The Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) recently released a survey [.pdf] of 144 leading economists who have published peer-reviewed articles on climate change. In the media blitz accompanying the release of the study, IPI spokespeople sold its results as a “consensus” among expert economists comparable to that of the climate scientists. They gave the average person the impression that only a fool or a tool of big business could possibly oppose the Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Boxer bills.
This is completely misleading. It is true that the vast majority of the surveyed economists believe that climate change poses a threat to the economy. However, this alone doesn’t mean that their work endorses the pending legislation. In fact, we will show that many of the responses in the survey underscore that Congress’ proposed “solutions” to climate change violate the recommendations of even those economists who are very concerned about climate change.
The Existence of a Threat Alone Doesn’t Justify Any Government “Solution”
The most-hyped result from the survey was the fact that 84 percent of the surveyed economists agreed with this statement: “The environmental effects of greenhouse-gas emissions, as described by leading scientific experts, create significant risks to important sectors of the United States and global economy.”
Already we see that the question is loaded; a more neutral question would have been, “Do you think greenhouse-gas emissions create significant risks to the economy?” There are many economists who have expressed skepticism about the computer models and techniques used to generate some of the scarier projections. But with the phrasing of the question, they were technically being asked to take the climate models at face value, and assess what the impact of their projections would be on the economy.
But that’s a minor quibble. The real problem with the hype placed on this particular result, is that it does not follow that the Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Boxer bills are appropriate to dealing with this potential risk. For an analogy, if we surveyed doctors and asked, “Is there a significant risk to the public from H1N1?” presumably a large percentage would say, “Yes.” If the Obama Administration then proposed vaccinating every American three times a month for the next 20 years, that would clearly be a waste of resources and detrimental to public health.
The same is true with the threat of climate change. As we will show, the pending Congressional legislation actually violates many of the recommendations of the economists in the survey. Yet one would never get that impression from reading the NYT coverage, or story in USA Today.
Surveyed Economists Favor “Market-Based” Approach and Auctioned Allowances
Another completely misleading result from the survey shows that an overwhelming 91.6 percent of the respondents favored a “market-based” approach to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. In the news stories linked above, as well as the Executive Summary of the survey itself, this statistic is offered as apparent endorsement of the cap-and-trade legislation currently being debated in Congress.
On the contrary, the economists endorsement of “market-based” approaches really shows how inefficient the pending legislation is. By “market-based” approach, the economists mean that the government should place a price penalty on carbon dioxide emissions, either through a cap-and-trade system or a straightforward carbon tax. And then…the government should mind its own business. In particular, policymakers should not try to micromanage the particular ways that business and consumers scale back their emissions, but rather the (augmented) profit and loss system will lead to the most efficient response to the new incentives. As the study itself explains:
Nearly all respondents—92%—also agreed or strongly agreed that market-based mechanisms, as opposed to command-and-control approaches, are the preferred way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and place a price on carbon. As such, most economists would support the cap-and-trade structure proposed by the main legislative options now pending before Congress. [Emphasis added]
Yet contrary to the non sequitur in the quote above, if a straightforward “market-based” approach is what the expert economists favor—by an overwhelming majority—then the economists would likely reject the monstrous hunks of legislation that passed the House and are being debated in the Senate. We at IER have already shown the tremendous thicket of new regulations contained in the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill, besides its cap-and-trade system. At best, only one half of Waxman-Markey could even be called cap-and-trade, leaving an additional 700 pages of inefficient regulations. The 91.6 percent of economists who favored a “market-based” approach were rejecting the top-down central planning contained in Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer.
Speaking of cap-and-trade, the IPI survey also found that 80.6 percent of respondents favored auctioning emission allowances rather than handing them to favored groups for free. Presumably then these economists would join with IER in condemning this thinly veiled transfer of an enormous amount of wealth from low- and middle-class energy consumers into the pockets of politically-connected shareholders.
What the Media Hype Didn’t Report
We have seen that the two most-hyped results of the survey actually do not support the pending legislation, and if anything actually undercut it. What’s interesting is that if one looks at pages 18-19 of the actual survey [.pdf], one learns:
The survey asked what percentage of benefits from emissions reduction would accrue to the United States. The average response was 7.7%, and the median was 4%….Given the global extent of the problem, each individual country has an incentive to “free ride” on the efforts of others—it is important for all countries to act to overcome this incentive or else appropriate controls will not be put in place.
The lay person who simply reads the news coverage or Executive Summary would be stunned by the above concession. Many economists support a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions because they calculate that the global benefits will outweigh the global costs. But as the above quotation makes crystal clear, if the U.S. restrains its own emissions while other major governments do not, then the impact on the U.S. economy—which the CBO estimates could be as high as 3.4 percent of GDP by 2050—will result in benefits that will accrue largely to foreigners.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with foreign aid per se; Americans are quite generous with their wealth. Furthermore, many people believe that the Western countries ought to bear the lion’s share of the pain from emissions cuts, because they historically benefited from plentiful energy supplies in the form of fossil fuels. Even so, average Americans are being misled when they believe the pending legislation will benefit the U.S. economy on net. Even according to the “consensus” models, it will not benefit if the U.S. acts unilaterally.
Conclusion
The media blitz surrounding the new IPI survey tells Americans that economists as well as climate scientists support government intervention into the energy sector. Yet a little digging shows that if anything, the economic consensus rejects the particular legislation pending in Congress. Just because many experts agree there is a problem doesn’t automatically mean Congress has the solution.
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