As I’ve mentioned on this site a few times, I’m a regular watcher of CBS Sunday Morning. My favorite segment is the nature one at the end, which goes from about 30 seconds to 45 seconds. But there are also other good segments. Steve Hartman is my other favorite: his typical story is a heart-warming one about someone doing something wonderful for someone else, often a stranger.
On issues like climate and global warming, though, CBS has no balance. It doesn’t present the issue as if there is any disagreement among scientists and it typically shows spokespeople who take among the most extreme views, like the idea that if we don’t do a lot now, we will have big trouble within a few years. There is little to no basis for that view.
Its August 6 segment on the recent heat wave, which was the lead story, was no exception. Even worse, there was an added wrinkle, which would be noticeable to people who closely follow Biden administration policy.
Before I get to that, notice how host Jane Pauley leads off. (You have to watch the first few seconds of the video to see this; it’s not in the transcript.) She states:
Politicians may still debate it but it’s getting harder and harder to deny. With temperatures climbing to new heights everywhere, something’s going on out there.
Pauley tells the reader that the debate is between politicians. Unstated implication: there’s no debate among scientists, which is false.
It then segues to David Pogue, who completely buys into the idea that this latest heat wave is an indicator of global warming and that global warming is a crisis.
Near the end of the segment, Pogue gets into what the Biden administration is doing to deal with heat waves. Here’s an excerpt:
Last month, President Biden announced some small steps toward adapting to dangerous heat, like expanding access to drinking water, improving weather forecasts, and setting up a heat alert system. But Guardaro maintains that there’s much more to be done. City planners should develop heat infrastructure (like cooling centers and strategic greenery), and the federal government should start taking heat as seriously as it treats other climate disasters. For example, FEMA has never declared extreme heat as a disaster.
Do you notice something missing? I did. One major thing the Biden administration is doing is making is more expensive for people to adapt to dangerous heat. How so? With new regulations limiting hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), an ingredient in many air conditioners. The Competitive Enterprise Institute spells out the problem here. (Disclosure: I give a small annual contribution to CEI.) Ben Lieberman, writing in 2021, stated:
If finalized in its current form, the proposed rule would reduce future supplies of HFC-410a and HFC-134a and raise prices for them. As we note in our comments to the agency, doing so will increase air conditioner repair costs. Any system that loses refrigerant from a leak—a common occurrence—would have to replace the lost refrigerants with the increasingly scarce and costly supplies of HFC-410a and HFC-134a.
Worst off would be low-income households, some of which can barely afford air conditioning as it is. And the current western heat wave’s victims are mostly those lacking access to air conditioning, which further underscores the need to keep it as affordable as possible.
Nonetheless, the EPA’s lengthy analysis of its proposed rule ignores the impacts on homeowners and car owners, not to mention businesses that rely on HFC-using air conditioning and refrigeration equipment.
What if, instead of repairing your old residential air conditioner, you decide to buy a new system designed to use one of the supposedly climate-friendlier alternative refrigerants? Expect to pay more, especially for a system using one of the patented new refrigerants that cost several times more than the HFCs they are designed to replace.
But once again, the EPA turns a blind eye to these costs, insisting that these new systems will be better and cheaper overall, without ever explaining why manufacturers and consumers preferred HFC-410a in the first place.
READER COMMENTS
Roger McKinney
Aug 8 2023 at 11:53am
Fortunately, the majority of Americans haven’t drunk the Kool-aid. They will ignore it until politicians try to pass draconian laws.
The Gallup polling group does an annual survey of trust in the media. It’s at historic lows now. About 25% trust the mainstream media, mostly Democrats.
Matt
Aug 8 2023 at 3:21pm
Point taken, David. It’s likely not a cost-effective policy for combating greenhouse gas emissions, and any climate policy should take more care to accommodate the risks to the less fortunate, but claiming that CBS has “no balance” on climate change is a bit pot calling the kettle black.
If you’re interested in balance, you might consider doing some posts that look at potentially viable and more economically optimal policies that could best serve different ranges of probable climate futures. You might consider demonstrating a level of consideration for climate policy that at least approaches the level of seriousness that many of your economist peers demonstrate. Instead, it seems like every time we hear from you on this issue, it’s to be dismissive without curiosity or alternative proposal.
