to seeing how coal could be replaced, but there's still an important hurdle: many renewable energy sources are either inconsistent and unreliable, or don't produce energy at the same time that it's demanded.
A little more background is needed here. As I said before, some of the biggest problems with renewable electricity generation from technologies like wind and solar have been about timing and control. For example, photovoltaic solar generators only produce energy during the day, and they can't really be adjusted to produce only the electricity that you need. During the summer and winter, when there's a lot of space heating or air conditioning going on, that doesn't matter too much. Most electricity use happens during the day anyway, and grids can pretty much use whatever electricity they can get during those times. But in the spring and fall, when intraday fluctuations are smaller, those operating characteristics aren't particularly helpful. From one study exploring the impacts of large-scale use of solar generation:
Source: http://www.nrel.gov/pv/pdfs/39683.pdf
Source: http://www.nrel.gov/pv/pdfs/39683.pdf
As you can see, in the second chart, the contribution of solar energy drops the residual peak demand (that is, the demand during peak demand periods after the impact of the contribution from the solar generator) significantly below the normal daily minimum level. If this electricity were going to be used by the system, the baseload plants would need to be ramped down to the new minimum levels, and expensive peaking plants would need to fill in the gaps. Needless to say, this wouldn't happen; utilities would just dump the extra power. This means that if solar power were going to be implemented on a very large scale, it would need to be profitable even with the use of only a portion of the electricity generated by the systems. Looking at wind generation, one can see that the problem is exacerbated by the fact that wind generation doesn't necessarily line up with the peak demand period for a grid. One example from New York yielded this result:
Source: http://www.nyiso.com/public/webdocs/documents/white_papers/ wind_management_whitepaper_11202008.pdf
At least part of the rationale for the National Unified Smart Grid seems to be the idea that power can be sent from areas with unneeded excess generation to those where the electricity can be used, so that something along the lines of a "law of averages" approach would help to ensure a more stable grid system. But can wind power really be relied on the carry the burden of base load? I'm not sure. Remember, of the flexible space in the area of generation, big baseload coal takes up about two thirds of the generation we need to replace. Solar thermal, which apparently can be effectively (if expensively) utilized for baseload power when combined with storage technology, is being relied on for 26.5% of the space. The 6% each taken up by biomass/municipal and geothermal could ostensibly go towards base load requirements as well. But we need to acknowledge that wind is being asked to do a whole lot of work here, and I'm not entirely sure if that's realistic.
And unlike natural gas and diesel plants, it appears to me that none of these technologies can be dispatched on the scale that would be necessary to completely address jumps in peak demand. You simply can't just demand that the wind blow harder or the sun shine brighter. If a heat wave comes along and the wind is dead along the West Coast while people are blasting their air conditioners like there's no tomorrow, we need a source of on demand power. Natural gas currently serves a very important role in bringing flexibility to the grid. It doesn't appear to me that there's any generation technology with that characteristic in the Repower America portfolio.
A piece of the solution to this problem is provided by the "Smart Grid" component of the "Unified National Smart Grid" plan. This basically mirrors the Department of Energy's vision of the future of the electricity grid, and involves the use of smart metering technologies and communication between utilities and end-users of electricity to allow for "demand response" programs. This would allow utilities to tell their customers in times of system stress or unexpectedly high demand that they should reduce their electricity consumption. Utilities would generally pay customers to do this, and some plans include the ability for utilities to remotely control some of the appliances in their customers' facilities in order to initiate these drops in demand instantaneously. But there's a limit to how effective a demand response program can be. Ultimately, it's an important part of the job of a utility to be able to provide electricity on demand, and relying on customers to put up with unavailability of electricity is simply not a feasible option.
What's needed to make this plan technologically feasible is an effective form of energy storage. This would allow grid operators to build up energy reserves to respond to unexpected changes in supply or demand which could not be remedied by the almost nonexistent responsive capacity of a generation portfolio pretty much entirely dependent on resources which can't ramp production quickly up and down when needed. And that's where the final step comes in.
Step 4: Clean Plug-in Cars. When I saw this, I first thought, "Here is where, as they say, the plan jumps the proverbial shark."
