New School Politics

If you're a first time visitor, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, which will keep you up to date with all the latest New School Politics posts. Thanks for visiting!

Naturally, trends in rising commodity prices causes increased concern about resource scarcity. As I’ve discussed, despite such concerns (which dates back since well before the time of Jesus) the real dilemma for man is not a matter of resources but of how to transform resources into wealth. While natural resources are technically limited, and those such as oil will eventually diminish in quantity, the earth is itself a giant ball of “natural resources,” so its hardly like we are running on empty.

In fact what the real difficulty our world economy has is the scarcity of productivity–in terms of capital–and the limits of our technology. As technology improves, not only can we do more with the resources we have but we can also extract a greater quantity of these resources.

Two articles confirm this. The first includes The Economist’s index of commodity prices from 1862 to 1999 and found that real prices decreased at an average of 1% every year over that entire period of time–indicating a steady rise in supply.

The second mentions a different index of real commodity prices from 1900 to 2003, which fell by .8% every year over that time.

The lesson: as long as we continue to increase our productive capacity, resources will not be a grave problem and the goods that are important will be pleantiful.

HT: Bryan Caplan

Popularity: 29% [?]

Step Two: Insert foot.

In response to a survey during the primary asking, “If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?” Senator Obama checked “Yes.” He elaborated:

I have been a long-time advocate for public financing of campaigns…If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.

Clearly, John McCain’s reaction indicated that there was no effort from Barack Obama “pursuing an agreement” on public financing so to keep it in place.

The Senator has had little trouble finding spare change

But of course things have changed since February of this year–Obama discovered he hasn’t the age-old Democrat’s fundraising handicap. Nay, he’s actually got quite the knack for raising money. So much so that he expects a cash flow great enough to able him to spend more than the $84.1 million limit that public financing mandates.

Money talks. And apparently what it says is more trustworthy than what flimsy pols like Barack Obama say. David Brooks hit the nail on the head–as he often does–with his column entitled, “The Two Obamas.”

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

Senator Obama has made a career out of commanding oratory and the image of a new and different and transcending and trustworthy politician. But everywhere we look, he has not fulfilled his own prophecy.

As Brooks notes, Senator Obama could “no more disown” the derisive Reverend Jeremiah Wright than his own grandmother–so he claimed. But when political circumstances changed, he dropped Wright like a sack of potatoes after their noted 20 year history.

Obama could have accepted Senator McCain’s proposal for 10 one-on-one town hall meetings–an unprompted, candid discussion with his opponent and the American people that screams born-again politics–but he has not, and will not take such a strategic risk.

The Senator could have cast legislative votes in the same non-partisan manner that he espouses on the stump, but his voting record indicates he is one of the least, if not the least, likely to step out of the party line.

The Senator could have taken tough stances on votes in the Illinois State Senate or taken the initiative to use his keen political skills to lead on certain vital legislative issues, but he has done neither.

The issue of campaign financing is only more evidence that Barack Obama is anything but the messianic public figure that him, his campaign, and his supporters (including many in the press) have made him out to be. While I wouldn’t usually waste my time blogging about a seeming textbook flip-flop, let’s remember who is making it. This is the man who was supposed to restore public confidence to the political system. This is the man who was supposed to change the way politics is done in Washington. But it is only style, not substance, that would indicate that.

ADDENDUM: The above news came the same week that John McCain himself flopped on the issue of federal offshore drilling moratoriums. And before I get criticized for only rebuking Obama, let it be know that I am not turning a blind eye to the GOP’s nominee.

