 Looks like a lot of people must be sitting in on the judges opening talk I think that's going on right now. It's kind of unfair because last night He told you guys that some of you're gonna die in the public square So I think a lot of people are like tell me more. I'm kind of curious See Paris agreement or learning how I'm gonna die. Let me think Although ironically many you know interventionists would say this is how you're gonna die. So it's actually I'm gonna be doing telling you how you're not gonna die put it that way. So let me just Sort of frame this for you know where I'm coming from here In the beginning so I do a lot of work for what's called the Institute for Energy Research And it's a free market think tank that's been a lot specializes in energy issues If you want to see more on this stuff just email me and I'll send you a bunch of links and so a lot of what I'm gonna do here is just Let me let me back up a minute when I started working in this area of climate change economics I sort of had this idea based on the rhetoric that I was hearing from, you know The the the interventionist side the one that thought governments needed to take aggressive action to limit the emission of greenhouse gases and they you know They like to use mantras like the science is settled and don't be a science denier You know, it sort of sounds like Holocaust denier and that sort of thing So I sort of had this idea that oh, I was gonna go into this debate and I would have to you know Oh, yeah I'm sure all the you know the mainstream science would would justify all of these really aggressive government policies that people were pushing in The name of so-called science and then I was gonna have to go find like you know It's a guy like Richard Linsen at MIT who is what's called a skeptic and so on and that's what I thought I was gonna be doing And it turned out that's that's actually not what I've end up doing in terms of the my my sort of day job as it were in This in this field. It's just people will say oh, this is what we should do And I'll go read the reports issued like by the Obama administration working group on this area or I'll read the UN's Periodic reports from the IPCC that stands for intergovernmental panel on climate change and lo and behold I found wait a minute. No, their own reports don't justify The policies that the people in charge of these programs are saying oh, we have to do x y and z or the government should do x y and z Because of the science and you find out know what they're telling you in their own reports as the science doesn't justify what they're saying So I'm gonna spend maybe like the first let's say three four Explaining that situation to you just so you can see how crazy this whole thing how Orwellian it is and then at the end though I will sort of say okay What what's the specifically Austrian take on these matters? Alright, so that's the the framework here will go over Let me just mention this is the first time I've talked to you guys in this capacity for this week Let me just I've noticed this in previous me says you and it's happening here as well So let me just mention something. I see people they'll go up to somebody and have a book and be like Would you mind? Autographing that as if Somebody you know is gonna say oh, I'm so sick of the paparazzi. Just fine. I'm trying to teach economic We're not cool guys. All right. This is like the one week of the year where we're special So don't be at all afraid of coming up and saying can I take a picture with you or can you sign this? That's fine. All right. We we were like reading economics and stuff Do you think we were the cool kids in high school? We weren't Peter Klein thought he was but he wasn't all right so Another thing just to just emphasize how cool the Mises Institute is this is a true story so I Was the the bellhop or whatever the kid that in the hotel who takes your your luggage in and so on He was helping me load up my stuff You know I had a bunch of hangers and stuff for the for the clothes and he was helping me load that and bring it to the room He's asking me what I'm doing because I have suits and things. What are you a business person? So I said oh, I'm here for this conference and he's oh, I study economics and it's really hard And so I'm trying to get him to you know start getting into Austrian economics and I said oh well You're in town. He's not an Auburn student. He went to a different school, but he's around he works at the hotel So I was saying well, you know, they're kind of busy this week with the conference But yeah, you should check out what the Mises Institute does and I was trying to explain where it was and I said well It's on Magnolia and he and I said oh well, it's You know, it's next to mama Goldberg's you know that he knew that and I said What's the building right next door and then I realized I had the great I said it's the building next to mama Goldberg's that looks like the X-Men mansion and he was like oh I know exactly what you're talking about So just think I mean I think that's a good analogy and since we're going down that path You know somebody associate the Mises Institute somebody associated with the X-Men mansion. I'm look. I'm not saying I'm Wolverine I'm just saying if one of us were Wolverine. It would clearly be me. That's all I'm saying. All right I'll move on now Okay, so what is the Paris Agreement just to make sure we know what the context is here? So on June 1st of this year President Trump announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement on the next day people began freaking out Okay, and actually it was that day but in terms of the print things, you know coming out newspapers and stuff It just you know in case you think I'm exaggerating setting up a straw man You cannot believe what people were saying just to give you one example So Stephen Hawking the physicist said Trump pulling out of Paris agreement could push earth over the brink in other interviews He said because Donald Trump did this earth might turn into Venus All right, and in terms of you know the heat and so forth in case you don't Venus is hotter than earth typically right so that is You know pretty over the top right although having said that I should mention that a few years ago Stephen Hawking also warned that Artificial intelligence could end mankind right so guys kind of a buzzkill all around but anyway I just wanted to say that this I'm grabbing just to give you a specific that was pretty provocative But I'm saying the rhetoric you were hearing from