The way that Repower America apparently expects to provide added stability to the electricity grid of the future is to basically use plug-in electric hybrids as batteries which can be charged when excess electricity is available, and drawn upon when electricity is needed by the grid. Now, a lot of people are talking about this as an important part of our energy future, and I'm one of them. I think plug in cars are a great idea. But the authors at Repower America are nuts if they think that the adoption of plug-in hybrid cars widespread enough to bring about this kind of energy storage capability would be consistent with their use of the Department of Energy's projection of electricity demand! A large plug-in hybrid fleet (in addition to taking longer than 10 years to materialize) would put an enormous strain on the electricity grid, forcing the already tenuous production of electricity from only renewables to somehow come up with thousands or millions more gigawatts of electricity. Perhaps it could be done; after all, we're not taking cost into account, remember?
But it's at this point where we really have to step back for a moment and ask ourselves, is this really what we think is going to happen? Even if we really want to stop climate change, does it make sense to try to completely eliminate fossil fuel technologies from the electricity generation landscape? Should we really just close the doors on billions upon billions of dollars in infrastructure investment? Is it really the best idea to try to force utilities to stop using coal, natural gas, and diesel to power their grids (or to offer them the money to convince them to do it voluntarily)? OF COURSE NOT!
So now we can finally get to why I hate that frikkin' commercial. There is such a thing as CLEANER coal technology, and we'd better darned well be ready to work towards implementing it! And we'd better keep an open mind towards expanding the use of cleaner natural gas and petroleum generation (which can be more energy efficient than coal) as well! And we SURE AS HELL better start building nuclear plants!
Smaller, decentralized coal plants can be used to provide heat to nearby buildings and homes, typically producing energy efficiencies much higher than can be achieved at large, centralized plants. Natural gas turbines typically operate at higher efficiencies as well, and they can be harnessed for combined heat and power too. By gasifying coal, petroleum coke, and other carboniferous feedstocks for use in Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants, we can also increase energy efficiency, even if we don't use the more concentrated resulting CO2 exhaust stream for Carbon Capture and Sequestration projects. Higher energy efficiency means less CO2 emitted, and doesn't necessarily force us to completely abandon cost-effectiveness. Looking for synergies for the use of waste CO2 could also be part of a solution. By burying our heads under the sand with a proposal to completely eliminate fossil fuel technologies, we draw attention away from these critical possibilities, and ultimately obstruct their development and implementation.
Nuclear power is CO2-free, and also needs to be a part of the answer. We simply can't expect to replace all of our baseload coal capacity without relying on nuclear power to help fill in the gap. To be sure, the increased use of renewable resources will need to be a huge and central part of our energy future. But to expect it to be the only part is flat out ridiculous, and trying to convince the American people otherwise is simply unreasonable and counterproductive.
Like it or not, we need fossil fuel technologies to meet our energy demands. And in addition to the technological feasibility we've discussed so far, and the monetary cost, that's because we're not going to employ the entire frikkin' country and its resources producing renewable generation facilities for the sole purpose of preventing climate change. Perhaps the most grating part of the Repower America plan is its repeated focus on job creation.
Here's something to chew on: When people consume their income, they consume goods and services that are produced by everyone else. If a substantial percentage of people are employed removing our existing infrastructure and replacing it with new infrastructure that serves exactly the same needs as the stuff that was there before, then it means that the people whose products are being consumed by the "green workers" are getting nothing in return for what they created. Imagine that Tom, Dick, and Harry are an economy. Tom produces food, Dick produces liquor, and Harry produces dirty magazines. At the end of the period, Tom, Dick, and Harry each have enough from selling to the others to end up with enough food, booze, and porn to go home happy. Now in period two, the government hires Harry to replace Tom's and Dick's doors with new doors that are no different from the old doors, except they're better for some reason which doesn't directly impact Tom or Dick. Tom and Dick still produce their food and booze, and the government taxes them to pay Harry for his services. Harry ends up with some food and some booze, but not as much as before, and Tom and Dick are in similar situations. And no one has any porn! What a terrible shame! So we can talk about jobs all we want, but what's really important is that at the end of the day, what goes around is what people produce. And if people are producing stuff that doesn't do anyone any good, everyone ends up worse off for it.
Now, it will immediately be countered that talking about costs is well and good when we're thinking about what to make for dinner, but climate change is a matter of justice. And while that would shift the debate away from my objection, which was that it's infuriating that Repowering America keeps harping about its plan's potential for job creation when it's undoubtedly going to make people generally worse off, I'll grant the point. The debate about climate change ultimately does come down to a question of ethics. But as Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer point out in their book, Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming, "The real issue, even ethically, is what will work..." (118). And this plan being pushed by the Alliance simply won't work.