The difference as I see it however is that Barack Obama choses to ride a far higher horse, which makes his reversal more noteworthy. Moreover, now that he has gone with the wind, at least John McCain has the right position on the issue of drilling. Regardless of how much he pandered to get to his stance, what this means is that if the Arizona Senator gets his way the government will reduce its restrictions on energy production in this country, and thats a good thing.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Senator Obama has offered little, if anything, remnant of an independent streak in Congress. He has practically been toeing the Democratic Party line for the entire three weeks (or three years–I can’t remember) he’s represented Illinois. Despite cries to the contrary, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise why the National Journal ranked Senator Obama the most liberal Senator in 2007, and one of the most liberal in the body over his short career. Nor does he have any notable legislative accomplishments (to the extent of my knowledge and research), but that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Now, there is nothing necessarily wrong with Obama being a partisan and/or left-winger if that is what he truly believes. But, if that is the case, the problem is that he is trying to mask it. He has run on the idea that he will transcend the politics of the past; that he is the reformer–the breath of fresh air who is immune to partisanship. At the same time, as a Senator he has been the Democratic Party Platform manifest, even before he started running. So while he is (incorrectly) claiming that McCain is running for Bush’s third term, he, himself, is running for little more than Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi’s ascension to the White House.

To be sure, John McCain still shares many of George Bush’s policy stances (and has strangely–and by strangely, I mean politically conveniently–shared an increasing number of those positions at least since 2001/02), but he has also demonstrated a long-standing streak of thinking for himself. Not only has McCain dissented from his party in his career (perhaps) as many times as Barack Obama has casted votes in the Senate, but he has shown a far greater tendency to be an independently minded politician than the Jr. Senator from IL.

In light of the facts, it is clear that the rolls are the reverse of what Sen. Obama would have many think. For better or for worse, John McCain has been his own man for much of his career in DC, while, in his short time in Congress, Barack Obama has been playing something along the lines of “follow the leader” with Democratic Party Leadership.

In Economic news, a notable panel of economists, including five Nobel Laureates, were put to task discussing various, global economic policy proposals. They assessed 40 different ideas and prioritized them, in utilitarian fasion, in order of how much good they would do for the welfare of the world’s population. The top of the list included relatively cheap nutrition and immunization for third world youth (tens of millions), which would yield hundreds of millions to billions of productivity in the future.

The top also included global expansion of free trade coming out of the Doha trade talks, which, according to studies by present economists could produce as much as $113 trillion in new wealth in the 21st century at a maximum opportunity cost of $420 billion from displaced industries.

What was perhaps most notable however was that Global Warming mitigation (as well as research and development to that end) came in at 39 and 40–the very bottom of the list. The explanation was that the costs of proposed policies to economic production and growing dynamism of the world economy will be very great, while the reasons and benefits for such overhauls have been speculative, and in some cases minimal.

Also of note: an opinion piece in today’s WSJ reminds us of the daily, yet revolutionary change that the market has offered America–and the world–over the course of history as well as in modern times. This sort of change, which coincides with unprecedented growth in standard of living, in the US and around the world, is produced by innovation and free trade both within and between nations–another sobering fact to those partial to a different type of change.

Popularity: 54% [?]

In light of the Cap-and-Trade bill, recently defeated in the Senate, I thought it proper to post on a recent scientific studies on future warming trends.

First, published in early May, a study published in Nature Magazine contends that, contrary to what is supposed to be scientific consensus, there will be no global warming until at least and possibly as late as 2020. The study found that the earth’s temperature will actually drop from the present to 2015. And since we have already witnessed a global temperature decline since 1998 (again, you do not hear about this very often in the news, do you?), this means that by the end of the next decade, there will have actually been a drop in global temperatures for two whole decades.

No, you did not read that wrong. In an era of globalization, rising human greenhouse gas emissions, Inconvenient Truths, and Nobel Peace Prizes for environmentalists, we are in the midst of two decades of no global warming.

Here is a review of the study in the NYT.

What makes this finding even more amusing is that it flies in the face of the Nobel-laureate IPCC which has predicted a .3 degree centigrade increase in temperature over the next decade. As a matter of fact, in their predictions, the IPCC uses a grand total of 0 climate models that have predicted any “lull” in warming over the next 7 years, such as the above study found.