people like oh my gosh Are you know it people were almost saying things like our grandkids are gonna be underwater now because of what Trump did All right, I'm just exaggerating a slight bit things like jeez Trump even has children You would think he would not you know take these measures that would ruin the fate of future generations and so not just hey I disagree. I think this is a bad move or no It was literally what Trump is doing now imperils humanity itself. All right, and so That's what I want to say. There's so many things wrong with that sort of reaction It's it's comical. Okay, so let me just spend some time explained you just how crazy this is because again the The terms of this climate change debate that Americans are hearing I'm sure it's probably similar in other countries for those of you who are from other countries But I can't speak to that with authority where it's here I mean I've been working in this field for a while in terms of the context of US political battles in terms of the Economic of climate change and it is just stunning to me how far removed from reality These debates are and then when the people who are for intervention just keep wagging their fingers saying oh, you're just you know You got to look at the facts Oh, I'm sorry if the empirical facts are inconvenient for you and that sort of thing when it's like no I'm fine to go ahead and rest things on the facts is what you do the facts that you even stipulate So anyway, we'll see here now some of the issues so What is this thing that they're talking about in case you don't know so it was negotiated under the UN auspices by representatives from almost 200 countries And they were working on this thing for a while and then in December of 2015 They had agreed on like the language of this agreement. All right, and then the country started either Signing it and or ratifying it. All right, and so in terms of various countries and how how do their governments? React or respond to Something like this a document like this, you know, they could sign it like the person Whoever the ruling official is at the time like a prime minister or a president Whatever, you know the executive branch in terms of our terminology could go ahead and sign the thing But then they might have further hoops that their governments go through to ratify something of this nature All right, and so that so you could see How it's been doing What now there's lots of stuff in this thing obviously it's a it's a huge document, but Upfront it says the primary aim of this is to hold total global warming to well below two degrees Celsius And to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Okay, so this is a point. I'm gonna come back to so just keep that in mind it in general in this climate change debate it has somehow become just Commonplace like just obvious of course we need to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius So by the way that what that refers to it means relative to the pre industrial era Benchmark, okay, so in terms of what they think the average global temperature was circa 1750 compared to now and that's how much global warming there's been so they're saying we need to limit that cumulative figure To two degrees Celsius at most all right, so they're saying clearly We don't want to go beyond 2c and they're saying ideally we want to shoot for closer to 1.5 c I don't want to forget to say let me just mention Just the hubris involved in this. Okay, so I mean just if you're somebody here I don't really know that much about this but the idea that we have a bunch of representatives from governments meeting to determine Like what's the thermostat? We're gonna adjust for the planet. I mean, that's how these people think okay, so that should just give you some idea of Just the the inflated opinion of themselves and their abilities that they think they have but like I say It's that's almost too easy like it's you know, you're tempted just to say oh my gosh You guys talk about central playing now you're gonna play in the plans temperature. Give me a break. Yes That's great. And that's why I'm saying it to make sure we hit that point, but even on their own terms It's not like their case makes internal sense once you grant the premise that yeah Let's say that we that it makes sense for us to talk about the temperature in the year 2100 It doesn't follow even if you grant them their own premises. All right, but that's what they're trying to do in The mechanism for doing this because this is really the the problem, right? So on its own terms the fact is okay there's this alleged huge negative externality that Economic processes left unregulated by governments are gonna allow for the emission of a large amount of greenhouse gases carbon dioxide so forth and then that Causes the concentration of those gases in the atmosphere to go up And then it acts like a giant greenhouse effect, right? So sunlight can come in but then the heat can't get out just like in a regular in a real greenhouse And so the earth gets warmer than it otherwise would be so just so you know that it's necessary for life for that thing to be there If there were no greenhouse effect at all, we'd all be dead, right? So it's the idea though is that oh, this is actually just pushing us beyond the optimal point And it's making things eventually worse for humans. And so in and standard Pagovian economics And you know named after Pagou in terms of externality analysis. This has been called the biggest Negative externality in human history. Alright, so the idea is when you're driving your car You're not fully internalizing the true cost to society of your actions Because in addition to you know using up crude oil and the workers who have to work to you know process it and refine it And give you the gasoline there's also the fact that you're imposing damages on Future generations and they're certainly not a part of that transaction of you buying the gasoline and driving your car Right, so that that's the idea that the market price system is not fully capturing The true social cost of your activities So that's why they they have all these plans to limit it Are you know, I would say artificially to augment the the penalties of just the market price So the problem with then okay, let's say we all agree on that or a bunch of governments What are we gonna do the problem is okay? We can talk about What would be the right trade-off to make it a global level like another was oh Humanity as a whole is emitting too much beyond the optimum point If only we