A libertarian response to global warming

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Part 1. Compensation.

If a person believes that he has been harmed by global warming, he should (and does) have the right to seek compensation for the damages in court. The United states have been operating civil courts for hundreds of years now, and they have a proven track record of being able to deal with complex issues, bizarre types of compensation, and litigants of all sizes, from the poor individual to the wealthy corporation.

After all, fossil fuels are not currently sold with a warning label: “Danger! Use of this product may cause coastal flooding.” Global warming is an unintended side effect of the use of fossil fuels for transportation, energy, etc, , and it is incumbent on the manufacturer of these products to pay for the damages caused. In a legal sense, carbon dioxide should be no different to thalidomide, or asbestos.

There should, however be some rules regarding these compensation claims.

a. Claims should be payable by all global fossil fuel producers, in proportion to their emissions.
b. A uniform standard should be applied to what constitutes a warming-induced event, as opposed to a natural event (e.g. greater than 3 sigma variance from the pre-industrial mean).

c. Punitive damages should be limited to cases where specific emitters have been deceptive, contemptuous, or otherwise acting in bad faith. After all, if individual judges start laying down arbitrary penalties, then the market will have a very difficult time quantifying what level of compensation it can reasonably expect to pay.

d. Since the deleterious effects of global warming will not be limited to the United States, foreign citizens should be given blanket approval to sue in our courts. Why? Because our courts are the best around, and more importantly, they are the only ones which we have any right to grant access to.

Trials should be standard jury trials, as there is no need to create a new governmental system to deal with this problem, and because this system has been proven to be fairer and more resistant to corruption that other types of tribunals.

The issue of foreign emitters who do not pay their compensation claims will be discussed in the diplomacy section.

Obviously, any compensation claims paid will be a cost of business, and will eventually be passed on to the consumer. If a company shows signs of being unable to pay these costs, then the government would be allowed to require fossil fuel producers to carry global warming insurance, which they could buy from private companies at market rates.

At any rate, the bottom line is this: Companies that produce fossil fuels should be responsible for the effects of the CO2 released by burning those fuels, from the time they enter the atmosphere to the time they are sequestered, or removed by natural causes.

Introduction

So here’s the deal. Over the past 100 years, industrial plants and vehicles have been burning fossil fuels to the point where the total atmospheric content of CO2 has increased by about 30%. Because CO2 is a heat-trapping, or “greenhouse” gas, the Earth has started to warm up. This warming could become very inconvenient, expensive, and even deadly if it continues at its present rate. Because of this, a number of solutions to this problem have been proposed. Almost all of them require a huge governmental program.

This is very odd, because global warming is one of the few modern-day problems which is not caused by government. But government solutions abound. And most of these solutions require unrealistic levels of diplomatic co-operation, corporate welfare of stupendous proportions, and very little consideration for personal liberty or the principles of limited governance.

The principles of a libertarian government are simple.
A government exists to protect people’s liberties.
A government does not have the power to limit people’s activities, as long as those activities do not cause harm to other people.
If a person is harmed by another person or corporation, he has a right to seek compensation for that harm.
A government should be the minimum size necessary to fulfill these limited roles.

Can these principles be applied to the problem of global warming, allowing a solution without massive government spending, rules, and treaties? I don’t see why not. And I don’t see why they can’t be applied using branches of government that already exist, thus precluding the need for new bureaucracies.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Statement of purpose

Over the past 100 years or so, the global mean temperature (as best as it can be calculated) has risen by around 0.5 degrees C. Over the same time period, the concentration of CO2 has increased by about 30%. Since CO2 is known to absorb certain frequencies of IR light, it has been postulated that the CO2 increase, which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, is the cause of the warming.

Scientists will continue debating the details of this process as long as the climate continues to vary. In the mean time, a wide variety of suggestions have been made as to what, if anything, should be done to address global warming.

Almost all of these views, whether denialist, alarmist, or circumspect, have one underlying similarity. They all approach the political response to the problem from a social-democratic point of view, not a libertarian one.

In a social-democratic system, everyone in a society gets together and argues, studies, proclaims, debates, and eventually votes (either directly, or by proxy through elected representatives) on a course of action that then binds everyone.

In a Libertarian government, a government does not aim to pass laws that restrict individuals, under the rationale that the government knows what is good for people, even if they do not. Instead, the government aims to protect the liberty of the citizens it represents; they can then decide for themselves what is or is not in their interest.

In this blog, I will attempt to develop a system that has the ability to address climate change, while adhering to the following libertarian principles:

  • Non-compulsion. The banning of behavior will be avoided as much as possible.

  • Diplomatic independence. The efficacy of the proposed system will not require the co-operation of foreign social-democratic, totalitarian, or ineffective governments.

  • Personal responsibility. People and corporations will be held responsible for their actions, including any harm that they may do to other people or corporations.

  • Transparency. All stakeholders should be able to understand and participate in the system if they feel they are being affected.

  • Market assessment of cost. This solution will assume that market forces will be more adroit at determine the true cost of a good or service than government prognostication.

  • No Groupthink. I will try to avoid the use of the word “we” as much as possible. A libertarian system should protect the rights of individuals and voluntary cooperatives according to their individual wishes, not according to some blanket, bureaucratically-mandated need.