American Enterprise Institute: A Critique of the House Republican Climate Policy Proposals

WASHINGTON, March 25 -- The American Enterprise Institute issued the following report:

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- Adopting net-zero proponents' assumptions will not prove salutary

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Key Points

* The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives released recently a set of policy proposals ostensibly designed to address the potential dangers of anthropogenic climate change: planting more trees and capturing carbon dioxide.

* The climate effects of these proposals would be effectively equal to zero and might actually be inconsistent with their stated goals, but their costs would be high.

* Instead, an alternative policy stance supported by the actual climate evidence and straightforward benefit/cost analysis is available.

Read the PDF (https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/A-Critique-of-the-House-Republican-Climate-Policy-Proposals.pdf).

Executive Summary

The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives released recently a set of policy proposals ostensibly designed to address the potential dangers of anthropogenic climate change. These proposals appear to be driven by perceived political imperatives perhaps revealed by polling data, and at least in substantial part by many of the same assumptions about climate phenomena, both current and prospective, underlying the "net-zero" emission proposals of the more-alarmist proponents of climate policies, one example of which is the Green New Deal.

The House Republicans propose two sets of policy initiatives: (1) subsidies and other policy support for formal US participation in the international "trillion trees" initiative and (2) subsidies and other policy support for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide from enhanced oil recovery, from natural gas power production, and through direct extraction from the air.

The US component of the trillion trees effort, based on the demonstrated absorption effect of trees on carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, would have a near-zero effect--a bit less than 1/100th of a degree C--on temperatures by 2100, based on straightforward modeling with the climate model used by the Environmental Protection Agency. Moreover, because forest canopies are dark as a crude generalization, expansion of forests would be likely to reduce global "albedo" (reflective) effects on solar radiation; the scientific literature suggests a net warming effect for most regions. Even ignoring the albedo issue, the costs of this effort would not be trivial; it could not satisfy any plausible benefit/cost test in terms of its stated objectives.

The same is true for an expanded effort to capture and sequester carbon dioxide. It would yield climate effects effectively equal to zero and would be very expensive. Under conservative assumptions, the plant capital costs of such an effort for the electric power sector alone would be $182 billion per year.

Republican policy proposals based on "alarmist" assumptions are unlikely to prove salutary. If anthropogenic climate change represents an "existential threat," then no cost is too large and no benefit is too small for given policy proposals, and proponents of climate policies purportedly more "sensible" inexorably will be driven to negotiate with themselves over how far toward the alarmist view they are willing to move. Instead, an alternative policy stance supported by the actual climate evidence and straightforward benefit/cost analysis is available. It comprises the following central components.

* Any plausible policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, whether implemented by the US alone or all nations collectively, would yield by 2100 climate effects effectively equal to zero.

* At the same time, the costs of such policies would be very large and inflicted disproportionately on the world's poor.

* Anthropogenic climate change is real, but natural processes too affect climate phenomena. The scientific literature suggests that mankind is responsible for about one-third of the approximate 1.5 degrees C of warming since 1850.

* There is substantial evidence that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations yield both risks and important benefits, and the unanticipated adverse effects of government policies should not be discounted.

* The body of evidence on climate phenomena does not support the "crisis" or "existential threat" assertions commonly heard in the public debate. Many of those arguments are based on model projections driven by implausible underlying assumptions, while others are simply assertions made ex nihilo.

* There is no "consensus" among scientists about climate science, whether at the 97 percent level commonly asserted or any other number. Moreover, scientific "truth" is not majoritarian, and scientists in any event are not entitled to deference with respect to their policy views.

* Climate policies, whether explicitly or implicitly, are intended to reduce the use of fossil fuels by increasing their relative perceived costs. The historical increase in the use of fossil fuels has driven advances in human well-being, while increases in individual incomes have expanded the demand for fossil fuels significantly. Opposition to fossil fuels implies a reduction in policies--education, training, health care, and the like--that add to human capital and so increase incomes and the demand for conventional energy. Therefore, opposition to fossil fuels is fundamentally antihuman.

* The uncertainties about shifts in future climate phenomena, whether anthropogenic or natural, are large, and any plausible policy action to affect them by reducing greenhouse gas emissions would yield trivial effects while imposing large costs. The most sensible policy approach moving forward comprises watchful waiting, adaptation over time, and ongoing investment in resilience against the future effects of climactic changes. Such an approach would be very different from "doing nothing."

Introduction

It is of no small interest that President Donald Trump--a man driven by instincts rather than analytic insight, a man unimpressed with scientific "truth" based on majoritarianism among experts, and a man utterly unconcerned with the approval of elites and opinion makers--has an outlook on the overall climate policy question that is correct in its essentials.1 That has not satisfied the perceived political needs of much of the Republican establishment in the House of Representatives, now proposing its own set of climate policies, to which we turn below.2 This response is likely to have been driven by poll numbers among younger and suburban Republicans, heavy criticism from editorial pages, and the old Beltway adage "you can't beat something with nothing," that "something" being the various proposals for immediate policy actions to achieve something approximating zero net emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), typically by 2050.3

In short, they seem to see promotion of a set of alternative climate policy responses as a political imperative, but if those alternatives are based on the same assumptions as those of the net-zero proponents, they can be predicted to engender environmental effects, whether positive or negative, effectively equal to zero, combined with an inexorable increase in the size, cost, and destructiveness of government.4 Another outcome virtually certain to obtain is a process in which the proponents of such policy alternatives gradually descend into negotiations with themselves over how far toward the alarmist view they are willing to move. No one can be surprised that this last dynamic already has begun: Having released its proposals only on February 12, Republicans have responded to the inevitable Democratic criticisms--the Republican proposals are vastly inadequate in the face of an "existential threat"--by saying they "have never said we don't have to reduce carbon emissions" and that the proposals are just a "first step."5

Can it possibly be the case that Republican strategists did not foresee something so predictable? Having endorsed the assumptions of those proposing net-zero policies, however costly, authoritarian, and unworkable, the principles that will support opposition to those policies in favor of something that can be summarized as "yes, but less" are far from clear.6

For now, it is useful briefly to summarize the essential contours of the public debate. It is sobering to review even a small sample of the myriad purported disasters looming large as sources of human suffering and ecological disaster resulting from increasing atmospheric concentrations of GHG:7 floods, fires, sea level rise and coastal destruction, disappearing arctic sea ice, the collapse of Antarctica, cyclones, droughts, torrential rainfall, mass extinctions, large-scale contagion, wildfires, large migrations of starving people, and wars over shrinking supplies of resources and food. Mainstream news coverage does not spend much time or space on dissent from such apocalyptic predictions. That there is little evidence of such effects to date has not dampened the crisis rhetoric; indeed, it may have elevated it if rhetorical volume is viewed as a substitute for the actual data on climate phenomena, which are summarized below.

The next section discusses the recent House Republican climate proposals and their attendant problems. Then I offer an alternative policy response to alarmist climate assertions and net-zero emissions proposals. Finally, I present some concluding observations.

Read the full report (https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/A-Critique-of-the-House-Republican-Climate-Policy-Proposals.pdf).