Don Boudreaux
Aug 9 2023 at 8:38am
Matt: How often do you read David Henderson’s writings – writings both at EconLog and in other outlets? Your comment here suggests that the answer is “not very often.” David frequently does, quite appropriately, call out the likely negative unseen consequences of various actual and proposed government interventions. Such calling out is necessary because much more often than not, proponents of this and that intervention, and of these and those taxes, point only to the interventions’ and taxes’ upsides (sometimes real, sometimes imaginary). And when proponents do acknowledge their favorite interventions’ downsides, these proponents frequently miss many important ones.
Pointing out the reality and often surprisingly wide range of the downsides of interventions is one of the most vital tasks that an economist can perform. Yet, increasingly, fewer and fewer economists perform this task, preferring instead to play at social and economic engineering.
Focusing on pointing out interventions’ downsides perhaps conveys to the too-quick or unsympathetic reader the impression that the economist isn’t ‘constructive’ or sufficiently open-minded. But this impression is false – and especially so in the case of David Henderson, who is unusually open-minded and thoughtful. If you read David’s work more carefully, I’m sure that you’ll see what I mean.
David Henderson
Aug 9 2023 at 9:02am
Thanks, Don. My guess is that the correct answer to your question is either “not very often” or “not very carefully.”
I have, for instance, pointed out a number of times that many economists, in advocating a carbon tax, are assuming that reducing CO2 is the least-cost way of dealing with global warming. They have little basis for this assumption.
Thomas Hutcheson
Aug 9 2023 at 11:27am
I agree that criticizing bad ideas is a useful exercise, but unless one actually thinks that doing nothing is the best way to achieve the objective the bad idea is aiming at, it is seriously incomplete.
We KNOW minimum wages cause some unemployment, maybe even of the most marginally employed. What SHOUD be done to raise real incomes of low-wage workers?
We Know that a climate change apocalypse is pretty unlikely, but what IS the best way to reduce harm from the increase in the atmosphere of CO2 and methane?
I think Matt is on the right track with his criticism.
David Henderson
Aug 9 2023 at 12:01pm
You write:
I’m glad we agree on the first. I don’t think there’s any necessary reason for me always to point out my ways of achieving the objective. For those who read this post regularly–and you, obviously, are one of those–they know what I’ve written.
You write:
I’ve written on that too: (1) end minimum wage laws so that unskilled people can acquire skills; (2) lower to 14 the age at which kids can avoid school so that they can acquire useful skills; (3) in line with (2), end child labor laws for everyone age 14 or more; (4) end occupational licensing so that unskilled people can enter jobs they are now prevented from getting; and (5) end the high tax rates, high government spending, and high regulation that reduce growth, recognizing that higher growth, to mix a metaphor, raises all boats.
Are you really saying, Thomas, that you want to repeat that every time I write about the minimum wage?
You write:
I’ve written about that too. I don’t know the best way. Neither do you. The difference is that I admit it and you don’t.
You write:
As you can see, I don’t.
Richard W Fulmer
Aug 9 2023 at 12:39pm
Responses to Poverty
Education
• Stop forcing children to go to bad schools.
• Stop preventing parents from sending their children to the schools of their choice.
• Stop letting teachers’ unions prevent schools from firing bad teachers.
• Require teachers to have degrees in the subjects they teach.
• Stop promoting students to the next grade even if they haven’t learned the material.
• Stop emphasizing self-esteem above accomplishment.
• Stop adding fad courses to the K-12 curricula that leave less time for students to learn the basics.
• Stop teaching children that the deck is stacked against them and that they have no hope of bettering their lives or those of their loved ones through their own efforts.
Employment
• Eliminate minimum wage laws, which make it difficult for the least employable (that is, the least educated, least skilled, least experienced, least physically and mentally able, and most discriminated against) to find jobs.
• Reduce job licensing restrictions.
• Reduce business startup regulations.
• Eliminate “certificates of need” that allow entrenched businesses to decide whether they’re willing to compete with newcomers.
Welfare Programs
• Stop paying people to be unemployed.
• Stop paying women to have children out of wedlock.
• Stop penalizing welfare recipients who get a job.
• Stop penalizing welfare recipients who are married or who get married.
Housing
• Stop imposing rent controls, which create shortages of low-cost housing.