could get humanity to scale back by such and such But then the issue is even if you could agree on that which if you think about it That's kind of a hard thing to get a bunch of people to agree on anyway I mean if you've ever been part of a big group that's trying to decide to go to a movie or to order a pizza You can see you know what a pain that is and how compromised have to be made and there's different So imagine having a bunch of things from 195 or sorry from close to more 200 countries deciding Okay, everybody how hot should the earth be in 2100? What do you say? What do you say you're right? I mean that's a crazy question So but even if you could agree to that Then the issue is okay, and how are we gonna get there? Because in order to achieve that given the the science that could be able to empirical cause and effect relationships of how nature works that we're just taking from these climate scientists as an effect just to Stipulate it. Okay, but that means what is are the advanced countries gonna all of a sudden screech to a halt and have no growth at all? Are we gonna say to China and India, you know? Yeah, actually having modern industrial systems has worked out pretty well for us But sorry, you can't do it You know you you have to slow your growth because sorry the plants at stake and you know too bad Hey, you should have industrialized 200 years ago. How do you feel right? You can you say that so you can see how just apportioning the Responsibility of meeting this target that they all agreed to is problematic So the the mechanism they use to get consensus in this is they said oh the agreement itself is not telling each participant What you're gonna do. It's just saying each participant unilaterally tells us When they join when they sign on to this thing, this is what our intended nationally determined contribution INDC is gonna be okay So that's what you have to do in order to sign on to this thing is to say here's what we're gonna do is our Contribution to hitting this shared goal of clearly keeping global warming under 2c and ideally trying to keep it closer to 1.5 c Okay So what could go wrong? Okay So one thing is why do we keep calling it the Paris climate agreement and not a treaty because doesn't it sound kind of like a treaty this thing that a bunch of countries are agreeing to and it's gonna Limit their actions in order to achieve a mutual goal doesn't that seem like the kind of a thing that treaties normally do so Why are they doing this? Well? it's because This way the Obama administration Can agree to this thing can sign it so that the US is one of the signatories of this thing But they don't have to have the US Senate approve it right because the Senate has to approve an actual treaty And that's what actually happened with the Kyoto protocol Which was something that was negotiated in the during a Clinton administration and so Clinton you know was all for it But they knew the Senate wouldn't ratify it and so they'd never actually went to a Senate vote right? So it was like the US was a signatory of this thing But hadn't actually ratified it and so especially back then the US was a bigger player in the world seen economically And so everybody knew if the US doesn't sign up up for this thing then it's pointless right? And so the Kyoto kind of was dead in the water because of that so looking at their mistakes from what happened here The people when they crafted this Paris climate agreement realized ah, it's not the Paris climate treaty It's the Paris climate agreement kind of like if you know US history that what we call the Korean War I believe at the time the US government referred to it as a police action or something like that right because if it Were a war it would there have to be a declaration and so on so that's Okay, so here we go. So Obama's happy about this So in terms of you know, how would The us feel about this or how would Rothbardians? Let's say feel about this idea of the government Using you know changing labels and so on just to get around What the constitution clearly requires so again what they're doing is sort of Getting the us to sign on to this international agreement sort of ceding sovereignty In a way so that even the legislature now can't have any input on this I think this kind of sums up what the reaction would be It was funny I was googling for this because I knew I was oh yeah, I'll put it in tom's And I couldn't find it I was googling like sad tom woods and it wasn't coming up and I was like what the heck And I realized what it turns out. This is grumpy tom woods. All right So if you're trying to find this it's a go to meme generator dot net. He's got his own meme That's how big the guy is but it's it's grumpy and you realize. Yeah, that is grumpy. It's not I have trouble with emojis also all right, so Let's talk a little bit about these these promises that are part of this again The way they because you might you think well gee wow, that's amazing and I had some people saying this when I was writing Sort of giving a qualified defense of what the trump administration had done on this one issue To say yeah, well he did makes total sense. There's no way the us was going to go Oh, this is a crazy thing. It's bad for america's using their own data You know I'll get into some of these numbers in a minute And some people were pushing back and and they were saying no This is amazing that you got all these countries to agree on this come on And the part of the way they did it was because there were no Uh There was no penalties Right, so in other words, they get everybody to say what their contribution is going to be And then if you don't even meet the thing that you unilaterally said this is what our contribution nothing happens to you Right, this is a purely symbolic thing. So that's partly how they got Wow, this amazing historic agreement among all these nations of the world and look at humanity coming together to meet This common foe of climate change. It's because there's no penalties in this thing at all, right? It's purely symbolic so that's that's one issue and then It's amazing Part of the way what the critics were doing when when trump took this step in order to show what a moron he is Is they're saying trump's talking about how this is a bad deal for the united states Well, that doesn't even make any sense because there's no penalties in this thing So the us could just blow right through, you know, the pledges that the obama administration may just violate them and nothing would happen Anyway, so why didn't