Climate activists are focused on purity. If they seriously worried about costs and benefits, their heads would explode.
Reducing global warming by 0.1 degree celsius means reducing global CO2 emissions by 170 gigatons. US emissions are 6.23 gigatons per year. To reduce global warming by 0.1 degree, you would have to reduce US emissions to zero for 27 plus years.
The only useful, cost-effective contribution America can make to climate change is developing technologies that can be deployed globally. Anything else is politically counterproductive virtue signaling.
"Climate activists are focused on purity." You could replace "climate activists" with the Pro-Life movement and write the same sentence. It's extremely notable to me that Trump has this iron grip on the GOP (to the point the business donor class is giving him tons of money despite the 10% tariff pledge), but on abortion he felt the need to backtrack and actually word-salad support the FL 6-week abortion ban.
I bring up just to note that climate activists have a decent amount of clout in the Democratic Party but nothing close to this much clout. It's why I think Matt is right to tout record oil production on the campaign trail.
Yes, but I think it’s the worst of his books. Good book, but if somebody hasn’t read Franzen I’d suggest starting with The Corrections.
Have you read Percival Everett? I find that he scratches the same itch but in a very different way. I’ve enjoyed all four books of his that I’ve read, but would start with both I Am Not Sydney Portier and So Much Blue. Very different books that start to capture his range.
Are there more or fewer lives on the line with abortion vs with climate issues vs with wars vs with health insurance? Most significant political matters literally are matters of life and death at least for thousands of people, if not millions.
Side-stepping the abortion issue it would fascinating to try to rank causes of North American mortality and morbidity with some consideration of tractability. In other words what are the lowest hanging fruits policy-wise for saving lives and ability?
What’s the biggest cause of illness and death? Aging and age-related disease. Fund research on common aging pathways that can make a difference against many diseases at once.
Most things this research program tries won’t work, of course, but the ones that do would work really, really well. Imagine those headlines about how “Ozempic treats X” but for more drugs, more consistently, additively across drugs.
I hate to say this because abortion is probably my second issue (first is climate change).
But most women are not going to die from carrying an unwanted pregnancy. It's damaging to the body and a violation of fundamental human rights. But if I had to pick between abortion and climate change, I'd pick climate change.
This is true, and no you don't. And I agree with you on the prioritization if you did.
I would add that in addition to women's lives, there are also the lives of some non-viable fetuses who, under some proposed abortion bans and restrictions, would have to be born, suffer, and quickly die, instead of being terminated months prior. And, of course, the lives of those who would seek out less safe illegal abortions if legal ones were unavailable, and those who would be harmed by partners (some people are truly evil like that) if they became pregnant and couldn't terminate the pregnancy.
Not only that, but implementing low cost policies for reducing demand for CO2 emissions: taxation of net CO2 emissions. Of course the tax would also spur the development of CO2 emissions-saving technologies.
The main problem here is the aside about land conservation (and generally the non climate impacts of fossil fuel extraction). That's the main reason there is grassroots environmental energy behind blocking exploration in Alaska, not climate. And if the President tried to make the case directly to the constituents of the environmental groups, we'd discover that they care more about conservation than about climate -- climate is a more elite concern even within the environmental movement.
Land conservation has many different political valences. Conserving a green belt or a local park directly benefits human beings. It can galvanize bipartisan coalitions of people who enjoy the outdoors even if they don’t care much about polar bear.
Conserving the north slope of Alaska is different. I’ve been there. It is a baren wasteland. It is virtually uninhabitable. It has almost no scenic value and supports only small populations the hardiest land mammals. Very few people even visit the north slope for tourist reasons. There are 50 tourists who visit Glacier Bay for every tourist who makes it to the north slope.
Conserving the north slope can really only be explained in terms of purity. The footprint of oil extraction is quite small and the place is huge.
It's fine to have different values for things, but I don't think this accurately characterizes why people want to preserve the north slope. It's an enormous wilderness that has had little human impact and supports large populations of wildlife in a way that it not true of anywhere in the US outside Alaska. How to value local parks vs caribou migration routes is not something that there's a right answer to but people do care about both for actual reasons.
why is the north slope of alaska more worth preserving than baffin island canada, or the lena delta in siberia? there is an amazing amount on unspoiled land. it’s not scarce. in fact, it’s unspoiled because it’s basically uninhabitable.
Well, the US government doesn’t have much control over the Canadian government’s decisions about where to locate oil exploration. And it has ~no control at all over what Russia does in Siberia.
Baffin Island has less biodiversity especially of large mammals because it's an island but no one is saying it's "more worth preserving". There's no current natural gas exploration on Baffin Island and plenty of people would be mad if there was.
I agree people get mad when “pristine” places are developed. It’s just strange that people place so much value on such unproductive land.
Rich, volcanic soil in temperate or tropical climates is a precious commodity. It would be good if there were more of it. The world has more polar ice caps then we no what to do with. Canada has roughly 1.5 million square miles north of the arctic circle, which is inhabited by fewer than 15,000 people. That sort of land is so abundant there is no need to protect it.
Charismatic mega fauna can easily coexist with oil rigs.
I think "this project will not actually harm the things people value" is a better argument than complaining that people value different things than you. And it's very plausible in this case (although trusting oil and gas companies on this score has not been a winning bet generally).
