Law – Page 33 – a sibilant intake of breath

How not to use feed-in tariffs

As I mentioned when expressing doubt about Bloom Boxes, many environmentalists assume that distributed generation of electricity is inherently preferable to large-scale generation and transmission. As I have argued in the past, there are good reasons to argue the converse. Micro wind turbines are especially dubious, given that the energy output from turbines increases with the diameter of the blades. Those little rooftop turbines some people install just don’t make sense, unless they live in very remote and windy areas. In a place as northern and cloudy as Britain, home solar photovoltaic arrays may make even less sense, especially if investments in more cost-effective options like improving efficiency of energy use have not yet been made. Saving many kilowatt-hours a day through better insulation beats producing a trickle of electricity, especially given that it is less costly.

In a recent essay, George Monbiot argues that feed-in tariffs for small scale renewables are regressive and a waste of money:

[The government] expects this scheme to save 7m tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020(5). Assuming, generously, that the rate of installation keeps accelerating, this suggests a saving of around 20m tonnes of CO2 by 2030. The estimated price by then is £8.6bn. This means it’ll cost around £430 to save one tonne of carbon dioxide.

Indeed, if the government is going to provide feed-in tariffs for renewable projects, they must be the sort that can actually make a difference: multi-megawatt run-of-river hydro projects, concentrating solar stations that can put out baseload power, and the like. If the government wants a sound climate policy for homes, it should be tightening building standards, encouraging retrofits, and the like.

BoingBoing stands up to a SLAPP

It’s nice to see the initiators of a frivolous or abusive lawsuit get their comeuppance. In this case, I am referring to the failed attempt by MagicJack to silence criticism through a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) against BoingBoing and blogger Rob Beschizza. Too often, faced by the high costs of going to court and the danger of losing, people who had been legitimately expressing an honestly held opinion (often one protected by constitutional law) are bullied into withdrawing their statement, or even paying a settlement. This is a particular danger in states that have terrible libel laws, like the United Kingdom. It is sad but understandable when firms take the safe course – such as when SuicideGirls when through their bout of unprovoked self-censorship. When someone has the guts to fight back, they deserve public recognition and support.

As such, kudos to BoingBoing and Mr. Beschizza. The $50,000 in legal costs they recovered aren’t enough for them to break even, but their example may have public value in deterring some future SLAPPs. There are strong positive externalities that result when organizations like BoingBoing take the courageous course and succeed. Such outcomes help to remind others that free expression is a vital aspect of free and democratic societies, and that attempts to suppress it through legal threats are inappropriate and anti-democratic. They also make it clear to potential filers of SLAPPs that they may end up with even more public embarrassment at the end of the process than they started out with.

Put crosswalks between intersections

The other day, I was crossing the street in the middle of the block, listening to a small voice of conscience chiding me for the ‘dangerous’ act. Then I realized that I had actually chosen to walk partway up the block, rather than using the crosswalk, and that my primary reason for doing so was my own safety.

Intersections try to combine two purposes that mesh poorly: allowing pedestrians to cross roads and allowing drivers and cyclists to make turns. It is obvious that these two goals conflict. People crossing the street don’t want vehicles passing through their area of travel – especially vehicles that move in unexpected directions and at unpredictable speeds. Cars making left-hand and right-hand turns tend to do both.

Perhaps it makes sense to divide these two purposes, then. Put stoplights in the middle of blocks and let pedestrians cross there, leaving intersections exclusively for turning. It might slow down the flow of traffic a bit, but I am actually in favour of moves to make driving less convenient in cities. It would make life safer for pedestrians, by making the crosswalk unambiguously their space when the light is in their favour, and the slowdowns caused by the potential lights would be partially made up for by freeing drivers from having to worry about pedestrians when making turns.

Sure, it would be better to reserve city centres entirely for people on foot, bicycles, and public transit vehicles. This plan is less radical, won’t generate the same outrage from big box stores, and may well save some lives.

When a cap-and-trade system stops biting

The relative merits of cap-and-trade versus a carbon tax for pricing carbon have been discussed here before. One characteristic that was not mentioned, and which is a blow against cap-and-trade, has to do with incentives to go beyond the minimum. Specifically, when the government sets a cap and auctions permits, you can be pretty sure the actual level of emissions will not fall lower than the cap. If it did, the market price for permits would plummet and people would rush in to buy the right to pollute.