he might just stay in it? So do you get why how duplicitous that that on one hand trump is, you know, ruining our grandkids chance at survival And on the other hand, there were no penalties for staying in he could have just You know, we could have just developed in whatever anyway and violated our own the pledge that was made only by Administration and no big deal. So why didn't he stay in so that's just how how topsy-turvy this whole thing is Incidentally when I do this just to note on notation My son's been playing chess lately And so if you ever looked at like the notation they give for chess games if they give an exclamation point Usually what that means is this looks like it's a stupid move, but really it's a brilliant move, right? It's it's smarter than you realize when I'm using it here in this talk It means this looks like it's a stupid move, but it's even stupider than it looks like, right If you studied it as much as I did you would realize how crazy this is, right? So my point again here is to say When you think through the logic of what they're saying that no Trump should have stayed in Because we could have just violated those pledges anyway. Who cares there was no I mean it just shows you That why are they you know, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too when obama signed this thing and came back He was the toast of the town all you know, the real respectable people and oh, this is such a great thing We're so glad we have a man of science in the white house and he's And then when trump pulls out everybody all of a sudden this thing had no teeth anyway There was it was just purely symbolism. What's the big deal right that doesn't those two don't go together. All right So also if you look at what their pledges were from the various countries because again It's not that the agreement said Okay, we're going to try to limit it to 2c closer to 1.5 You know if things turn up break our way China we want you to do this india we want you to this us you do this europe That's not what it said. It just said when you if you want to agree to this thing And participate you tell us. What are you going to do? It's non-binding, but you just tell us you're that's why they call the intended Contribution and so when you start looking at what some of these countries agreed to it's hilarious so china gave specific numbers and things in terms of Uh, you know like the our carbon emissions per unit of gdp But when you look at the trend of what's happened before they agreed to this Arguably they were just saying what was probably going to happen anyway All right, so they but at least they were saying something official Whereas the funniest one oran cas noted this From manhattan institute He said that what if you look at the wording that pack the pakistani government used They agreed to cut emissions after they reached peak levels Think about that I'm giving you three exclamation points. So that should be a flag. Wait a minute. Don't just move on think What the pakistani government was agreeing is yes, we will reduce our emissions After they peak That's a definition. That's not a pledge. Yes, of course once emissions peak, they're going to start falling That's what it means that they peaked at that level. Okay, they're not saying a year or anything They're just saying no at some point our emissions will peak and then from that point forward We will have lower emissions. That's what they're agreeing to All right, I had I knew I had to keep hitting that to make sure you really got it. All right, so Uh, so you start to see now how crazy this was and the fact that trump pulled out of it Again, this is not you know, there's lots of stuff the trump administration has done that I'm totally opposed to but on this particular issue What he said made perfect sense And the fact that so many people were screaming bloody murder just shows how the the debate on this issue At least the united states is completely crazy Okay Another thing people would say is no, this is horrendous because you need us leadership on this The u.s. Is a huge country, you know all this prestige and now donald trump just ruined everything and And some people were like we're linking it to like military action and so forth They're saying because now we lost credibility on this issue that trump has gone back on our pledges That you know were made on the you know, no other country can trust us It was how are we supposed to fight isis now, right? They were saying stuff like that and um So just to to walk through now one thing in particular Some people were saying like this so this isn't for everybody But there were you know, I can show you articles This isn't a straw man of people who are making arguments like that That oh my gosh now this is all going to fall apart Because you know without the us doing it clearly it doesn't make sense for the other countries to do They're not going to you know hurt their own economies by restricting emissions if the us isn't going to do it That's pointless so this is it you know And then they'll also say trump is being a fool because now china and Some other countries are going to get the jump on us in terms of advanced solar and wind technology And so they're going to corner that market and so really you know trump shooting ourselves He wanted to create jobs for american workers or whatever. Well, gee now we're going to miss it on all these jobs for solar panels and wind turbines So they're again, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. It's like, okay So if being in this thing is really great for your own economy and trump just doesn't see that because he's an idiot Okay, so the other countries will stay in on a rational self-interest right the fact that the us pulls out Doesn't mean they should pull out if we take your argument seriously So again, they're trying to have it both ways to say I mean think about it Why wouldn't it make sense for the other countries to go in and participate even if the us doesn't Unless the critics agree with trump that being in this thing is bad for your country okay, so What I'm saying here you could consistently say In in some like actual phd economists who are in the climate change debate in favor these sorts of measures They do at least they're at least coherent They will say yes being part of this thing makes us poorer than otherwise But as long as enough countries could all agree to do that Then we would all be better off than if we each do what's our own interest So it's sort of like a prisoner's dilemma thing