Going a step farther, I defy anyone to give me a legitimate ethical argument which ends in the conclusion, "...and therefore, we must repower America with 100% clean energy in ten years, or else we will neglect our moral duty." I can't believe I'm about to sound like Bjorn Lomborg (*shudder*), but I'm not stopping myself. Watch:
Much of the climate change we can expect in the future is already in the pipeline. Taking a slower approach to reducing emissions, and embracing our need to maintain some carbon-intensive generation, would produce enormous efficiency gains and seriously accelerate progress in other areas of our economy. If we took some of the hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars that we would save by not implementing Al Gore's plan, and put it towards fighting malaria, restoring the rainforests, researching AIDS, promoting better energy efficiency in the developing world, and helping those who will need to adapt to the now inevitable impacts of climate change, we could likely do a lot more good in the world, even from the perspective of dealing with the impacts of climate change. Further, our descendents would likely be richer and better able to deal with their changing climate, and to help those who were not brought along by the rising tide of economic prosperity.
I'm not saying that nothing should be done to fight climate change. But driving our entire economy into the ground in order to fight a problem which is already partly out of our control doesn't seem like it's the best answer from anyone's perspective: even the victims', and even the environment's. We can be more energy efficient. We can use less coal and natural gas and oil. We can learn to harness the sun and the wind and the soil. We can learn to live as responsible members of the biotic community. But we have to learn to do that. And everyone will be better off if we don't rush ourselves into a more impoverished lifestyle to make it happen. Remember, before we were comfortable and well taken care of, the environment was the last thing on anyone's mind; look at China.
And remember, we're saving the world for future generations. Imagine if the industrial revolution had been stopped to prevent mercury poisoning. 'Nuff said.
So in closing, I hate that commercial because it represents a loss of perspective. It takes an important issue and reduces it to a set of overly simplistic talking points. We need to address climate change, to be sure. And that means a shift away from CO2-intensive electricity generation and towards renewables and clean technologies. But taking half of the most reasonable and important responses entirely off the table is irresponsible and counterproductive. It makes it so I end up talking to people who say, "No! No new coal plants!" instead of, "Is the plant going to produce combined heat and power?" And that's a problem, because if they scream about wind and solar, the utilities are going to laugh at them, whereas if they scream about capturing the heat stream for the benefit of the community, they might actually end up having an impact. The commercial makes it so the people who care most about fighting global warming get the absolute wrong idea of how to go about doing that. And that's a darned shame.
Update:
For anyone interested, the current breakdown for electricity generated from renewable resources by technology is as follows: Biomass electricity accounts for about 1.1%, wind for 0.6%, geothermal for 0.3%, and solar for about 0.01%. Hopefully that puts the Alliance's plan in a little better perspective.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Intertemporal Pollution, Accountability, and Justice in Appropriation
If we are ever able to quantify the effects of pollution, we will still need to establish the degree to which particular contributors can be held accountable for those effects. It is important to recognize that in many cases, polluting acts have happened, and will continue to happen, over a long period of time. The significance of this fact can perhaps be best illustrated by an example.
Let's say that on one fall day, three factories independently decide to dump some barrels of toxic waste intoTranquility Lake Tranquility Lake
He confronts the owners of the factories, and being good, honest people, the owners confess to dumping the barrels of chemicals into the lake, and apologize for the harm they caused. They all agree to settle the matter in arbitration. The solution that they reach is that Marlon is entitled to full compensation for the damage to his lawn, including compensation for his inconvenience. And because the factories all contributed to the harm in basically the same way, the factories will pay the part of the compensation corresponding to the amount of toxic waste they dumped on the autumn day. Since Factory A dumped 1 barrel, Factory B dumped 2 barrels, and Factory C dumped 3 barrels, Factory A pays 1/6 of the damages, Factory B pays 1/3, and Factory B pays 1/2. Everyone goes home happy; justice has been served.
Now let's amend the example to say that the lake had been contaminated decades ago by a number of factories that had long since shut down. The pollution was not severe enough that any damage to Marlon's property resulted (or would ever result), but the levels of the foreign chemicals were significantly higher than they would have been naturally. Now let's imagine that our three factories show up on the scene and dump their chemicals. What if, because of the previous pollution, the damage done to Marlon's lawn is more severe than it would have been if the old factories had never existed? Should the three currently operating factories be held accountable for all of the damage that they do?
