Robin Hanson wrote a blogpost the other day about a book called Fossil Future. I haven’t read the book, and given my infinitely long to-read list, I don’t think I’ll get around to it anytime soon. But the blogpost is worth a read, and for many more reasons than just learning more about the book itself:
My main intellectual strategy is to explore important neglected topics where I can find an original angle to pursue. As a result, I lose interest in topics as they get more attention.
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2022/10/fossil-future.html
It’s good advice in general, I would argue. Do stuff that other people are ignoring, and do it by picking up on something that others haven’t thought of. There’s some causality at play here, in the sense that other folks are ignoring this (whatever this may be) precisely because there’s a way to do it that they haven’t thought of.
Epstein is right that our elite academic and media systems focus on a few celebrated and quoted climate expert/activists, who are not that representative of the larger world of experts. And these activists are opposed to nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and hydroelectricity, all of which avoid CO2 warming. They even tend to oppose new solar and wind energy projects, and any land development, that have substantial environmental impacts. It seems that, thought they may deny it in public, what they really want is a smaller human world, with fewer people using less material and energy.
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2022/10/fossil-future.html
Other people have written on this topic, with varying degrees of exasperation. But I think Robin Hanson latches on to an important point: the key issue is a fundamentally different worldview. It’s not so much about the opportunity costs of more materials and energy – there is no price at which the trade-off is worth it is the opinion of some climate experts/activists. “OK fine, where do you lie on the spectrum of trade-offs when it comes to more energy being generated?” is a question that doesn’t make sense, because they wouldn’t want to be on the spectrum altogether. As Robin Hanson makes clear in the blogpost, it isn’t about painting one side of this debate as being “right” or “wrong”, it’s about folks on both sides not willing to think about the world in opportunity costs:
He doesn’t really distinguish the marginal value of more energy from that of more other kinds of modern inputs and capital. And he doesn’t seem to want to admit that CO2 emissions might have mild negative externalities which could justify mild taxes.
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2022/10/fossil-future.html
And Robin Hanson then comes up with one of my favorite sentences ever:
“As an economist I’m sad to think we can’t make a more reasonable choice in the middle, where everything we value gets traded off via conscious calculation mediated by mundane prices.”
Who defines what is reasonable? Where is this “middle” to be found? Do we all value everything equally? How do we set up markets and institutions that allow for these trade-offs? How do we get prices to become mundane? What does that even mean? What if certain things don’t have prices, mundane or otherwise?
Start thinking about these questions, and whether you like it or not, you’ve enrolled yourself in an econ course. And in my opinion, the world would be a much better place if everybody did just that: enrolled in an econ course.
Opportunity costs matter.
EconForEverybody 