11 August 2009

11 August 2009

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national ID card was being repackaged.

About This Year’s $2 Trillion Deficit: Don’t Worry, Be Happy! [Cato at Liberty]

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Stephen Brooks’ Response to Me, and Mine to Him [Cato at Liberty]

AUG 10, 2009 07:17P.M. Certainly the House leadership believes, along with Bobby McFerrin: “Don’t worry, be happy.” What else to make of the plan to spend $550 million on another eight planes to fly legislators and their families around the world?

AUG 10, 2009 04:08P.M. Guest-blogging for Stephen Walt last week, I offered some criticism of Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth’s book, World Out of Balance. Brooks has emailed to offer his response, which I post below with my reply.

Reports the Wall Street Journal: Bipartisan opposition is emerging in the Senate to a plan by House lawmakers to spend $550 million for additional passenger jets for senior government officials.The resistance to buying eight Gulfstream and Boeing planes comes as members of both chambers of Congress embark on the busiest month of the year for official overseas travel. The plan to upgrade the fleet of government jets, which was included in a broader defense-funding bill, has also sparked criticism from the Pentagon, which has said it doesn’t need half of the new jets.

Brooks writes: First, the concluding chapter of our book distinguishes between two forms of systemic activism that a leading state can pursue — the first one relies on the use of the military and the second (identified by Robert Gilpin) involves changing the structure of the global economy, international institutions, and standards of legitimacy. We favor a focus on the second approach to systemic activism (that is what our Foreign Affairs article is all about) and taking this route does not involve the deployment or use of military force. It is hard for me to see how undertaking this second form of systemic activism can contribute to imperial overstretch.

Well, what’s a few hundred million dollars among friends? I always say: “it’s only money.” In this case, “it’s only the taxpayers’ money,” which means that it doesn’t really count at all.

Second, our main point about the financial crisis does not concern the US policy response. Rather, the essential point is that the crisis does not change the fact that America’s lead over its competitors is very, very large and that relative power shifts slowly. Knowing that the US is so far ahead is sufficient for us to reach the conclusion that the US will long remain the sole superpower.

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PASS ID: National ID v3.0? [Cato at Liberty] AUG 10, 2009 06:33P.M. Michigan state representative Paul Opsommer (R) fits PASS ID into the overall national ID picture:

My response is as follows: Let me start by making clear that I think Brooks and Wohlforth have the better of the “is unipolarity ending?” argument. I also think they have the better of the argument about the likely implications of the financial crisis on the balance of power. Due to interdependence and a number of other factors, the United States will almost certainly emerge from the wreckage with its unipolar status intact.

As politicians, we see firsthand how often things are simply retooled, renamed and resubmitted. And in the case of REAL ID, which has its roots in failed attempts to implement AAMVA’s Driver’s License Agreement (DLA), it would not be the first time the concept behind a “one license, one record”

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11 August 2009

Rather, the point of my highlighting their argument that the long-term fiscal problems in the United States “can be fixed” was to observe that they seem quick to dismiss problems that may pose serious danger to America’s standing over the medium term. To my mind, the fiscal imbalances are significant, and don’t appear likely to be fixed any time soon.

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Second, Brooks adds that his and Wohlforth’s preferred systemic activism does not involve military activism, but rather a focus on “changing the structure of the global economy, international institutions, and standards of legitimacy.” On this point they cite Robert Gilpin. Gilpin did distinguish between three objects of foreign policy (physical/military control of territory, “influence over the behavior of other states,” and influence over the world economy), and acknowledged that economic control had increased in salience since the global economy developed. But he made clear that economic interests “cannot be easily isolated from the first two” types of objective. That is, the relative weight of the three may shift, but they remain tethered to one another.

AUG 10, 2009 03:17P.M.