One way to approach this would be to say that the three factories should "take the lake as they found it." This is the approach taken by Robert McGee and Walter Block in their essay, "Pollution Trading Permits as a Form of Market Socialism and the Search for a Real Market Solution to Environmental Pollution." McGee and Block explain, "...one can analogize the case of ordinary (human) trespass to the intrusion of pollutants onto the property of the victim. In a typical case, the thief breaks into the premises of the homeowner. Unbeknownst to the intruder, the victim has a weak heart, and is easily frightened. In this example the weak heart...amplifies the harm. As a result of the trespass, the homeowner dies from a heart attack. Can the trespasser be found liable for wrongful death? Yes, because of the doctrine of "you take your victim as you find him." Taking this approach, we would say that Marlon was particularly vulnerable because of the peculiar circumstances in which the factories found him, but this fact wouldn't absolve the factory owners of their accountability for the damage caused by the dumping of the chemicals.
However, one might object that in the weak heart example, the factor making the homeowner vulnerable was no one's fault. In Marlon's case, the only reason the damage was so severe was that other agents had committed acts in the past which put Marlon in a position of vulnerability. A case could seemingly be made that the factories should be held accountable for the damage that would have been caused in the absence of the old factories' contributions, but nothing more. However, this raises a significant problem. This approach would force us to either place the accountability for the damage to Marlon's property on the old factories' operators, or to place the burden back on Marlon.
The latter seems unacceptable. The "responsibility principle," suggested by Talbot Page in his essay, "Responsibility, Liability, and Incentive Compatibility," seem to me a reasonable starting point for arguing why. Page writes, "When A's actions impose costs on B, A should be made responsible by paying for these costs." As I interpret it, A does not need to be a single individual for this principle to make sense. As long as costs are being imposed on B, and as long as those costs are caused by A's actions, then the costs should be paid by A. This is clearest in cases like Marlon's, where B is not a member of A. The group of people including both the old factory operators and the current factory operators imposed costs on Marlon, and so they should pay those costs. To be honest, I find that so obviously true that I'm not even sure how to argue in favor of it.
Accordingly, the accountability for remaining damage would need to be allocated to the old factory operators. For the sake of discussion, we'll ignore for now all questions regarding the burden of proof, imperfect knowledge, the potential need to deal with preemptive compensation, and any difficulties arising from intertemporal compensation. These are all important issues, and I want to deal with them. But first, I think it's important to ask whether it would actually be fair to hold the old factory operators responsible for damage which resulted from the presence of their (otherwise harmless) pollution in Tranquility Lake when the three factories came along decades later to dump some chemicals there.
The first thing to notice about this example is that it seems to be the outgrowth of something like a tragedy of the commons. The damage to Marlon's lawn is caused by a situation in which a commons has been "fouled" to the extent where it is damaging property adjacent to it. So perhaps if we figured out what the right way is to think about tragedies of the commons, we could determine what to think about theTranquility Lake
As a result of the environmental space having been filled by the old factory operators, the currently operating factories' dumping did a lot more damage than it otherwise would have been. In order to hold the old factory operators responsible for part of this damage, it seems that we would need to establish that they didn't have a right to fill the environmental space in the way that they did. Otherwise, we would seem to be led to the idea that they did nothing wrong, since they acted perfectly within their rights, and (because of the responsibility principle) we should hold the currently operating factories completely responsible for the damage they caused.
So did the old factory operators have a right to do what they did? Some libertarians, like Murray Rothbard, think they did. In his essay, "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution," Rothbard wrote, "...if a factory owned by A polluted originally unused property up to a certain amount of pollutant X, then A can be said to have homesteaded a pollution easement of a certain degree and type." So essentially, what the old factory owners did was to enclose a part of the commons (in this case the "environmental space" that they filled) and made it their own. And it does seem to me that this is what they have done. But does that mean that their actions were acceptable?
As far as I am aware, Rothbard believed so. The polluter "improves" previously unused environmental space by directing it to the achievement of her ends, and through mixing her labor with it, she acquires just title to it. Because the polluter is using previously unowned environmental space, no one can deny her the right to do as she did. But this is a left-libertarian site, and Rothbard won't be getting away that easily. Accordingly, I'll try to figure out what to think about Rothbard's position as it applies to this situation, in order to determine whether or not it gives us adequate guidance for approaching the old factory operators' actions.
