Alan Carlin: Unilateral US Decarbonization Could Have Serious Economic Consequences

Credit: chicagotribune.com

As the energy policies of various countries sink ever further into the realms of fantasy over the imagined role of minor trace gases in the atmosphere, what will the US do – or not do?

The current unilateral US decarbonization proposals by various Democrats promoting the Green New Deal (GND) climate schemes suffer from two particularly crucial assumptions that they have made, says Alan Carlin.

One is the extremely doubtful assumption that CO2 levels determine temperatures as opposed to temperatures determining CO2 levels. The assumption being made is that it is the atmospheric CO2 level that is the critical determinant of temperatures.

If this is wrong, as I believe it is, any dollar spent on decarbonization will provide no benefits in terms of global temperatures.

Another important assumption is that China, India, and other less developed countries (LDCs) will soon stop building coal fired power plants, which they are currently doing at a rapid rate. If they continue to build them rapidly, minor decreases in CO2 emissions from the developed world will not make any significant difference even if CO2 levels determine temperatures.

I see no reason why India, China, and the other LDCs will or even should reduce their CO2 emissions any time in the foreseeable future.

So all that will happen is that the developed world will pay more for electricity using high cost, unreliable “renewable” sources of energy like wind and solar while LDCs will pay less by using much cheaper and more reliable coal plants. So there will be a transfer of wealth and comparative advantage to the LDCs from the developed countries.

In the case of China this would be highly disadvantageous to the US since China is the leading economic competitor to the US. If the US pays more for energy while China pays less, the US will be put at a significant economic disadvantage. But this is exactly what the US Democratic Party currently advocates.

So the proposed emissions of CO2 contained in many of the Democratic proposals for US decarbonization would have a profound adverse effect on the US economy.

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