2011 was the most expensive year in terms of disaster losses in history, mostly because of a spate of disasters affecting developed countries. Globally, the economic cost of disasters in 2011 was $380 billion, of which $210 billion were the result of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. This was 72 percent higher than the losses in 2005, the second costliest year in history of disaster-related losses.

The report also draws an interesting connection with demographic trends.  In most developed countries, the population is rapidly graying due to declining birthrates and longer life expectancies.  This means that a greater percentage are elderly.  The elderly are particularly vulnerable to disasters.  This fact has been clear for years. In the 1995 Chicago heat wave, almost three-quarters of the victims were over sixty-five. In Hurricane Katrina, over forty percent of the dead were over seventy.  Thus, it is hard to take issue with the view that, in developed countries especially, disaster management needs to attend to the special needs of the older population.

Brookings has made disasters an ongoing research focus.  These papers should be an important resource for anyone with an interest in disaster issues.

From the perspective of environmental law, is the filibuster a bad thing?  Dave Roberts at Grist claims that it is, because it more or less stopped the passage of the Waxman-Markey bill that would have regulated carbon emissions.  I think that Roberts is probably right that Waxman-Markey would likely have passed in some form that could have been reconciled with the House bill if it had only needed 50 votes to pass.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the existence of the filibuster is all bad from the perspective of environmental law.  A quick comparison with Canada makes this clear.  Canada’s political system, as a parliamentary one, provides much fewer obstacles to the enactment of legislation: The majority party in Parliament can pretty much enact what it wants; the legislature is effectively unicameral (the Canadian Senate rarely obstructs lower house legislation); there is no independently elected executive who can veto legislation.  That makes it relatively easy to enact legislation – say, a hypothetical carbon tax.  But it also makes it relatively easy to repeal legislation – as recent efforts by the Tories to amend Canadian environmental laws show.  (Our readers in Canada should correct me in the comments if I am wrong about any of this.)

So which is better?  A system with high legislative inertia, such as the United States, where legislation is hard to enact but hard to repeal?  Or a system like Canada’s, where legislation is easy to enact and repeal?  One possible answer is that, for environmental law, high inertia is a good thing.  If you think that certain kinds of environmental harm are irreversible or at least extremely costly to remedy (think of species extinction), then short-lived environmental protections are pretty much the same thing as no environmental protection at all.  Once the environmentally protective law is repealed and development occurs, reinstating the environmentally protective law later won’t do much good (you can’t bring back an extinct species).  In fact, if you think that having laws on the books that look environmentally protective, but in fact don’t do much at all, is problematic (perhaps because it deceives voters and the public), then environmentally protective laws that come and go might be worse than having no environmentally protective laws at all.  In the former case, you have the same level of environmental harm, but the public may not understand what is occurring because at least some of the time there are protective laws on the books; in the latter case, at least we’re clear about what kinds of protection are or are not occurring.

Now, whether this kind of “truth in legislation” principle in environmental law outweighs the costs that high inertia imposes on the ability of a political system to respond to new environmental harms (e.g., climate change!) is a hard question.  But I do think it means that from an environmental protection perspective, whether a supermajority requirement is a bad thing isn’t obvious.  Certainly, if we have President Romney in January 2013 and Republicans hold majorities (but not supermajorities) in both the Senate and the House, the filibuster might be seen as very environmentally friendly.  Without that supermajority requirement, a bunch of environmental laws might get repealed or gutted in a short amount of time; and even if President Hilary Clinton storms to power in 2016 with massive Democratic majorities and reenacts all those laws, the interim environmental damage that might occur could be irreversible.

While he acknowledged he had no scientific credentials that would allow him to speak with authority on climate science, Monckton said he was uniquely qualified to explain the various logical fallacies that supporters of man-made climate change had engaged in to attack their critics “because I was classically trained.”

Yup, a knowledge of Ancient Greek is exactly what you need to understanding thermodynamics, statistics, and dynamic modeling. Next week he’ll explain how Aristotle disproved quantum physics.

Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and Environment has released a new report 0n this issue. In general, we agree with other observers (such as our UCLA colleagues) about the rankings of key spending choices in terms  of their level of legal risk.  In general, the more closely a spending option is tied with climate change, the lower the risk. However, in terms of the absolute level of legal risk, we identify some significant arguments for upholding even the options with a higher level of risk, such as putting the proceeds in the general fund.

According to Resources for the Future, a carbon tax of $10 per ton of CO2 could generate annual tax revenues of $60 billion, and a carbon tax of about $25 could raise roughly $125 billion per year.  The amounts are uncertain in part because the tax revenue is sensitive to the price of natural gas — low natural gas prices drive out coal and reduce revenue from the carbon tax. Regardless, the potential for deficit reduction is significant.