GAO Finds that Trade Agreements Promote Trade [Cato at Liberty] The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report today that found that four trade agreements implemented during the Bush administration “have largely accomplished the U.S. objectives of achieving better access to markets and strengthening trade rules, and have resulted in increased trade.” That is a finding that will be controversial only to the most hardened opponents of trade liberalization. The GAO examined trade agreements with Jordan, Chile, Singapore, and Morocco, all enacted since 2001. Here’s the nut graph from the report:

To my mind, this fact can be seen in Brooks and Wohlforth’s proposal in Foreign Affairs to revise the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. While the authors present this as an institutional change, it would create laws that would need to be enforced. For the past couple decades, as a unipole, the United States has tasked itself with being the ultimate backstop against proliferation, with mixed results. At bottom, then, the question is who will enforce the law?

While varying in details, the FTAs have all eliminated import taxes, lowered obstacles to U.S. services such as banking, increased protection of U.S. intellectual property rights abroad, and strengthened rules to ensure government fairness and transparency. Overall merchandise trade between the United States and partner countries has substantially grown, with increases ranging from 42 percent to 259 percent. Services trade, foreign direct investment, and U.S. affiliate sales in the largest partners also rose.

The authors propose creating an institution to provide nuclear aspirants with LEU but precluding them from obtaining indigenous enrichment capabilities, and creating a new institution involving NATO allies, South Korea, Japan, and Australia to impose sanctions on the violators of this new regime. If recent experience is any indication, though, the countries listed do not believe it in their interests to impose tight economic sanctions, let alone military action, to stop proliferation. One wonders how the creation of a new institution would shift these countries’ willingness to impose binding constraints on proliferation.

No big news here. Trade agreements are supposed to promote more trade, and each one of these agreements has delivered on that central objective. They have delivered the “level playing field” between U.S. producers and those in the FTA countries that members of Congress are always demanding. And as we have amply documented through the years, more liberalized trade delivers faster growth, more consumer choice, better jobs, and higher living standards.

A primacy strategy that focuses on enhancing legitimacy and international institutions does not seem separable from military power—and the willingness to use it. If Brooks and Wohlforth’s position is that the systemic activism which they favor does not involve “the deployment or use of military force,” then that is a curious view indeed.

Opponents of trade have attempted to thwart such a straight-forward agenda by demanding that trade agreements become vehicles for enforcing more stringent labor and environmental standards in the partner countries. On this front, the GAO found that “FTA negotiations spurred some labor reforms in each of the selected partners, according to U.S. and partner officials, but progress has been uneven and U.S. engagement minimal.” Critics will interpret this as a failure, but it really shows the limitations of FTAs as a club for imposing our social standards on what are often less developed countries. After all, we are talking about internal regulations of sovereign countries. The real question is not whether every provision of these agreements has been fully enforced, but whether most people in the participating countries are better off than they would have been without the increased trade promoted by these agreements. As the GAO

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11 August 2009

report confirms, the answer is a clear, “Yes.”

more people than the attention-grabbing epidemic.

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Who knew this presumably important fact? The well-informed readers of Cato Unbound, that’s who. (Swine flu has killed 1,154 worldwide; since 2006, drug violence has killed more than ten thousand in Mexico alone.)

Up, Up and Away [Cato at Liberty]

This month’s lead essayist, former Mexican Foreign Secretary Jorge Castañeda, complains of “A U.S. War with Mexican Consequences.” He notes that we in the United States have a greater taste than Mexicans for both illegal drugs and prohibition. And we have a disturbing tendency to export the consequences of those tastes to Mexico. Without the United States, there would scarcely be a Mexican drug problem. Many policies offered as solutions aren’t working. In particular, militarization is a dangerous step that has worked out badly in other Latin American countries; a U.S. military presence would be politically unpopular and would not be tolerated in Mexico. Mexico pursuing drug decriminalization is just as unpopular in the United States; American governments have worked hard to keep decriminalization off the Mexican political agenda.

