Selling immigration restrictions to the global waming crowd

Two posts about this report by the Center for Immigration Studies that concludes the following:

Overall, our findings indicate that the average immigrant (legal or illegal) in the United States produces somewhat less CO2 than the average native-born American. However, immigrants in the United States produce about four times more CO2 in the United States as they would have in their countries of origin...

When it comes to dealing with global warming, environmentalists in the United States have generally chosen to adopt what might be described as piecemeal efforts to oppose new sources of fossil fuel-based energy, such as the construction of new coal-fired power plants...But they have assiduously avoided the underlying issue of growing energy demand driven by immigration-fueled population growth...

But to simply dismiss the large role that continuing high levels of immigration play in increasing U.S. and worldwide CO2 emissions is not only intellectually dishonest, it is also counter-productive. One must acknowledge a problem before a solution can be found. The effect of immigration is certainly not trivial. If immigrants in the United States were their own country, they would rank seventh in the world in annual CO2 output, ahead of such countries as Canada, France, and Great Britain.

Unless there is a change in immigration policy, 30 million (legal and illegal) immigrants are likely to settle in the United States over the next 20 years. One can still argue for high levels of immigration for any number of reasons. However, one cannot make the argument for high immigration without at least understanding what it means for global efforts to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

It's kind of long, but it essentially says that because immigrants emit more CO2 in the U.S. than they would in their home countries, their impact on global warming should be considered in any efforts to increase levels of immigration. Why is it that they emit more CO2 here than at home? Because they are wealthier here than they would otherwise be. One of the big global warming arguments, to me at least, is that globally we're too wealthy and because of that wealth, we're emitting too much carbon into the air that is causing temperature change. Th point of the study seems to be that if we can keep these immigrants from getting richer by coming here, we can slow global warming. Additionally, if we can stop all of us from becoming richer, we can also slow global warming. Unfortunately, though, the second point seems to be the goal of all the climate alarmists.

This first blog post I saw about the study concluded with this by Ronald Bailey:

These figures are likely to be true. But is keeping people poor by depriving us of their labor and skills really the best way to address man-made global warming?

Of all the comments, I like this one best:

Of course, the best way to combat greenhouse gases is to drive American citizens into poverty and adopting the lifestyles the poor illegal immigrants enjoy in their native countries. But who would advocate that? oh, wait...

Dan Griswold adds the following:

What the CIS study is really arguing is that rich people pollute more than poor people, so the world would be better off if more people remained poor. The same argument could be used to oppose economic development in places such as China and India that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the past two decades.

Through the dark lens of CIS, the world is a better place when poor people remain stuck in poor countries, and poor countries remain poor.

Why are they so interested?

After discussing an effort by some to urge the "federal government to encourage states to adopt automated enforcement laws to reduce red-light running," Radley Balko notes the following:

What Alexander and Ladies' Home Journal don't disclose in the article, however, is that the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running is funded by three private companies: Affiliated Computer Systems, Gatso USA, and Redflex, Inc. All three are in the automated traffic enforcement business, and all three stand to make millions should the campaign prove successful. That's a pretty big omission.

Bootleggers and Baptists abound. Surely those companies are only concerned about the safety of of drivers.

Homeschooling is legal (again) in CA

From Jacon Sullen at reason:

Last week a California appeals court reversed a February ruling that said state law permits homeschooling only by credentialed teachers. In the earlier ruling, noted here by Katherine Mangu-Ward, the Court of Appeal for the 2nd Appellate District concluded that the legislature had deliberately removed an exemption for homeschooled children from California's compulsory education law in 1929 and had never reinstated it. The decision alarmed tens of thousands of Californians who thought they had the state's approval in teaching their children at home. In last week's ruling, the court reconsidered, finding that the legislature had implicitly endorsed homeschools by exempting them from various regulatory requirements. "While the Legislature has never acted to expressly supersede" appeals court decisions that said a homeschool did not qualify as a "private full-time day school," the three-judge panel said, "it has acted as though home schooling is, in fact, permitted in California."

Thomas Donlan about the failed Doha round:

The real issues were not heard amid this cacophony. India and other developing countries don't need to protect subsistence farmers' tiny incomes; if a billion people live on a dollar a day and another two billion live on two dollars a day, it would take a mere $10 billion to double their income. And increased global trade could pay for such transition costs in very short order.

