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“Q&A with UCLA’s Matthew Kahn”

I'll be watching this today and "liveblogging" in the comments section:

"My unsexy bumper sticker for adapting to climate change," says UCLA Professor of Economics, the Environment, and Public Affairs Matthew Kahn, "is 'Give free markets a chance!'"

Kahn, the author of Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future , argues that "well-meaning government actions" designed to combat the effects of global warming need to be scrutinized more than they have been. Despite the hostility to markets and economic development shared by many green activists, Kahn says that "free-market capitalism" provides the most flexible – and most progressive – solution to environmental issues. Climate change is coming, he avers, and raising the urban poor's standard of living and generating new technological innovations will do far more to improve things than top-down attempts to control energy use and consumption patterns.

via reason.com

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  1. Dallas Wood Avatar
    Dallas Wood

    John, do you believe it likely that adaptation on the scale that Kahn imagines will actually occur under our current institutional structure?
    More specifically, do you believe moral hazard poses a big problem for adapting to climate change? For example, if everyone knows the costs of future damages to coastal areas will be borne by the federal govt (FEMA), then maybe coastal residents will do nothing to prepare for coming sea level rises?
    In fact, maybe that sort of reasoning was motivating the NCGA when it passed House Bill 819 (which bars state agencies from accounting for predicted acceleration in sea level rise)?
    If moral hazard is indeed a big problem, won’t achieving the level of adaptation that Kahn advocates require significant changes to current policy?

    Reply
  2. Funk Avatar
    Funk

    Seems to me climate change is a classic example of a problem that the free market can’t solve because the benefits of fossil fuel accrue to one group, while the costs are borne by another group–another generation and often another part of the world. If he is talking about taxing carbon and letting the free market take it from there, that I can understand.

    Reply
  3. Funk Avatar
    Funk

    Sign in seems to default to my wife’s account. This is Steve Funk

    Reply
  4. John Whitehead Avatar
    John Whitehead

    OK, I watched it and don’t disagree with anything that Matt said.
    My concern is there are too many government and quasi-government subsidization of behavior that generates spillover costs for adaptation to completely work. Minus these subsidies, adaptation will work (hasn’t it always) but the costs will be large.
    Towards the end Matt talks about energy prices moving with demand and supply changes but he stops at, or Reason TV decided to edit it out, saying that one role for government is to appropriately price energy and other market goods that create negative externalities.
    I think that some sort of federal climate policy needs to be implemented to complement the adaptation that Matt talks about. Otherwise, I think inertia will reduce the efficiency of a pure adaptation policy.

    Reply
  5. David Zetland Avatar
    David Zetland

    Sounds like he’s talking (1) set a baseline and then (2) let free markets deliver, not laissez faire (per Dallas). So that’s a deceptive bumpersticker…

    Reply
  6. PatrickW Avatar
    PatrickW

    When did Quentin Tarantino start working at UCLA?

    Reply

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