Joe Romm strikes me as a nice, well-meaning, middle-of-the-road believer in the market whose views exhibit the kind of “utopian pragmatism” I referred to in my previous post. I chose Nordhaus & Shellenberger because they were conservatives (obviously my own views are well to the left of theirs), but at least ones who recognise how pitiful the effects of market approaches are in comparison with the scale of the problem. I certainly don’t agree with everything they say.

The problem with Romm and people like him is that they just have faith in cap & trade simply because they believe markets work for this kind of thing. But markets don’t and won’t.

A good analogy is to imagine leaving the US’ WWII effort to the market–imagine a 1941 cap & trade system on car and mainstream industrial production in order to coax US big business to militarise! Luckily we have a bit more time to make the massive economic changes we need, but not really a huge amount more.

On mass transit… banning car use in some areas may be needed once it is in place in order to make sure we cut car use. But banning cars before it is in place would obviously be a disaster.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/05/22/waxman-markey-offsets-breakthrough-institute-shellenberger-nordhaus-media/

You also overstate the possible impact of mass transit on transforming car use in Australia from both a cost, technical and social perspective. PT is certainly part of the solution, but not to the extent that you seem to be suggesting with a notion of “banning cars” from urban areas.

On the other hand while hammering in Green signs early in the morning for the last State election in our Southern “working family” Suburbs every morning I was getting friendly beeps and “good onya”’s from men in utes setting off to work between 5-6am ( the supportive yells averaged between 2-6 every morning in the last week of the campaign)

Cheers, Steve

(1) Empirically, the experience of carbon trading has been awful. The European ETS, for example, failed chiefly because it gave so much leeway to the carbon-producing industries that the carbon price collapsed very quickly, rendering any caps meaningless. It is now politically very difficult to jack up that price. I think the Australian equivalent of this is the raft of concessions and givebacks Rudd is giving the polluters. Furthermore, after the subprime fiasco do we really want to create a new complex derivatives market to guide our society to a *cough* bright future?

(2) There are many loopholes in the current CPRS–including such things as international leakage of pollution rights and lack of reward for mitigation efforts–that mean that any target is unlikely to have much force. And are the penalties so severe that polluters will change their ways if they break the rules? Indeed, how severe would they have to be to actually cut into profitability enough to cause behaviour change?

(3) Most important, the science indicates we need relatively rapid and deep emissions cuts or risk a “butterfly effect” in terms of melting arctic ice, etc. But the world economy is based almost entirely on carbon emitting energy sources and that means massive structural change in how energy is produced and used. Market penalties for emitting carbon may mitigate some of it, but what can drive investment in renewable energy sources that are (currently) considerably more expensive than traditional carbon-based sources? Only massive state investment, perhaps to the detriment of the polluters’ economic interests, can be reasonably expected to solve this problem in the timeframe we have. Not only things like building of solar-thermal power plants while decommissioning coal powered energy, but building mass, heavily-subsidised new public transport while markedly limiting car use (and banning it in many urban areas).

Surely the experience of neoliberalism’s recent and very spectacular failure should alert us to putting such heavy faith in markets. It is a sign of how deeply neoliberal ideology has penetrated that even committed environmentalists and parties like the Greens can come to accept the market logic embodied in cap & trade. It would be a tragedy if the global financial crisis led to only one type of government intervention being legitimised–that used to bail out bankers.

The very “reasonable” and “pragmatic” views of those who support market mechanisms seem much more like dangerous utopian thinking to me when the scale of the problem is seriously considered.

PS A relatively conservative Keynesian view of what is needed is provided by Nordhaus & Shellenberger. Their work can be read at http://www.thebreakthrough.org/blog/PDF/EmergingClimateConsensus.pdf or for a brief summary http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8966

Tad – Your suggestion that Rudd et al. are implementing the CPRS simply because of appearances misunderstands a) how policy is developed and b) the international situation.

Second, it is simply false to state that there is “no logic” in an emissions trading scheme. While I’ll accept that there is little currently available evidence of emissions trading schemes, the early EU experience is certainly not as flawed as many commentators point out.

The CPRS legislation is not perfect, but the alternative (a grab bag of regulation and cash) is far worse. I’d love to see some ‘rigorous analysis’ which shows how you plan to get emissions down to anywhere near 15-25% (as per the CPRS) below 2000 AND get it through Parliament.