While there is a nod to local issues, this post suffers for excessive focus on climate change to the detriment of all other environmental considerations. Opposition to drilling in nature preserve precedes climate change myopia and exists for other reasons, which are not served by curbing production in the Persian Gulf or Venezuela.
Part of the problem with this line of argument is that sanctions enforcement often has the net effect of driving foreign oil producers to do extremely emissions-heavy activities like flaring the associated gas from their oil fields, burning unrefined crude oil in their power plants, and smuggling oil across international borders in tanker trucks.
It’s also worth noting that a lot of global oil production is coordinated by OPEC+, which tends to respond to supply constraints with coordinated production increases and vice versa, which makes the net effect of sanctions on total global oil production a lot murkier. (That’s also a reason why trying to fight climate change by just cutting domestic production is a bad strategy; rich countries can do much more to improve matters on the demand side.)
How would opec respond to a swap in which the US increased domestic production while sharpening sanctions on Russian exports, so that total production was constant?
Despite the sanctions, Russia is actually currently deliberately limiting its oil companies’ production as part of its current agreement with OPEC.
If the US and Europe actually managed to impose sanctions strong enough to lower Russia’s production significantly below the current negotiated cap (actually a fairly heavy lift, and one which would require require cooperation from the current main buyers of Russian crude, India and China), and somehow managed to increase its own production the same amount through increased exploration permitting (the math there is kind of questionable), it’s likely that OPEC would retaliate by temporarily cranking up production to disrupt the smaller US upstream producers. (The bloc’s swing producers, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE have low production costs.) This course of events would also create a significant risk of geopolitically pushing India and Saudi Arabia toward China.
Russia is not able to increase production. It is acquiescing to Saudi demands because of technical limitations caused by sanctions. The Russian oil industry was dependent on US company's technical expertise and capital. Russia is currently depreciating it's oil capital, not able to replace it effectively, and not able to drill new wells effectively.
This is sort of true, but not nearly as true as Western observers thought it was a few years ago. Russian production has actually held up okay over the past few years.
Also worth noting that the Russians acquiesced to Saudi cut demands well before the sanctions started, in 2020. Having lower production costs than everyone else and being able to crash prices if they won’t cooperate with you gives you a lot of power!
(An aside: getting each of the leading anti-climate change advocacy groups a Bloomberg terminal and a subscription to Platts might be a good high-leverage donation for people who care about decarbinization; the global energy system is really complicated and changing its behavior through policy requires a lot of insight.)
This isn't directly related to the post, but it does relate to the topic of sanctions. The other day I was chatting on a Discord about the Taliban and remarked that the overwhelming objection to them from the US side is their treatment of women's rights, so shouldn't we aim the sanctions on Afghanistan specifically on that issue? That is to say, make it clear a deal is on the table where if women's rights are restored to more of what they were under the pre-Taliban regime, the US agrees to lift at least some sanctions.
I got a lot of no, no, no, they're fanatics, they'd never take that deal. Which, who knows, can't tell what deal a government will take until you offer it. But then I asked what the sanctions are supposed to achieve, that is what we are pressuring the Taliban to do in exchange for lifting the economic blockade. The consensus seemed to be that there is literally nothing the Taliban can offer, other than to dissolve their government and stop existing. Is that basically correct?
I think you can defend those sorts of sanctions as following through on a credible threat: I.e. pissing off the US is costly, they might wreck your economy indefinitely if you do so badly enough. Once you have invited that response it is difficult to get them to stop (ask Cuba).
I think any sanctions against the Taliban would be counteracted by China. We kind of lost whatever leverage we had against the Taliban when we, you know, lost the war.
What do you mean "would be"? I'm talking what they're under right now, not some hypothetical new sanctions.
The point is that whenever read something bad about what the Taliban is doing it's usually related to women's rights specifically. That seems to be the specific issue that the people of the United States have with them. If they didn't restrict women so much they'd just be another authoritarian regime. But nobody is talking about how to get the Taliban to change its policies on women's rights. It's just assumed that they would never do so, no point trying.
Hard for me to judge how impactful this specific trade off is, the only one of those three I could see being genuinely useful to tighten the screws on is Russia. And i am not sure of the practical precision we could achieve with sanctions.
That said I think a broader piece on the pro's and cons of the Biden "secret Presidency" approach would be interesting. We know that big Presidential speeches serve to mobilize the opposition against the President's position as much as garner in group support. And there's no Tea Party counter movement, as Matt notes, which probably helped in 2022. But, if you look at the groups Harris immediately improved with it's primarily the Know Very Littles, who get their politics through TikTok clips and other sound bite delivery devices, who may be the most persuaded by playing President on camera.
I admit - I had a little bit of trouble following what the specific policy trade-offs are that we’re talking about. What’s a concrete proposal that enviros said no to that they should have said yes to? And same with foreign policy hawks?
Isn't an example that the enviros shouldn't have fought as hard against drilling in Alaska (or construction of LNG export terminals), while achieving similar reductions in production by advocating with the foreign-policy establishment against sanctions relief for Venezuela?