• End or reduce zoning restrictions, which also create shortages of low-cost housing.
• End housing policies that encourage people to take out mortgages they can’t afford.
Economy
• End the Fed’s loose monetary policies.
• Reduce regulation.
• Reduce (or, better, eliminate) the capital gains tax.
• Reduce tariffs. Eliminate tariffs on goods from allied nations.
• End public unions.
• Eliminate farm subsidies.
• Eliminate corporate subsidies.
Law Enforcement
• End civil asset forfeiture, which encourages cities to use their police forces as revenue collectors and are especially hard on the poor who cannot afford to hire the legal talent needed to recover their property.
• Stop letting police unions prevent bad the firing of bad police officers.
Responses to Climate Change
• See my article “8 Commonsense Proposals to Alleviate Climate Change.”
• Address highway bottlenecks.
• End or reduce zoning laws that prevent the construction of multi-family dwellings.
• Stop subsidizing flood-prone housing.
• Stop blocking domestic mining, which pushes mining operations to less environmentally conscious countries resulting in more emissions elsewhere.
• Improve forest management.
• End farm subsidies.
• Repeal the Passenger Services Act of 1886.
• End wasteful recycling programs.
• Above all, stop imposing “solutions” (e.g., corn-based ethanol and bio-mass power plants) that make the problem worse.
David Seltzer
Aug 10 2023 at 4:33pm
Richard: A beautiful compendium! Econ 101 for the common man.
Richard W Fulmer
Aug 12 2023 at 4:03pm
David: Thanks. The actions I listed are little more than applying Barack Obama’s suggestion that we stop doing stupid (ahem) stuff. The problem is that so many people have a vested interest in the government doing stupid stuff. To stop would mean eliminating the regulatory, welfare state, which the left would oppose. They’ll never admit that their policies have made things worse.
And now the populist right wants to join in the fun and regulate things their way. Moreover, the right won’t support ending government programs that mandate waste and inefficiency in the name of addressing climate change because that would be to admit that the planet is warming.
As Kevin D. Williamson once observed, when the government does stupid, it does immortally stupid.
Thomas Hutcheson
Aug 8 2023 at 7:00pm
“like the idea that if we don’t do a lot now, we will have big trouble within a few years.”
Crudely put, but the sooner we tax net emissions of CO2 and methane, (admittedly that is not “a lot”) the lower the tax will need to be to achieve any given target CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
Don Boudreaux
Aug 9 2023 at 7:59am
Mr. Hutcheson: You write as if you have solid information confirming that the best way to deal with climate change is to reduce emissions of CO2. I understand that nearly everyone assumes that reducing CO2 emissions is the only, or at least the unquestionably best, means of dealing with climate change. But this assumption is no more than that: an assumption.
We have, as far as I know, no solid information showing that the costs of reducing CO2 emissions (by whatever amount) are worth the resulting benefits. What would be sacrificed by such efforts? And how do we know that the value of these sacrifices would be less than the value of what would be sacrificed if humanity dealt with climate change instead in some alternative manner – say, by building higher seawalls and more air-conditioning? Or by arranging to increase the earth’s albedo? Or by reducing government-erected barriers to the construction and use of nuclear-power plants? Or perhaps even by suffering climate-change’s negative (along with its positive) consequences? Or some combination of these (and other) means of dealing with climate change without reducing emissions of CO2?
I do not deny that in the mind of god the best way to deal with climate change might be to reduce, or perhaps to eliminate completely ASAP, emissions of CO2. But having no access to god’s mind, I can admit this possibility only as, well, a possibility – one amount countless alternative possibilities.
The core point here is that no one – not St. Greta of Stockholm, not Pres. Biden, not Al Gore, not you, no one – has access to the mind of god. Even putting aside the fact that there is (as David correctly points out) serious debate among serious scientists about many aspects of the climate-change question (see, e.g., Steven Koonin’s 2021 book, Unsettled?), we simply have no reason to know if – and, if so, by how much – reductions in CO2 emissions are an appropriate tool to use to deal with climate change. Given this lack of adequate information, it’s highly unscientific to endorse taxes on carbon emissions as if the case for such taxes has been scientifically established. That case has not been so established. Not by a long shot.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Aug 9 2023 at 11:44am
Yes, I do think that taxing net emissions of CO2 and methane is the lowest cost way to reduce the future cost of CO2 concentrations and future investment in adapting to a warmer climate. Now if _you_ do not think that increasing concentrations are going to produce future costs, then fine, argue THAT position. Of if you think there is better way to reduce those costs, argue that. ,But I think would be good to go beyond just refuting the wildest estimates of climate change costs.