And let us also remember that even despite its model-based estimates of global warming, the IPCC still only predicts a rise in sea levels between 7 inches and (at most) 23 inches over the course of the entire 21st century.

One has to wonder if this is the sort of imminant and emminant global warming that Barack Obama thinks warrents an 80% cut in GHGs by 2050.

Popularity: 55% [?]

From the AP this morning:

Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases, after a bitter debate over its economic costs and whether it would substantially raise gasoline and other energy prices.

Democratic leaders fell a dozen votes short of getting the 60 needed to end a Republican filibuster on the measure and bring the bill up for a vote. The 48-36 vote failed to reach even a majority, a disappointment to the bill’s supporters.

Although few expected this bill to actually go very far, the fact that it was shot down so quickly is a good sign for now.

The Climate Security Act (co-sponsored by John Warner (R-VA) and Joe Lieberman (confused-CT)) calls for limiting emissions to 2005 levels by 2012, 30% below 2005 leves by 2030, and finally reducing emissions by 74% by 2050. With present population growth accounted for, that would mean that by 2050, per capita greenhouse gas emissions would be more than 90% less than what they are presently, which–according to one commentator who I unfortunately cannot recall in order to cite at this point–would reduce per capita emissions to a level not seen since around the time Thomas Jefferson was president.

The economic costs of the central planning will obviously be imense. Low-end estimates like that of the Energy Information Administration estimate the costs to economic output at somewhere between $1 and 2 trillion by 2030 (in 2000 dollars) while other estimates, like that of the Heritage Foundation, expect losses up to $4.8 trillion (in 2006 dollars) by 2030.

This cannot even account for the potential deadweight losses and stifled innovation that will result from the massive politicization and bureaucratization of economic planning. Its a wonder how an economy that runs on 85% fossil fuel could cope with such massive overhaul.

While it is a positive to see these massive regulations thwarted, the real battle will come in the next four years when we know we will have a president who supports a Cap-and-Trade scheme. And with a Congress that will likely have even greater Democratic majorities there should be a real worry for those who actually value the idea of economic freedom and remotely limited government. The coming years will really test whether Congressional Republicans (as few as they are) and the American people are willing to go the distance to prevent what the minority leader, I think, correctly calls “the largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal.”

Popularity: 53% [?]

Last week, during their endorsement of John McCain as the Republican nominee, The New York Times included some choice words for a mayor they supported at one time, Rudy Giuliani.

“The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power…”

Giuliani, they asserted, was not the same man as he was during his mayoral tenure. While his campaign has not fared well in most states, Florida seems to be the fighting ground for his candidacy. As he’s currently in fifth place [without a win in any early primary or caucuses], Giuliani needs to hold Florida to show America that he is electable. Fortunately, if current trends hold, Mr. Giuliani will place third in tonight’s primary, behind established frontrunners John McCain and Mitt Romney.

That outcome is better not just for the other Republican candidates, but for America as well. With Giuiliani out of the race, America will be safe from a President who intended to encroach upon their vital Constitutional rights, and a President who would endanger relations with the international community. An America without Rudy Giuliani is an America prepared to confront fearmongering, and an America prepared to blaze the path to a successful future and a new American era. Below, you’ll find a more descriptive analysis of our viewpoints.

The Candidate of Fear

by Zach

As the Republican Party has moved more towards religious and social conservatism, only one candidate has managed to stay in the race without espousing his socially conservative beliefs. Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, was that candidate. Unfortunately for his campaign, he’s proved to be far from the ideal social conservative most Republican voters are looking for.  His pro-choice beliefs, while in line with the ideals of many mainstream voters, did not play well with conservatives either.  While I admire Rudy’s resistance to conservative social pressures, the Republicans did not.

Voters should consider themselves lucky. The centerpiece of Giuliani’s campaign has been September 11th. Whereas most Republican candidates used the main focuses of their campaign as a jumping off point for other issues, Giuliani relied at times only on his “tough guy” national security viewpoint. When voters disagreed, Giuliani was always there to tell them that he was the mayor of New York City on 9/11. It’s true. False, however, are most of Giuliani’s comments about the aftermath of September 11th.

