More fairly obvious climate survey results

It seems every month or so a new survey comes out showing that people say they are willing to pay something to reduce/prevent/circumvent/cope with climate change.  Here's the latest:

Millions of people around the world are willing to make personal sacrifices, including paying higher bills, to help redress climate change, a global survey said on Monday.

The basic findings...

 

• The survey found 83 percent of those questioned believed lifestyle changes would be necessary to cut emissions of climate warming carbon gases.

Gee, yathink?

• 61  percent overall said it would be necessary to increase energy  costs to encourage conservation and reduce carbon emissions

Hmmm. That implies either supplies are decreasing or we're taxing energy consumption.  If we target demand reductions, then energy consumption and prices will both decrease.

• to provide incentives for those changes there will need to be an increase in the cost of energy that contributes to climate change

Incentives are good.  But incentives don't have to increase the cost of existing energy.  What if, instead of taxing existing energy, we subsidize the consumption of renewables?  The result would be a decrease in the demand for existing energy--which will lower the price.

• The response to climate taxes was more muted than that on  raised energy prices

Anyone know the difference between a climate tax and raised energy prices?  Most tax proposals I've seen result in higher energy prices.

• There was also a greater acceptance of higher green taxes if they were offset by cuts in taxation elsewhere so the net effect on the individual's pocket was neutral.

At the risk of sounding childish..and being told to grow up--again...Duh.

 

Comments

[James]

I'm not an economist, so apologies if I'm missing something important here. The argument I can think of against subsidizing renewable energy is that the government then has to choose which industry segments get supported, rather than the market doing its relentless churn towards efficiency. How do you avoid ending up with an inefficient, entrenched renewable energy sector that may or may not be the best approach if you subsidize renewable energy? Thanks for your thoughts.

[Jay Abolofia]

James, it appears to me that you have an excellent point. Subsidies are just the opposite of taxes and thus are also market distorting. But, the idea behind choosing to subsidize renewables is that they are relatively more costly compared to non-renewables yet provide significant social benefits (that non-renewables do not provide) that are often not accounted for. For example, cleaner air is a social benefit that does not have a price tag, and is often under valued - thus, by encouraging renewable energies to take the place of non-renewables we are coming closer to accounting for the true social cost of polluting our air. In the end I believe that you are right in the sense that we (our governments) must decide how to allocate subsidies which inherently leads to inefficiencies. But, by allocating subsidies to renewables we are trying to fix an already existing market inefficiency, and thus I believe it is an appropriate step to take.

[odograph]

Some renewables are better than others on that front. Some (wind?) are generally considered good by current science, and some (corn ethanol?) are considered bad.

The political power of corn ethanol is the saddest thing about current energy policy, imnsho.