The coming debate on global warming

On an unrelated note, I can't resist sharing a bit of internet debate that I managed to get into the middle of recently.  I've mentioned before my daily guilty pleasure of reading Andrew Sullivan's blog (now hosted at The Atlantic Monthly's site) -- it's frequently the first thing I read in the morning.  Anyway, he linked  to and quoted something from the National Review's Jim Manzi talking about the drawbacks and failures of cap-and-trade regulatory programs.  Manzi is a conservative who actually acknowledges anthropogenic climate change, yet still opposes the current regulatory framework.  I e-mailed Sullivan a response, which he actually published in full on his site, along with another reader's response, and linked to some guy named Sonny Bunch's blog post on it.  (Due to the ease of forging e-mail, Sullivan publishes all e-mail anonymously, so you just have to trust me that I wrote it -- hey, I did write something similar here last year.)

I have to admit, I was rather gratified that Manzi both responded to my piece via Sullivan, and posted a response of his own at the National Review's The Corner*.  Manzi essentially agrees with my framing of the coming debate, and expresses his confidence that conservatives will ultimately win on this issue.  (As a final link in the debate, Sullivan links to a gent named Ryan Avent, who thinks Manzi's confidence is bunk.)

Since I had the chance to jump into this discussion, I'll put up one bit of response here.  Manzi notes -- correctly, I think -- that if the debate really does go there, it boils down to a conversation about industrial policy, and in that regard falls along some familiar lines, e.g., what kind of government involvement in economic development is appropriate.  Where Manzi is sanguine that along these lines, conservatives have won the day and will win it in the future, I think he misreads the political landscape.  The ascendancy of Goldwater/Reagan domestic economic policy wasn't due to the inherent logical superiority of their framework, it was tied up in a confluence of political factors (as most things in politics are), naturally including the backlash to the civil rights movement and the advent of the southern strategy.  If I had  to grossly generalize the last century of American public sentiment over federal economic policy, I would say that while the left likely overreached with the Great Society, and that it's unlikely that strong federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Welfare will unlikely ever be seen again in the same strong form, the FDR/Eisenhower-era policies of widespread federal investment in basic infrastructure were on the whole extremely popular on their own, and the rollback of this sort of involvement during the Reagan-Bush peak of conservatism represents as big an overreach on the other side. 

It is my hope, as well as that, I think, of Shellenberger and Nordhaus, that with the specter of another era of Democratic dominance, that we may see a resurgence in federal investment in the economy, but more in the restrained end of providing fundamental infrastructure and its reviving its traditional role in helping to fund research.  This isn't somehow "revolutionary," of the sort that Manzi uses de Toqueville to scold, although it does go pretty staunchly against the predominant neoliberal paradigm of the past 20 years (and which S&N have a bad habit of falling into).  Rather, it represents a basic economic pragmatism apart either from grand reformist visions or ideologies of free market purity.  But it does, at the root, represent an opportunity to think about and encourage a more economically sustainable, and yes, less carbon-intensive society.

Despite the protests of the free marketeers, the last century of American dominance did not emerge with the federal government sitting on its hands.  The very economic and geographic shape of the country only emerged with utterly massive influence from a number of key government programs, in transportation, in the form of the US and Interstate highways systems, airports, and port and shipping channel investments; in public health, in the form of extensive and long-running federal grants to local water and sewer authorities, disease management, vaccine programs, food safety, and nutrition programs; and in research, with projects such as the internet, thousands of pharmaceuticals, advances in building materials, and much of America's commercial airline industry owing its existence to federal programs.  The impact of federal programs is not etched, but gouged deeply into our economic landscape.  Obama alluded to this in his 2004 convention speech, and has recently made infrastructure and develpment key pieces of his economic proposals.

So if, as I suspect, we're likely to see a resurgence of federal investment in economic fundamentals, why not try to shape that economic investment in a more carbon-friendly way?  When investing in energy research, which we already do, focus that research on renewable energy.  When we invest in transportation, which we already do, focus it on rail and shipping instead of on the highway system (which as much as anything is at the root of our auto-centric culture).  When we invest in engineering, which we already do, focus it on programs that could help lower emissions and create jobs at the same time.  Don't go out to the end products of the economy and try to regulate back from there, build your carbon-neutral goals into the government programs you already have.

And if Manzi thinks the conservatives can win that debate with the same lower taxes and less regulation arguments, I suspect this is the way many Americans will see it.