AUG 10, 2009 02:57P.M. The Wall Street Journal reports today that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has asked Congress to increase the statutory federal debt limit from its current $12.1 trillion. I don’t think that this will be the last such request from Geithner, given that the Obama administration’s budget includes the projection in this chart:

Journalist and Latin American affairs expert Stephanie Hanson of the Council on Foreign Relations responds that both countries should consider decriminalization of marijuana and possibly of harder drugs as well. It may be time, she suggests, to admit that prohibition isn’t working, at least as it’s been practiced so far. She points to experiments conducted in the Netherlands, Portugal, and — for those not as wellinformed — the experiment in the fictional Baltimore of The Wire, where decriminalization offered a measure of calm, albeit only for one episode. Another expert in the area, James Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, suggests otherwise. Drug decriminalization and/or legalization will also ruin lives and kill people, just as prohibition has done, except this time it will be done with the support of our governments. Rather than give in to the drug cartels, he recommends fighting them every step of the way. In any event, decriminalization is never going to succeed politically in the United States, so we’re better off with a vigorous, effective prohibition than a halfhearted one.

Nobody knows who will buy all this debt and what economic damage it will do. But federal policymakers seem hellbent on finding out as they continue their decade-long spending spree.

Tomorrow we’ll hear from Cato’s own Ted Galen Carpenter, an expert with yet another view of the situation. A discussion will follow over the next few weeks and, given the diversity of views, it will no doubt be an

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interesting one.

“Three Amigos” Meet, Drugs on the Agenda [“Cato at Liberty” Meet, Drugs on the Agenda] AUG 10, 2009 02:35P.M. The presidents of Mexico and the United States and the prime minister of Canada are meeting today in Guadalajara. One of the many things they’ll discuss will be cross-border drug trafficking and the violence that accompanies it. Although swine flu is making the headlines, most Americans probably don’t know that drug violence has killed many times

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11 August 2009

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‘Cash for Clunkers’ Is a Lemon [‘Cato at Liberty]

Bob Barr on National ID [Cato at Liberty]

AUG 10, 2009 02:13P.M.

AUG 10, 2009 01:33P.M.

Jerry Taylor and I published an op-ed criticizing the Cash for Clunkers program on Friday. We weren’t alone in our evaluation of the program.

On his AJC “Barr Code” blog, Bob Barr weighs in on the national ID debate, rejecting PASS ID just as much as REAL ID. Notably, he discusses how the immigration issue may bolster pro–national ID forces:

Two interesting critical analyses of the Cash for Clunkers program were published over the weekend. The first by New York Times reporter Matt Wald examines the energy savings that would result from the program. If a clunker traveling 12,000 miles at 16 miles per gallon (consuming 750 gallons per year) were traded in for a new car getting 25 mpg while traveling the same distance (480 gallons a year), the the trade-in would save the driver 270 gallons per year. Multiply that by the roughly 245,000 vehicles that had been traded in under the program as of last Friday, before Congress extended the program, and you get 1.6 million barrels saved each year. That sounds great until you realize it’s only about two hours’ worth of our daily consumption, which is about 18.6 million barrels per day so far in 2009. But the savings is probably much less than that because old cars are not driven 12,000 miles per year.

Not content with relying on PASS ID to secure sufficient support where its predecessor failed, some in the Congress — most notably Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) — are using fear of illegal immigration as another vehicle by which to mandate a national, biometricidentification card that would be required before any person could secure employment. Clearly, those relishing the creation of some form of national identification card and the national database on which it would rest, will themselves not rest until they have realized their dream. Those of us opposed to such a travesty, likewise must not let up.

The second critical analysis, examining the program’s effect on carbon emissions, appeared as a figure in the Outlook section of this weekend’s Washington Post. Over 10 years, the new cars will reduce emissions by 7 million metric tons, which is about 0.04% of the 16 billion metric tons that U.S. cars will produce over that time. That is, taxpayers will pay $147 per ton of CO2 reduction ($1.03 billion dollars divided by 7 million tons). In comparison, the economic literature estimates that the cost of the marginal damages of carbon emissions is between $15

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Monday’s Daily News [The Club for Growth] AUG 10, 2009 11:35A.M. THE DAILY NEWS The Specter of Unlimited Liability - Wall Street Journal Editorial Ten Questions Politicians Won’t Answer - Sen. Tom Coburn, National Review House Dems Set Up Healthcare ‘War Room’ Jared Allen, The Hill Who Is Lying About Healthcare? - Andrew Biggs, American.com Stalling On Trade - IBD Editorial A Better Umpire for Corporate Pay - Amity Shlaes, Washington Post Fed Does Not Need More Powers - John Taylor, FT.com Tort Reform More Urgent Than Ever - Waterbury Rep-Am Editorial Do You Have a Permit, Kid? - John Stossel, ABC News Canada Questions “Buy American” - Ian Austen, New

and$50 per ton (see, e.g., this and this).

