Cost-benefit Analysis and the Paris Agreement

For months we’ve heard how important the Paris Agreement is. Environmentalists and their friends use language like “key to planetary survival”. The Paris Agreement is all about saving us from global warming. Let’s grant that there is a scientific consensus that global warming is real, but there is no consensus on the impact of the Paris Agreement.

The core goal of the Paris Agreement is to keep “a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels”. Before the deal was agreed at Paris researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Global Change Science released a statement saying this: “even if negotiators reach a deal … it probably won’t be enough to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”

The problem appears to be what climate negotiators call “leakage”, defined here as: “a reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases within the State that is offset by an increase in emissions of greenhouse gases outside the State”. In this case, as stated in the MIT report: “For Africa, the Rest of East Asia and Rest of Eurasia the leakage is sufficient to overwhelm the emissions-reducing effects of the expected policies and measures”. It seems that the Paris negotiators sent us down a rat hole, leaving us with a non-functional plan.

The left loves global warming because of the synergy with its favorite tools for world domination: regulation and taxation. The details of the Paris Agreement are contained in a series of INDCs: Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. Each INDC contains a country’s commitment for action in the Paris Agreement. For example, see the European Union’s INDC, a list of proposed taxes and regulations.

The French government is now facing riots against taxes on fossil fuels, which are exactly what climate negotiators say are needed to fight global warming. Maybe the taxes are intended to discourage use of fossil fuels, or maybe the taxes are intended to fund prevention of global warming. Constituents are unhappy.

THE BOTTOM LINE
There’s a new term that sums up the Paris Accords: ‘virtue signaling’, defined this way by my Bing search engine: “the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue”.
There are problems with the Paris Accord: unrealistic, politically unviable. If global warming opponents are interested in solutions rather than just the opportunities offered by exploiting the issue, I suggest they try again with a program that actually gets us somewhere, and provide a realistic assessment of the costs.

One thought on “Cost-benefit Analysis and the Paris Agreement”

  1. The costs and benefits of a carbon tax can be predicted but I am fairly certain just like market timing it will be difficult to pin that down with any accuracy. So if on as average we have 10 hurricanes per year and without a carbon tax we have 15 and the other 10 are .50 more damaging I can assure you that the insurance companies could and will figure it out. The problem is getting a carbon tax that can be applied globally. People, that is us, don’t like paying more but we will pay I can assure you of that. My 2 cents.

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