so that at least is coherent But again, some people were trying to even go over the top and say Being in this thing would have been good for our economy because it would have you know promoted efficiency Houses would have had more Things to make sure they don't leak heat and things like that and that would be great and companies would save money I mean just to give you another example in this area that just popped into my head You have people saying I want the government to have stricter regulations on efficiency standards so that like a big building You know a company heats its building and if they just installed more insulation Then they would save on heating and air conditioning costs and we want the government to force them to have more such Efficiency measures than they're voluntarily doing right now and it will save them money So really don't listen to these right wing critics So the way what I say to them is if that's true, you don't need a regulation Just take up, you know, take your op-ed or your white paper In facts it to the companies and say look at you can save money and they'll say oh my gosh, you're right Let's save money It's like no we need to force these companies to save money. That is such as their hatred of the planet They would spend money to destroy the planet Right, that's what these people are saying when you think it's so okay Another element in this you might say okay But the us is such a big player on the world scene and that's why you know, they really kind of need their participation That was you know true historically the us was one of the biggest emitters But just using standard models. So here, you know, I had I'm friends with some climate scientists and they Worked up this thing. So this is not like the right wing model or something. This is standard stuff Using a particular scenario that they call a 1b in this literature Is just saying okay If things go, you know middle of the road projections from this point forward So wait, you know, this was in early 2017. They ran these numbers between now and the rest of the end of the century What fraction of total global emissions if governments, you know, keep their current policies in place and don't take aggressive measures to limit things What are we talking about here? And under this particular scenario, the us was only going to Amid about 11 percent of the you know total emissions going forward in that time frame You could see china and india were more and you can see what the us was Compared to the world total. All right, so again even on its own terms If it really made sense to do this thing Then the us pulling out doesn't just oh, yeah, the whole thing is pointless that it would it would still make sense For these other countries to do it. So again, just showing That this these scare tactics and oh my gosh Because trump did this now the whole thing's worth it. It doesn't follow Okay, so so far i've told you how It's That these these things these pledges are kind of nonsensical and so the whole thing seems a bit dubious especially when there's not Penalties so you might you might be thinking You know being commonsensical and so forth and thinking the world surely makes sense at some deep level, right? You probably think that the political sense at least you're probably thinking okay So what you're saying murphy is If all these governments met the targets that they agreed to or the you know if they the pledges they made Then it would limit it, but you're just saying they're probably going to cheat right because there's no penalty No, that's not what i'm saying i'm saying even if we look at the pledges they all made They're nowhere near to meeting that target Okay, so again just showing you the craziness of for example This was a vox article. So this guy david roberts is like vox's in-house expert on climate change issues He's the person that writes on this stuff all the time And so this came out in late april, right? So this was well before Trump made his announcement And what was he saying no country on earth is taking the two-degree climate target seriously All right, and there was a i didn't include it because i wanted to have room here But there was a photo of earth on fire going along just to make sure you get how serious this is all right, so The point is here they weren't taking it seriously here's something from i apologize if i blew it up that would get fuzzy Let me just so this is this thing you can go to a climate action tracker dot org So this is very much a website in favor of government intervention, right? This isn't like from the heritage foundation So this is very much in favor of it and they have this thermometer and so over here They've got the pledges. So they're saying if all the governments of the world Did the met the pledges they made when they joined the paris agreement right if they if they lived up to those Unilaterally imposed obligations Then our best estimate is that would limit warming to 2.8 degrees Okay, so we're blowing way past the 2c absolute ceiling Even if they all did what they said they were going to do and then but there's another Nuance they say let's instead of looking at what do they say they were going to do Let's look at their current policies right now and say if they just kept those in place What are we on track for and there the warming was 3.6 degrees celsius, okay, so Again, what's my point here is Even just before trump pulled out Everybody who was like for this thing was saying the governments of the world We're not anywhere near hitting this thing even if all the participants Did what they said they were going to do we would blow way past this 2c target come on people So then trump says you know what this whole thing is a sham. We're not doing this and I was like, oh my gosh now We're all dead Do you see how like you're using marginal analysis? You can see wait a minute if we were all dead before he did it And we're all dead after he did it that him pulling out really isn't why we're all dead even on your own terms Okay, so that's that's the importance of marginal analysis for you right there, okay So thus far i've shown you i think compelling arguments that Even if they agreed to or even if they met their targets You know the things they agreed to it wouldn't hit it Clearly if you look at the weaker thing of what are they actually doing right now because in other words You could agree to something that's onerous And then not follow through with it because it's always politically easier just to kick it down the road Right like