Global Warming

This week I am posting first. The term “global warming” refers to increased global temperatures caused by increased concentrations of “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere. A greenhouse gas is a gas that tends to block heat reflected from the earth’s surface while letting the heat of the sun through to heat up that surface; so the higher the concentration of such gases in the atmosphere, the hotter the surface becomes. The most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, which is emitted into the atmosphere by a variety of human activities, mainly the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) and of forests; those fuels, and of course wood, are made out of carbon and burning them liberates carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. Recent decades have seen large, and accelerating, increases in annual emissions of carbon dioxide, because of growth of population and of economic activity. The increases in emissions have been accompanied by substantial increases in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and by increases in global temperatures as well. It is now the scientific consensus that these developments are linked: the emissions increase the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and the increase in that concentration causes global temperatures to rise. Not all scientists agree, but the ranks of the dissenters are shrinking as new evidence of global warming emerges, such as the recent recession of glaciers in Alaska and elsewhere. What if anything is being done, or should be done, about global warming? The Kyoto Protocol, which recently came into effect by its terms when Russia signed it, though the United States has not, requires the signatory nations to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to 7 to 10 percent below what they were five years ago, but exempts developing countries, such as China, a larger and growing emitter, and Brazil, which is destroying large reaches of the Amazon rain forest, much of it by burning. The effect of carbon dioxide emissions on the atmospheric concentration of the gas is cumulative, because carbon dioxide leaves the atmosphere (by being absorbed into the oceans) at a much lower rate than it enters it, and therefore the concentration will continue to grow even if the annual rate of emission is cut down substantially. Between this phenomenon and the exemptions, there is a widespread belief that the Kyoto Protocol will have only a slight effect in arresting global warming; yet the tax or other regulatory measures required to reduce emissions below their level of five years ago will be very costly. The Kyoto Protocol could certainly be improved, but on balance I think it is a step in the right direction—if the United States ratifies it, which it has thus far refused to do. But my reasoning is different from that of most of the Protocol’s supporters. They are content to slow the rate of global warming by encouraging, through heavy taxes (for example on gasoline or coal) or other measures (such as quotas) that will make fossil fuels more expensive to consumers, conservation measures, such as driving less or driving more fuel-efficient cars, that will reduce the consumption of these fuels. This is either too much or too little. It is too much if, as most scientists believe, global warming will continue to be a gradual process, producing really serious effects—the destruction of tropical agriculture, the spread of tropical diseases such as malaria to currently temperate zones, dramatic increases in violent storm activity (increased atmospheric temperatures, by increasing the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, increase precipitation), and a rise in sea levels (eventually to the point of inundating most coastal cities)—only toward the end of the century. For by that time science, without prodding by governments, is likely to have developed economical “clean” substitutes for fossil fuels (we already have a clean substitute—nuclear power) and even economic technology for either preventing carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels or for removing it from the atmosphere. But the Protocol, at least without the participation of the United States, is too limited a response to global warming if the focus is changed from gradual to abrupt global warming. At various times in the earth’s history, drastic temperature changes have occurred in the course of just a few years. The most recent of these periods, called the “Younger Dryas” (Dryas if a flower that flourished then), took place about 11,000 years ago, shortly after the end of the last ice age. In a period of no more than a decade, temperatures soared by about 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Because the earth was still cool from the ice age, the effect of the increased warmth on the human population was positive. But a similar increase in a modern decade would have devastating effects on agriculture and on coastal cities, and might even cause a shift in the Gulf Stream that would result in giving all of Europe a Siberian climate. Because of the enormous complexity of the forces that determine climate, and the historically unprecedented magnitude of human effects on the concentration of greenhouse gases, the possibility that continued growth in that concentration could precipitate—and within the near rather than the distant future—a sudden warming similar to that of the Younger Dryas cannot be excluded. Indeed, no probability, high or low, can be assigned to such a catastrophe. It may be prudent, therefore, to try to stimulate the rate at which economical substitutes for fossil fuels, and technology both for limiting the emission of carbon dioxide by those fuels when they are burned in internal-combustion engines or electrical generating plants, and for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, are developed. This can be done, in part anyway, by stiff taxes on carbon dioxide emissions. Such taxes give the energy industries, along with business customers of them such as airlines and manufacturers of motor vehicles, a strong incentive to finance R&D designed to create economical clean substitutes for such fuels and devices to “trap” emissions at the source, before they enter the atmosphere. Given the technological predominance of the United States, it is important that these taxes be imposed on U.S. firms, which they would be if we ratified the Kyoto Protocol and by doing so became bound by it. One advantage of the technology-forcing tax approach over public subsidies for R&D is that the government wouldn’t be in the business of picking winners—the affected industries would decide what R&D to support—and another is that the brunt of the taxes could be partly offset by reducing other taxes, since emission taxes would raise revenue as well as inducing greater R&D expenditures. However, subsidies would be necessary for technologies that would have no market, such as technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There would be no private demand for such technologies because, in contrast to ones that reduce emissions, technologies that remove already emitted carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would not reduce any emitter’s tax burden. This analysis completes the circle from our patent postings of last week. Private investment in technologies for reducing global warming by developing clear fuels or reducing emissions from the burning of the dirty ones could probably not be financed by the market, because of the cost and risk involved, unless inventors were allowed to obtain patents on these new technologies.

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