Be Afraid of Manzi, Be Very Afraid

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, Reformist Republicans™, have both praised Jim Manzi’s National Review piece outlining a conservative approach to climate change. He wants conservatives to come out of the muck of “is Anthropogenic Global Warming happening?” and instead ask “What should we do about it.” I think that if Republicans adopt the Manzi plan, we’re totally screwed. To be clear, by “we,” I mean the world as a whole and, secondarily, Democrats - even though there is a feedback loop going on here.

Manzi’s strategy is based on a few keystones - 1) APG is real 2) APG’s effect on America is likely to be slightly negative and far off (100 years is the inside estimate he gives) and 3) Carbon abatement will have short term negative effects on the economy to avoid the small chance of climate catastrophe and thus aren’t advisable.

There are a few issues with Manzi’s plan, which is more research into carbon abatement, carbon reduction technologies along with low-cost strategies for adaptation. The most obvious objection is that the chance of negative worldwide effects of APG occurring within the next 50-100 years are higher than Manzi estimates and that Manzi arbitrarily brackets off the higher probability, more immediate effects in “poor areas close to the equator” should probably be higher up in Manzi’s consideration, or at least higher than they appear to be for him - zero. He also tries to do wave the magic policy wonk wand of “my set of policies will not devolve into hand outs for various interested parties.” Well, government research money for large, ambitious goals often turns into just that (see Complex, Military Industrial), so I’m going to need more than Manzi’s assurances. A carbon tax, on the other hand, won’t lend itself to all sorts of arbitrary and inefficient carve outs. And since this is the GOP implementing Manzi’s supposed policies, I imagine the usual cast of characters will be drinking from the trough. The strategy of adaptation is inadvisable for two reasons. 1) North America , under a fairly wide range of scenarios, probably could adapt for about 150-200 years, but without serious carbon abatement, the warming will continue to happen, thus rendering previous adaptation to a world with temperatures of x unsuitable for a world of temperatures of x+3 and 2) We can adapt, and Bangladesh will go under water - that would not be good.

The second, and more immediate, reason that Manzi worries me is that his political strategy could be deadly for Democrats and for serious efforts to reduce carbon emissions and lessen climate change. Getting serious on climate change is hard enough, as Reihan puts it, “The costs of climate change are uncertain, unpredictable, very diffuse, and (mostly) in the future.” The human mind is generally very bad at discounting appropriately and there’s massive immediacy bias at play. Additionally the way democracies work, the immediate concern (winning elections) is all most policy makers care about, so long term, diffuse issues like global warming are structurally hard to address. Global warming, specifically, will become impossible to do anything about if the GOP gets out of the denialist cave and goes with Manzi’s strategy:

Imagine what a competent phone-bank and direct-mail effort could do in these
states by contacting employees in carbon-sensitive industries (such as auto manufacturing and truck
transport) with some version of this message: “My opponent wants you to pay thousands of dollars per year,
and maybe lose your job, to help avoid a problem that might occur in sub-Saharan Africa a hundred years
from now. I oppose this policy. I think we should invest in American technology and ingenuity to protect
ourselves from any climate risk that might threaten us.”
Tellingly, the most obvious examples of persuadable voters are old-line industrial-union members alienated
by an elite policy that imposes huge penalties on them. They used to be called Reagan Democrats.

If the Democrats make some noise about implementing a carbon tax, and the GOP comes over the top with this message, we’ll be so screwed. The only way to break this logjam would either have the EPA do some sketchy quasi-constitutional regulation or sequential, massive, disastrous hurricanes that could plausibly be laid at the feet of global warming. Besides that, people just want cheap gas.