The questions about Rothbard's approach come from the heart of the left-libertarian paradigm. In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick wrote, "It will be implausible to view improving an object as giving full ownership of it, if the stock of unowned objects that might be improved is limited. For an object's coming under one person's ownership changes the situation of all others. Whereas previously they were at liberty...to use the object, they now no longer are. This change in the situation of others (by removing their liberty to act on a previously unowned object) need not worsen their situation. If I appropriate a grain of sand fromConey Island , no one else may now do as they will with that grain of sand. But there are plenty of other grains of sand left for them to do the same with. Or if not grains of sand, then other things...The crucial point is whether is whether appropriation of an unowned object worsens the situation of others." In the case of any scarce resource, it seems fair to say that any appropriating act has the potential to make others worse off. But more precisely, the crucial point is whether the appropriating act makes others worse off in a way that infringes upon their rights. Merely making someone worse off does not violate their rights; I am made worse off when a girl at a bar declines to kiss me. We must examine what people are entitled to in order to resolve the question of whether an act of appropriation is justified.
And as far as Rothbard is concerned, no one is made worse off in a morally relevant sense by the appropriation of an unowned object. The path of the reasoning arriving at this view is easy enough to spell out. In the case of an unowned object (such as the environmental space in our example) no one has yet "mixed" any labor with the object. Because Rothbard ostensibly believes that our claims to property originate in our mixing our labor with unowned objects (this is taken from Locke), it seems reasonable to say that no one has any property rights involving objects that have not had any labor mixed with them. But as Peter Vallentyne writes in his introduction to Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate, "Libertarianism (both left and right) construes basic individual rights as property rights." So if no one has property rights in these unowned objects, and property rights are the only kind of rights there are, then no one's rights are violated by appropriation.
In my view, something seems to be missing here. For example, let's say that in order to survive, the individuals living around the lake needed to pollute it to some degree. Let's further stipulate that if not for the old factory operators, this level of pollution would never produce any damage. According to Rothbard's approach, if Marlon's lawn ended up damaged by the pollution in the lake, the people to be held accountable for the damage are the people polluting the lake to survive. But it seems to me that the people responsible are the old factory operators, who (we might suppose) did not need to pollute the lake in order to survive.
This idea is captured by Stephen Gardiner in his essay, "A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption," when he wrote, "One way in which a generation may act badly is if it puts in place a set of future circumstances that make it morally required for its successors (and perhaps even itself) to make other generations suffer either unnecessary, or at least more than would otherwise be the case." I think Gardiner oversteps his intentions when he uses the term "morally required," but what he has in mind is clear. If in the pursuit of some "sufficient" standard of living, people needed to pollute the lake, then in some sense we would feel sympathy for them, and consider their actions to be morally permissible. If the old factory operators made it the case that these actions would harm others, where they would not have ordinarily, then the factory operators have done something wrong. It seems to me that because Rothbard's account cannot capture this notion, there is something wrong with it.
But what exactly is Rothbard’s principle missing? If we are to hold the old factory operators accountable, we need to know. This is because there is an important disanalogy between a case where people need to pollute the lake to survive and the case which we have been working with, where the three currently operating factories did not need to pollute in any similar way. The reasons why we disagree with Rothbard will determine what we think about the old factory operators' actions.
We have several options. The first is an extremely strict proviso: It is illegitimate to appropriate any resource without leaving as much of that resource (or a costlessly available substitute) as there was when you got there. Under this criterion, by depleting the natural store of environmental space embodied by Tranquility Lake, and not putting the lake back into its former state afterwards, the old factory operators acted wrongly. Accordingly, it might seem reasonable to put them on the hook for the damage caused by the depleted state of the lake.
The other end of the spectrum would be a very weak proviso: It is illegitimate to appropriate any resource without leaving enough of that resource to allow others to satisfy their basic needs. In this instance, the old factory operators wouldn't be in the wrong at all. The three currently-operating factories didn't need to dump in lake, and so the old factory operators did nothing wrong by using the resource. The accountability, then, would rest squarely on the three factories which acted most recently.
In the middle, there are a number of other provisos which warrant consideration. For one: It is illegitimate to appropriate any resource without leaving enough so that others had the opportunity attain the same level of wellbeing (I dispute this elsewhere). Or another: It is illegitimate to appropriate any resource without leaving behind something of equal value as what you took (I don't like this one either; I can't think of any coherent theory of value which would make it work).
