I read the article by Tyler Cowen and feel that his presentation doesn’t even make sense. Bananas on collapsing roofs? What does this have to do with the problem at hand? He also misses the basic tenet of the Austrian Cycle: time preferences. (see link below).

As for your second link, at least his article is well written and makes points with supporting opinions. However, I disagree with the “ease” at which people can predict and account for the government in their planning.

I’ll just link a response which works equally well for both arguments.
http://www.mises.org/story/2673

Suffice it to say that not everyone subscribes to the idea that the government should be so heavily involved in trying to regulate something that is scientifically unclear at this point. Let’s all remember when CFCs were banned for destroying the ozone, (how’s that hole doing now? oh, naturally contracting?) and replaced something that is an even worse green house gas. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14452816/ How about regulating light bulbs to be florescent: yeah less power consumption, more mercury in our land fills… hmm… Maybe the government’s environmental policies don’t always work out so hot for the environment. What they DO however is frequently make Congressional Reps or their friends/contributors lots of money.

Let’s look at Al Gore, savior of the environment, first carbon billionaire:
http://tinyurl.com/ye56mum

@Katie – Maybe you’ll get to this, but make sure to mention that all the health care reform isn’t going to really kick in until 2013 last I heard. Hmmm, President Obama’s going to be done trying to get elected by then isn’t he? Isn’t it surprising that it starts the year after the 2012 elections, what a coincidence…Or maybe not, maybe he doesn’t want to face the music when people are outraged by what this does to the economy? Oh, and remember, (this is the most important) we’re going to be paying the new TAXES for the health care reform from now until then, but don’t worry, they’re going to save that money for when 2013 comes around just like they did with Social Security….oh wait…. Won’t PresidentObama’s budgets look nice with all these taxes from a program that hasn’t even started yet. Now THAT’S a tax that any politician has to love!

I mean, its discredited by everyone. Here’s a take-down by noted economist Tyler Cowen (he’s no Paul Krugman) and here’s one by a big a libertarian economist as well. I mean, my econ textbook may be wrong (my real econ textbook was written by Greg Mankew, of Bush II fame), but probably not. It’s more likely the Austrian School is laughable by anyone who takes economics seriously, on the right or on the left.

@augy A one letter proof against the “scientific consensus” you mention. http://blog.mises.org/archives/010939.asp

I suggest you read some more on the whole “climate change” movement and why it changed from “global warming” particularly look at your recent history in the early 70′s the scientific consensus was we were entering an ice age.

The fact of the matter is that NO model shows this as a crisis that must be handled now. A 4 degree increase in temperatures in 800 years is NOT A CRISIS. You do a disservice to the word to call it that. The fact is the earth has been warming since before the industrial revolution, the first point where any sane person could argue humans had an impact on global climate. Even baring all that, the fact still remains that volcanoes put out more CO2 in one year then all of humanity combined!

Your Econ 101 class was probably wrong too, read up on some true market theory (google “Austrian Business Cycle” and/or read anything at mises.org) and forget the Keynsian interventionist rubbish they taught you, then maybe people’s faith in the market will make sense to you.

http://capwiz.com/chamber/issues/alert/?alertid=13915566

Thank you, Katie, for all your work into this. I find it most interesting to read.

I understand your reluctance to admit that we need a market-wide mechanism to put the costs to public health back into the carbon market. That makes sense; it goes against your political ideals. However, it makes more sense to approach this as “how do we put economic externalties back into the market?” and not “how can somehow avoid not using government to solve a problem?” By approaching the problem in good faith, we get workable policy solutions. By looking at what the scientific consensus is, we can get policy solutions. Attacking policy solutions of all ideologies (cap and trade being the GOP/moderate idea, and carbon taxing being the liberal idea), then we’re only left with a blind faith in the ambiguous idea of “innovation.”

And where would this innovation come from? People with ideas who take advantage of un-met or yet-uncreated demand. Is demand for technological innovation going to suddenly appear when people create “green” solutions to world-wide greenhouse gas emissions? No. Policy makers and special interests have a vested interest not to do anything that upsets the present political and economic order.

That is why the nature of this problem is so different from other policy issues: it will take impairing business and one’s own political popularity to do what is right. On top of that, there is no constituency time-traveling from the future to elect politicians — so they have no present interest in fixing preventable problems now. So, the consequences are huge, the political motivation is basically non-existent, and the solutions need to be world-wide and massive. It’s pretty scary stuff.

Conservative parties elsewhere in the world are doing a great job of regulating carbon using market mechanisms, rather than setting limits as 1970s liberals would do. UK Tory David Cameron is awesome on this and based his campaign on it. The American GOP, however, ignores the classic Econ 101 problem of negative externalities to merely hope for technological innovation. When such “demand” for innovation materializes however, it will come much too late and at a high cost to public health, without addressing the world-wide problem. It would likely only treat the symptoms for “consumers” dealing with their new environment.

At that point the damage to our economy would have been massive (more wild fires, less fresh water, more oceans, more deserts in the SW, more hurricanes, etc) … Buying some solar panels or a hybrid car is only somewhat helpful; we need world-wide coordination and drastic measures immediately.