As an additional aside, the 5% target is never going to happen. There will be an international agreement in Copenhagen its just a matter of how strong. So the CPRS should be seen with a minimum (albeit still too low) target of 15%.

People who’s parents voted Liberal are not “Liberal voters”.

No, and I didn’t say they were. I asked where the young people who SHOULD (demographically speaking) be voting Liberal had parked their votes. I pointed to the well known truism (don’t know if it IS true) that younger voters tend to vote along family lines. I also implied that, with a growing privately school educated cohort, one would expect a growth in the young Liberal vote.

I admit I shifted the argument a bit – from ‘prior Liberal voters who now vote Green’ to ‘putative Liberal voters who vote Green’. And yes, there are lots of good working class youth who vote Green (and Liberal).

And I’ll admit I’m being a bit playful and exploratory, because that’s how you tease out ideas.

But on the other question – whether Hamerite Liberals are more likely to vote Green than Labor – yes, they are. I speak to lots of these kinds of Liberals. When they became frustrated with Howard, they never ever suggested voting Labor (and would never) but they toyed with Green. I would assume that they would switch back to the Liberals if the Libs became more Hamerite (I’m assured that I should talk of ‘Hamer Libs’ and not “Menzies Libs’ in this context).

So my argument (and it is just playing, so play with me) is that, if there is a movement away from the Liberals to Greens by young, private school educated, leafy suburbs types and by ’soft’ Liberals (the type who support Georgiou) than a reinvigorated Liberal (not necessarily conservative) party might lure them back.

Of course there will always be former Liberal voters who jump ship to the Greens, usually for one of two major reasons: (1) they have shifted sharply to the left because of other circumstances or (2) there is an issue or combination of issues that the Greens are strong on (I think even Michael Duffy called for a vote for us once!).

I am really happy that former Liberal voters vote for us, but that doesn’t mean that the party should base its strategy on acquiring more. In politics you need to prioritise, and former Labor voters are where it’s at. And, outside the federal sphere the ALP has spent a long time disillusioning its support base while in power—a phenomenon most concentrated here in NSW. The openings for a left-wing alternative are real and growing.

Chasing ALP voters also makes more sense politically. The members of the Greens (the ones who have built the party) largely hold views to the left of what the ALP offers and want to win people to vote for those kinds of policies. Before the neoliberal era, when official politics got reduced to the question of who better manages the market economy, quaint ideas like political principle meant more to parties.

I have loved Possum’s site since early in the the last federal campaign (when he kept my hopes up as all the pundits claimed the poll figures couldn’t last). But one of the dangers of all this hard-headed psephological analysis is that it misses the fact that voters hold political and ideological views, and that for complex reasons that aren’t entirely demographic those ideas can change (sometimes quite rapidly). The data we get can be very helpful to work out some of these shifts, but sometimes you need political judgements to be made that can’t just be read off the figures.

I just say this, really, to put some of the above debate in perspective.

thanks to Howard - whose parents vote Liberal?

People who’s parents voted Liberal are not “Liberal voters”.

or otherwise I’ll assume you like to appear all mysterious and all knowing when really you have no ideas at all.

When you start making sense, I’ll engage properly. But you’re using very hokey arguments that have been refuted by both public and private polling. The Greens vote is not growing primarily due to disaffected Liberals.

And really, it’s just common sense. One of Labor’s biggest demographics at the last election were the 18-30s. One of the Greens’ biggest demographics was the 18-30s. So what’s happened to all the private school kiddies – a growing demographic, thanks to Howard – whose parents vote Liberal?

Usually children, especially in the younger demographic of voters, vote the way they’ve been raised.

I don’t know (and neither do you) how many scions of Liberal voting families voted Green at the last election. It isn’t ridiculous to suggest that those who did would be more likely to vote for a centrist Liberal party than a lefter ALP, because (given the old school tie routine) it is more likely they voted Green from environmental rather than social or economic reasons.

I’d like it if, once in a while, you actually argued with me rather than just telling me something’s ridiculous. I’m genuinely interested in discussion, am prepared to admit I’m wrong, and am getting a bit tired of putting ideas out there just to have you curl your lip at them. If I’m wrong, explain why – or otherwise I’ll assume you like to appear all mysterious and all knowing when really you have no ideas at all.