The Heritage Insider: The (mostly) pointless Paris climate conference, more fracking is the best climate policy, U.S. military strength is declining, welcome to the new Insider!
November 14, 2015
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CLIMATE
Expect no agreement from the UN climate conference to be held later this month. “Developing nations, facing the costliest action, plainly do not perceive it in their self-interest to change. Developed nations, desperate to demonstrate continued progress, make whatever concessions are necessary to ensure that more ‘agreements’ are signed, even as the core issues remain unaddressed. A meaningful climate agreement will not emerge from the parties’ current positions and interests.
“If negotiations will not lead developing nations to substantially alter their emissions trajectories, two dramatically different paths remain. The first is to support innovation and hope that new technologies emerge with the capacity to replace fossil fuels affordably and at scale. With sufficient technological progress, developing nations would find it within their interest to join in collective action—perhaps with realistic financing from developed nations. Government policy can encourage innovation, but this path is ultimately one of wait-and-see. For those who consider this path inadequate, the only viable alternative is coercion. […]
“Only by credibly threatening real harm to developing nations are they likely to change course. Such a tactic may sound radical—it is—but in a world where a cooperative global agreement is unattainable, activists who describe the threat of climate change in equally radical terms […] need to describe how far they would go. […]
“Anyone who truly views the threat of climate change in terms of world war or genocide must be prepared to threaten dramatic coercive action in pursuit of an agreement—and take that action if negotiations fail.”
—Oren Cass, “Leading Nowhere: The Futility and Farce of Global Climate Negotiations,” The Manhattan Institute, October 2015.
It’s almost as if reducing global temperatures isn’t even the point. “That failure to address the central question is characteristic of the ‘climate’ dogma of the environmental left generally: What effect would their policy prescriptions have under assumptions most favorable to their position? The Obama administration Climate Action Plan (a 17 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020): eighteen one-thousandths of a degree by 2100. The pseudo-agreement with China, announced last November, disavowed two weeks later, supposedly now to be resurrected, but with the details left to the imagination; and so let us assume an additional 10 percent reduction by the U.S. and a 20 percent reduction by China: two tenths of a degree. Let’s go wild and assume a 30 percent reduction by the rest of the industrialized world: another two tenths of a degree. The grand total: barely more than four tenths of a degree. Is that worth something on the order of a trillion dollars per year? And let us not forget the latest fantasy of the environmental left: an 80 percent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The temperature effect: about three tenths of a degree by 2100.”
—Benjamin Zycher, “The Strange Silence About Climate Policy and the Looming Apocalypse,” American Enterprise Institute, September 29.
Why consult people who have a different point of view? Josh Earnest gives the Obama administration’s view on the process of adopting a climate change agreement: “I think it’s hard to take seriously from some Members of Congress who deny the fact that climate change exists, that they should have some opportunity to render judgment about a climate change agreement.”
About that part of the Constitution that says the Senate can’t disagree with a Democratic President: Nope. That’s not in there. “An agreement with far-reaching domestic consequences like the Paris Protocol will lack democratic legitimacy unless the Senate or Congress as a whole, representing the will of the American people, gives its approval. The White House plan shows contempt for the U.S. treaty process and the role of Congress, particularly the Senate. It is an attempt to achieve through executive fiat that which cannot be achieved through the democratic process.”
—Steven Groves, “Obama’s Plan to Avoid Senate Review of the Paris Protocol,” The Heritage Foundation, September 21
Meanwhile, fracking is getting the job done. “U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have fallen significantly since their peak in 2007—more than in any other country. The biggest cause is America’s fracking-led natural gas boom: solar power is responsible for 1 percent of the decline in U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions; natural gas is responsible for nearly 20 percent. […]
“[T]he growth in electricity generation from [renewable] sources looks impressive only in percentage terms. Solar power contributed only 18 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) to the 3,936 billion kWh generated by the U.S. electricity sector last year. As a result, the country’s massive investment in the technology has made virtually no dent in total emissions of carbon-dioxide—and will not make a significant dent for the foreseeable future.
