Capitalism and Pollution

The US has been something of a world beater in seeing a reduction in CO2 levels in recent years thanks, in part, to its growing abundance of cheap natural gas. NG emits about half the CO2 that coal does and far less sulfur and nitrous oxides. Even environmentalist sources were jubilant.

Since 2006, the U.S. has seen the largest reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of any country or region, according to a recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The report states that, during this time, U.S. CO2 emissions have fallen by 7.7 percent or 430 million metric tons, primarily due to a decrease in coal use. This decrease in carbon emissions is equal to eliminating the annual greenhouse gas emissions from more than 84 million passenger vehicles or more than 53 million homes.

NG must be doing something right when you are getting praise from the likes of Michael Mann and Roger Pielke jnr.

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for "cautious optimism" about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that "ultimately people follow their wallets" on global warming.

"There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources," said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado...

...Despite unanswered questions about the environmental effects of drilling, the gas boom "is actually one of a number of reasons for cautious optimism," Mann said. "There's a lot of doom and gloom out there. It is important to point out that there is still time" to address global warning.

Even AGW alarmist sources admit natural gas reduces CO2 output, they only criticise it for not going far enough.

Now I have had some AGW proponents throw back statistics from the EPA that CO2 emissions have indeed been increasing since 1990. But this omits one very important factor - the shale gas revolution has only happened over recent years. In fact up until 2001 shale was only around 1% of all gas produced compared to around 37% now. In fact the dramatic change in the ratio of oil to gas price since 2009 indicates just how dirt cheap NG has gotten relative to oil in just the last 3 years.

Whats more the astronomical growth in output of CO2 by China and India makes the question of US CO2 output almost completely tangential. In fact, here is the projected CO2 output for non-OECD countries to 2035.

But just like with nuclear energy, the environmental movement is not about to take up the mantel of natural gas even though it is much cleaner than coal. As even the New York Times admits.

There is little recognition by either side that current policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are inadequate for dealing with the threat that they pose. It is the coal-fueled growth of countries like China and India that generates much of these emissions. Unless a cheap, rapidly deployable substitute fuel is found for coal, then it will be next to impossible to safely rein in rising carbon dioxide levels around the world.

Although the green movement might at first see shale gas as an enemy in this fight, it may in fact turn out to be a friend. Broad development of shale gas resources — with proper ecological safeguards — could be the best way to achieve the quick cuts in carbon dioxide emissions that we need to maintain a habitable environment on Earth.

Chicago and Guns

In June 2010 the US Supreme Court ruled that citizens in Chicago have a constitutional "right to keep and bear arms", striking down its handgun ban. In the immediate years that followed the violent crime rate dropped despite predictions of carnage in the streets. The majority of the gun owners are white, however, where most of the violent crime is committed by blacks and Hispanics.

It seems now, though, Chicago's violent crime rate is way up, reaching its 500th homicide for the year. Hard to blame on the second amendment though as it has been pinned on a spike in gang violence.

McCarthy and other officials blame the surge on a splintering of the city's traditional gangs and the rise of new cliques and factions that are vying, often violently, for control of turf on the city's south and west sides.

The spike in homicides was especially dramatic in the first quarter of the year, when murders jumped 66 percent. So far in the fourth quarter, McCarthy said, the murder rate is down 15 percent compared with the same period last year. Police have arrested 7,000 more gang members this year than in 2011, he said.

"We're doing what we can do and it's working," McCarthy said.

Who would have thought tougher policing, targeting the actual criminals, would work? Especially since 91.5% of homicide offenders have a prior arrest record - maybe the revolving door of Leftist justice can now be shut?

In response to the Supreme Court decision Chicago politicians immediately enacted strict laws to limit the amount of new guns.

To comply, gun owners must acquire a state firearm-owner identification card, undergo three background checks, take a training class, practice shooting at a range, pay $100 plus $15 per gun, and register with the police department. Registrations started last July 12.

