Comments (29)

• Robert Brazil

  Statists are always on the lookout for the next Great Cause, in the name of which to foster a herd mentality among the weak-minded, while indulging their own egos in the hopes of someday having their names appear on one of those "greatest Americans" lists alongside such monsters as Lincoln and FDR.

  Of course, it is not "circumstances," but the guns of police and soldiers that will "force" us to "put aside" our "pettiness" and emrace Mr. Gore's "moral and spiritual challenge."

  I would suggest that Mr. Gore's real moral challenge is in learning that he doesn't have the right to enforce compliance with his opinions at the point of a gun.

  P.S. I don't suppose Dr. Reisman's response to Mr. Gore will be appearing in the New York Times anytime soon.

  Published: July 4, 2007 9:44 PM

• Ed

  Your argument about Mars is missing a key fact. Atmospheric pressure:
  
  
  
  Venus - 90 bar
  
  Earth - 1 bar
  
  Mars - 0.007 bar
  
  
  
  So despite Mars having a greater proportion of CO2, the total mass of CO2 there is quite small -- because there's hardly any atmosphere at all.

  Please fact check to avoid these kinds of errors -- they discredit your otherwise valuable insights on the politics and economics of the situation.

  [I've addressed your point in the latest version of my article--GR.]

  Published: July 4, 2007 11:50 PM

• TLWP Sam

  Maybe two thoughts that arise about the problem of global warming are:

  1. So what if there are some negative externalities from production, the positive externalities more than compensate for them. And a process that doesn't produce waste violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, right?

  2. So what if the world is getting warmer, who's to say it's going to be all bad? Think of all the old people who no longer cringe as much as they did at the thought of another impending winter.

  Published: July 5, 2007 12:33 AM

• martian

  Shouldn't someone point out the major difference between Mars, Earth ane Venus is HOW CLOSE TO THE SUN THEY ARE?

  Published: July 5, 2007 5:19 AM

• Anthony

  Good article by the brilliant Dr Reisman. As a point, though, when faced with anthropogenic global warming cultists we should maintain that even if the planet is warming due to human actions, that a proper application of property rights and other free market solutions would help remedy the situation.

  Published: July 5, 2007 5:43 AM

• Yancey Ward

  Ed is correct. Using the percentage of the Martian atmosphere's carbon dioxide as an argument against the global warming hypothesis is either dishonest or ignorant, either of which does discredit to Reisman's otherwise correct point of view. Of course, Gore dispays the same dishonesty or ignorance when not pointing out the vast difference in atmospheric mass between Venus and the Earth.

  I would encourage Reisman to edit his essay and correct his own error. It would make for a stronger argument if he would then point out Gore's.

  [I've addressed your point in the latest version of my article--GR.]

  Published: July 5, 2007 8:51 AM

• Bruce Koerber

  Anthony brings the point of the discussion 'back to earth.' The most significant difference between our planet and all others in the vast and perhaps infinite universe is the presence of humans. And one of the inherent characteristics of a human being is dominion - which translates into property rights, which is the mirror image of human rights.

  Anthony is correct in stating that the disorder stirring the minds and generating hype among the interventionists can easily be brought back into a state of order by defining and refining property rights.

  That which is excessive and which can be attributed to materialism is the effect, but most importantly, weak and eroded property rights is the cause.

  Published: July 5, 2007 6:29 PM

• Anthony

  Indeed. Personally I see little credibility in the anthropogenic theory. The problem is though that it seems as if we are refusing to acknowledge its existence because it would somehow invalidate libertarian theory - but it wouldn't. This is exactly why libertarians have long focused on the efficiency of property rights in preserving the environment. It'd be erroneous to forget it. Reisman doesn't fall into this trap of course.

  Published: July 5, 2007 7:05 PM

• John Fitzpatrick

  Mars atmosphere is 95% C02, that's true; but, Mars' atmosphere is also 1/9000th the density of Venus, so there's no place to store the heat.

  Published: July 7, 2007 10:53 AM

• Dennis

  Does anyone know what the CO2 concentration and density of Mercury's atmosphere is?