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President Obama to Address Trade Barriers at North American Summit [Americans for Tax Reform]

York Times Cubs 5, Rockies 11 - Associated Press

AUG 10, 2009 02:04P.M. Today, President Barack Obama, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper are attending a summit held in Mexico to address obstacles facing North America. One of...

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11 August 2009

Book to find some opportunities for savings.

Un-American Political Terrorists? [The Club for Growth]

But as usual, state governments spend with abandon while the money rolls in, and then when the lean years hit, they declare that they’ll need more money to teach math and fix the roads. It’s called the Washington Monument Syndrome — never cut the waste, the fat, the golf courses, the layers of bureaucracy, the fringes, the frills; threaten to cut the most basic or traditional or popular functions of government in order to pressure the voters to go along with a tax increase. Journalists shouldn’t play along.

AUG 10, 2009 10:13A.M. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are saying some of the protests are “unAmerican.” Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN)is calling them “political terrorists.” That kind of name-calling isn’t a good strategy to pass health care

Meanwhile, the Post’s Outlook section fronts a column by economist Gregory Clark declaring that we need to

reform.

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Specifically, he says, there will be no jobs for the stupid people in the new dynamic economy, so those of us with jobs are going to have to be taxed to the bone to support a huge class of nonworkers — or face revolution, I suppose. Which is even worse than congested highways.

Tax Tax Tax at the Washington Post [Cato at Liberty] AUG 10, 2009 09:49A.M.

Other Post writers have joined the tax-hike chorus recently: Steven Pearlstein, “Health Reform Threatened by Conservatives’ Anti-Tax Fantasy“; constant editorials on “the transportation funding problem”; Ruth Marcus on Obama’s need to display “political courage” by raising taxes so he can keep on spending; etc.

A banner headline at the top of the Washington Post Sunday Metro section reads It’s Time for Deeds to Step Up to the Plate on a Tax Increase

Alas, it is a constant frustration to the Post that, as Gregory Clark puts it, “The United States was founded, essentially, on resistance to taxes, and to this day, an aversion to the grasping hand of the state seems

Columnist Robert McCartney, for years the top editor of the Metro section, says that Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee should “Propose to raise taxes to fix the roads. Yes, you read that correctly. Raise taxes.”

fundamental to the American psyche.”

No doubt a lot of Republicans are hoping that Deeds will take the Post’s advice.

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The Fever Swamps of Paranoia [Cato at Liberty]

McCartney goes on to say that taxes must go up because (in bold) “The public sector needs to expand.” Because, you see, the infrastructure is failing in Virginia and also in D.C., and “Virginia’s roads clearly require extra revenue.”

AUG 10, 2009 08:45A.M. The “birthers” are no longer the most paranoid set of nutcases in town. Take for example this conspiracy uncovered by New York Times columnist Frank Rich: 1) Among the groups urging Obamacare opponents to protest at congressional town halls is FreedomWorks; 2) The chairman of FreedomWorks (a position not involved in day-to-day operation of the organization) is former House Minority Leader Dick Armey; 3) Dick Armey is also employed as a lobbyist for DLA Piper, a DC law firm; 4) Among DLA Piper’s clients have been pharmaceutical companies.

Well, let’s see. Virginia’s state budget doubled between 1996 and 2006, from $17 billion to $34 billion. And the governor’s office estimated last December that the state would spend $37 billion in 2009 and $37.6 billion in 2010. Thanks to the recession, and to the state’s habit of spending during good years as if the party would never end, those numbers may drop slightly. But even with the current shortfalls, the budget’s gone up by $20 billion in the past 14 years, and they can’t find enough to fix the roads? What have they spent that extra $20 billion on? Do Mr. McCartney, Mr. Deeds, and other tax-hikers ever think about prioritizing state spending? The Virginians who call themselves the Tertium Quids do. They urge the legislators to review the recommendations of the Wilder Commission and the Virginia Piglet

Got it? Connect the dots? True, it is a bit confusing that the pharmaceutical companies are actually supporting the president’s health care plan. In fact, they’ve even run

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television ads urging Congress to pass it. But that just shows how devious they are.