A carbon tax wouldn’t have this problem, since people would be paying for every tonne of emissions, regardless of where the whole country was relative to the target. Also, a cap-and-trade system could probably be designed in a way that eliminates or eliminates this problem. For instance, the government could mandate a price floor, below which point permits are automatically withdrawn from sale.

Personally, I think it is possible to design either system well. It would also be possible to use an alternative cap-and-dividend or fee-and-dividend system, with automatic recycling of revenues. The key thing is to put a price on carbon domestically, and do so in a way that can eventually be integrated with systems elsewhere. By itself, carbon pricing won’t be enough. The volume of coal and unconventional fossil fuels out there makes them too dangerous to allow continued growing use. Before carbon prices, I would be happier to see both developed and developing states adopt moratoriums on new coal-fired facilities, except perhaps those that actually capture and store the great majority of their greenhouse gas emissions.

Another shot at shutting down InSite

Disappointingly, the federal government is going to the Supreme Court to try to shut down InSite – Vancouver’s safe injection site (mentioned here before). It seems astonishing to me that any government would want to emulate the hard anti-drug stance embraced in the United States, given the extent to which drug prohibition has wrecked their justice system. It defies both evidence and logic to suggest that the proper response to drug use is to lock up the people doing it.

Here’s hoping the Supreme Court rules that facilities of this sort are permissible, given the proven success of harm reduction programs in diminishing the negative effects of drug addiction. Giving InSite a clear legal mandate to exist could encourage the emergence of similar programs in other areas where drug problems are a major concern.

[Update: 10 February 2010] There is a good post about InSite and the Conservative government over on Knitnut: Ideology trumps evidence: Conservative drug policy.

My fantasy climate change policy

Even once you have reached agreement that there must be a cost associated with dumping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, there are countless ways in which you can choose to do so. Many different instruments could be combined in many different ways.

Some argue that the simplest policy that corrects for the market failure is the best. I think there are multiple interlinked market failures, which require multiple policies to correct them.

If I had the power to dictate a climate policy for a developed state, it would look something like this:

1) Ban coal

Coal has no place in our energy future, given the terrible climatic effects that would result from burning the world’s massive reserves of the stuff. As such, no new coal-fired facilities should be allowed. Existing facilities should be subjected to the same carbon pricing mechanism as the rest of the economy, with no refunds, exemptions, or special treatment.

If someone wants to build a coal-fired facility that captures and stores its greenhouse gas emissions, they can be free to do so, provided:

The firm pays the full cost for the equipment;
They demonstrate that the technology is safe and environmentally effective;
They continue to pay the market price for any greenhouse gas emissions not captured.

In practical terms, the demand for subsidies may be impossible to resist. At the very least, they should be directed towards research and demonstration projects, not towards commercial ventures.

2) Set a hard cap

This could be done in either of two ways. You could calculate the quantity of emissions likely to be produced by burning a unit of any particular fuel, then cap how much can be extracted or imported. Alternatively, you could require permits for the emission of greenhouse gases and only sell a set number.

Some intermediate system could also be possible: with fuels capped upstream and certain emission-generating activities capped at the point of emission (such as cement production). The important thing is that the cap should include all activities that occur within a country, and which lead to greenhouse gas emissions. This would also include things like land use changes, as well as the emissions embedded in imports. The latter should be addressed with a carbon tariff applied at the border. This could be waived in the case of imports from states that have robust carbon pricing systems of their own.

To get the level for the cap, you would start by choosing an overall temperature target (such as keeping the increase to less than 2°C), then work out a fair way to distribute the global cap that generates between nations. Some kind of contraction and convergence approach would likely be the most fair, with emissions in rich states falling soonest and fastest, but with everyone eventually reaching carbon neutrality.

3) Auction all permits

The revenue from the production/import/emission permits should be used in several ways. Firstly, some should be recycled back to taxpayers. In the event that refunds are granted for children, the level of the benefit should be capped at two per family, as an incentive to constrain population growth in emissions-intensive societies.

Some of the income should be used for basic research into low-carbon technologies, including renewable forms of energy, air capture of greenhouse gases, etc. Some could also be used for feed-in tariffs, to encourage the deployment of zero-carbon forms of energy.

