The majority of Californians made the decision.
“California needs to decide whether it wants low carbon or lower gas prices.”
That’s the title of a paper published by the Haas Energy Institute, part of the University of California, Berkeley.
This is according to James Bushnell, a Ph.D., professor of economics at the University of California, Davis. in Operations Research. The article is here.
First, as co-blogger Pierre Lemieux is quick to point out, the title of this article is incorrect. Nothing can be decided in California. It is not a sentient being.
But Californians, if they’re like most Americans — and maybe not — have already made up their minds.
In a long article, Bushnell talks about the trade-off between lower gas prices and lower carbon usage. But, unless I missed something, I haven’t told readers how much Californians will have to pay to meet the ambitious goals set by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). My feeling is that it is very expensive.
But Californians are probably going to pay a lot of money to reduce their carbon usage, right?
Wrong.
in “68% of Americans don’t want to pay $10 a month more to fight climate change,” Kato at LibertyOn March 8, 2019, Emily Ekins, Vice President and Director of Public Opinion Research at the Cato Institute, presented a graph a that spoke volumes. Part of that is in the title of her work. And $10 a month is a huge understatement. The cost of having any appreciable impact on global temperatures would almost certainly be at least $100 per month. Only 16% of those surveyed were willing to pay that much.
Bushnell did not provide cost figures to compare with the study’s numbers, but a long-ago study articleRobert P. Murphy did. He cited an MIT study that found a typical cap-and-trade program costs the average household $3,100. As Murphy pointed out, the MIT professor strongly objected to quoting his number, but did not deny it. Rather, he argued, the net cost per household would be “only” $800 a year, as the income would be rebated to people. But, as Murphy pointed out, for that to be true, the revenue must be rebated in an efficient manner. Does that sound like the government you or I know?
But let’s assume, contrary to virtually all evidence, that the government actually distributes revenue efficiently. A total of $800 when the MIT professor wrote (say, in 2008) would have been $950 in 2019, when Emily Ekins wrote, when adjusted for the Consumer Price Index. That’s $80 a month. Only 15% of those surveyed would have paid $75 per month.
So, again, as long as Californians aren’t very different from other Americans, and as long as Californians haven’t changed much on this issue in five years, James Bushnell can rest easy. The majority of Californians spoke up.