  Published: July 7, 2007 2:11 PM

• TokyoTom

  Dear Dr. Reisman:

  The factual premises of your post are scientifically uninformed, even as you accuse others whose views are clearly scientifically better informed of ignorance and/or dishonesty. This is both a shame and a distraction from points on which you can more substantively contribute - such as the Austrian perspectives on whether Gore's policy prescriptions are wise and on what, if anything, should be done to address the obvious absence of property rights relating to the global atmospheric commons.

  1. On the scientific front, Gore is clearly correct that the greenhouse gas effect of Venus's atmospheric carbon dioxide is responsible for the fact that surface temperatures there are three times higher than those on Mercury, even though Mercury in much nearer to the Sun. Your data about Mars notwithstanding, how did you fail to note that scientists generally believe that Mars is also warmer than it would be if its thin atmosphere had even less CO2? Thus, it is your "decisive objection", rather than Gore's brief summary of the actual science, that must be put aside.

  Also, you make the bewildering assertion that "there is simply no informed or honest way for [Gore] to suggest that the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide on Earth is or ever will be comparable to the amount on Venus" - bewildering because Gore's op ed makes it clear that Earth's atmospheric CO2 levels are much lower than on Venus because most of our CO2 is geologically locked up. While Gore is correct that we continue to release CO2 by burning fossil fuels, the strawman that this will bring us close to atmosphere (and temperatures) of Venus is yours, not his.

  2. On the economic/analytic front, surely you are aware that Ludwig von Mises directly addressed issues of "externalities" in 1940 in his work "Nationalökonomie: Theorie des Handelns und Wirtschaftens" - some 28 years before Garrett Hardin, in his famous 1968 essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons," described how private incentives inexorably results in the destructive overexploitation of unmanaged "common" property resources. (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243).

  In his expanded English translation of this work, "Human Action", Mises concluded as follows:

  "[I]f some of the consequences of [a proprietor's] action are outside of the sphere of the benefits he is entitled to reap and of the drawbacks that are put to his debit, he will not bother in his planning about all the effects of his action. He will disregard those benefits which do not increase his own satisfaction and those costs which do not burden him. His conduct will deviate from the line which it would have followed if the laws were better adjusted to the economic objectives of private ownership. He will embark upon certain projects only because the laws release him from responsibility for some of the costs incurred. He will abstain from other projects merely because the laws prevent him from harvesting all the advantages derivable.

  "The laws concerning liability and indemnification for damages caused were and still are in some respects deficient. By and large the principle is accepted that everybody is liable to damages which his actions have inflicted upon other people. But there were loopholes left which the legislators were slow to fill. In some cases this tardiness was intentional because the imperfections agreed with the plans of the authorities. When in the past in many countries the owners of factories and railroads were not held liable for the damages which the conduct of their enterprises inflicted on the property and health of neighbors, patrons, employees, and other people through smoke, soot, noise, water pollution, and accidents caused by defective or inappropriate equipment, the idea was that one should not undermine the progress of industrialization and the development of transportation facilities. The same doctrines which prompted and still are prompting many governments to encourage investment in factories and railroads through subsidies, tax exemption, tariffs, and cheap credit were at work in the emergence of a legal state of affairs in which the liability of such enterprises was either formally or practically abated."

  and

  "Whether the proprietor's relief from responsibility for some of the disadvantages resulting from his conduct of affairs is the outcome of a deliberate policy on the part of governments and legislators or whether it is an unintentional effect of the traditional working of laws, it is at any rate a datum which the actors must take into account. They are faced with the problem of external costs. Then some people choose certain modes of want-satisfaction merely on account of the fact that a part of the costs incurred are debited not to them but to other people.

