Shi-Ling Hsu

Assessing “dangerous climate change”: Required reduction of carbon emissions to protect young people, future generations and nature

We assess climate impacts of global warming using ongoing observations and paleoclimate data. We use Earth’s measured energy imbalance, paleoclimate data, and simple representations of the global carbon cycle and temperature to define emission reductions needed to stabilize climate and avoid potentially disastrous impacts on today’s young people, future generations, and nature. A cumulative industrial-era limit of ∼500 GtC fossil fuel emissions and 100 GtC storage in the biosphere and soil would keep climate close to the Holocene range to which humanity and other species are adapted. Cumulative emissions of ∼1000 GtC, sometimes associated with 2°C global warming, would spur “slow” feedbacks and eventual warming of 3–4°C with disastrous consequences. Rapid emissions reduction is required to restore Earth’s energy balance and avoid ocean heat uptake that would practically guarantee irreversible effects. Continuation of high fossil fuel emissions, given current knowledge of the consequences, would be an act of extraordinary witting intergenerational injustice. Responsible policymaking requires a rising price on carbon emissions that would preclude emissions from most remaining coal and unconventional fossil fuels and phase down emissions from conventional fossil fuels.

Ecosystem Management and the 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act

Many observers have hailed the 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA), reauthorizing and amending the 1976 Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act (FCMA or Magnuson Act), as a victory for conservation and ecosystem preservation. New provisions include the removal of discretion over the definition of overfishing, new requirements to reduce bycatch and waste, and provisions protecting essential habitat for fisheries systems. However, because the SFA imposes a moratorium prohibiting the implementation of new individual quota systems until the year 2000, it is presently ineffective in curing perceived problems in fisheries management. By blocking the implementation of new quota programs, the Sustainable Fisheries Act not only fails to address the overcapitalization problem, but actually provides perverse incentives to exacerbate the problem. These incentives may cause fishermen to strive to accumulate harvest records during the moratorium to ensure their ability to participate in future quota programs. Such strategic behavior will only accelerate overfishing problems, reducing or offsetting some of the positive benefits of other conservation provisions in the Act.

Scale Economies, Scale Externalities: Hog Farming and the Changing American Agricultural Industry

American agriculture is inexorably concentrating into the hands of a small number of large conglomerates. Expanding farms pursuing scale economies would also normally have to abide by a system of environmental and other laws that would, in theory, require farms to account for negative externalities. If those laws were observed and enforced, they would help strike a balance between the greater profitability and the larger externalities of larger farms. But these laws are not widely observed and not rigorously enforced, upsetting this balance and giving large-scale farms a cost advantage while insulating them from corresponding responsibilities. Perhaps nowhere in agriculture is this more visible than in the hog industry, which has dramatically transformed itself from one based on small-scale, localized production to one based on large-scale and far-flung production. Ninety-six percent of all hogs raised in the United States are now raised on farms of 1,000 or more hogs. Lax enforcement of environmental laws against large hog farms has allowed them to grow and realize scale economies without accounting for their exponential increase in water and air pollution. The same can be said for state Right-to-Farm laws, which insulate many large hog farms from nuisance lawsuits. Reckless practices in concentrated animal feeding operations contribute to the development of dangerously antibioticresistant bacteria and heighten the risk of a transfer of zoonotic diseases to humans, potentially helping to set the stage for next pandemic. Finally, the concentration of hog farming imposes economic costs by reducing competition and by marginalizing small farmers. Large conglomerates should be held to account for these enormous costs, not only because these costs vastly outweigh the productivity benefits, but also because it is important to preserve an industrial capacity to produce food in an alternative manner that generates far fewer and lower costs. a Larson Professor, Florida State University College of Law. The author would like to acknowledge the research assistance of the always-outstanding library staff at the Florida State University College of Law. IN DEFENSE OF, OR OFFENSIVE TO FARMS?

Capital Transitioning: An International Human Capital Strategy for Climate Innovation

The 2015 Paris accord represents a promising change of course in international climate diplomacy, but left unanswered is the question of exactly how the world will meet the daunting technological challenges that lie ahead. This article proposes a global strategy to build up human capital oriented towards two bodies of knowledge: (1) alternative, non-fossil energy systems, and (2) a deeper understanding of climate systems that might be engineered to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Simply committing funding to climate technology is insufficient; an international agreement with specific funding priorities is needed to implement a global policy that takes into account the nature of human capital and its role in bringing about the radical technological changes necessary to avert climate disaster. Fossil fuel-related industries, which have globally led the political resistance to climate policies, have many assets that would be threatened by climate policy, but an important and overlooked asset is their stock of human capital: the many kinds of formal and informal learning that enable them to exploit fossil fuels. Human capital should be brought to the fore in an international climate agreement for three reasons: (1) the wrong kind of human capital – attached to fossil fuel-related methods of energy generation and consumption – has helped to create a political economy that is unfavorable for climate policy, (2) the right kind of human capital – broader and more fundamental understandings of energy systems and natural climate systems – can create a more favorable political economy for climate policy, and (3) the technological changes needed for both mitigation and geoengineering technologies are so profound that a human capital stock must be developed with a conscious focus on radical technological change that can be delivered quickly. While individual countries may pursue an enlightened human capital policy on their own, cooperation at the international level would maximize the scale economies of inventive effort. Moreover, an international agreement that includes a human capital component, from which all signatories benefit, could lubricate further international negotiations.