Don Boudreaux
Aug 9 2023 at 12:24pm
Mr. Hutcheson: I believe you that you “think that taxing net emissions of CO2 and methane is the lowest cost way to reduce the future cost of CO2 concentrations and future investment in adapting to a warmer climate.” Lots of people have the same thought. But merely thinking such a thing isn’t evidence of the thought’s validity. Nor does such thinking put the burden of persuasion or proof on those who think differently, or even who simply question the thought’s validity.
You and other greenhouse-gas-tax proponents propose a massive government intervention. The burden of persuasion is on you to make the case empirically for the tax – a case that’s not made, by the way, merely by recalling the familiar textbook model of Pigouvian taxes. This burden is not on those of us who point out that the informational basis on which the case for such a tax is proposed is too flimsy to support the tax as sound public policy.
When in sufficient doubt about the merits of a particular policy, the default should be not to impose that policy and to allow individuals to continue to operate freely in the market. We have plenty of empirical evidence that individuals operating in free markets have both incentives and creative capacities to deal with problems as they emerge. Most of such ‘dealing with problems’ is piecemeal – e.g., in the case of climate change, this town builds a higher levee, those families and businesses move further inland, those other families and businesses remain in place but purchase more insurance, some other people invest more in air-conditioning…. this list is practically endless. These piecemeal adjustments add up to significant precaution against the risks and costs of climate change. They aren’t as sexy or as noticeable as a government-imposed ‘solution.’ But they’re real. And until you or someone else present sufficiently detailed evidence that the least-costly way of dealing with climate change is to tax emissions of fuels that have powered the world’s industrial development for the past 200-plus years, the case for a tax on greenhouse-gas emissions is a religious dogma and not a scientifically justified position.
steve
Aug 9 2023 at 1:21pm
What would you regard as sufficient evidence? We are dealing with future events and effects. That means we need to model and no one agrees upon acceptable models.
Steve
Don Boudreaux
Aug 9 2023 at 1:48pm
Steve: You ask what I would regard as sufficient evidence to make a case for taxing greenhouse-gas emissions. The burden is not on opponents of such a tax to specify minimum sufficient evidence. It is enough that we opponents point out that no such sufficient evidence has yet been presented. Because no such evidence has been presented – because the only ‘evidence’ for the merits of such a tax is that it would (as it indeed would) reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and, hence, ceteris paribus, reduce the rate of rise in global temperatures – there is no scientifically established case for such a tax.
This conclusion grows only much stronger in face of the reality that there are alternative ways of dealing with climate change other than by reducing the amounts of greenhouse gasses in the earth’s atmosphere.
You are correct that we’re dealing with a future impossible to predict in detail, and very difficult to predict even in broad outline. It’s a curse for our being mere mortals. But our ignorance of the future certainly doesn’t imply that we should therefore all embrace a particular proposal not only as if it’s the only game in town, but as if its a game that we’re likely to be glad to have played.
Richard W Fulmer
Aug 9 2023 at 2:15pm
Steve: At a minimum, I’d like some sort of proof that carbon taxes wouldn’t result in more CO2 emissions. To date, many, if not most, government-imposed solutions have made the problem worse. I mentioned corn-based ethanol and biomass power plants above, but we could add CAFE standards, which have driven the switch to gas-guzzling SUVs.
Just offhand, carbon taxes could increase emissions by driving energy-intensive companies to move their operations to nations with less restrictive emissions standards. The result could well be more emissions elsewhere – hardly a solution to a global problem.
Carbon tax proponents respond that the U.S. could impose import tariffs that reflect each goods’ carbon footprint. That sounds plausible until you consider that we import tens of millions of different products each year. Determining the carbon footprint of each item would be an impossible task. Moreover, the tariffs would be subject to intense lobbying as companies jockey to get their factory inputs exempted. In the end, the tariffs would be as arbitrary as prices were in the old Soviet Union.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Aug 9 2023 at 9:50pm
IN other words, you do think the best thing politically is to do nothing.