September 11th was the worst terrorist tragedy America has ever seen. Yet there are some actions Giuliani took during his tenure as mayor that could have prevented dozens of casualties. Giuliani’s anti-terror headquarters, the $13 million Emergency Operations Center, opened in a building right across the street from the World Trade Center, ignoring the risks posed by terrorist attacks like that of Ramzi Yousef in 1993. Even Giuliani’s emergency management director, Jerome M. Hauer, has criticized his handling of the 9/11 tragedy, claiming Mr. Giuliani is running on a “Grand Illusion.” Giuliani made other errors that contributed to a slower emergency response on 9/11. Procedural lapses in the production of radios and flame retardant firefighter uniforms may have elevated the death toll for first responders. Giuliani’s been criticized for his reaction to the environmental and health concerns of the attacks as well. Giuliani ran a “slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused response” to the health challenges of the attacks. As a result, more than 70% of WTC first responders now suffer long term ills, mainly from breathing in debris that Mayor Giuliani told them was safe. As a result, many firefighters have spoken out against Mayor Giuliani’s campaign.

Without 9/11, there is no substance to Mayor Giuliani’s campaign for the presidency. Despite snags in the public perception of his performance post-9/11, he continues to exploit the fears of Americans in negative and fearmongering campaign advertisements. His “Ready” advertisement has caused a stir among thousands of disgruntled viewers, as it portrays marching terrorists with dangerous voiceovers like “Leaders assassinated. Democracy attacked.” Preying on the fears of Americans is not the way to win a presidency. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama is winning praise for his optimistic and hopeful message for the future of America. Those who endorse him applaud his forward thinking and plans for an America that fits neatly into the new international balance. A Rudy Giuliani presidency, meanwhile, would do the opposite, driving Americans further away from the ideals of freedom that our country is based on.

Giuliani is an avid proponent of the REAL ID Act, a plan to issue a national ID card to all Americans. The REAL ID Act would create the potential for an even larger surveillance state. After President Bush broke FISA precedents illegally, does America really want a president who is openly prepared to spy on them? The ACLU notes that issuing a REAL ID “does nothing to protect against terrorism.” Giuliani, however, still espouses its benefits, and says he’d require Americans to use their “tamper proof ID card” to “work, pay taxes, get online, become a citizen, follow the rules.” In a draconian police state like Giuliani is proposing, Americans would be deprived of crucial rights granted to them by the Constitution. Giuliani is running not just against the majority of Americans’ policies, but against those of the United States Constitution as well.

His inability to capture the interest of Americans in early primary and caucus states like Iowa and New Hampshire led him to focus his efforts on tonight’s Florida primary. Dismal results in the aforementioned early contests have diminished any hope for a Giuliani presidency, and tonight’s loss will hopefully be the death knell to his campaign. Giuliani has the support of neoconservative war hawks, but lacks the support of any American political base. The Republicans don’t support him, his own New York City firemen don’t support him, and, most importantly, Americans do not support Rudolph Giuliani’s candidacy for President of the United States.