Personally, I think the most plausible of these accounts is the weak proviso. If my appropriation makes it so that others can't satisfy their basic interests without harming others, then I think it's fair to say that I should be accountable for the damage (assuming that I didn't need to appropriate what I did). But if my appropriation just makes it so that others have to figure out some perfectly feasible alternative course of action in order to avoid harming others, then I don't see why I should be accountable if they choose the harmful alternative.
Accordingly, it seems we can say that in Marlon's case, the accountability rests solely on the three factories' operators, even though the damage caused by their acts was amplified by the polluting activities of the old factories. Because they didn't need to pollute in any morally relevant sense, they should bear the burden of any costs imposed on others by their actions. I think I'm happy with that, so I'll stop there.
Let's say that on one fall day, three factories independently decide to dump some barrels of toxic waste into
He confronts the owners of the factories, and being good, honest people, the owners confess to dumping the barrels of chemicals into the lake, and apologize for the harm they caused. They all agree to settle the matter in arbitration. The solution that they reach is that Marlon is entitled to full compensation for the damage to his lawn, including compensation for his inconvenience. And because the factories all contributed to the harm in basically the same way, the factories will pay the part of the compensation corresponding to the amount of toxic waste they dumped on the autumn day. Since Factory A dumped 1 barrel, Factory B dumped 2 barrels, and Factory C dumped 3 barrels, Factory A pays 1/6 of the damages, Factory B pays 1/3, and Factory B pays 1/2. Everyone goes home happy; justice has been served.
Now let's amend the example to say that the lake had been contaminated decades ago by a number of factories that had long since shut down. The pollution was not severe enough that any damage to Marlon's property resulted (or would ever result), but the levels of the foreign chemicals were significantly higher than they would have been naturally. Now let's imagine that our three factories show up on the scene and dump their chemicals. What if, because of the previous pollution, the damage done to Marlon's lawn is more severe than it would have been if the old factories had never existed? Should the three currently operating factories be held accountable for all of the damage that they do?
One way to approach this would be to say that the three factories should "take the lake as they found it." This is the approach taken by Robert McGee and Walter Block in their essay, "Pollution Trading Permits as a Form of Market Socialism and the Search for a Real Market Solution to Environmental Pollution." McGee and Block explain, "...one can analogize the case of ordinary (human) trespass to the intrusion of pollutants onto the property of the victim. In a typical case, the thief breaks into the premises of the homeowner. Unbeknownst to the intruder, the victim has a weak heart, and is easily frightened. In this example the weak heart...amplifies the harm. As a result of the trespass, the homeowner dies from a heart attack. Can the trespasser be found liable for wrongful death? Yes, because of the doctrine of "you take your victim as you find him." Taking this approach, we would say that Marlon was particularly vulnerable because of the peculiar circumstances in which the factories found him, but this fact wouldn't absolve the factory owners of their accountability for the damage caused by the dumping of the chemicals.
However, one might object that in the weak heart example, the factor making the homeowner vulnerable was no one's fault. In Marlon's case, the only reason the damage was so severe was that other agents had committed acts in the past which put Marlon in a position of vulnerability. A case could seemingly be made that the factories should be held accountable for the damage that would have been caused in the absence of the old factories' contributions, but nothing more. However, this raises a significant problem. This approach would force us to either place the accountability for the damage to Marlon's property on the old factories' operators, or to place the burden back on Marlon.
The latter seems unacceptable. The "responsibility principle," suggested by Talbot Page in his essay, "Responsibility, Liability, and Incentive Compatibility," seem to me a reasonable starting point for arguing why. Page writes, "When A's actions impose costs on B, A should be made responsible by paying for these costs." As I interpret it, A does not need to be a single individual for this principle to make sense. As long as costs are being imposed on B, and as long as those costs are caused by A's actions, then the costs should be paid by A. This is clearest in cases like Marlon's, where B is not a member of A. The group of people including both the old factory operators and the current factory operators imposed costs on Marlon, and so they should pay those costs. To be honest, I find that so obviously true that I'm not even sure how to argue in favor of it.
Accordingly, the accountability for remaining damage would need to be allocated to the old factory operators. For the sake of discussion, we'll ignore for now all questions regarding the burden of proof, imperfect knowledge, the potential need to deal with preemptive compensation, and any difficulties arising from intertemporal compensation. These are all important issues, and I want to deal with them. But first, I think it's important to ask whether it would actually be fair to hold the old factory operators responsible for damage which resulted from the presence of their (otherwise harmless) pollution in Tranquility Lake when the three factories came along decades later to dump some chemicals there.