you could say yeah, I intend to lose 30 pounds before that wedding And then you know you and suppose you were 50 pounds overweight And then you could say well, even if you did that you would still be overweight But then looking and say you know what you're not going to the gym you're keep eating pizza every night So clearly if we look at the policy what you're actually doing Then that's even further away from what you said your goal is Okay, so you can so i've explained to you all that and what a farce this is But it gets even worse or better depending if you like paradox You again everybody it's hard for me to emphasize just how much everybody agrees Oh, of course, we got to limit it to 2c. That's that's a given. I mean you go beyond 2c We're talking about catastrophe like ice sheets collapsing and you know that Bangladesh people being drowned and so forth. It's crazy and You then say okay. Well surely then the consensus science this thing that the un publishes it periodically the ipcc reports Intergovernmental panel on climate change. This is the thing that codifies all the latest peer reviewed research In terms of the you know the natural science like just oh with emissions of greenhouse gases What about methane versus co2? What's the global warming potential of those two gas? You know that sort of thing um And then they also have things about mitigation efforts like okay. What what steps could governments do? Various things. What about adaptation? Okay, suppose certain warming is inevitable will farmers Plant crops differently and people might move and we'll build More dykes and so forth because of sea level right right. They have all this stuff humongous Volumes of documents here or papers summarizing all the literature from the last one You go to that thing and I try to do this when it all came out the last issue And I was saying okay. Surely i'm going to be able to see why the two degrees celsius target makes sense Right in other words that using their own numbers the benefits to humanity of limiting emissions to 2c or warming to 2c Will clearly outweigh the costs right just the way they do things because they have cost benefit figures in this document so surely And it turned out no that that's not true I can use the un's own document to make a pretty strong case that the 2c target Is a bad idea right so Again, this is what i'm talking about and i'm going to come later at the end of this talk to the more roth barding approach So i'm not saying in general Certainly not roth barding libertarians are going to go around running cost benefit analyses, especially on stuff like this But i'm just saying to show you how crazy it is using their own stuff The cure they're proposing is worse than the disease All right, so here, um, I realize this might be difficult to see But just to give you an example So this was a chart or a table that I took from the last issue of this UN document and you can see they have The consumption losses and cost effective scenarios meaning If governments rationally and efficiently limit Warming using the best possible means which of course in practice governments wouldn't do but even a best case scenario This row right here is what they would need to do to limit To 2c warming to have a good chance of doing it. This is the atmospheric concentration. You can see they give numbers So by the year 2050 They're saying a percent reduction in consumption relative to the baseline. They're saying oh in the year 2050 if governments Take measures that would likely limit warming by 2100 to 2c The economy in the year 2050 will be 3.4 percent smaller than it otherwise would have been and by 2100 it'll be 4.8 percent lower. Okay, so this is the cost of these measures to to limit Global warming. All right, and so then you say, okay, so those are like the costs The economy as of the year 2100 would be 4.8 percent lower or the consumption technically would be 4.8 percent lower than otherwise would be so then you say, okay, so what are the benefits? And so to do that If you so think about it, there's going to be a certain amount of global warming They say it's going to cause damages and interesting if we limit the warming to 2c By the year 2100 that's going to cost our economy 4.8 percent Right because now instead of doing the cheapest ways of producing electricity We got to you know, switch away from coal fire plants and go towards wind or solar Instead of driving cars that use gasoline more people are going to switch over to electric cars More quickly than they otherwise would have done, right? So in other words if we're forcing people to do things differently then clearly that has a cost Otherwise they would have done it voluntarily, right? So that's the idea. So they're quantifying So you say, okay, so the on their own charts tables. They're saying it's going to cost 4.8 percent by 2100 So what's the benefit? And there if you think about it, well, it's not just The gross damages of what's unrestrained global warming going to do By the year 2100 you got to use marginal analysis because even on their own terms if there's 2c of warming There's still going to be Climate change damages So to figure out is that makes sense to do is you need to look at the change You need to say what's the likely amount of global warming if we do nothing as governments How much damage would there be? Then what if we impose these limits to limit it to 2c? How much damage would there be with 2c of warming? And then that difference is how much we've spared ourselves by this and then how does that compare to the 4.8 number? That's what you would need to do. So I went through that And they don't even have the numbers in the right form, right? So it's hard to dig that stuff up But using You know approximations and looking at various things that they do give you I could back it up and say clearly by 2050. It's not even close and by 2100 It's basically a wash in other words if all the governments of the world did things perfectly efficiently Optimally limited blah blah blah. It looks like it's close to being about a wash, but it's still slightly Worse in terms of the the cost of the economy So You know isn't that interesting that number one if you try to run the numbers using their own stuff It doesn't fully work. It looks at best like it's a wash But number two, like I say, I had to go through and be a detective and grab stuff It's not like it's all in one spot. So it's just showing that This is really um Sort of a foregone conclusion that the people participating in this they already