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If California Was Serious About Climate



Between the 1980s and today, cost-benefit analysis became one good-government reform that actually took hold across the public sector. So much so that President Obama’s own regulatory guru, Cass Sunstein, would write an article proclaiming that when it comes to regulation, Democrats and Republicans have “embraced the need for careful analysis of costs and benefits.” Yet in the great American way of indulging opposites, the same period also marked the rise of climate policy, which has, of necessity, been a negation of cost-benefit analysis.

There is an almost symphonic beauty to the point and counterpoint. Mr. Sunstein nearly didn’t get his job in the Obama administration because he wrote some off-color things about the application of cost-benefit analysis to climate policy. Later he would lend his imprimatur to the administration’s creation of a “social cost of carbon” to assign a dollar-value benefit to climate policies that produce no actual benefit.

So we come naturally to California, whose state Assembly just approved a bill to accelerate California’s commitment to ban fossil fuels from its electricity market, aiming for 100% renewables by 2045.

The state accounts for less than 1% of global emissions, so its climate heroism can have no serious effect on climate change, which the state’s politicians blame for wildfires and rising sea levels. Plus its cuts are partly illusory since they drive manufacturing jobs to other states, which then produce greenhouse emissions on California’s behalf.

California legislators answer that they are setting an example for others, but why would others emulate a policy of cost without benefit? Gov. Jerry Brown is under pressure to do more, such as ban fracking and oil drilling in the state. Wouldn’t other oil-producing jurisdictions just be more excited to produce oil, including oil for California drivers, if California abandoned the market and created higher prices for those who continue to produce?

Whether to laugh or cry has been a perennial question as California wrestles with these issues. Rural Democrats and Republicans lament the state’s unwillingness to spend on controlled burns to limit the fire risk even as the state diverts billions in cap-and-trade dollars to a senseless “bullet” train.

Mr. Brown himself insists that democratic, constitutional and practical barriers stand in the way of the sweeping energy bans that greens advocate. There would be “revolution,” “shootings” and “mass chaos,” he says. Yet he also says California faces an “apocalyptic threat of irreversible climate change.”

What if its pols wanted to do something nonfraudulent about a problem they claim is so dire? Are there any options?

Yes. A new study partly funded by Bill Gates has dramatically cut the estimated cost of removing CO2 directly from the air to as little as $100 a ton. According to the study, much of this expense could be recaptured by converting the CO2 into low-carbon motor fuel.

Assume California recovered 80% of its costs. For $500 billion a year, or 20% of state gross domestic product, California could solve the alleged problem for the whole world, reducing global emissions by half and meeting the widely touted goal of holding warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius according to prevailing climate models.

Too speculative? Too expensive? Many classic studies suggest that, at a cost as low as $2 billion a year, any highly motivated actor, even one with pockets less deep than California’s, could offset the entire warming effect of excess CO2 by distributing enough high-altitude sulfates or other aerosol particles to limit by 1% the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. Indeed, experts quietly acknowledge that, by reducing such particulates, our clean-air efforts have actually made our climate problem worse.

Ethicists worry about unintended consequences. Other states and countries might object since they expect to benefit from a warmer climate. Such an approach also would not deal with ocean acidification that comes with CO2 (you can’t have everything).

Some would say California has no right to make decisions for the world. Let them sue. That’s why we have courts. An uncontrolled experiment is already underway concerning the effect of human CO2 on the climate. In fact, countless experiments of the unplanned variety are in progress regarding a human impact on the environment. How is one deliberate, controllable experiment more objectionable than many accidental, uncontrolled ones?

So cost-effective options can be found if California politicians really believe their forecasts of climate doom. When might they transcend the high-cost, no-benefit posturing that has been their preferred mode so far? Perhaps only when the public starts believing dubious claims that all bad things come from climate change.



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