“Conversely, the extraordinary technological progress that produced America’s natural gas boom has sent natural gas prices plummeting and has driven a substantial shift from coal to natural gas as the fuel generating U.S. electricity. Burning natural gas emits only about half as much carbon-dioxide as burning coal (and even smaller fractions of harmful air pollutants), so its increased use at the expense of coal reduces emissions. Fracking, the technique despised by environmentalists for extracting natural gas from shale, is reducing carbon-dioxide emissions much faster than renewable energy can.”
—Oren Cass, “Fracking, Not Solar Power, Is Reducing U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions,” Manhattan Institute, November 4
MORE ON THE UN CLIMATE CONFERENCE
EDUCATION
Where did today’s college kids (or at least the ones at Amherst, Yale, Missouri, and Claremont McKenna), ever get the idea that college should be a “safe space”—free from judgments they don’t like or opinions that make them uncomfortable?
“Children are hardwired to play. That’s how we learn. But what happens when play is micro-managed? St. Lawrence University professor Steven Horwitz argues that it undermines democracy.
“Free play — tag in the schoolyard, pickup basketball at the park, etc. — is a very complicated thing. It requires young people to negotiate rules among themselves, without the benefit of some third-party authority figure. These skills are hugely important in life. When parents or teachers short-circuit that process by constantly intervening to stop bullying or just to make sure that everyone plays nice, Horwitz argues, ‘we are taking away a key piece of what makes it possible for free people to be peaceful, cooperative people by devising bottom-up solutions to a variety of conflicts.’
“The rise in ‘helicopter parenting’ and the epidemic of ‘everyone gets a trophy’ education are another facet of the same problem. We’re raising millions of kids to be smart and kind, but also fragile.”
—Jonah Goldberg, “Campus Commotions Show We’re Raising Fragile Kids,” National Review, November 11
NATIONAL SECURITY
U.S. military strength is declining. “In aggregate, the United States’ military posture is rated as ‘Marginal’ and is trending toward ‘Weak.’ […] [T]he current U.S. military force is capable of meeting the demands of a single major regional conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities—something it is doing now and has done for the past two decades—but […] it would be very hard-pressed to do more and certainly would be ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous major regional contingencies. As was the case in the preceding year, the consistent decline in funding and the consequent shrinking of the force have placed it under significant pressure. Essential maintenance continues to be deferred; fewer units (mostly the Navy’s platforms and the Special Operations Forces community) are being cycled through operational deployments more often and for longer periods; and old equipment is being extended while programmed replacements are problematic.”
Some details: “[T]he Active Army has been downsized from 45 [brigade combat teams (BCTs)] (552,100 soldiers) in FY 2013 to 32 BCTs (490,000 soldiers) in FY 2015. Thus, a 12 percent reduction in troop numbers resulted in a 29 percent reduction in BCTs. The Army Chief of Staff told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2015 that the Army can meet the missions outlined in the 2012 [Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG)] with this current force size, but he also warned that the continuation of sequestration would prevent the Army from executing the DSG. […]
“Ship modernization programs as they currently stand are problematic because they do not ‘keep pace to deal with high-end adversary weapons systems by 2020.’ The CBO reported in 2015 that to reach its procurement goals, the Navy would need to increase spending on shipbuilding by one-third over what it has spent per year during the past 30 years. It is worth noting that this assessment was for the Navy’s goal of a 306-ship Navy, which is lower than the previous determination of 313 ships and lower than the current requirement of 308; it is also well below this Index’s prescribed fleet size of 346 ships.
“Because ships take such a long time to build and only a few shipyards are capable of building them, and because shipbuilding programs require carefully orchestrated, long-lead-time planning to account for sequencing in the shipyards, supply chain and workforce management, and multi-year funding, the Navy publishes a 30-year plan as its top-level document that captures objectives by class and sequencing of replacements as older ships reach the end of their service lives. According to the current 30-year plan, the Navy will reach its 308-ship requirement by FY 2022.” [Internal citations omitted.]
