Chip Knappenberger was perhaps the first analyst to demonstrate the negligible impact on global temperatures that would result from unilateral U.S. adoption of the pending Waxman-Markey bill. Knappenberger showed that even if the U.S. cut its emissions by 83% (of the 2005 level) by the year 2050, and then capped them at that level indefinitely, the schedule of global temperature increases would only be postponed by about five years.

Naturally, supporters of strong government action argued that the whole point of Waxman-Markey was to give American negotiators credibility when they demanded reciprocal action from other countries; Paul Krugman says as much in a recent blog post. Yet this leads to the next major problem: If the whole world adopted the stringent emission cutbacks in Waxman-Markey, then the costs to the global economy would far outweigh any reasonable estimate of the benefits (measured in avoided climate damage).…

Longtime MasterResource readers know of Chip Knappenberger’s post on the negligible climatic effects of unilateral adherence to Waxman-Markey. Across the board, the response from supporters of Waxman-Markey was not to deny Knappenberger’s calculations, but rather to insist that the U.S. had to show leadership. The (perhaps unspoken) premise was that if the whole world adopted the steep emission cuts proposed in Waxman-Markey, then the climatic benefits would clearly outweigh the economic costs.

In an earlier post, I tried to show that this view is simply false. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)–the very document showing the “consensus” on the physical science basis of manmade climate change–the best estimates of climate change damages do not justify the aggressive limits contained in the current Waxman-Markey bill.…

 “Yes, you read that correctly. Paul Krugman, a Nobel Laureate, writing in America’s paper of record, just accused nearly half of the House of Representatives, including both Republicans and Democrats, as guilty of treason against the very planet—along, presumably with the many thousands of scientists, policy analysts, economists, and environmentalists who have raised objections to the Waxman-Markey energy bill.”

– Ken Green, “Is Paul Krugman Inciting Violence?” The Enterprise Blog, June 29, 2009

New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman recently praised the passage of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill by the House of Representatives as a “remarkable achievement.” But rather than just congratulte House members voting aye, Krugman disparaged the nays as having undertaken “treason against the planet” for choosing “willfully, to ignore that threat [from climate change], placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about.”…

“It seems clear that the first major penalty man will have to pay for his rapid consumption of the earth’s nonrenewable resources will be that of having to live in a world where his thoughts and actions are ever more strongly limited, where social organization has become all pervasive, complex, and inflexible, and where the state completely dominates the actions of the individual.”

– Harrison Brown (1954), quoted in Anne Ehrlich, Paul Ehrlich, and John Holdren, Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973), p. 388.

Free-market writers such as Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman have stressed that it is impossible for a government to restrict economic freedoms while retaining civil or “personal” liberties. For example, even if a democratic yet socialist government assures its citizens they have “freedom of the press,” that assurance is hollow because the government owns all the newspapers and radio stations.…