I haven't pointed to the Environmental Economics blog, even though I read it, and even though Lynne Kiesling has posted there on rare occasion, because it's usually either vague and nonsensical or explicit and nonsensical. The subject is important but the authors don't seem to have a useful grasp of it. I continue reading just in case someone comes to his senses or finds his voice. This one isn't so bad, and it explains some of the vagueness that detracts so much from the posts.

I have been unclear as to where I stand on the global warming broohaha. Part of that is intentional as I have found that we get more discussion when I am vague then when I'm specific.

The rest of the post is a dialog involving two perspectives, the differing views of the author depending on which hat he is wearing. His Internal Human view is typical brain-dead muddle and his Internal Economist is typical sophomoric econo-speak. It is to his credit that he declines to silence one or the other of them though it seems it would be tempting to strangle them both. They are better together than apart, even if that still isn't very good, and this is far better than the majority accomplishes.

The good bit is that the questions of whether global warming is happening and if it is caused by human behavior are deflated by the Internal Economist. In short: they aren't the real issues.

The silly bit is the glib assumption that no matter what the answer to these leading non-questions turns out to be there is something we can do about it. We in this case means political entities or groups of them. Not only are the burning issues of the public debate the wrong ones, the assumption that there are public measures that can affect things is mistaken.

The redeeming bit that makes it worth posting about here is this.

The point is, we have to let individuals make this choice for themselves within the bounds of restraining the costs imposed on others. No doubt there are external consequences of individual behavior...and these must be accounted for in the design of regulation. We have to know what these consequences (up to a measurable level of uncertainty) are before we can create the set of incentives that cause the least economic damage. Now don't panic just because I am focusing on economic damages. In my world, economic damages include ALL costs of a particular action: lost welfare, lost environmental values, lost biodiversity...everything. The problem with the popular interpretation of economics is that it is often assumed that we ignore all of these costs. Quite the contrary. Economists are obsessed with measuring all of the costs and benefits of actions. The problem? That's really hard and complicated and messy and difficult to explain.

The next step up in insight would be that this isn't merely an economic or political preference, it's the only useful approach, the only one that has a ghost of a chance of making an effective response to circumstances. The need to argue that "we have to let individuals" do anything is a sad indication of how screwy governance has become. It's an inversion of power that degrades society. In any event, it's a fiction that doesn't usefully describe reality though it confuses behavior, creates conflict and leads to unimplementable policies or policies that don't achieve stated objectives.

It seems possible, given the confession of intentional obfuscation, that this is already known but left unstated in yet another instance of fashion crime. There's no accounting for taste. But I think it's unhelpful since there is so much confusion in society about effective responses to environmental impact.