Romney Not So Into Free-Market Solution for Global Warming

Well, you're right that the New England pact would "advance objectives chosen by politicians rather than by private actors in the marketplace." But private actors in the marketplace are presumed to be rational actors who maximize their own economic benefits, and the long-term benefit of reducing pollution doesn't motivate nearly as well as the near-term gains to be had by ignoring pollution. That's where government comes in: unconstrained by concerns over profitability, it can act to advance interests (like public health) not accounted for by market forces. As for whether global warming is so uncertain as you make it out to be, I'll take the word of accomplished scientists (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/... over the word of political analysts, no matter how accomplished they are. (When you talk about a reduction in temperature increases of only .07 degrees c., it seems paltry, but an accompanying rise in the sea level of between .09 and .88 meters during the next 100 years ( http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html) would, at the very least, make my commute more complicated.)

Dear Bostonist, the New England CO2 pact is an example of "market socialism," not "free market environmentalism." Free market environmentalism seeks to extend private property rights and common law liability rules to previously unowned portions of nature. It views the market primarily as a discovery process to determine what is to be done (which of the many possible uses of finite resouces are most valuable), and only secondarily as a system of incentives to promote efficiency. Market socialists, in contrast, seek to use "market mechanisms," such as emissions trading, to advance objectives chosen by politicians rather than by private actors in the marketplace. Government steers and business rows. Government picks the ends, the marketplace selects the means. This may be more efficient than old-fashioned, command-and-control socialism (government selecting both means and ends), but the result is likely to be smarter ways of doing dumb things.

The Kyoto Protocol and kindred schemes like the New England CO2 Pact are a case in point. Kyoto, by the estimate of its own supporters, would avert a hypothetical and unverifiable 0.07C of warming by 2050. Yet, Kyoto could easily cost industrial nations upwards of $150 billion per year. Nobody in a free (private) marketplace would invest trillions of dollars to achieve undetectable changes in global climate that would not benefit people or the planet one whit.