  "The extreme instance is provided by the case of no-man's property referred to above. If land is not owned by anybody, although legal formalism may call it public property, it is utilized without any regard to the disadvantages resulting. Those who are in a position to appropriate to themselves the returns--lumber and game of the forests, fish of the water areas, and mineral deposits of the subsoil--do not bother about the later effects of their mode of exploitation. For them the erosion of the soil, the depletion of the exhaustible resources and other impairments of the future utilization are external costs not entering into their calculation of input and output. They cut down the trees without any regard for fresh shoots or reforestation. In hunting and fishing they do not shrink from methods preventing the repopulation of the hunting and fishing grounds. In the early days of human civilization, when soil of a quality not inferior to that of the utilized pieces was still abundant, people did not find any fault with such predatory methods. When their effects appeared in a decrease in the net returns, the ploughman abandoned his farm and moved to another place. It was only when a country was more densely settled and unoccupied first class land was no longer available for appropriation, that people began to consider such predatory methods wasteful. At that time they consolidated the institution of private property in land."

  Ludwig von Mises, Part IV (Das Handeln in der Marktwirtschaft), Chapter 10 (Kapitel: Die Daten der Marktlage), Sec. VI (Die Grenzen des Sondereigentums und das Problem der external costs und external economies), Nationalökonomie: Theorie des Handelns und Wirtschaftens (Geneva: Editions Union, 1940); http://mises.org/humanaction/pdf/nationaloekonomie.pdf. The quote provided is from Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949) (Chapter XXIII: “The Data of the Market,” Sec. 6: "The Limits of Property Rights and the Problems of External Costs and External Economies,"); http://mises.org/humanaction/chap23sec6.asp.

  Surely "the problem of external costs" that troubled Mises and in particular the "deficiencies", "loopholes", "imperfections" and "predatory methods" that have now been fixed into our environmental laws and regulations at the cost of common law rules protecting private property rights - whether resulting from "tardiness", "unintentional effect" or "deliberate policy on the part of governments and legislators" - are relevant to our use of fossil fuels and its effects on our climate, and to environmental issues generally. Do you agree, or do you find Mises' discussions of environmental issues completely irrelevant or unconvincing?

  Your clarification would be helpful, as in the absence of which one wonders why you so passionately attack those who point to problems that have been sympathetically analyzed by Mises (and Rothbard, Block and Corato et al.) and yet consistently turn a blind eye to the special deals that allow heavy industries to freely transfer costs of their activities to others.

  3. Hardin, Mises and more recently Bruce Yandle have stressed how our approach to common property regimes continues to evolve in the face of growing human populations and technological advances, mainly through the development of private property and other institutions that allow us to avoid the "tragedy of the commons".

  Yandle concludes that "mankind's struggle to avoid the tragedy of the commons ... tells us that at very low levels of income, what might be called stage one, human beings cannot afford to do much about property-rights enforcement and the commons. They live in a world where custom and tradition sustain them. As incomes rise and losses from the commons expand, stage two is entered. Fences go up, and rules are set for protecting the commons. Finally, in stage three, markets evolve along with rules of law that define spheres of private and public action. Private rights replace public control, and the triumph replaces the tragedy of the commons.

  "Life for mankind began on a commons where tragedies were commonplace and the incentive to improve was powerful. Out of the struggle to survive and accumulate wealth evolved markets, property rights, and the rule of law - a triumph on the commons. ... Human beings can and do avoid the tragedy of the commons. But doing so requires property rights and markets, which must be defended if the triumph is to continue."

  http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=4064

  Are Yandle and others wrong? If so, why? Are we always better off by simply ignoring problems relating to open-access resources, searching for our own facts that makes the problems disappear, or waiting for a technological deus ex machina (such as atom bombs in the Arctic) to appear?

  Your further clarifications would be helpful, at least on the analytical points (even as a shared understanding of changes in the physical world seems elusive).

  Sincerely,

  TT

  Published: July 9, 2007 4:52 AM

• TokyoTom

  Dr. Reisman, allow me to futher comment that of course it is entirely fair to question the appropriateness of the CO2 emission reduction goals that Gore would like to target by pointing to possible consequences.

  One wishes, however, that you would not on the other hand disregard entirely the question of what consequences - already being felt as the climate changes - we face by ignoring the ways that our various economic activities promote climate change, simply because no ownership rules, management regime or priicing signals or other feedback mechanisms are in effect relating to GHGs or albedo changes.