Arguments against a Carbon Tax

The fact that carbon tax proposals have failed to advance in North America suggests that alternatives are more currently more popular. At least cap-and-trade proposals have passed the US House of Representatives, seen the light of day in the US Senate, and been the topic of discussion in various Canadian federal and provincial governments. Most outside of the carbon tax tent (but inside the camp favoring action on climate change) favor cap-and-trade, most of the remainder favor government subsidies (without necessarily using that term), and a few, mostly environmental advocates, still favor the use of command-and-control regulation (also without specifically calling it that). In the United States, some environmental organizations still call for regulation of greenhouse gas emissions through the existing command-and-control-oriented Clean Air Act. Whether emanating from a sincere belief in the efficacy of command-and-control, or from a strategic desire to use command-and-control as leverage for obtaining passage of cap-and-trade legislation, this has become a distinctly minority view.

Carbon Tax Psychology

So why does the idea of a carbon tax remain in political purgatory? Even detractors of carbon taxes would generally concede, in candid conversation, that a carbon tax is at least as effective or nearly as effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions as other options, especially since most countries already collect taxes on fossil fuels. Most would also have to acknowledge that carbon taxes could address regressiveness concerns, and perhaps, given recent findings, perhaps even do so without revenue recycling.

Human Capital in a Climate-Changed World

At the center of the crisis of climate change is an amazingly efficient but inert fossil fuel-centered energy industry. What makes the energy industry so inert is its massive stock of capital: the facilities, structures, networks, and other physical assets required to extract, process, distribute, and combust fossil fuels. This capital stock is predicated on fossil fuel exploitation, and does not adapt well to alternative methods of meeting energy needs. Fossil fuel subsidies have bloated capital investments in the energy sector, producing low prices and in turn, economic development. It has thus been widely assumed that this is the most reliable model for economic development. Two things have become increasingly clear: (i) that fossil fuel subsidies and low energy prices are not a condition precedent to economic development, and (ii) human capital development, primarily through broad provision of education, is a condition precedent to economic development. The climate crisis highlights the environmental harms of fossil fuel combustion, but it also shines a spotlight on the faulty economic reasoning behind a fossil fuel-centered model of economic growth. This chapter suggests that as a minimum, two no-regrets policies be linked: the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies, and the robust financing of broader access to education. The climate crisis introduces a new set of inequalities, those in which some countries have benefited disproportionately from the combustion of fossil fuels, and a mostly different set of countries will suffer disproportionately from the harms of climate change. Effecting a direct transfer of fossil fuel subsidies to educational objectives simultaneously reduces the inert capital in fossil fuel industries, increases more productive capital in the form of human capital, and provides a compensatory mechanism for those disproportionately harmed by climate change. Ultimately, the most beneficial and lasting aid that can be provided for developing countries most vulnerable to climate change is one that increases human capital through broad educational initiatives.

Climate Change Policy Alternatives

What are the main policy alternatives for addressing the climate change problem? While the many possibilities for greenhouse gas regulation have been treated extensively elsewhere, a brief review and definition of the regulatory instruments would helpfully frame the discussion. A comprehensive treatment, involving the scores of ideas and many of the variations of the four main climate policy instruments, is beyond the scope of this book.

Ten Arguments for a Carbon Tax

This chapter outlines ten arguments for a carbon tax, breaking out each argument into a separate part. The most salient hypothetical is that a federal carbon tax be adopted in the United States or Canada, but clearly a carbon tax could be adopted by any number of countries or subnational jurisdictions. The arguments and considerations outlined in this book apply equally whether it is proposed as a US federal carbon tax, a Chinese federal carbon tax, a state or provincial law, or potentially even a law adopted by cities and municipalities.

Changing Political Fortunes

Cognitive biases and the reinforcement of these biases—inadvertent by pollsters, to some extent purposeful by politicians—have seemingly created a deep political pit from which carbon taxes will never emerge to see the light of day. Carbon taxes mean higher energy prices, and it is easy for anti-tax groups to tap into consumers’ fears and squeeze out other considerations.1 But although these biases are widespread, they are fragile and fixable. Misperceptions and errant decision-making processes can be corrected, and information can be supplied to help citizens evaluate different policy instruments.