4) Establish rising floor prices for transportation fuels

Fossil fuels were never going to last forever, and volatility in their prices leads to inefficiency and other problems.

As such, the government should set minimum prices for transportation fuels including diesel and gasoline. These should rise predictably over time. In the event that market prices are above the minimum, market prices would prevail. If those fall below the mandated minimum, the government would collect the difference.

The funds that accumulated would go into a fund from which payments would be made to all citizens, without ever drawing down the principle. That way, future generations will benefit from the bounty of fossil fuels, even if they live long after we’ve stopped using them.

5) Coordinate with other policies

Even all together, these approaches might not be sufficient to drive society aggressively in the direction of carbon neutrality. They could be supplemented with additional policies, as the effect of those already enacted becomes clearer. Also, the rate at which the overall cap is tightened could be increased or decreased, as necessitated by improved understanding of climate science or economics. Other policies and incentive schemes may well be necessary to ensure that the costs of complying with the declining cap do not become excessive. These would include support for research and international cooperation on zero-carbon energy projects.

Other existing policies that promote high emissions should be scrapped, such as subsidies to fossil fuel producers or emissions-intensive industries. Climate change must also be taken into account when making policy in areas like urban and transportation planning.

It would also be appropriate to participate in international efforts in areas like climate change adaptation and preventing deforestation.

Pro-photography protest in London

Yesterday’s pro-photography protest in London was rather encouraging. Amateur and professional photographers came together to protest the restrictions and harassment of photographers that has developed in response to concerns about terrorism. The protest follows a European Court of Human Rights ruling that police don’t have the right to indiscriminately search people, just because they are taking photos. The “I’m a photographer, not a terrorist” campaign has objected specifically to police using Section 44 of the UK’s Terrorism Act to harass photographers. High-profile recent incidents include “7 armed police detaining an award winning architectural photographer in the City of London, the arrest of a press photographer covering campaigning santas at City Airport and the stop and search of a BBC photographer at St Paul’s Cathedral and many others.”

In addition to creating art and a historical record, photography has an important role to play in keeping security entities accountable for their actions. As I have said before, photography is an important mechanism for maintaining oversight over the police and private security forces. Restrictions on photograpy allow for power to be used with less oversight, probably leading to more incidents of abuse and fewer cases in which abusers are punished. Indeed, it has been shown repeatedly that only photo or video evidence is sufficient to produce convictions for police brutality. In short, restricting photography makes us less safe.

Both casual photographers and those with a more substantial connection to the practice should be aware of their rights as photographers, and be willing to stand up when people try to bully them out of taking pictures. The British campaign has produced a pocket sized card outlining what rights individuals have when stopped by a police officer. I have been meaning to print off and laminate a card with the relevant sections of Canadian law, for use next time someone insists that taking photos in public spaces is forbidden.

CES Franks on democracy in Canada

CES Franks, of Queen’s University, has written an interesting essay describing the state of parliamentary democracy in Canada: “The Functioning of the Present-Day Canadian House of Commons: a paper prepared for the conference in honour of Peter Aucoin.” It focuses to a considerable extent on the reality of minority governments in Canada today, though also considers broader factors and long-term trends. For instance, the number of days per year in which Parliament is sitting has fallen by a third since the 1950s and the proportion of government bills eventually receiving Royal Assent has fallen from over 90% to just over 50%.

Franks also highlights the drift towards a bigger role for the provinces, with fewer national strategies and initiatives:

[M]y findings leave me with a sense of slight unease, and I am prepared to argue that the role of Parliament has diminished in recent decades and is continuing to diminish, to the detriment of good government in Canada. Further, much of the reason for this diminished role does not lie in the fact that we now have a Pizza Parliament with four parties and a likelihood of continuing minority parliaments. The causes lie elsewhere, and many are beyond the control of Parliament and government. They lie in fundamental changes in recent decades in the political economy of the Canadian Federation, in the increasing role of provincial governments as compared to the federal government, and in the unwillingness, rightly or wrongly, for better or worse, of recent federal governments to establish national programmes, policies, and national standards for the services Canadians expect from their governments.