  I also find puzzling your implication that Gore and others who wish to point to problems relating to the tragedy of the commons that results from a lack of clear ownership rules for open-access resources must all wear hairshirts and forego the selfish and damaging behavior that Mises and Hardin explain is entirely rational. Are you essentially saying that only a God can criticize man?

  I understand your peevishness of course, since appeals to morality in advance of institutional reform can be seen, as Hardin noted, "trying to browbeat a free man in a commons into acting against his own interest". Hardin further described the problem of appeals to conscience:

  "If we ask a man who is exploiting a commons to desist "in the name of conscience," what are we saying to him? What does he hear? --not only at the moment but also in the wee small hours of the night when, half asleep, he remembers not merely the words we used but also the nonverbal communication cues we gave him unawares? Sooner or later, consciously or subconsciously, he senses that he has received two communications, and that they are contradictory: (i) (intended communication) "If you don't do as we ask, we will openly condemn you for not acting like a responsible citizen"; (ii) (the unintended communication) "If you do behave as we ask, we will secretly condemn you for a simpleton who can be shamed into standing aside while the rest of us exploit the commons."" http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243

  Hardin was simply noting the relative inefficacy of attempts at moral suasion in modern society and, like Mises, pointing out that rule changes are needed. One should not forget however the potential efficacy of moral positions in advocating for the rule changes that may ultimately be needed.

  By the way, I fail to see how Gore's willingness to voluntarily bear very real offset costs amounts to "hypocrisy" on his part. He is acting against his own advantage in doing so. As for the costs that he advocates that others bear, surely you understand that institutional approaches could be taken that would in effect assign the ownership (and thus the revenue benefits) of emissions rights to individuals, thus directly offsetting any increases in market prices?

  Kind regards,

  TT

  Published: July 9, 2007 9:25 PM

• Tom Rapheal

  Tokyo Tom,
  Could you state your position on how you could gain ownership of your portion of the atmosphere (it seems impossible to homestead it) and how this would work?.
  Could you assert that, since the atmosphere is homogeneous, that any changes in your part of the atmosphere's contents by other humans is a violation of your property. From this basis, a single person could demand the halt of industry on the basis that it changes the contents of his atmosphere. Or do you argue that companies need to buy carbon credits? How would you know what is the right amount of carbon in the atmosphere? What if some of the people wanted to increase carbon production so the earth warms? Feel free not to answer every question.

  Thank you

  Published: July 10, 2007 12:30 AM

• TokyoTom

  Tom Raphael:

  Good questions, and I even drafted a good faith response that was lost in the ether last night as my remote internet acces shut down. I'll try again later, but note that I think setting appropriate mitigation targets is a task that requires international negotiations, with countries as proxies for their citizens and industries.

  I would of course be interested in hearing your own ideas.

  Regards,

  Tom

  Published: July 11, 2007 3:24 AM

• TokyoTom

  Am I the only one who remembers Simon & Garfunkel`s "The Sound of Silence?"

  Published: July 13, 2007 10:16 AM

• Anthony

  My guess is that Dr Reisman does not post on this site, and probably has someone else put his articles up for him. The best way to further the discussion would be to e-mail him. Maybe even visit his blog.

  Published: July 13, 2007 6:39 PM

• Yancey Ward

  Anthony,

  Dr. Reisman does occassionally read the comments here since he has replied directly to Tokyo Tom in the past. However, I think it likely that he does not do that very often.

  Published: July 14, 2007 9:28 AM

• TokyoTom

  Anthony, I welcome your observation and suggestion for how to better engage Dr. Reisman - I too have found his lack of meaningful engagement, direct or indirect, with commenters here to be rather frustrating. Unfortunately, to date Dr. Reisman has also declined to respond to emails.

  While the lack of direct engagement by Dr. Reisman disappointing, I nevertheless appreciate the many opportunities that his posts provide for me to inquire about what insights, if any, Austrian views can offer into climate change and other environmental issues. As I have noted above, Mises himself and others have provided a very useful framework for the discussion of what Mises called "the problem of external costs" that arises from imperfect property rights.