The first thing to notice about this example is that it seems to be the outgrowth of something like a tragedy of the commons. The damage to Marlon's lawn is caused by a situation in which a commons has been "fouled" to the extent where it is damaging property adjacent to it. So perhaps if we figured out what the right way is to think about tragedies of the commons, we could determine what to think about the
As a result of the environmental space having been filled by the old factory operators, the currently operating factories' dumping did a lot more damage than it otherwise would have been. In order to hold the old factory operators responsible for part of this damage, it seems that we would need to establish that they didn't have a right to fill the environmental space in the way that they did. Otherwise, we would seem to be led to the idea that they did nothing wrong, since they acted perfectly within their rights, and (because of the responsibility principle) we should hold the currently operating factories completely responsible for the damage they caused.
So did the old factory operators have a right to do what they did? Some libertarians, like Murray Rothbard, think they did. In his essay, "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution," Rothbard wrote, "...if a factory owned by A polluted originally unused property up to a certain amount of pollutant X, then A can be said to have homesteaded a pollution easement of a certain degree and type." So essentially, what the old factory owners did was to enclose a part of the commons (in this case the "environmental space" that they filled) and made it their own. And it does seem to me that this is what they have done. But does that mean that their actions were acceptable?
As far as I am aware, Rothbard believed so. The polluter "improves" previously unused environmental space by directing it to the achievement of her ends, and through mixing her labor with it, she acquires just title to it. Because the polluter is using previously unowned environmental space, no one can deny her the right to do as she did. But this is a left-libertarian site, and Rothbard won't be getting away that easily. Accordingly, I'll try to figure out what to think about Rothbard's position as it applies to this situation, in order to determine whether or not it gives us adequate guidance for approaching the old factory operators' actions.
The questions about Rothbard's approach come from the heart of the left-libertarian paradigm. In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick wrote, "It will be implausible to view improving an object as giving full ownership of it, if the stock of unowned objects that might be improved is limited. For an object's coming under one person's ownership changes the situation of all others. Whereas previously they were at liberty...to use the object, they now no longer are. This change in the situation of others (by removing their liberty to act on a previously unowned object) need not worsen their situation. If I appropriate a grain of sand from
And as far as Rothbard is concerned, no one is made worse off in a morally relevant sense by the appropriation of an unowned object. The path of the reasoning arriving at this view is easy enough to spell out. In the case of an unowned object (such as the environmental space in our example) no one has yet "mixed" any labor with the object. Because Rothbard ostensibly believes that our claims to property originate in our mixing our labor with unowned objects (this is taken from Locke), it seems reasonable to say that no one has any property rights involving objects that have not had any labor mixed with them. But as Peter Vallentyne writes in his introduction to Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate, "Libertarianism (both left and right) construes basic individual rights as property rights." So if no one has property rights in these unowned objects, and property rights are the only kind of rights there are, then no one's rights are violated by appropriation.
In my view, something seems to be missing here. For example, let's say that in order to survive, the individuals living around the lake needed to pollute it to some degree. Let's further stipulate that if not for the old factory operators, this level of pollution would never produce any damage. According to Rothbard's approach, if Marlon's lawn ended up damaged by the pollution in the lake, the people to be held accountable for the damage are the people polluting the lake to survive. But it seems to me that the people responsible are the old factory operators, who (we might suppose) did not need to pollute the lake in order to survive.
This idea is captured by Stephen Gardiner in his essay, "A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption," when he wrote, "One way in which a generation may act badly is if it puts in place a set of future circumstances that make it morally required for its successors (and perhaps even itself) to make other generations suffer either unnecessary, or at least more than would otherwise be the case." I think Gardiner oversteps his intentions when he uses the term "morally required," but what he has in mind is clear. If in the pursuit of some "sufficient" standard of living, people needed to pollute the lake, then in some sense we would feel sympathy for them, and consider their actions to be morally permissible. If the old factory operators made it the case that these actions would harm others, where they would not have ordinarily, then the factory operators have done something wrong. It seems to me that because Rothbard's account cannot capture this notion, there is something wrong with it.