The developing countries really need cheap imported food and cheap imported capital so that hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers and sharecroppers can move off the land and enter more productive sectors of the economy. If India is going to create economic opportunity for all its people, it needs more mechanized agriculture and fewer peasants. As China has shown over the last 30 years, this is not quick, easy or pleasant, but it works.

In the same way, the U.S., the EU and a few other efficient farming countries don't need to subsidize any of their farmers: They have mechanized agriculture and they can produce food for the entire world without taking billions of dollars a year away from the rest of their economies.

No child should grow up thinking that their story, their hometown story, is not a part of the larger American story. It's time Washington stopped working for special interests and started working for rural America. So not only do I want to recruit the teachers, but I especially want to recruit the [?] in rural communities. I want to make sure that we're making investments in rural schools. I think we can connect all of America to 21st Century technology. We'll show that we value farming in this country by launching a program that gives a hand to the next generation of farmers and helps them buy their first farm.

From a new ad (I guess) by Barack Obama. You can guess what I think about this. I saw this on the WSJ Washington Wire blog. This is ridiculous. Anyone who can say "It's time Washington stopped working for special interests and started working for rural America...We'll show that we value farming in this country by launching a program that gives a hand to the next generation of farmers and helps them buy their first farm" with a straight face deserves a medal. Maybe 4% of the country works in agriculture but somehow they aren't a special interest. A simple look at Wikipedia (a killer source, I know) defines an interest group as "an organized collection of people who seek to influence political decisions." Farm lobby anyone? How does Obama define a special interest? Maybe they just aren't "special" enough.

The Byrd Amendment

I sent the following letter in response to this from the WSJ:

Senator Robert Byrd’s recent foray into protectionism isn’t his first (Byrd’s Bad Idea Is Back, Aug 8). His meddling has produced other “Byrd Amendments” designed to protect the few at the expense of the many. One of his most notable was an amendment to the Clean Air Act of 1977.

Congress was looking for a way to decrease pollution emissions in response to growing public demand, so Senator Byrd offered an amendment requiring utility companies to install expensive scrubbers that helped clean the air. Great idea, right? Unfortunately, a tax on emissions would have been cheaper because it would have forced utilities to find the most efficient way to reduce pollutions. Maybe the companies would have installed the scrubbers anyway. Or, maybe they would have switched to the more expensive “clean” coal (coal with less sulfur dioxide, which was the real pollutant) from the cheaper “dirty” coal. We’ll never know. Senator Byrd’s amendment made sure of it.

The significance is that the dirty coal came from Senator Byrd’s home state of West Virginia while the clean coal came from the West. The result was that he protected the mining interests in his home state from competition by mandating that all utility
companies use the same pricey technology, incentivizing the utilities to use the cheaper, dirty coal at the expense of both consumers, who then had to pay more for their energy due to the scrubbers, and the producers of the clean coal in the West. If only Senator Byrd cared more for U.S. consumers, both those living in and out of West Virginia, than he does for favored lobbies.

Matt Hutchison
Atlanta, Georgia

I guess this is why he (and Ted Stevens, John Murtha, etc) keep getting elected. See this post about term limits. I'll admit I don't understand all the arguments against term limits, but this is a pretty good reason for them.

Term limits

WSJ Sunday Political Diary:

U.S. Term Limits president Philip Blumel mocks Mr. Obama's attitude as "utter nonsense." He notes that lobbyists derive their power and influence from careerist politicians, giving rise to the so-called "iron triangle" of power in Washington: career politicians, federal agency bureaucrats and lobbyists. The idea of term limits is to break up that symbiotic and corruptive pact.

The argument that elections are a form of term limits is the standard reply from the business-as-usual crowd in Washington. "As an incumbent," says Mr. Blumel, "Mr. Obama knows full well that members of Congress have now skewed the laws to give themselves a virtual guarantee of a lifetime job. And as the self-appointed apostle of change, he ought to be taking the lead to change all that inequity."

That was in response to this from Barack Obama:

"I'm generally not in favor of term limits. Nobody is term-limiting the lobbyists or the slick operators walking around the halls of Congress. I believe in one form of term limits. They're called elections."

That is very closely related to this letter of mine in the WSJ. Checked politicians, either voluntarily or involuntarily, is the only real check on lobbyists.