Fair enough.
Richard Fulmer
Aug 10 2023 at 8:52am
Between the article to which I linked and the list of additional actions that I posted, I provided 16 different “no regrets” measures that we can take.
I do not favor embarking on nationwide programs that have a very real chance of making things worse in the name of “doing something.” We’ve already done too much of that.
Charley Hooper
Aug 10 2023 at 2:02pm
People who are convinced that global warming/climate change is a serious problem often dismiss even a discussion of potential solutions.
How can we be certain we’ve settled on the right solution when the very conversation about approaches is discouraged? Given this, it is highly unlikely we’ve found the best solution.
steve
Aug 10 2023 at 3:19pm
I think a discussion of all options has some merit. It’s a frequent topic of conversation at our home with our in house physicist and by extension his fellow geeks. I think I end up kind of agnostic about taxing CO2. Might work, but people are good at avoiding taxes. Do we ignore CO2 production and look at stuff like stratospheric aerosol injection? Long term modeling isn’t clear and knowing that CO2 is causative you are talking about constantly increasing aerosols so unintended and unpredictable consequences increase. Maybe as an aid to efforts to decrease CO2 it has a place.
Steve
Gary Marshall
Aug 10 2023 at 1:13am
Do you really believe that a sprinkling of CO2 molecules in the upper atmosphere can heat up the vast water and land masses below?
If true, why aren’t we using a proportional sprinkling of CO2 to heat my home, or the residential and commercial structures of large cities?
There is no greenhouse in the sky. Therefore, there is no Greenhouse Effect.
And absorption band of Methane for IR or heat is at the very limit of IR.
If raising taxes on CO2 emissions cools temperatures, does cutting them raise them?
steve
Aug 10 2023 at 3:21pm
That must mean very tiny amounts of cyanide cannot harm you. Must be safe to eat lots of it.
Steve
Jon Murphy
Aug 9 2023 at 6:20am
In addition to your point, the bit from Pogue states that the Feds are not taking global warming seriously:
The problem with this quoted segment is the second sentence is unrelated to the first. FEMA declarations must be requested by the governor of the state or territory firstly and the state/local systems must be overwhelmed by the disaster. Given global warming is a relatively slow phenomenon (compared to, say, a hurricane, tornado, or flood), there’s no reason to think the operations of local governments would be overwhelmed by global warming such that a federal declaration of disaster would be appropriate.
In short, what Pogue is asking for would be a violation of the spirit and letter of the law, rather than a sign of seriousness.
Charley Hooper
Aug 10 2023 at 1:53pm
Good point.
And then there’s the fact that cold kills about ten times as many people as does heat. So if FEMA were to declare heat disasters, it should declare about ten times as many cold disasters.
sman
Aug 9 2023 at 11:00am
It is amazing how many will buy in to an urgent need to address climate based on a static long term forecast, and yet deny the issue of ever increasing US debt that is based on use of static models in forecasting.
Really speaks to emotion and not logical analysis in my view.
SK
Aug 9 2023 at 11:00am
It is amazing how many will buy in to an urgent need to address climate based on a static long term forecast, and yet deny the issue of ever increasing US debt that is based on use of static models in forecasting.
Really speaks to emotion and not logical analysis in my view.
Thomas Hutcheson
Aug 9 2023 at 11:47am
You won’t find many more deficit-hawkist people than me. I want to reduce both CO2 concentrations and the deficit. Conveniently for me, taxing net CO2 emissions does both. 🙂
Richard W Fulmer
Aug 14 2023 at 12:44pm
I doubt that CO2 emission taxes would do either. First, as I noted above, taxes could increase emissions by driving energy-intensive industries to nations with less restrictive emissions standards. Second, moving production offshore reduces GNP, which tends to drive up the deficit. Third, taxes shift resources away from the private sector, which tends to decrease production and thereby increase the federal deficit. Fourth, the federal government has historically spent more than a dollar for every additional dollar of revenue that it receives.
Knut P. Heen
Aug 14 2023 at 7:58am
All in on CO2 is the opposite of risk management. We should insure against the consequences of climate change rather than bet on the reasons for it.
Comments are closed.