Giuliani: Avoiding a Lasting Peace

by Eftychis

In Giuliani’s Foreign Policy essay in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled, “Towards a Realistic Peace” he outlines his plan for strengthening America’s position in the international system. Mayor Giuliani faces two dilemmas with his foreign policy stance. The first is that 9/11 occurred almost seven years ago. The second is that there is nothing in his plan that differentiates him from any of the other Republican candidates; in particular there is nothing to indicate he has more understanding of national security or foreign affairs than legendary, veteran Senator John McCain. As we approach Florida and the subsequent Super-Tuesday primaries it is apparent that the economy belongs to Mitt Romney, social conservatives have found themselves aligned Mike Huckabee, libertarians with Ron Paul, and military and national security conservatives divided between McCain and Rudy Giuliani. In his piece in Foreign Affairs Giuliani writes that we are the, “9/11-generation.” While in many ways this is true, the 2008 election is about the “Iraq generation.” It could be argued that the consequences and ramifications of September 11th 2001 are only just beginning to manifest them across the world, but it is evident that the most contentious event to occur after the mass murder of American citizens at the world trade center is the Iraq war. Yet, Rudy Giuliani does nothing to explain to voters why he is more capable of managing this war than Senator John McCain. McCain stood up to President Bush’s failed military policy in Iraq when Rudy Giuliani was still reading neo-con talking points and now most of the foreign policy advisors who engineered the failed Iraq war have shifted over to the Giuliani campaign. Giuliani has hoped that GOP primary voters will support him because of his national security credentials but I see no evidence for him to make the case that his are any greater than the other candidates and there is nothing he can do to convince GOP voters that he is more capable of winning the war in Iraq than John McCain. If McCain has the war and Romney has the economy, what does Giuliani embody to appeal to voters with?

Popularity: 86% [?]

From his Economic View column in the NYT, Tyler Cowen writes:

There has been plenty of talk about “predatory lending,” but “predatory borrowing” may have been the bigger problem. As much as 70 percent of recent early payment defaults had fraudulent misrepresentations on their original loan applications, according to one recent study. The research was done by BasePoint Analytics, which helps banks and lenders identify fraudulent transactions; the study looked at more than three million loans from 1997 to 2006, with a majority from 2005 to 2006. Applications with misrepresentations were also five times as likely to go into default.

This fact, however, falls upon the deaf ears of the Democrats, all of who touched upon the issue in Tuesday’s Nevada debate:

Edwards said, “We need a national law cracking down on predatory and payday lenders that are taking advantage of our most vulnerable families.”

Clinton argued that, “…because of the way the interest rates are going up, and many of the fraudulent and predatory practices that got people into them in the first place…” we need to extend credit and loosen bankrupcy laws for those in trouble.

Obama agreed, “Hillary’s exactly right, but we’ve got to modify some of the fraudulent practices, predatory lending practices.”

It sounds wonderful to the economically illiterate, but this season’s buzzword–“predatory” lending–does not so much as pass the smell test. The fact is that the phenominan–if you can call it that–is easily explained by the price system. If the price of credit goes down, and lenders have access to a greater supply of funds then demand from consumers goes up as they are able to borrow more then they previously could. With more credit, consumers are able to buy higher end goods, which they otherwise wouldn’t have access to–such as homes–and the price for those goods grows.

In reality, neither the lenders nor borrowers were “predatory.” Each demanded more credit as credit became cheaper. Unfortunately for both, the credit bubble burst and they are suffering the consequences of unsustainable financing. But the fact remains, it makes no sense to call either party “predatory” considering they both got screwed. And I believe that is the point that Professor Cowen would ultimately make.

In the same column, Cown spoke on lethal cold fronts:

Spells of extreme cold kill over 27,000 Americans each year, or about 700 people each very cold day. Heat waves may receive more publicity, but it turns out that cold periods — days with an average temperature below 30 degrees —have more significant and longer-lasting effects on human mortality. More people die in cold periods than in homicides.

Extreme cold brings cardiovascular stress as human bodies struggle to adjust to the temperature; many of the deaths in these periods come through heart attacks. Heat waves tend to kill people who were already weakened and would have died soon anyway; cold periods bring additional people to the verge of death.

When retired people move to a warmer state, their life expectancy rises dramatically. In fact, 8 to 15 percent of the increase in American life expectancy over the last 30 years comes from people moving to warmer climates, according to research done by two economics professors, Olivier Deschenes at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Enrico Moretti, at the University of California, Berkeley.

Much is made of how a warming trend could hurt us, but, not only do I assume that those are under the most severe of scenarios, not much is made of if and how warming can help. Not only do many more humans die from the cold than from the heat, but productivity also flurishes when it is warmer. For instance estimates generally hover around the consensus that warming and greater CO2 has contributed to a 15% growth in crop yields since 1950.