Query: assume that a sanctioned actor ceased its sanctionable behavior or otherwise was offered a carrot in the form of sanctions relief to resume higher oil export (to the extent any such export had been meaningfully curtailed in the first place — see Russia). Would the higher US production be abated, or just continue with a larger economic-political constituency that, in the Mark Twain sense, have a livelihood that depends on not understanding climate concerns?
There is no specific proposal. His point is that there have been two separate negotiations that have been stalled at one point, but by combining them a better outcome could be achieved.
In Alaska, enviros want less drilling and econ wants more, and they got X. On Russia, national security people want more sanctions and econ wants less, and they got Y. The Econ people and enviros have opposite interests, but a tradeoff between the two policies can keep the same overall balance, while the national security people get more of what they want.
Matt's written about this before, but I still don't understand why congress doesn't do much cross issue bargaining.
e.g. Democrats formally legalize the status of some DREAMers in exchange for some corporate tax cuts.
But for congress, I understand the political incentives for any kind of agreement is tough, so when you add even more interested parties negotions can be harder.
But within the executive branch itself, the lack of coordination that Matt brings up seems more like an org chart problem.
> I still don't understand why congress doesn't do much cross issue bargaining
Because, in general, politicians are punished more for cooperating with the other side than for their own wins from such cooperation, particularly in the context of primaries with deeply ideological voters and small donors.
I imagine that hypothetical example would be quite egregious to Republican primary voters for whom corp tax cuts have little salience, but would be horrified by any amnesty for illegal immigrants. Reversing the example, I similarly imagine Democratic primary voters would be mortified if their elected representatives won a corp tax increase in exchange for a large deportation program.
At best, we can get bargaining and cooperation on low-salience issues, à la secret Congress. For salient issues, we might hope for some compromise on one issue at a time. Eg, amnesty for DREAMers in exchange for deportation of a comparable number of less sympathetic cases.
Isn't Everything Bagel politics just this kind of cross-issue bargaining, albeit only within the party? "I'll support all your policy objectives if you'll support all of mine."
That only works if your party has permanent power, like the LDP in Japan. When another party has at least some power you bargain with them, or you get nothing.
Considering that (to my understanding) the oil produced by the US is cleaner than oil produced by Russia and most other countries, it would also be a win for environmental activists to produce more oil here and less of it abroad
Only if your primary concern is the global level. 'Environmentalists' is of course a wide group of people with different beliefs and goals, and can and will definitely include people whose view is 'less oil, but if we have to have it then at least don't ruin Alaskan wilderness to get it'.
"It's simple. You get your reduced fossil fuel production. I get my sanctions. I get my economic boost through resource extraction. You get that the extraction is done under tighter regulation and local environmental watchdogs."
"Criss cross. Just two political strangers, completely unrelated. The perfect plan."
The US should put Russian-style price cap sanctions on Venezuela, and keep them on for as long as they don't have free & fair elections. The price cap has not been particularly successful with Russia (so far). I think it'd work much better for Venezuela though:
1. Venezuela lacks the means & funds to purchase a 'shadow fleet' of uninsured ships
2. More importantly, Venezuela is in the US Navy's backyard. I think a Navy destroyer could um gently persuade any unregistered/shadow fleet ships entering the area that they're not welcome
It's kind of the perfect sanction. Harms Venezuela financially while actually benefitting the US consumer, with lower oil prices. Indirectly harms Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran through cheaper oil. Can be raised or lowered at will
I would much rather have a lot of nuclear plants in the barren and ugly parts of CA, NV, AZ, NM, etc. than destroy AK, one of the most beautiful places on earth with amazing natural beauty and wildlife.
I think we should generally let the people in Alaska decide what is important to them and go with that. The only thing worse than a NIMBY is a NIYBY (not in your backyard).
Yes, but I find it weird that people in NY which is over 3000 miles away get MORE of a say than the people in Alaska because there are more people *in* NY than in Alaska. Imagine if NYC was told they had to stop building because the people in California decided it was better and there are more Californians than New Yorkers.
It's my personal preference. Obviously, because I'm a nobody, neither the federal government, nor the people of Alaska are going to make decisions based on what I prefer.
I feel like this fails to comprehend how massive Alaska is. Its on the order of saying a new nuclear plant in empty Nevada would destroy the natural beauty of all of America west of the Mississippi
If one insists that Alaska should be pristine and not economically develop and use its resources, that is going to involve overriding local preferences.
If you speak to the kind of locals liberals like to speak to, I'm sure you can get the response you want.
Meanwhile we actually have the results of lots of Alaska elections and their revealed preferences are for growth and development, not treating the state as pristine.
I actually have. They’re generally extremely pro-natural resource extraction, and since it’s so massive and sparsely populated, it’s one of the few places where there’s not a tradeoff with NIMBYism (generally)
I would love more nuclear plants in the CA desert (and solar plants and all sorts of other things) but many of us who grew up there also find it beautiful. It’s only barren and ugly to people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
I think it's fine if you find it beautiful but people who find it barren and ugly have also seen the world and know the difference between that and scenic places and certainly know what they're talking about.
I don't care if you're offended. I don't see traffic backed up to see these ugly barren areas the way it is in Yosemite or other scenic places that CA has to offer.