But only a fraction of those who own guns in Chicago have bothered to register. And most of those who have registered are from white, low crime areas where most of the crime is gang related and committed by blacks and Hispanics. The idiocy of gun regulations is illustrated here

But observers in Chicago say there are other factors at work here: More convicted felons—most of whom can't legally own guns—live in south- and west-side neighborhoods, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. There's also a higher level of distrust of the police in black and Latino communities, which means fewer people there are willing to register a gun with the CPD. More retired cops live on the northwest and southwest sides. And concerns about racial change, especially on the diversifying southwest side, has also accompanied anxiety about safety, some residents say.

John Lott, an economist who argues that gun control laws like Chicago's actually lead to higher crime, says the cost of meeting the gun application's training and registration requirements essentially discriminates against low-income black communities. In Chicago, the training and permit fees cost about $250 on top of the price of the gun.

"Those who are most likely to be victims of crime benefit the most from owning guns, and unfortunately, that is one very well defined group in our country, poor blacks who live in high crime urban areas such as Chicago," Lott wrote in an e-mail. "But these white, middle class areas can much more easily afford the fees to register their guns and to go through the training requirements."

Roderick Sawyer, alderman of the Sixth Ward, is skeptical of that theory. "It's like buying a car," he says. "If you want one you'll find a way to do it."

Sawyer's south-side ward includes struggling, high-crime areas in Englewood as well as middle-class parts of Chatham where residents are openly talking about getting guns because of crime concerns. He says it's appropriate to have "reasonable restrictions" on gun ownership in the city, though it's also clear that many people aren't complying with the law. He recalled an evening when he offered to walk a senior citizen home after a community meeting.

"She moved her coat to the side and showed me she was packing," he recalls. "She said, 'How about if I walk you home?'" 

(Incidentally this is also an illustration of why the US' firearm induced homicide is so high compared to European countries - they have far more warring gang factions amongst blacks and Latinos.)

Canada More Free than the US

Here

Taxes and the States

I'm not a huge Peter van Onselen fan but there are some interesting points to be made from his most recent column. His whole argument seems in favour of allowing an equal distribution of the GST in return for its increase.

The case for upping the GST is powerful. Growth in the tax has not kept pace with the costs attached to funding a host of state-based services. The squeeze is only going to get worse in the years to come.

The case for upping the GST may be viable on the grounds that it is one of the most efficient taxes because it is not a tax on production (unlike a capital gains or income tax), but the case should not be made on the basis that states are no longer able to afford the services they are providing. We already have a case where more productive states like WA - who get 68c in the dollar - are funding less productive states like Tasmania - who get $1.60 in the dollar.

A few years ago, the cost of providing government welfare (including to the middle class) outstripped revenue from income taxes for the first time in our national history. This, to be sure, is cause for a wider debate about the size of government. But, more urgently, it means we need to plug the funding gap that is fast becoming a gaping hole.

His logic seems to be backwards here. Yes there is a problem with too much welfare provision but the solution shouldn't be to up taxes but to cut spending. Yes there should be more equalisation but supplying the funds to states like NSW that produce less than states like WA will only guarantee that spending will increase even further. Politicians only confront dire fiscal conditions when they are forced to. If states were spending their own tax revenue then perhaps there would be more incentive to economize.

One of the arguments in favour of Tasmania's disproportionate share of the GST is its unique status as an island state. But the high unemployment rate and poor economic performance of Tasmania should be an incentive for people to move to places like WA where there are jobs that can't be filled. As Henry Ergas points out

While the CGC originally sought to ensure financially weaker states could afford public services to a "minimum acceptable standard", by the 80s the goal had changed to that of making the states fully equal from a fiscal point of view.

As that happened, our fiscal redistributions came to greatly exceed, in scope and ambition, those in other federal systems.

Little wonder our economy responds poorly to shifts in the geography of economic opportunity. And it is surely paradoxical that both government and opposition lament WA's reliance on importing short-term migrants while defending fiscal arrangements that discourage domestic labour mobility.

Basically, WA shouldn't be punished for collecting more mining royalties and should be a greater benefactor of more GST income to provide more services and training to attract employees for its productive sectors. If there are little economic activities in Tasmania then people should be encouraged to move where there are opportunities and our overly centralised 'federal' system shouldn't be standing in the way.

But this is John Howard's legacy. Despite being a decent PM he lacked respect for the federation. 

More on Guns in Oz

Some more useful info on Australia's gun ban

With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.
 