This wisdom regarding warming is certainly unconventional, but it is worth discussing openly. I believe the reason we never hear about it is that global warming skepticism is strongly condemned by the mainstream.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Here is an eye-popping link enumerating scores of different trends which have been linked to global warming.

Some of my personal favorites: rape, suicide, teen drinking, terrorism, child insomnia, less circumcision, polar bear cannibalism, poisonous spiders invading Scotland, rainfall increase, rainfall decrease, more colorful trees, less colorful trees, taller mountains, smaller mountains, and, best of all, another ice age.

The climate change sensation is prevalent in contemporary culture, and while the pressure is strong to hop on the band-wagon, any independent and rational thinker will notice it wreaks of dubious logic and claims. For instance, the current Secretary-General of the UN blames global warming as the primary culprit in the Darfur conflict. And, while the Sudanese campaign has been motivated in part by desertification of land in the north, it is giant leap to blame global warming for local weather trends. Not to mention the fact that by blaming climate change you are invariably evading the real issue which is that no government or people have the right to systematically violate people’s lives and property in the manner that the Sudanese government is doing.

An articulate editorial in the WSJ today posits how mob mentality may be perpetuating the matter:

How this honor has befallen the former Veep could perhaps be explained by another Nobel, awarded in 2002 to Daniel Kahneman for work he and the late Amos Tversky did on “availability bias,” roughly the human propensity to judge the validity of a proposition by how easily it comes to mind.

Their insight has been fruitful and multiplied: “Availability cascade” has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; “informational cascade” for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd’s beliefs; and “reputational cascade” for the rational incentive to do so.

Mr. Gore clearly understands the game he’s playing, judging by his resort to such nondispositive arguments as: “The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona.”

Two things to remember are, a) its bad when open, rational debate is not tolerated and people blindly follow the leader and b) environmentalist politics are consequential and if people truly accept the idea that there are catastrophic warming trends, logically, regulations will follow that could severely hamstring the economy by attacking both its energy sources and its related price system.

The fact remains that the scientific data does not add up to the earth melting. For one, humans contribute a very small fraction of the greenhouse effect (try less than 2%). Moreover, the earth warmed more during the first half of the twentieth century then the second half and actually cooled for much of the period from the 50s-80s (hence, the “global cooling” scare), all the while industrial emissions were increasing steadily.

Such inconsistencies, among others, are not addressed in the mainstream. A documentary released in the UK in the past year called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is a very informative source. Ultimately it demonstrates that “the debate” is not over–as a matter of fact, it has never even started–and that before we do anything too crazy the world should start openly and freely discussing the issue.

ADDENDUM: In a comment, Simmons said he did not believe me when I said that human contribution to the Greenhouse effect was just about 2% of the total greenhouse effect. While it is difficult to measure the exact contribution of humans, even what I consider generous estimates, measure human contribution at no more that 2 and a fraction %. From Junk Science:

Humans can only claim responsibility, if that’s the word, for abut 3.4% of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere annually, the rest of it is all natural (you can see the IPCC representation of the natural carbon cycle and human perturbation here or a simple schematic from Woods Hole here).

Half our estimated emissions fail to accumulate in the atmosphere, “disappearing” into sinks as yet undetermined. Humans’ total accumulated carbon contribution could account for perhaps a quarter of the total non-water greenhouse gases (that is, accounting for all the increase since the Industrial Revolution regardless of source and irrespective of whether warming from any cause might result in an increase in natural emission to atmosphere — we’re simply claiming the lot as anthropogenic or human-caused here).

Assuming that water vapor accounts for about 70% and clouds (mostly water droplets) accounts for another 20%, thus water in it’s various forms is 90% of the total greenhouse effect, leaving 10% for non-water greenhouse effect (we know we cited 95% above — see “important distinction“). Of this remaining 10%, mainly atmospheric carbon, humans might be responsible for 25% of the total accumulated atmospheric carbon, meaning 0.25 x 0.1 = 0.025 x 100 = 2.5% of the total greenhouse effect.