Tradeoffs

I submitted the following letters to the WSJ in response to this editorial:

I’m happy to hear about Barack Obama’s favoring of a stronger dollar (“Barack and the Buck”, Aug. 8). Unfortunately, I fear he’s only making a well-timed political move related to high gas prices (not unlike Republicans banging the “drill now” drum) he doesn’t intend to carry out. The question for both him and the Republicans should be: “Why are you supporting this now instead of months or years ago?”. In Senator Obama’s case, I imagine it has something to do with an attempt to strike a balance between decreasing the cost of oil and appealing to his manufacturing base.

Many of us learned a long time ago that as the value of the home currency falls relative to that of foreign currencies exports rise (which is exactly what has happened in the US, especially over the last year) and imports fall. The reason imports fall, for example, is because their prices, in dollar terms, increase (oil, anyone?). The flip side of that is what Obama is hoping undecided voters in the Rust Belt don’t fully grasp: when the dollar strengthens, exports fall and imports rise. The result, of course, is that the prices of foreign imports, like oil, and the number of manufacturing jobs available to American workers will both decrease. While I’d like to see both candidates take a strong dollar stance, I don’t think the mercantilist mentality running through the country will let that happen. So much for a good idea.

Matt Hutchison
Atlanta, Georgia

It's been too long

Way too long. Actually, I think it's been two or three months since I updated the song at the top of the blog. I could do several, but since I'm only going to put one there, I must choose. This song isn't actually by The White Stripes but by the Raconteurs, Jack White's other band. It's from their most recent album, Consolers of the Lonely (here for the album on imeem and here for it on Amazon), and is called Top Yourself.


Enjoy.

"Plenty of stupid"

That was how Don Boudreaux described his email this morning. I wish I could say that I disagreed with his assessment:

8 August 2008

Editor, The New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036

To the Editor:

Paul Krugman is confused ("Know-Nothing Politics," August 8). While I agree that Bush's attack on Iraq was both stupid and immoral, many of the reasons that persons on the left (such as Mr. Krugman) offer against military intervention abroad apply equally to "liberals'" case for government intervention domestically.

Just as many on the right naively fantasize that foreign problems are best solved by force, "liberals" fantasize that domestic problems - real and imaginary - are best solved by force. Jobs disappearing in Ohio? No problem - force Americans to buy fewer foreign goods. Too many Americans without health insurance? Force taxpayers to give it to them. The "distribution" of income doesn't satisfy some Very Caring Person's criterion? Government should forcibly redistribute. A mine collapses in West Virginia? Uncle Sam should force mine-owners to increase safety. See. All very simple.

Unlike Mr. Krugman, I believe that both political parties are the party of the stupid - specifically Republicans are the party of the stupid and the hypocritical and the Democrats are the party of the stupid and the arrogant.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

Who's going to build the ladder?

I don't like the analogy, but I played along. I sent the following letter to this editorial in the AJC describing how the government is building the ladder that will get the economy out of its current hole:

In his August 8 editorial (“Rung by rung out of the hole”), Andre Jackson got his metaphor backwards by implying that it is the government that will “get us out of the hole”. No amount of monetary tinkering or Congressional grandstanding to show they are “doing something” is going to build the ladder he’s describing, especially not in an economy as dynamic as is ours. Instead, elected officials and government bureaucrats can do no better than to keep the needed tools and supplies necessary to build said latter – stable money for consumers to spend and businesses to invest – in the hands of the private sector and kindly step aside. Only then can the economy truly return to its feet and get back to making the U.S. the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen, just like it has in every other economic crisis we’ve ever experienced.

Required contributions

Don Boudreaux:

7 August 2008

Director, Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis

Dear Sir or Madam:

I received your e-mail encouraging me to ask my representatives in Congress to vote for H.R. 6567, which would "increase federal research funding for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis."

Even though in March IPF stole the life of my dear mother, I cannot join your crusade for more taxpayer funding to fight this horrible disease. Congress does not conjure resources from thin air; any resources devoted to finding a cure for IPF must be taken from some other use - and there's no reason to suppose that Congress can judge better than private individuals how best to use resources. Who's to say that resources taken by government from the private sector to support IPF research would not yield even greater long-term benefits by being left in the private sector? Perhaps resources devoted to IPF research would otherwise have been used to cure
leukemia or to develop an automobile engine powered by water.

More importantly, being touched tragically by that disease gives me no moral claim to have Congress, in my name, take resources from other people. I can, and do, ask people to voluntarily fund IPF research. I cannot, and will not, support any effort to force them to do so.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030