  I remain hopeful that others will step up to the task that Dr. Reisman continues to dodge, and to explore, from the basis of fundamental tenets, what public and private approaches such tenets may dictate.

  Regards,

  TT
  

  Published: July 16, 2007 4:29 AM

• TokyoTom

  Tom Raphael:

  Sorry for not responding sooner to your questions.

  For most atmospheric industrial pollutants I would be willing to completely eliminate the complete set of costly and inflexible federal regulations and move back to state common law protections against trespass and nuisance - with the caveat that I think that the common law has been severely hamstrung (by limited liability rules inter alia) and that I would also favor aggressive veil-piercing if corporate assets and capital prove insufficient to cover liabilities.

  However, it seems that GHGs and changes affecting albedo are quite different, as their effects are quite diffuse, not directly harmful and extremely difficult to trace back to particular emitters, and the "information cost" hurdles of aggregating affected persons (worldwide) are prohibitive. Accordingly, I fail to see how any purely private activities that may arise (even as they should be welcomed and encouraged) will ever be sufficient to the size of the global problem.

  Clearly there has been no umambiguous or universally accepted homesteading of rights to emit GHGs or to have a particular atmosphere with stabilized GHGs (or a particular climate). There will certainly be distributive effects for any new rules (and arguments could be made all around), but what is most important is that rights be recognized that then allow private, utility-maximizing exchanges (including investments in offset/sequestration technologies). Such exchanges will result in value-producing transactions that create incentives for minimizing net GHG emissions and adverse albedo changes, and should produce net benefits over the long term as GHG emitters have incentives to internalize some costs that they have until now shifted to others. This would be very similar to the approach of assigning or recognizing private ownership rights of particular shares of a fishery - although much more complex and difficult.

  There are legitimate concerns that the creation of permits would be rife with rent-seeking problems even after the initial assignment stage, and that a tax system would be much easier to implement and would be more resistant to rent-seeking. In either case, I would favor allocating revenues on a per capita basis to citizens.

  I certainly oppose any direct government involvement in trying to fund or direct investments in new "clean" technologies; this should be left wholly to the market.

  Regards,

  TT

  Published: July 16, 2007 5:14 AM

• Geoffrey Allan Plauche

  World Climate report has finally chimed in on Gore's Venus claims: "Lost in Space."

  By the way, Tom, I'm glad to hear you are against government funding of environmentally "clean" technology. Often you don't make your libertarian-ness on environmental issues clear enough. But this is admirably clear. However, I must object to your advocacy of a carbon tax. That's not libertarian at all. And what is that bit about "allocating revenues on a per capita basis to citizens." That doesn't sound very libertarian either.

  Published: July 21, 2007 4:52 PM

• TokyoTom

  Dr. Reisman, perhaps you care to note that not only do CO2 and other gasses have a known and measurable greenhouse effect, but that this serves as a basis for all of the interest and study into "terraforming" Mars. Here is a recent news article on the opportunities that this presents:

  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19791609 (warning: not for members of the Flat Earch Society)
  

  Published: July 26, 2007 1:41 AM

• Anthony

  I find it amusing when advocates of the AGW theory refer to us skeptics as they would to creationists, flat earthers, geocentric universe nutcases etc...

  Published: July 26, 2007 5:50 AM

• Carl Strohmeyer

  The problem with Gore and his followers is that we live in a day of anecdotal evidence, not facts. I posted an article to a fish forum about Dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) that got many persons upset as no one really stops and thinks or does real research, they just pass along the same old misinformation. The article stated that Dihydrogen monoxide caused these effects among others:
  *Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
  *Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
  *Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
  *DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
  *Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.

  In my business and profession this kind of misinformation gets passed around here on the internet and in forums. It has been an uphill battle for me with my Aquarium Information site ( http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/Aquarium_Information.html ) to get past these types of anecdotal science.

  More back on subject, this is the same thing for Global Warming, it is easy to believe the news media and even corporations who use this as a marketing ploy than to just look at some of the facts and allow for real debate.