Sure, but the people who think CA and NV deserts are gorgeous aren’t just untraveled rubes, they just have different preferences to you. And if you haven’t driven through Lassen County, you’re missing out - EASILY as beautiful as Yellowstone.
And most of Alaska doesn’t get tourists for the scenery because Alaska is HUGE and almost entirely unpopulated. So if we’re going by traffic backing up for scenic views, screw Alaska, no one cares.
I've been to Lassen Volcanic NP. It's a very different landscape from ugliness that is most of inland CA. Northern CA in general is a lot nicer than the south except for the beaches.
If you don't like Alaska, or think CA's deserts are more beautiful, that's your choice. That's not going to change my opinion on what I think is one of the ugliest areas in the US that I've been to.
I would rather concentrate the wastes of industrial progress on the north slope of alaska than anywhere else in the us. It’s almost as big as texas, has 7000 people and i’d monotonous, even ugly. it’s also little different than hundreds of very similar places in canada and siberia. that sort of biome is too abundant
The problem with your suggestion is that we don't have a shovel ready and cost effective nuclear power solution yet. There's lots of very promising research underway and in a decade or so we might be able to start scaling one of these promising new approaches.
Today though, the only thing we could break ground on is technology that costs between 10 and 15 cents per kWh. That would about double most peoples' electricity bills. In addition, building the workforce, industrial infrastructure, and supply chain needed for a massive nuclear power build out will also take some time.
Personally, I could possibly get convinced that we should federally underwrite the cost overrun risk of building 10-20 Vogtle type reactors just to get the workforce and industrial sector ready for a big nuclear build out should the next-gen stuff pan out, but such a limited effort won't move the US carbon needle very much in the next couple of decades.
There will never be shovel ready projects for a nuclear power plant. It requires years of planning and execution. Cost effectiveness may be a more reasonable argument because the US cannot build anything significant even if our lives depended on it and this definitely doesn't fall in that category.
I think the admin still has the idea they can appeal to "the youth vote" with things like the LNG pause and I know there have been a lot of posts on this idiotic belief bur it really needs to die.
I can't stand The Groups myself, but yet I still don't understand why apparently opening the taps for exporting LNG is the hill so many people are willing to die on.
Sure, fine, great to support European energy demands as they move away from Russian fossil fuels and toward renewables, but sheesh why is this such a flaming issue?
I mean, maybe let's keep the LNG here and lower prices for Americans instead?
I assume it's popularism: if you adhere to this political M.O., you don't want Democrats to be on the wrong side of US hydrocarbon jobs—at least absent extremely compelling reasons—given the price you might pay in terms of votes in places like Pennsylvania.
One underlying question hawks never ask is whether sanctions work. Those Cuban cigar sanctions have probably killed and immiserated a lot of Cubans over 60 years but they haven't actually changed the government.
You are assuming that the sanctions are for the benefit of the USA rather than ongoing leverage for the specific influential families who lost their land ownership there, and I am not sure that is the case.
That just makes it more immoral. Obviously I'm not saying property rights have no value, but in the scheme of things, rich families getting their property back after decades is not very important. Lots of wealthy people lose their stuff in revolutions. The notion that we are going to kill tens of thousands of children and immiserate ordinary Cubans (many of whom come from families who were oppressed by the Cuban upper class property owners during the Batista era) just so we can get some rich families their property back is insane.
Not only are sanctions of questionable effectiveness, but they almost certainly become less effective the more profligate we are in using them. Sanctions are the antibiotics of foreign policy.
Correct. They are also addictive so they are the fentanyl of foreign policy as well. And they allow their imposers to bathe in self-righteousness while harming marginalized people so they are the religious conservativism of foreign policy.
There's a lot of analogies here. They are just one of the biggest cancers in our policymaking (there's another analogy) because the people who want to impose them are really attached to them and lack the imagination to acknowledge limits on their own power, especially humanitarian limits that the involve the welfare of foreigners. So they are extremely persistent.
Matt's thesis relies on the idea that environmental damage in foreign countries is equivalent to those damages in the US. It's not obvious to me that this is true in a bunch of different vectors. I'd like to see Matt defend that point some more.
Climate activists are focused on purity. If they seriously worried about costs and benefits, their heads would explode.
Reducing global warming by 0.1 degree celsius means reducing global CO2 emissions by 170 gigatons. US emissions are 6.23 gigatons per year. To reduce global warming by 0.1 degree, you would have to reduce US emissions to zero for 27 plus years.
The only useful, cost-effective contribution America can make to climate change is developing technologies that can be deployed globally. Anything else is politically counterproductive virtue signaling.
Interesting but totally unsurprising that climate change is an issue that literally not one Democrat in a swing seat is running on this year.
"Climate activists are focused on purity." You could replace "climate activists" with the Pro-Life movement and write the same sentence. It's extremely notable to me that Trump has this iron grip on the GOP (to the point the business donor class is giving him tons of money despite the 10% tariff pledge), but on abortion he felt the need to backtrack and actually word-salad support the FL 6-week abortion ban.
I bring up just to note that climate activists have a decent amount of clout in the Democratic Party but nothing close to this much clout. It's why I think Matt is right to tout record oil production on the campaign trail.
Franzen wrote a book called “Purity.”. He may be the best English language writer of his generation. Highly recommended.