Within the given range, 2.5% is the maximum estimation because  it used the maximum estimates of CO2’s greenhouse composition and human emmisions of C02. Being that CO2 may be as little as 4 or 5% of the greenhouse effect, and humans may contribute as little as 3.4% of CO2, a reasonable estimate would also pin human greenhouse effect as low as (.034 x .05) .17%.

Popularity: 61% [?]

Mark Steyn writes:

Well, the average US household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000kWh.

Lesson: before you can save the world from other people, you should try saving the world from yourself.

Popularity: 45% [?]

From the LA Times, here’s something you don’t see every day:

Nelson is a former corporate executive who can afford to dine at four-star restaurants. But she prefers turning garbage into gourmet meals without spending a cent.

…

Nelson, 51, once earned a six-figure income as director of communications at Barnes and Noble. Tired of representing a multimillion dollar company, she quit in 2005 and became a “freegan” — the word combining “vegan” and “free” — a growing subculture of people who have reduced their spending habits and live off consumer waste. Though many of its pioneers are vegans, people who neither eat nor use any animal-based products, the concept has caught on with Nelson and other meat-eaters who do not want to depend on businesses that they believe waste resources, harm the environment or allow unfair labor practices.

…

Freeganism was born out of environmental justice and anti-globalization movements dating to the 1980s. The concept was inspired in part by groups like “Food Not Bombs,” an international organization that feeds the homeless with surplus food that’s often donated by businesses.

…

Adam Weissman, whose New York group Freegan.info has been around for about four years, lives with his father, a pediatrician, and mother, a teacher. The 29-year-old is unemployed by choice, taking care of his elderly grandparents daily and working odd jobs when he needs to. The rest of his time is spent furthering the freegan cause, he said, which is “about opting out of capitalism in any way that we can.”

Of course their utter disregard for morality and open opposition to the productive process is lamentable, to say the least, but I also must question the label of “wasteful” that they attach to consumerism and capitalist activity.

Economic agents measure their resourcefulness in dollars and cents. Whether they are making more money than they spend represents whether they are producing more than they spend. It’s naive to say it constitutes waste when food is thrown out or plastics aren’t recycled, etc., because that statement lacks economic perspective. Within the full context the food and the other materials that are disposed of are mostly thrown away because that is the most efficient way of dealing with them.

Doubtlessly, it would be far more costly to force people to consume everything they buy or to recycle what they do not consume. Why? Because, in addition to the fact that on an aggregate level the process of recycling is far more costly than garbage disposal, conserving and recycling imposes an added burden on the people whose time and labor it requires.

If the “Freegans” got their way and no one threw out anything there would be far more waste–waste of time and labor–which is far more consequential then the cold cuts that have reached their expiration date.

Hence, we know that the Freegan solution to “waste” would be far more wasteful because of its ridiculous opportunity cost and because it reflects negatively on people’s bottom line. I can be confident that at present people are generally resourceful when allocating all of their because the incentives are there for them to be. If they waste too much of their material wealth than they will live less comfortably, if they waste too much of their time they will make less money, if they waste too much money they will have less to buy. There is general accountability, meaning that people incur the costs and benefits of their habits so they will be less likely to be unproductive and wasteful.

I cannot say the same of freegan socialism.

ADDENDUM: Here is a link I was fed to another environmentalism movement who, although somewhat different, share the same distaste for earthly and material pleasure. They call themselves “vegansexuals”:

These people are now commonly known as vegansexuals. Alongside not eating meat, they are also choosing not to be sexually intimate with non-vegan partners whose bodies, they say, are made up of dead animals.

Its an amusing story. All I can say is that I could think of few romantic habits that could inflict greater misery. (HT: Simmons)

Popularity: 59% [?]