  Published: July 30, 2007 8:10 PM

• TokyoTom

  Anthony, why not come out and say what you think? If the supposed "science" underpinning AGW concerns are wrong, then terraforming Mars must be imposssible. What's your view?

  Published: July 31, 2007 8:18 AM

• Anthony

  My position is one of skepticism toward the AGW theory, and no more and no less than that. As I have said before I have supported your attempts to discuss solutions the matter on the basis that the AGW theory might be correct (and thus it would do Austrolibertarianism a favour to prepare responses on the issue.) The article you posted mentioned scientists desirous of terraforming Mars. I am not sure how much warming that would require, and whether it's even comparable to what is occuring on the Earth. Nor am I even that confident in their success. It remains to be seen.

  Published: July 31, 2007 8:39 AM

• Mark Humphrey

  Tokyo Tom repeatedly calls for extending property rights into new realms for the purpose, he states, of heading off environmental costs that he associates with the "tragedy of the commons".

  But his ideas about defining private property rights in the atmosphere have been shown to be ignorant and absurd, not once, but several times. And yet, like a devoted ideological True Believer, Tom is not deterred by mere facts and logic; he has embarked a a Great Crusade to save mankind from itself.

  Tom's notions about private property rights are nonsensical, primarily because he doesns't care about individual rights and private property when they get in his way: witness his support for government funding of "scientific research" and green taxes to further his political agenda. When he recommends new extensions of "property rights", he really calls for New Big Coercive Government Programs. Such coercive collectivist schemes invariably shovel people and their property around like so much gravel and concrete in pursuit of the dreams of utopian political operators.

  More specifically, the "damages" that Tom claims stem from carbon production: A) are unproven; B) are inconsequential--of zero effect--when traced to the specific activites of specific companies and individuals, rendering legal pursuit of "C02 polluters" pointless and unjust; C) are, as George Reisman has pointed out, a background effect to a natural and benevolent process--human productive achievement and the Ascent of Man--that should therefore be viewed tolerantly, and dealt with as morally subordinate to the right of individuals to engage in peaceful enterprise.

  Although it is logically absurd to attempt to create authentic new private property rights to serve the goals of environmental collectivists, it is entirely possible and desireable to do so for the purpose of advancing productive enterprise. When once abundant resources--in the skies, the seas, on or under the earth--become scarce, they acquire market value. The just delineation of private property in those realms results, in effect, from private homesteading of unclaimed resources.

  For example, if cooling temperatures threatened large scale productive enterprise, by piling huge accumulations of snow in northern lattitudes, thereby shutting down oil exploration and extraction in northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia; and ending profitable farming across vast stretches of the North, businesses could stake out property rights in the atmosphere that would benefit us all. Say that the cause of the approaching ice age were a long term cyclical increase in gamma rays--charged particles that penetrate our lower atmosphere from space--that seed cloud cover and yield rising precipitation and falling temperatures (as recently proven by Henrik Svensmark in his just released book "The Chilling Stars"). Big companies might initiate processes in the atmosphere that would negate the electrical charge of some appropriate percentage of incoming gamma rays. Assumming it were successful, such a process would enable man to prevent a destructive ice age, and to ensure more hospitable climatic conditions necessary to human well-being.

  But would this process violate the rights of a few soreheads who actually want an ice age?

  No. For the resources utilized by large scale enterprises--gamma rays entering our atmosphere from space--are unclaimed, unused, unowned. The fact that companies homestead rights in those resources for the purpose of improving the weather doesn't impose damages on any other property owner in any meaningful sense. True, environmental busybodies might get upset, much like the sorehead who complains that another built a beautiful new home on the lot next door, wrecking his view and his dog's exercise area.

  It is also true that if private enterprises eventually succeed in homesteading property rights in atmospheric resources to regulate climate to enhance their productive activity, some people would have to make adjustments. But such adjustments are similar to changes we all make to stay competitive: vast tracts of new farmland are devoted to soybean production in Brazil, and American farmers have to cultivate other more profitable crops. As long as the extension of private property rights is voluntary and just, rather than the outcome of some fashionable coercive crusade, the results will promote the harmony of interests characteristic of capitalism and individualism.