Yes, but I think it’s the worst of his books. Good book, but if somebody hasn’t read Franzen I’d suggest starting with The Corrections.
Have you read Percival Everett? I find that he scratches the same itch but in a very different way. I’ve enjoyed all four books of his that I’ve read, but would start with both I Am Not Sydney Portier and So Much Blue. Very different books that start to capture his range.
Definitely start with The Corrections.
The difference of course is that with abortion there literally are lives on the line for the decision
Are there more or fewer lives on the line with abortion vs with climate issues vs with wars vs with health insurance? Most significant political matters literally are matters of life and death at least for thousands of people, if not millions.
Side-stepping the abortion issue it would fascinating to try to rank causes of North American mortality and morbidity with some consideration of tractability. In other words what are the lowest hanging fruits policy-wise for saving lives and ability?
Funding the right kind of medical research!
What’s the biggest cause of illness and death? Aging and age-related disease. Fund research on common aging pathways that can make a difference against many diseases at once.
Most things this research program tries won’t work, of course, but the ones that do would work really, really well. Imagine those headlines about how “Ozempic treats X” but for more drugs, more consistently, additively across drugs.
It’s a scandal that the National Institute on Aging gets so little money and spends most of it on amyloid-related ideas about Alzheimer’s
I would estimate that there are more American lives on the line in regards to abortion, but more human lives on the line in regards to climate change.
I hate to say this because abortion is probably my second issue (first is climate change).
But most women are not going to die from carrying an unwanted pregnancy. It's damaging to the body and a violation of fundamental human rights. But if I had to pick between abortion and climate change, I'd pick climate change.
Fortunately I don't have to pick.
This is true, and no you don't. And I agree with you on the prioritization if you did.
I would add that in addition to women's lives, there are also the lives of some non-viable fetuses who, under some proposed abortion bans and restrictions, would have to be born, suffer, and quickly die, instead of being terminated months prior. And, of course, the lives of those who would seek out less safe illegal abortions if legal ones were unavailable, and those who would be harmed by partners (some people are truly evil like that) if they became pregnant and couldn't terminate the pregnancy.
heat waves and hurricanes also kill. there are lives on the line with any serious policy choice
It really is a moral failure that the lives of those pregnant women is so undervalued by the GOP.
Not only that, but implementing low cost policies for reducing demand for CO2 emissions: taxation of net CO2 emissions. Of course the tax would also spur the development of CO2 emissions-saving technologies.
This. Their simply Dogma of Doom gives their lives meaning. They serve Republicans' interests.
The main problem here is the aside about land conservation (and generally the non climate impacts of fossil fuel extraction). That's the main reason there is grassroots environmental energy behind blocking exploration in Alaska, not climate. And if the President tried to make the case directly to the constituents of the environmental groups, we'd discover that they care more about conservation than about climate -- climate is a more elite concern even within the environmental movement.
Land conservation has many different political valences. Conserving a green belt or a local park directly benefits human beings. It can galvanize bipartisan coalitions of people who enjoy the outdoors even if they don’t care much about polar bear.
Conserving the north slope of Alaska is different. I’ve been there. It is a baren wasteland. It is virtually uninhabitable. It has almost no scenic value and supports only small populations the hardiest land mammals. Very few people even visit the north slope for tourist reasons. There are 50 tourists who visit Glacier Bay for every tourist who makes it to the north slope.
Conserving the north slope can really only be explained in terms of purity. The footprint of oil extraction is quite small and the place is huge.
It's fine to have different values for things, but I don't think this accurately characterizes why people want to preserve the north slope. It's an enormous wilderness that has had little human impact and supports large populations of wildlife in a way that it not true of anywhere in the US outside Alaska. How to value local parks vs caribou migration routes is not something that there's a right answer to but people do care about both for actual reasons.
why is the north slope of alaska more worth preserving than baffin island canada, or the lena delta in siberia? there is an amazing amount on unspoiled land. it’s not scarce. in fact, it’s unspoiled because it’s basically uninhabitable.
Well, the US government doesn’t have much control over the Canadian government’s decisions about where to locate oil exploration. And it has ~no control at all over what Russia does in Siberia.
Baffin Island has less biodiversity especially of large mammals because it's an island but no one is saying it's "more worth preserving". There's no current natural gas exploration on Baffin Island and plenty of people would be mad if there was.
I agree people get mad when “pristine” places are developed. It’s just strange that people place so much value on such unproductive land.
Rich, volcanic soil in temperate or tropical climates is a precious commodity. It would be good if there were more of it. The world has more polar ice caps then we no what to do with. Canada has roughly 1.5 million square miles north of the arctic circle, which is inhabited by fewer than 15,000 people. That sort of land is so abundant there is no need to protect it.
Charismatic mega fauna can easily coexist with oil rigs.
I think "this project will not actually harm the things people value" is a better argument than complaining that people value different things than you. And it's very plausible in this case (although trusting oil and gas companies on this score has not been a winning bet generally).
It could also be partially explained by people just not knowing the relevant sizes.
While there is a nod to local issues, this post suffers for excessive focus on climate change to the detriment of all other environmental considerations. Opposition to drilling in nature preserve precedes climate change myopia and exists for other reasons, which are not served by curbing production in the Persian Gulf or Venezuela.