In some ways, wider variation between the provinces doesn’t seem problematic. After all, there is nothing objectionable about populations with different perspectives being governed under differing rules, selected through democratic processes in which they participate. At the same time, there does seem to be reason for concern about the possible diminishing of the entity that is Canada. For one thing, there are major cross-cutting challenges that all provinces need to address, and it makes sense to do so in a cooperative way. For another, the temptations to make policy with only an eye turned towards the short-term consequences might be even greater for individual regions than they are for the confederation as a whole.

The full Word document is online, and linked from the Macleans website.

Carbon taxes v. cap-and-trade

Among advocates of carbon pricing, there is a long-running disagreement about whether a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system is preferable. Among economists and environmentalists, there is generally a preference for a carbon tax. Politicians terrified of the electoral implications of creating a new ‘tax’ tend to favour cap-and-trade schemes (partly, because it is easy to give away permits to influential industries under such a scheme).

Economists frequently argue that the trade-off is between price and emissions certainty. With a tax, you know exactly how much more any particular carbon-intensive activity will cost, making planning easier. With a hard cap, you know exactly what your emissions will be. With a tax, you can try to tweak the level to get the emissions volume you want, but you can never be entirely sure. Conversely, a cap assures the emissions outcome selected, but does so at a cost that cannot be known in advance.

A recent letter to The Economist does a good job of laying out some of the advantages of a cap-and-trade approach, arguing that economists and environmentalists have been too eager in throwing their support behind a tax:

First, a “one size fits all” tax requires an impossible calculation of the average cost of reducing emissions over a given period of time. Compare this with an emissions-trading system that works on the free-floating marginal cost of abating emissions. Second, carbon taxes would be levied locally and so impossible to properly administer on a global scale. A global carbon-market price is perfectly pervasive. And third, taxation cannot guarantee a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions; emitters could opt to pay the tax and continue emitting at will. Conversely, a cap-and-trade solution introduces a carbon ceiling and the price acts as no more than a useful barometer of how close we are to achieving that goal; prices will tend to zero as the requisite level of emission reductions is achieved.

Personally, I think the choice of instrument is less important than the level of genuine political will, reflected in the care taken in regulatory design. Either approach can be set up in a dodgy way, intended to produce the impression of action without actually constraining carbon emissions effectively. A well-designed tax is better than a cap-and-trade system full of giveaways and dodgy offsets. A well-designed cap-and-trade scheme is better than a tax that is too low to be effective, or one where exemptions and rebates undermine the incentive effect. Those concerned about climate change should be willing to support either policy approach, while being energetic in ensuring that the system that is ultimately designed is a fair and effective one where polluters pay for the cost of their damaging activities and the long path to carbon neutrality is started upon.

Crush the Cell

Michael Sheenan’s Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism Without Terrorizing Ourselves covers ground that overlaps with that of Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent and Securing the City. Namely, the history of Al Qaeda in relation to the United States, and the question of what sort of policies the United States should adopt in response to terrorism. Sheehan brings an insider’s perspective, having served as New York’s Deputy Commissioner for counterterrorism. While Sheehan provides a lot of information and tries to argue a few key points, the book succeeds more as a source of raw information than as a source of analysis. In particular, Sheehan fails to fully justify his views that Al Qaeda will fizzle out in a few decades, and fails to provide a comparative justification for why targeting cells is the most effective way of undermining terrorist plots while avoiding unwanted secondary effects.

Sheehan covers a number of important and interesting topics: methods for counterterrorism, intelligence, and law enforcement; the (limited) competence of Al Qaeda operatives; the risks that arise then officials practice ‘cover your ass’ security; the significance of weapons of mass destruction; torture and human rights; and the importance of not granting terrorists the psychological advantages that arise when we allow ourselves to be terrorized. In the last of those, he echoes a point well-made by Bruce Schneier. Sheehan also provides an insider’s perspective on the controversial rebuilding of the former World Trade Center site, including why construction has been so slow to begin.

Among the three books I have recently read on this subject, Securing the City probably provides the most insight into effective counterterrorism strategies developed and deployed in New York, while Ghost may be the most compelling personal account (though one lacking in balance). Crush the Cell occupies a middle territory – worth reading for those who want even more details and examples than they have found from other sources, but probably not essential reading for those only moderately interested in the subject.