But what exactly is Rothbard’s principle missing? If we are to hold the old factory operators accountable, we need to know. This is because there is an important disanalogy between a case where people need to pollute the lake to survive and the case which we have been working with, where the three currently operating factories did not need to pollute in any similar way. The reasons why we disagree with Rothbard will determine what we think about the old factory operators' actions.
We have several options. The first is an extremely strict proviso: It is illegitimate to appropriate any resource without leaving as much of that resource (or a costlessly available substitute) as there was when you got there. Under this criterion, by depleting the natural store of environmental space embodied by Tranquility Lake, and not putting the lake back into its former state afterwards, the old factory operators acted wrongly. Accordingly, it might seem reasonable to put them on the hook for the damage caused by the depleted state of the lake.
The other end of the spectrum would be a very weak proviso: It is illegitimate to appropriate any resource without leaving enough of that resource to allow others to satisfy their basic needs. In this instance, the old factory operators wouldn't be in the wrong at all. The three currently-operating factories didn't need to dump in lake, and so the old factory operators did nothing wrong by using the resource. The accountability, then, would rest squarely on the three factories which acted most recently.
In the middle, there are a number of other provisos which warrant consideration. For one: It is illegitimate to appropriate any resource without leaving enough so that others had the opportunity attain the same level of wellbeing (I dispute this elsewhere). Or another: It is illegitimate to appropriate any resource without leaving behind something of equal value as what you took (I don't like this one either; I can't think of any coherent theory of value which would make it work).
Personally, I think the most plausible of these accounts is the weak proviso. If my appropriation makes it so that others can't satisfy their basic interests without harming others, then I think it's fair to say that I should be accountable for the damage (assuming that I didn't need to appropriate what I did). But if my appropriation just makes it so that others have to figure out some perfectly feasible alternative course of action in order to avoid harming others, then I don't see why I should be accountable if they choose the harmful alternative.
Accordingly, it seems we can say that in Marlon's case, the accountability rests solely on the three factories' operators, even though the damage caused by their acts was amplified by the polluting activities of the old factories. Because they didn't need to pollute in any morally relevant sense, they should bear the burden of any costs imposed on others by their actions. I think I'm happy with that, so I'll stop there.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
A Short Story
Imagine, for a moment, that I am in front of Sally's house, preparing to break in and steal all of her possessions. A local policeman sees what I am about to do, and pauses to calculate how much Sally would be harmed if I carried out my plan. He approaches me and says, "If you pay Sally the amount that you would harm her, then you may rob her house. She will be made no worse off, and you will get to do something you want to do." I think about this for a moment. It doesn't seem like it would be completely fair to Sally, but I can see a kind of logic behind it. Besides, I really want Sally's stuff; I don't really care how she feels.
Overhearing our conversation, though, the policeman's partner interjects, "I can see that you want to rob Sally enough that you would be willing to pay her for the damage. Since the benefit to you from robbing Sally's house is greater than the harm that would be caused to Sally, you should just go ahead and rob her." Hearing this, I can't help but feel that this is even more unfair to Sally. But again, I'm a robber; I don't mind.
However, before I have a chance to accept the proposal, the police chief walks over with a glimmer in his eye. He says, "Why don't you pay me the amount that Sally will be harmed, and then you may go ahead and rob her house." I can't help but marvel at the evil genius of his plan. I would get to rob Sally's house, he would get a whole bunch of money, and only Sally would lose.
But I turn to the police chief and say, "Surely you can't get away with this sort of thing. If the general public finds out you're doing this, you'll be run out of town!"
He thinks a moment and replies, "They support pollution taxes; what's the difference?"
Overhearing our conversation, though, the policeman's partner interjects, "I can see that you want to rob Sally enough that you would be willing to pay her for the damage. Since the benefit to you from robbing Sally's house is greater than the harm that would be caused to Sally, you should just go ahead and rob her." Hearing this, I can't help but feel that this is even more unfair to Sally. But again, I'm a robber; I don't mind.
However, before I have a chance to accept the proposal, the police chief walks over with a glimmer in his eye. He says, "Why don't you pay me the amount that Sally will be harmed, and then you may go ahead and rob her house." I can't help but marvel at the evil genius of his plan. I would get to rob Sally's house, he would get a whole bunch of money, and only Sally would lose.
But I turn to the police chief and say, "Surely you can't get away with this sort of thing. If the general public finds out you're doing this, you'll be run out of town!"
He thinks a moment and replies, "They support pollution taxes; what's the difference?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
