Re: TownHall.com – 5/3/2008 – “Need Growth, Think Global Warming?” – Wayne Winegarden

Winegarden says “Because of our current technology constraints, limiting U.S. emissions limits our use of energy and, consequently, our economic growth”. He’s wrong in several ways.

First, energy’s relation to economic growth does not follow from energy consumption but from what we get out of energy consumption. If the economy could be measured by automobile miles driven, wouldn’t doubling gas efficiency and increasing miles driven by 50% mean significant economic growth with significant decrease in energy consumption? As we actually began to put the current commercial technologies available into our products, we will greatly reduce energy efficiency at little to no net cost, especially as the prices decline with economy of scale.

Second, emissions are a very poor measure of energy consumption --- our hydroelectric capacity produces plenty of consumable electric power with no emissions.

Third, technology constraints do not currently prevent us from reducing emissions without reducing energy production or utilization. In addition to existing market ready technologies that allow energy production with reduced emission (natural gas generated electric power, for example) there are many just commercialized (solar heating and solar generated electric power, for example) and others proven in concept and in the process of commercialization (wave power, for example). And of course, the more efficiently we use the energy produced, the less energy is needed to fuel our usage, and consequently the less emissions are released.

In my opinion, cap and trade will do for energy emissions what home equity withdrawal, variable rate mortgages, and packaged mortgages did for home ownership in the long term. But that’s because cap and trade is a terrible policy that will not accomplish what it is intended to and will have negative side effects, not because it is a government policy. There are plenty of governmental incentives for continuing to use current technology (especially in the tax code) that could be removed from inefficient high emission technologies and transferred to efficient low emission technologies.

Winegarden’s arguments about job creation sounds like pre-automobile era economists arguing that leasing oil rights on federal lands and building roads for automobiles would harm horse breeders, hay growers, and buggy manufacturers. They’d be right about that but really, really wrong about the effects on the economy. Winegarden is just as wrong about opposing incentives to move to an efficient, low emission energy economy.