Part of the problem with this line of argument is that sanctions enforcement often has the net effect of driving foreign oil producers to do extremely emissions-heavy activities like flaring the associated gas from their oil fields, burning unrefined crude oil in their power plants, and smuggling oil across international borders in tanker trucks.
It’s also worth noting that a lot of global oil production is coordinated by OPEC+, which tends to respond to supply constraints with coordinated production increases and vice versa, which makes the net effect of sanctions on total global oil production a lot murkier. (That’s also a reason why trying to fight climate change by just cutting domestic production is a bad strategy; rich countries can do much more to improve matters on the demand side.)
How would opec respond to a swap in which the US increased domestic production while sharpening sanctions on Russian exports, so that total production was constant?
Despite the sanctions, Russia is actually currently deliberately limiting its oil companies’ production as part of its current agreement with OPEC.
If the US and Europe actually managed to impose sanctions strong enough to lower Russia’s production significantly below the current negotiated cap (actually a fairly heavy lift, and one which would require require cooperation from the current main buyers of Russian crude, India and China), and somehow managed to increase its own production the same amount through increased exploration permitting (the math there is kind of questionable), it’s likely that OPEC would retaliate by temporarily cranking up production to disrupt the smaller US upstream producers. (The bloc’s swing producers, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE have low production costs.) This course of events would also create a significant risk of geopolitically pushing India and Saudi Arabia toward China.
Russia is not able to increase production. It is acquiescing to Saudi demands because of technical limitations caused by sanctions. The Russian oil industry was dependent on US company's technical expertise and capital. Russia is currently depreciating it's oil capital, not able to replace it effectively, and not able to drill new wells effectively.
There is a lines on maps video on this.
This is sort of true, but not nearly as true as Western observers thought it was a few years ago. Russian production has actually held up okay over the past few years.
Also worth noting that the Russians acquiesced to Saudi cut demands well before the sanctions started, in 2020. Having lower production costs than everyone else and being able to crash prices if they won’t cooperate with you gives you a lot of power!
(An aside: getting each of the leading anti-climate change advocacy groups a Bloomberg terminal and a subscription to Platts might be a good high-leverage donation for people who care about decarbinization; the global energy system is really complicated and changing its behavior through policy requires a lot of insight.)
This isn't directly related to the post, but it does relate to the topic of sanctions. The other day I was chatting on a Discord about the Taliban and remarked that the overwhelming objection to them from the US side is their treatment of women's rights, so shouldn't we aim the sanctions on Afghanistan specifically on that issue? That is to say, make it clear a deal is on the table where if women's rights are restored to more of what they were under the pre-Taliban regime, the US agrees to lift at least some sanctions.
I got a lot of no, no, no, they're fanatics, they'd never take that deal. Which, who knows, can't tell what deal a government will take until you offer it. But then I asked what the sanctions are supposed to achieve, that is what we are pressuring the Taliban to do in exchange for lifting the economic blockade. The consensus seemed to be that there is literally nothing the Taliban can offer, other than to dissolve their government and stop existing. Is that basically correct?
I think you can defend those sorts of sanctions as following through on a credible threat: I.e. pissing off the US is costly, they might wreck your economy indefinitely if you do so badly enough. Once you have invited that response it is difficult to get them to stop (ask Cuba).
I think any sanctions against the Taliban would be counteracted by China. We kind of lost whatever leverage we had against the Taliban when we, you know, lost the war.
What do you mean "would be"? I'm talking what they're under right now, not some hypothetical new sanctions.
The point is that whenever read something bad about what the Taliban is doing it's usually related to women's rights specifically. That seems to be the specific issue that the people of the United States have with them. If they didn't restrict women so much they'd just be another authoritarian regime. But nobody is talking about how to get the Taliban to change its policies on women's rights. It's just assumed that they would never do so, no point trying.
Hard for me to judge how impactful this specific trade off is, the only one of those three I could see being genuinely useful to tighten the screws on is Russia. And i am not sure of the practical precision we could achieve with sanctions.
That said I think a broader piece on the pro's and cons of the Biden "secret Presidency" approach would be interesting. We know that big Presidential speeches serve to mobilize the opposition against the President's position as much as garner in group support. And there's no Tea Party counter movement, as Matt notes, which probably helped in 2022. But, if you look at the groups Harris immediately improved with it's primarily the Know Very Littles, who get their politics through TikTok clips and other sound bite delivery devices, who may be the most persuaded by playing President on camera.
I admit - I had a little bit of trouble following what the specific policy trade-offs are that we’re talking about. What’s a concrete proposal that enviros said no to that they should have said yes to? And same with foreign policy hawks?
Isn't an example that the enviros shouldn't have fought as hard against drilling in Alaska (or construction of LNG export terminals), while achieving similar reductions in production by advocating with the foreign-policy establishment against sanctions relief for Venezuela?
Query: assume that a sanctioned actor ceased its sanctionable behavior or otherwise was offered a carrot in the form of sanctions relief to resume higher oil export (to the extent any such export had been meaningfully curtailed in the first place — see Russia). Would the higher US production be abated, or just continue with a larger economic-political constituency that, in the Mark Twain sense, have a livelihood that depends on not understanding climate concerns?