To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides "continued a modest decline" since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was "relatively small," with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.
 
According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported "a modest reduction in the severity" of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.
 
In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.

Like Dennis Prager says: 'Its important to put clarity before agreement'. I don't know that her conclusion that there has been no effect on massacres in Australia is true. There really hasn't been any multiple-victim shootings in Oz since the 1996 legislation. Is it possible that the gun ban prevented massacres? Perhaps, but the percentage of those who die by massacre is tiny and I don't think it warrants regulation in the same way that heavily regulating or banning pools - which kills far more people than guns - is warranted.

UPDATE: The always erudite Maverick Philosopher.

Liberals routinely pose the rhetorical question, Why would anyone need a semi-automatic rifle?  You need to have an answer at the ready.  When 'Assault Weapons' Saved Koreatown

William Spengler, the miscreant who ambushed NY firefighters, killing two of them, was a convicted felon out on parole.  In 1981 he was convicted of killing his grandmother with a hammer.  Two points.  First, if he hadn't been let out he couldn't have committed arson and murder, outside the prison, leastways.  This supports my claim that it is liberal culture, not gun culture, that is the real problem.  Liberals have a casual attitude toward criminal behavior.  Second, as a convicted felon, Spengler illegally possessed the guns he used in his rampage.  Liberals need to reflect on the fact that criminals, by definition, do not respect laws or the rule of law.

UPDATE II:  John Lott Jnr:

With the public school shootings in Germany, it might be worth noting how hard it is to legally own a gun in that country.  New registration figures indicate that there are 1.4 million people who legally own guns in the country out of a population of 81.8 million people --- a 1.7 percent rate.  Of course, the illegal rate of gun ownership is presumably quite different.

Taxing the Rich

(Apparently Dennis Prager's wife has an 'intellectual crush' on the English writer Theodore Dalrymple. Hell I think I have an intellectual crush on him.)

With the tax regime of France (that is about to get much worse) it is hardly surprising the London is the sixth largest French city since France is hemorrhaging so many of their most productive citizens. It is especially galling to me that those fleeing France are called 'unpatriotic'; is it unpatriotic to not want over half of your wealth stolen?

Two things strike me about the French attitude to wealth. The first is how hypocritical the French are with regard to money: they are as bad about it as the Anglo-Saxons are about sex. And the second is the position they accord the state in their lives.

Although the French dislike the rich, they like money as much as anybody else, indeed perhaps rather more. Tax evasion is for them a national sport and no moral opprobrium attaches to it. To be caught by the fisc is a matter more for commiseration than for condemnation. Indeed, according to Le Figaro last week, a majority of French people "understood" Depardieu's decision.

And the journalists who are happy to criticise Depardieu sternly for his greed and lack of patriotism are rather coy about giving publicity to their own special tax regime as a result of which they pay much lower taxes than ordinary French mortals.

The Seen and the Unseen

Nice piece from the gutsy Jo Nova. There are opportunity costs to everything the government spends money on. There are only finite resources in the world. If billions are directed to carbon capture technology then that is billions not spent on other research in the western world and overseas. Warmists like to appeal to the precautionary principle; even if we are not convinced that the world is dangerously warming shouldn't we take precaution just in case? But this neglects the opportunity costs that money spent combating climate change forgoes. A dollar spent on reducing CO2 is a dollar that could have been spent on mosquito nets in Africa, or on vaccines, or eye surgery for the world's poorest.

If our government-funded climate establishment makes the wrong guess about what humidity does in a warmer world, CO2 emissions become trivial and inconsequential. But the money diverted or delayed from better causes leaves a trail of destruction that cannot be repaired. Money can always be replaced, but lives lost are gone for good.

Julio Licinio, director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University, put together a passionate, disturbing advertisement two weeks ago, a plea to stop cuts to medical research funding. His sister died aged four from a disease that is treatable today.

Which four-year-old in 2018 will die because Gillard introduced a carbon tax instead of increasing medical research funding? Which father will die in 2022 who would have lived if we had doubled our funding for medical research? It is for people such as four-year-old Fabiola that we should keep fighting for rational debate. Bad science makes for bad policy. Poor reasoning is deadly.