—Dakota Wood, ed. 2016 Index of U.S. Military Strength, The Heritage Foundation, October 2015
CITIZENSHIP AND CIVIL SOCIETY
Government is not the solution to our coordination problem; it is the coordination problem. “[W]e cannot use the normal political process to roll back the reach of government. By ‘cannot,’ I mean it is ‘impossible,’ and not just for now but for the remainder of America’s existence. […]
“Jonathan Rauch gave a very nice description of [the problem] in his book Government’s End: ‘If you see others rushing to lobby for favorable laws and regulations, you rush to do the same so as not to be left at a disadvantage. But the government can do only so much. … Its adaptability erodes with each additional benefit that interest groups lock in… . Thus if everybody descends on Washington hunting some favorable public policy, government becomes rigid, overburdened, and incoherent. Soon its problem-solving capacity is despoiled. Everybody loses.’
“And that’s where we are now. We are living in a political system that has tied itself in knots. ‘Cleaning house’ in Washington will do nothing to untie those knots. When it comes to an explanation of why government under both Democrats and Republicans has become so pathetically ineffectual across the board, even at simple tasks, a powerful underlying explanation is that American government suffers from an advanced case of institutional sclerosis.
That’s the start of Charles Murray’s case for ‘massive, systemic civil disobedience,’ ‘to make large portions of the Federal Code of Regulations unenforceable.’ “Think ahead for two centuries. […]
“National wealth that dwarfs today’s, and technology that gives the individual access to total information and the capacity to apply that information to everyday life: under those conditions, it is unimaginable to me that Americans will still think the best way to live is to be governed by armies of bureaucrats enforcing thousands of minutely prescriptive rules. Somehow, the American polity will have evolved toward more efficient ways of working and living together. In the language I use in the book, America will do a better job of leaving people free to live their lives as they see fit as long as they accord the same freedom to everyone else.
“I think the key event in the evolution of that better world will be a recognition that government is increasingly the Wizard of Oz. It makes a lot of noise, sounds very fearsome, but when the curtain is pulled, is revealed to be a pathetic old man. It doesn’t mean that the government can’t hurt us. But we are going to discover all sorts of ways in which the government becomes irrelevant, and is something that can be sidestepped, something that can be worked around.
“I see systematic civil disobedience as an initial step in this process of consigning government to its proper box once again. Equally important, it is the initial step in sustaining our unique civic culture.”
—Charles Murray, “Curing American Sclerosis,” American Enterprise Institute,’ November 5.
MORE ON CITIZENSHIP AND CIVIL SOCIETY
STATE AND LOCAL SPENDING
Protectionism, in the form of preferences for in-state bidders on government contracts, is costing state taxpayers a bundle. “[S]tates with broad preference policies spend $158 more per capita on capital projects than do states without any preference policy. According to the US Census Bureau, an average of 2.58 persons resided in each household in the United States in 2010. Thus the average household in a state with a broad/strict preference policy pays $408 more a year for government services than does the average household in a state with no preference policy. With the median state population at 4.2 million, the results further suggest that broad/strict preference policies are associated with $664 million more in capital expenditures in the median state.
“We observe similar results for construction expenditures. States with broad/strict preference policies spend an extra $148 per person (or $382 per household, or $622 million in the median state) on construction projects than do states without preference policies.”
—Adam J. Hoffer and Russell S. Sobel, “Protectionism Among the States: How Preference Policies Undermine Competition,” Mercatus Center, October 2015
MORE ON STATE AND LOCAL SPENDING
HAPPENINGS
Get your nominations in for the Cato Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize’.
The 2015 Woman of Valor Awards Dinner, hosted by the Independent Women’s Forum, will begin at 6 p.m. on November 18 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
The Holodomor Memorial was unveiled last week in Washington, D.C. It commemorates the killing of at least 7 million people by the Soviet state through policies that deliberately caused a famine throughout Ukraine in 1932-1933. You can visit the memorial now at the intersections of Massachusetts Avenue, North Capital Street, and F Street, NW, in Washington, D.C.
The Tax Foundation’s Annual Dinner will begin at 6 p.m. on November 19 at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C.
The Young Conservatives Coalition’s 6th Annual Buckley Awards, recognizing young conservative leaders, will begin at 6 p.m. on November 19 at the Capital Hill Club in Washington, D.C.
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