Liked, but that latter bit is actually based on an Upton Sinclair quote: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-00010168
Mea culpa.
No problem!
Are you HK-47?
Response: No, meatbag.
That would be some 12 dimensional chess there.
There is no specific proposal. His point is that there have been two separate negotiations that have been stalled at one point, but by combining them a better outcome could be achieved.
In Alaska, enviros want less drilling and econ wants more, and they got X. On Russia, national security people want more sanctions and econ wants less, and they got Y. The Econ people and enviros have opposite interests, but a tradeoff between the two policies can keep the same overall balance, while the national security people get more of what they want.
Matt's written about this before, but I still don't understand why congress doesn't do much cross issue bargaining.
e.g. Democrats formally legalize the status of some DREAMers in exchange for some corporate tax cuts.
But for congress, I understand the political incentives for any kind of agreement is tough, so when you add even more interested parties negotions can be harder.
But within the executive branch itself, the lack of coordination that Matt brings up seems more like an org chart problem.
> I still don't understand why congress doesn't do much cross issue bargaining
Because, in general, politicians are punished more for cooperating with the other side than for their own wins from such cooperation, particularly in the context of primaries with deeply ideological voters and small donors.
I imagine that hypothetical example would be quite egregious to Republican primary voters for whom corp tax cuts have little salience, but would be horrified by any amnesty for illegal immigrants. Reversing the example, I similarly imagine Democratic primary voters would be mortified if their elected representatives won a corp tax increase in exchange for a large deportation program.
At best, we can get bargaining and cooperation on low-salience issues, à la secret Congress. For salient issues, we might hope for some compromise on one issue at a time. Eg, amnesty for DREAMers in exchange for deportation of a comparable number of less sympathetic cases.
But in swing races politicians frequently highlight their bipartisan bonafides.
Even in swing races, politicians still have to make it past the primary.
Isn't Everything Bagel politics just this kind of cross-issue bargaining, albeit only within the party? "I'll support all your policy objectives if you'll support all of mine."
That only works if your party has permanent power, like the LDP in Japan. When another party has at least some power you bargain with them, or you get nothing.
Considering that (to my understanding) the oil produced by the US is cleaner than oil produced by Russia and most other countries, it would also be a win for environmental activists to produce more oil here and less of it abroad
Only if your primary concern is the global level. 'Environmentalists' is of course a wide group of people with different beliefs and goals, and can and will definitely include people whose view is 'less oil, but if we have to have it then at least don't ruin Alaskan wilderness to get it'.
But potentially a loss if increased production just lowers global price and increases consumption.
Two strangers sit next to each other on a train.
"It's simple. You get your reduced fossil fuel production. I get my sanctions. I get my economic boost through resource extraction. You get that the extraction is done under tighter regulation and local environmental watchdogs."
"Criss cross. Just two political strangers, completely unrelated. The perfect plan."
The US should put Russian-style price cap sanctions on Venezuela, and keep them on for as long as they don't have free & fair elections. The price cap has not been particularly successful with Russia (so far). I think it'd work much better for Venezuela though:
1. Venezuela lacks the means & funds to purchase a 'shadow fleet' of uninsured ships
2. More importantly, Venezuela is in the US Navy's backyard. I think a Navy destroyer could um gently persuade any unregistered/shadow fleet ships entering the area that they're not welcome
It's kind of the perfect sanction. Harms Venezuela financially while actually benefitting the US consumer, with lower oil prices. Indirectly harms Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran through cheaper oil. Can be raised or lowered at will
I would much rather have a lot of nuclear plants in the barren and ugly parts of CA, NV, AZ, NM, etc. than destroy AK, one of the most beautiful places on earth with amazing natural beauty and wildlife.
I think we should generally let the people in Alaska decide what is important to them and go with that. The only thing worse than a NIMBY is a NIYBY (not in your backyard).
I think the residents of Alaska should get a vote. They don't get an absolute veto, however.
Yes, but I find it weird that people in NY which is over 3000 miles away get MORE of a say than the people in Alaska because there are more people *in* NY than in Alaska. Imagine if NYC was told they had to stop building because the people in California decided it was better and there are more Californians than New Yorkers.
The residents of Alaska are trying to override the veto imposed by the rest of the country.
It's my personal preference. Obviously, because I'm a nobody, neither the federal government, nor the people of Alaska are going to make decisions based on what I prefer.
I feel like this fails to comprehend how massive Alaska is. Its on the order of saying a new nuclear plant in empty Nevada would destroy the natural beauty of all of America west of the Mississippi
It also fails to take into account that maybe Alaskans should have a say in what they want out of their state.
Didn't realize that my opinions have so much power that it would prevent Alaskans from getting what they want out of their state.
If one insists that Alaska should be pristine and not economically develop and use its resources, that is going to involve overriding local preferences.
Have you been to Alaska and spoken to a lot of locals about what they want?
If you speak to the kind of locals liberals like to speak to, I'm sure you can get the response you want.
Meanwhile we actually have the results of lots of Alaska elections and their revealed preferences are for growth and development, not treating the state as pristine.