The distributive impact of a carbon tax raises some issues.  Because low-income consumers spend more of their income on energy and energy-intensive goods, a carbon tax is regressive.  Also, there are regional disparities, depending primarily on how much electricity is generated by coal.  Thus, it may make sense to use some of the tax proceeds to reduce burdens on the most heavily affected groups, although this would reduce the net revenue from the tax.

In the long run, the carbon tax should produce decreasing revenue as reliance on fossil fuels wanes. But in the shorter-run, the tax could be a significant plus in terms of deficit reduction.

This might not sound like an environmental crisis.  But much of the rhetoric of those involved in the controversy is environmental.  The headline of the New York Times article (in the Automobile section, of course) is Conserving Utah’s Fragile Salt Flats.  There is an organization formed by the racing community called “Save the Salt.”  The area is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the federal land manager (Bureau of Land Management) has designated the site an Area of Critical Environmental Concern.

Probably a lot of people who consider themselves environmentalists wouldn’t think it that important to protect a site for high-speed racing.  But the fight to “save” the Bonneville Salt Flats shows that there is a tremendous diversity of values and goals that people might consider environmental.

Sometimes those goals will be in tension, even when the goals are more widely embraced within the traditional environmental movement.  Much of the controversy over industrial-scale solar power projects in the California desert has been around how to tradeoff one goal (rapidly increasing low- or no-carbon renewable energy production) with other goals (protecting biodiversity such as desert tortoises; protecting what is a relatively wild landscape that is visually inspiring to many people; protecting Native American cultural and spiritual resources).

In an earlier post, I discussed the dangers of creating exemptions from general environmental laws (such as CEQA) where there might be significant asymmetry in political power.  But even if that asymmetry does not exist, even where the only interest groups involved are environmental groups or other citizen groups, these kinds of exemptions have a risk.  They identify some environmental goals as “better” or “more important” than others.  That might well be true – I can very much understand the argument that some local environmental harms in the California desert are worth massively increasing renewable energy to help deal with the problem of climate change.  But it carries a political risk.

Those whose goals and values are identified as “less important” through statutory exemptions are surely going to be frustrated and angry.  They may question why the general environmental law deserves support, if their preferences are not going to be considered.

This is important because environmental law is statutory law in the United States, always subject to revision and repeal.  Those laws are more likely to be sustainable if they have more allies – whether they be proponents and opponents of solar power projects, or even racing enthusiasts.  Some environmentalists might question whether the Salt Flats should be identified as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern, arguing that this diminishes what it means to be an environmental problem.  But a big tent might mean all the more support for BLM’s ability to protect environmental values – of a wide range – on its lands.  The same may be true for CEQA.

In a nutshell,  individuals have a variety of coping strategies including (but not limited to) moving within the city, fortifying their home against flood risk or simply moving valuable stuff out of their basement.  Firms will  have increased incentives to dream up new products that help households to cope with flooding (i.e the cheap sand bag?).   Insurance firms through differential pricing of flood insurance can affect the spatial distribution of where households live and what materials their homes are made out of and this will reduce flood damage. Local governments will have incentives to invest in storm drains and engineering approaches to redirect water away from the central population.   Local governments will also using zoning regulation to reduce density in the flood zones.

Together these efforts will sharply reduce the flood damage.  Why am I so sure?   The land owners in these cities know that if flood risk sharply reduces the area’s quality of life then the footloose skilled will move and the city will enter a death spiral.   This anticipated loss of real estate value for hundreds of thousands of people in a city creates a strong interest group looking for adaptation solutions.  The mayor of the city will also recognize this dynamic logic and will seek out solutions to protect the “golden goose” and keep attracting and retaining the skilled to live in the flood prone city.

Most people who don’t like regulations also don’t like the idea of using courts to solve social problems.  In the case of environmental problems, the reluctance is well-founded.  Major pollution problems involve very technical scientific and engineering issues, complex economics, and hard tradeoffs.  Courts don’t have great expertise in any of those areas.  In addition, the practicalities of mega-cases involving millions of plaintiffs and dozens or hundreds of pollution sources are more than a little daunting.

If not the courts, how about Congress?  There is a school of thought that Congress should set more specific standards rather than giving EPA the authority to translate general policies into specific numbers.  That would reduce EPA’s policy role, but would leave EPA with a big enforcement role much like the IRS’s.  How many people who hate EPA love the IRS?

It’s also doubtful that Congress could work out the specific numbers — unless, that is, it developed a staff with just as many engineers, scientists, economists, and other experts as EPA has.  In that case, Congress would essentially have its own in-house EPA.  The only difference would be that essentially the same people would report to Congress rather than the President.  Given that both Congress and the President are elected by the same voters, it’s hard to see any big advantage to the shift.