knew That the answer was going to be oh, we have to do something. They're just trying to like illustrate the specific reasons But there's nowhere in those things where you could actually see a formal case of Yes, the reason it makes sense using our own methodology or whatever to do this It's because here's the cost. Here's the benefits. They don't even make that case anywhere I had to kind of piece it together myself drawing on various sections of the document Okay, another little slippery thing just watch out for notice what they did here They say where's my thing percentage point reduction in annualized consumption growth rate from here There's a 0.06 percent So when this document came out Several years ago a lot of people were running around and saying oh un says the cost of fighting global change virtually negligible because what they're saying here is It would only be a reduction in the rate of growth Of 0.06 percentage points. So like if normally the economy around the world would grow at 3 percent If we have these policies, you know to fight climate change, then it would only be What 2.94 percent right and you think it's a rounding error, okay but you see the the slight of hand there that If you have that little bit of a reduction in the growth rate Over 90 years well then by this year, you know that the actual difference between what it would have been and what it is Is now is a bigger number and so that's fine I mean, it's not like the math is wrong But they weren't then saying you know and I did this when these kind of spins came out and I said Oh, un reports the cost of climate change is is negligible because I looked at like some of the bad scenarios of what climate change damage would do in the year 2200 And then I just showed you know, in other words, even if there's a 50 percent hit to the world by 2200 In terms of the percentage that you need rolling over all that time exponentially to get to that isn't a big number at any one year And so you could use the same trick just to show off See it's not a big deal, but of course they weren't framing it like that So again, just showing that you can take these numbers you go and read this stuff and see what they're actually saying and it doesn't add up another example in this realm Is The work of william nordhaus. So I have a an article in the independent review on this. It's called rolling the dice Um nordhaus's case for carbon tax or something like that In the the title is because his model is called the dice model. It's an acronym Dice stands for what he's doing And in this thing, so I like him. So this guy in case you don't know him He has a book. He was one of the guys who for a while was the co-author with samuelson on his famous Textbook, he's been around paul krugman worked, you know for as a research assistant for him when krugman was was in school uh, so even if that doesn't recommend him to you, I don't know what would and And he's one of the pioneers in climate change He was what his model was one that was picked by the obama administration of three When they were calculating what's called the social cost of carbon Okay, so this guy is clearly, you know, he's very much in favor of a carbon tax He's totally in that camp and he literally is one of the pioneers in this field of the economics of climate change Okay, so he's a he's a huge authority in this in this area if you're going to say is somebody in authority and in this book He says that yeah the two two degrees celcius target is not very scientific Right, he's saying that they never when they just kind of pull that out of the air There's there's no justification in fact his own in his own modeling and whatever he recommends You know an opt if if governments around the world adopted what he thinks is the optimal carbon tax You know given the cost and benefits and the externalities and blah blah blah There would be a lot more than to see of warming in his optimal trajectory of how would the world go If the governments all did what I think is the proper thing economically adjusting for the externality, all right So again just showing you that it's it's insane that the the rhetoric has somehow settled on this 2c target As clearly we have to do this and yet the people even from that camp who have you know run the numbers and stuff It doesn't pop out now. What will happen is you'll see people say stuff I've made these these arguments and some people will push back and they'll say things like uh Well, yeah, but you know those models they leave out a lot of stuff And yeah, of course they do I mean you're building a computer model That's going to simulate the the climate system and the economy through the year 2100. Yeah, they leave out a lot of stuff Duh, but the point is we've been lectured to all these years about oh You got to follow the science and you know just making up stuff And so you go and look at their own documents and their own models and so forth. Okay. Well, this doesn't justify Oh, yeah, well that you can't trust those things You see I'm saying so it's like the consensus science is great except when you go and read it and say wait This doesn't justify what you say and then it's a you can't trust those things come on There's all sorts of problems with those that's well known So they'll also use an insurance analogy, right? So I want to I want to move on but I don't have time But they'll some people will agree with you up front. Oh, yeah in terms of what's likely to happen All these measures are recommending probably will cost more than they're worth But you know, there's a small chance a disaster could strike and I say okay again And I'll say so like with with fire insurance or something and it'll be like someone comes up to you now And says hey, we wanted to give you to give 3% of your income as a premium Because 50 years from now there might be a fire that at that point Would burn down 20% of your house And in that case will indemnify you for maybe 10 of the cost But the damage is it would you you wouldn't buy that kind of an insurance policy? But that's kind of what these are being sold as right that it's it's a big hit to the economy upfront To spare what is not a catastrophic loss down the road under most projections And then even if there is going to be that outcome what we're doing now is not going to avoid it entirely That's kind of the the irony here like it's like catch 22 The worst they make these projections and say look at how awful things are going to be Then it's like okay, but then the stuff you're proposing