I actually have. They’re generally extremely pro-natural resource extraction, and since it’s so massive and sparsely populated, it’s one of the few places where there’s not a tradeoff with NIMBYism (generally)
I would love more nuclear plants in the CA desert (and solar plants and all sorts of other things) but many of us who grew up there also find it beautiful. It’s only barren and ugly to people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
I think it's fine if you find it beautiful but people who find it barren and ugly have also seen the world and know the difference between that and scenic places and certainly know what they're talking about.
I’ve traveled all over, including Alaska. I think the Nevadan and Californian desert is stunningly beautiful and find your dismissal offensive.
I don't care if you're offended. I don't see traffic backed up to see these ugly barren areas the way it is in Yosemite or other scenic places that CA has to offer.
Sure, but the people who think CA and NV deserts are gorgeous aren’t just untraveled rubes, they just have different preferences to you. And if you haven’t driven through Lassen County, you’re missing out - EASILY as beautiful as Yellowstone.
And most of Alaska doesn’t get tourists for the scenery because Alaska is HUGE and almost entirely unpopulated. So if we’re going by traffic backing up for scenic views, screw Alaska, no one cares.
Read again - "I think it's fine if you find it beautiful.."
https://open.substack.com/pub/matthewyglesias/p/a-simple-swap-to-boost-growth-and?r=7jbfd&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=67913377
I've been to Lassen Volcanic NP. It's a very different landscape from ugliness that is most of inland CA. Northern CA in general is a lot nicer than the south except for the beaches.
If you don't like Alaska, or think CA's deserts are more beautiful, that's your choice. That's not going to change my opinion on what I think is one of the ugliest areas in the US that I've been to.
I would rather concentrate the wastes of industrial progress on the north slope of alaska than anywhere else in the us. It’s almost as big as texas, has 7000 people and i’d monotonous, even ugly. it’s also little different than hundreds of very similar places in canada and siberia. that sort of biome is too abundant
The problem with your suggestion is that we don't have a shovel ready and cost effective nuclear power solution yet. There's lots of very promising research underway and in a decade or so we might be able to start scaling one of these promising new approaches.
Today though, the only thing we could break ground on is technology that costs between 10 and 15 cents per kWh. That would about double most peoples' electricity bills. In addition, building the workforce, industrial infrastructure, and supply chain needed for a massive nuclear power build out will also take some time.
Personally, I could possibly get convinced that we should federally underwrite the cost overrun risk of building 10-20 Vogtle type reactors just to get the workforce and industrial sector ready for a big nuclear build out should the next-gen stuff pan out, but such a limited effort won't move the US carbon needle very much in the next couple of decades.
There will never be shovel ready projects for a nuclear power plant. It requires years of planning and execution. Cost effectiveness may be a more reasonable argument because the US cannot build anything significant even if our lives depended on it and this definitely doesn't fall in that category.
I think the admin still has the idea they can appeal to "the youth vote" with things like the LNG pause and I know there have been a lot of posts on this idiotic belief bur it really needs to die.
I can't stand The Groups myself, but yet I still don't understand why apparently opening the taps for exporting LNG is the hill so many people are willing to die on.
Sure, fine, great to support European energy demands as they move away from Russian fossil fuels and toward renewables, but sheesh why is this such a flaming issue?
I mean, maybe let's keep the LNG here and lower prices for Americans instead?
I assume it's popularism: if you adhere to this political M.O., you don't want Democrats to be on the wrong side of US hydrocarbon jobs—at least absent extremely compelling reasons—given the price you might pay in terms of votes in places like Pennsylvania.
One underlying question hawks never ask is whether sanctions work. Those Cuban cigar sanctions have probably killed and immiserated a lot of Cubans over 60 years but they haven't actually changed the government.
But how many countries haven't had Communist Revolutions because people see that they emiserate their country so fight against it.
So what? Some countries did like Vietnam and we eventually come to our senses and trade with them.
You are assuming that the sanctions are for the benefit of the USA rather than ongoing leverage for the specific influential families who lost their land ownership there, and I am not sure that is the case.
That just makes it more immoral. Obviously I'm not saying property rights have no value, but in the scheme of things, rich families getting their property back after decades is not very important. Lots of wealthy people lose their stuff in revolutions. The notion that we are going to kill tens of thousands of children and immiserate ordinary Cubans (many of whom come from families who were oppressed by the Cuban upper class property owners during the Batista era) just so we can get some rich families their property back is insane.
Not only are sanctions of questionable effectiveness, but they almost certainly become less effective the more profligate we are in using them. Sanctions are the antibiotics of foreign policy.
Correct. They are also addictive so they are the fentanyl of foreign policy as well. And they allow their imposers to bathe in self-righteousness while harming marginalized people so they are the religious conservativism of foreign policy.
There's a lot of analogies here. They are just one of the biggest cancers in our policymaking (there's another analogy) because the people who want to impose them are really attached to them and lack the imagination to acknowledge limits on their own power, especially humanitarian limits that the involve the welfare of foreigners. So they are extremely persistent.
Regarding today's post -- well, I guess they can't all be bangers.
Better luck tomorrow.
Matt's thesis relies on the idea that environmental damage in foreign countries is equivalent to those damages in the US. It's not obvious to me that this is true in a bunch of different vectors. I'd like to see Matt defend that point some more.
I think that is actually true for carbon emissions, though not necessarily for air/water/etc. pollution.