People think of EPA as composed of unaccountable bureaucrats.  But in fact they’re accountable in many dimensions for their decisions.  The ultimate authority over the decision is held by the President or a presidential appointee.  Even then, a court will review the decision to be sure that it has factual support and does not violate the congressional mandate.  And in the end, Congress can pass a new law and change the rules, or put pressure on the executive branch through funding decisions or hearings.

There are undoubtedly many ways we could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our environmental laws.  But in the end, if we want to limit pollution or protect some areas from unrestricted development, we’re going to need administrative agencies to get the work done.

Of course, a company or individual could decide to voluntarily correct the problem to eliminate the externality.  But if the cost is significant, many people will not be altruistic enough to bear a heavy cost in order to help someone else.  And corporations, which have a fiduciary duty to protect their own shareholders, are not in the business of being altruistic toward outsider.

If only a few people are on the receiving side of the externality, they might be able to enter a contract with the creator of the externality to take care of the problem. But that’s obviously not going to be practical in complicated situations with multiple victims (and perhaps multiple sources), like urban air pollution.   For instance, a negotiation involving all the major polluters and residents of Houston would be a nightmare.

Another solution, favored by some libertarians, is for the recipients to sue.  But this is also problematic except in very simple situations. Imagine a lawsuit by all the residents of Houston against all the pollution sources in the city.  This would be immensely complicated and expensive litigation, and in the end the decision would fall on a judge or jurors with no expertise in the problem.

So if the problem can’t be settled by the private sector alone or by the courts, the remaining alternatives are legislative or administrative.  There are basically only three options:

1. Subsidies. The government can pay the source of the externality to stop.
2. Taxes. The government can tax the source, so that the cost is internalized by the source rather than just imposed on others.
3. Regulations. The government can tell the source or sources to reduce the level of the externality, perhaps using a market mechanism like an emissions trading system to make the regulation more effective.

That’s pretty much the range of options.  They all involve government coercion — either to impose the tax or regulation on the externality, or to fund the subsidy by raising taxes. Free markets are great, but they won’t solve externality problems on their own.

Put simply: significant externalities call for significant government intervention.

Next up: why we need administrative agencies like EPA.

A new report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication finds that since November 2011, public belief that global warming is happening increased by 3 percentage points, to 66 percent overall.  However, public belief that global warming is caused mostly by human activities decreased four percentage points, to 46 percent.

Even more striking:  Since November, there has been a 6 point decrease (to 35%) in the proportion of Americans who believe that most scientists think global warming is happening, with a 2 point increase (to 41%) in those who believe there is substantial disagreement among scientists.

What the Science Says

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made pronouncements on anthropogenic climate change dating back to 2001 and further strengthened in its Fourth Assessment report.   The IPCC stated in 2007: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20^th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.”  This statement is worth far more weight than a single dissenting view; more than 800 scientists and experts from all over the world contribute to the preparation of IPCC reports as authors, contributors, and expert reviewers.

A 2009 survey of 3,146 earth scientists posed the question “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” (Doran 2009).  The study found that 97.5% of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change responded “yes.”

Clouding the Air

Why then does the climate change “debate” continue?  There seem to be a few factors at play: 

• The intense polarization of our political parties, with environmentalism tagged as a Democratic issue, even when a healthy number of Republicans support clean energy;
• Mainstream media’s bias towards the debate format, which lends disproportionate air time to climate change deniers.
• Lack of clear information and reporting on the scientific consensus that climate change is real and that humans are a major contributor.
• Prioritization of economic issues over environmental issues and the public perception that environmental regulation hurts job growth.
• In the digital age, easy access to authorship, strong trends towards personalization in media consumption, and instantaneous dissemination of information – whether accurate or not.

These factors, among others, have contributed to our current state: the public is simply not aware of, or not convinced by, the degree of scientific agreement on anthropogenic climate change.  The challenge, therefore, is how to cut through the haze and effectively communicate this scientific consensus.

Show and Tell

Perhaps visualizing the weight of scientific opinion on anthropogenic climate change will advance understanding:

This chart summarizes the results of eight different reviews of scientific literature examining anthropogenic climate change. Visualizing information is just one tool at the disposal of scientists and the media alike.  We can all recall the graphs and charts that Al Gore famously pointed to in An Inconvenient Truth.  Tacky?  Maybe.  But he made his point.  Re-visualizing scientific information may prove useful as a way of demonstrating the true weight of scientific opinion.

Regardless of personal opinion, there is a clear need for more information on the current views of scientists, their research methods, and the true level of dissent among scientific experts concerning climate change.