wouldn't fix that problem Just like we saw earlier with the you know, no country on earth is taking the 2c target seriously That it's a problem they're in where they're trying to scare people But yet they realize if what we say is too scary people are just going to tune us out So they kind of have to say no, it's real easy. It's it's sort of like if we do nothing. We're all dead But to fix it. It's really cheap. Don't worry. All the you know solar turbines and stuff. They're just around the corner They're just waiting to pop on the market. We just need a little carbon tax. We'll get it Okay, so I've spent some time just running through the main sort of mainstream analysis here What would a more roth barding approach look like? So let's be clear here. It's not That libertarians are pro-business. All right, you sometimes get that mentality if you watch the political debates in terms of the way it would play out between like let's say conservatives and liberals or wherever the The standard arguments in the united states context at least often seem to sound like Oh, yeah, it works. You know one group cares about jobs and american workers and the production and the other group cares about the environment and Nature and and leaving a legacy for our grandchildren in terms of the beauty of the environment And that is not the way marie roth bard looked at it, right? So he clearly explodes those fallacies and says it's not that libertarians are pro-big business And he talks about historically how A lot of times, you know, there was from the common law tradition Like if if you were down if you owned a house and you were downstream from some factory that was dumping chemicals in the river You could get an injunction against that right because they're violating your property rights and it was actually Government intervention in the name of promoting industrialization that sort of overturned that at the time All right, so it's don't at all fall for this Idea that if you're if you care about the environment, you couldn't possibly be a libertarian In fact, walter block is the editor of a collection called free market environmentalism All right, so you can see that that's actually a phrase free market environmentalism Whereas to a lot of people they would think that's that's a contradiction On the other hand though, and I've seen some people Try to people who are for a us carbon tax Tried to use roth bard's name to justify what they were doing Because they quoted roth bard rejecting, you know, the move by conservatives Who just wanted to say big business could do whatever they want who cares about the environment Don't you know, don't be such a whiner and roth bard saying no, that's that's not correct And some people quote that And then they omitted though the next thing though the next look it was literally like the next sentence or two Where roth bard then transitions and says That on the other hand It also doesn't follow that we should go for these quote market approaches To limiting emissions and so on or so roth bard He wasn't he was writing before the climate change was the big deal. So I want to be clear It's not that roth bard was directly writing on carbon taxes or things like that He was talking about more like standard pollution and things But he was saying this idea of like quotas for emission emissions and the government's going to say, okay, you can emit this much of Things that cause smog in a certain year and then you can trade them among yourselves and that's a market outcome And roth bard's point that's how is that a market outcome? You have a bunch of bureaucrats deciding how much total emissions of this type the economy is going to do That's clearly that you know, that's like a version of central planning Yeah, maybe it's more efficient than if they're literally telling each firm This is how much you can admit and letting the firms decide through a market But clearly that's not like capitalism. That's not the free market. So what I point out here is Sometimes people trying to justify this stuff will say Well, I mean it's kind of like the tragedy of the commons and until we had property rights there You know, people had their Grazing animals grazing and when there wasn't well established property rights There was overgrazing and we fixed that by having property rights and barbed wire fences and blah blah blah And so that's what we're doing with having cap and trade or having a carbon tax And I said no, that doesn't follow Having cap and trade or a carbon tax at the us level is an algae this that would be like When animals were grazing if the government said, okay, we're going to tax farmers Every time their cow takes a bite of grass But only if it's domestic cows the foreigners want to come in with their animals and eat the grass. That's fine Right and you see how that that clearly wouldn't solve the tragedy of the commons That's what it would be like if the u.s. Government said to businesses Okay, this is how much you can admit to deal with this problem of climate change because then If the u.s. Government does it then other countries can still have as much emissions as they want So that's it's clearly not solving the problem Okay, so I only have a minute here Let me just point you to if you really want to see Because I know people say okay suppose though the science really is saying That there's disaster going to strike unless we sharply reduce emissions. I agree governments can't be trusted But what would happen if we had a worldwide anarcho capitalist system? That's a big question And I think that's something that you know future researchers can work on just to flesh out libertarian theory But the clearly where you need to go start is rossberg's article from 1982 on this Let me so he talks about property rights. Let me just mention One last thing here is I've seen some people Disparaging this thing. Oh the libertarian approach just says property rights But that's crazy because then that means nobody could do anything Right because any little thing you do if I light a cigarette that emits smoke and that might hit somebody in california Or whatever and so clearly that can't work and rossberg's much more nuanced than that. All right He has in their discussion. He looks at case law. He has a distinction between nuisances and trespass Okay, so it's it's very sophisticated Much more than I've seen other theorists do in terms of what would a property rights approach to solving these problems look like So that's clearly where you need to start. Okay. Thanks everybody