  Published: July 31, 2007 6:03 PM

• Philemon

  Ignorant or dishonest? Albert Armand (Hammer) Gore? Formerly dubbed the senator from Occidental as well as the senator from Likud? In league with the Rothschilds (how interested in uranium are we?) And he's the same guy who makes a movie produced by the son of the man who figured out that Clinton using the word “truthful” caused people to have “negative emotional responses.”

  Sorry, but it is to laugh.

  Published: July 31, 2007 6:58 PM

• TokyoTom

  Mark Humphrey, thanks for the comments; my apologies for not seeing them sooner.

  I'd like to protest that "I resemble those remarks!", but unfortunately again you attack some strawman that you have constructed rather than my own positions. Care to actually address any specific remarks that I have made - for example, those over at Jim Fedako's more recent thread? http://blog.mises.org/archives/006877.asp

  Despite the fact that there are any number of common-ground positions that Austrians can support - such as ending government subsidies to energy production and use and other "no regrets" measures that enviros would support, you ignore any middle ground.

  Far from making a strong positive argument that coercive state measures are justified, I have largely devoted my efforts to explaining why climate change presents real concerns that cannot be ignored and why it (and other environmental problems) can be understood from an Austrian viewpoint (Mises himself and others such as Rothbard, Block, Cordato and Yandle) as arising from a lack of clear or effective ownership interest in an open-access resource (tied partly to government ownership of resources or other governmental action that favors rent-seekers with a stake in the status quo).

  Perhaps Austrians might be correct that inaction by government is the best policy in the face of climate change, but you and others here seem not to be uninterested in persuading (much less understanding) others, but rather in simply in the reflexive effort to defend tribal boundaries from the ideologically impure. If you successfully shoo me off, how will that Austrianism influence the public debate?

  Published: August 7, 2007 4:55 AM

• TokyoTom

  Dr. Reisman, I take the liberty of posting here my email response to you:

  "[W]ho's hiding? TokyoTom is simply a convenient nom de plume and my identity is irrelevant to my questions and observations. On the other hand, while I have also enjoyed the opportunity to comments on your posts at the LVM blog, I confess that it has been no small disappointment that to date you have consistently declined to discuss climate change (or any other environmental issues) from a perspective that acknowledges that these problems stem from a lack of clear or enforceable property rights - resulting in tragedies of the commons situations (Bruce Yandle) or "externalities" (as LVM noted), where incentives are skewed towards use without a capability to own or protect the resource, so that resources are destructively exploited (the recent crash of the cod and whale fisheries and ongoing destruction of the tuna fisheries are obvious examples) and those affected do not face market pricing signals that reflect the externality or cannot otherwise engage in private transactions that reflect their preferences (as Cordato notes). In some cases, as LVM and Rothbard have noted, the situation has been much complicated by the subversion of the traditional common law remedies of trespass and nuisance by powerful industrial interests, with the result that wealth-creating private transactions are impossible and all affected parties must battle politically for favors from a growing state and its self-interested gatekeepers.

  "Despite these fairly obvious points, you continue to ignore the underlying institutional failures and to make ad hominem arguments that cannot possibly lead towards resolution between competing interests. Ironically, you also consistently disparage all private, nonstatist efforts to redress climate change. What purpose can your approach possibly serve - except to provide cover for the most powerful batch of rent-seekers and their gatekeepers, whom you conveniently and consistently fail to mention? I find this profoundly puzzling, as this defeats what surely must be your purpose of make a constructive contribution.

  "I do commend that you have stretched to suggest that open-atmosphere atom bombs or other geoenginnering approaches should be considered, but note that this ignores the initial analytical step of acknowleding that there is a problem of externaltities that results from the lack of clear and enforceable property rights [and begs the question of who would trouble to engage in such countermeasures].

  "Here's hoping that you will decide to engage in the debate on the basis of fundamental issues.

  Sincerely,

  That evil, cowardly misanthropist who hides while making open arguments,

  Tom"

  Published: August 14, 2007 9:26 PM