11 August 2009

reference to the deaths of several detainees at Kahrizak detention center in southwestern Tehran.

And today, House Speaker Nancy Peolosi writes in USA Today that is

It is frustrating to have to stand by as such human rights abuses occur, but that is almost always the case irrespective of the country. There usually is little that Washington can do. So it is in Iran. Absent initiating war, the U.S. government — which already has imposed economic sanctions against Tehran in response to its nuclear program — has no good options.

“un-American” to tell “lies” about the healthy care bill. This comes only days after she discovered that anti-Obamacare protestors carried Swastikas. Its only a matter of time until they uncover the truth: a secret Neo-Nazi anti-Obamacare cabal in Buenos Aires.

Ultimately, the Iranian people, who appear to be increasingly restive under an ever more repressive system (which these days looks more purely authoritarian and less genuinely Islamic), will have to force reform. The sooner they succeed, the better for them and believers in

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liberty around the globe.

Iranian Show Trials Continue — As Divisions Within Regime Grow [Cato at Liberty— As Divisions Within Regime Grow]

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Do Industrialized Countries Have a Responsibility for the Well-Being of Developing Nations? [Cato at Liberty]

AUG 10, 2009 08:41A.M. The news out of Iran continues to be bad, as show trials continue, with Stalinesque confessions. However, protests are rising over torture and other abuse of prisoners.

AUG 10, 2009 08:38A.M. Reports the New York Times: Conor Clarke’s second comment at The Atlantic blog on the study, “What to Do About Climate Change,” was that:

A top judiciary official acknowledged Saturday that some detainees arrested after post-election protests had been tortured in Iranian prisons, the first such acknowledgment by a senior Iranian official.

Goklany’s estimates are based on global aggregates that hide the unequal distribution of the climate change burden. Yes yes, I know Manzi will say that’s not decisive: As long as global GDP is higher, we can redistribute our way out of the problem more effectively tomorrow than we can today. I would be more comfortable with that debate if I thought vast international restributions of income in the name of global equity were more likely tomorrow than they are today.

Meanwhile, a second day of hearings was held in a mass trial of reformers and election protesters, with more than 100 people accused of trying to topple the government. The accused included a French researcher and employees of the French and British Embassies, prompting angry responses from Britain, France and the European Union.

RESPONSE: But even as the trial appeared to further the campaign by the hard-line establishment to intimidate and silence the opposition, at the expense of alienating Iranian moderates and the West, the statement on torture by the judiciary official, Iran’s prosecutor general, revealed continued divisions within the government.

Global greenhouse gas controls will also have uneven consequences. First, cost of controls will vary from country to country, and sector to sector. Second, because the impacts of climate change will also vary from area to area, the benefits of control will necessarily be uneven. They will also vary over time. In fact, for some sectors, some areas may benefit even under the IPCC’s warmest scenario, at least through the foreseeable future. For example, through at least 2085, climate change would increase the global population at risk of water stress (see Figure 2, here). Therefore controlling climate change would exacerbate the global population at risk of water stress. So both the costs and benefits of climate change controls will also be distributed unevenly. Third, as noted here, implementing climate change controls that go beyond no-regret

Speaking to reporters at a news conference, Qorbanali DoriNajafabadi, the prosecutor general, said “mistakes” had led to a few “painful accidents which cannot be defended, and those who were involved should be punished.” Such mistakes, he said, included “the Kahrizak incident,” a

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actions requires that today’s poorer generations delay solving the real problems they face here and now and instead put resources into solving the hypothetical problems that may (or may not) confront tomorrow’s far wealthier — and technologically better-endowed — populations. Nothing equitable about that.

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impacts were they to be manifested. Although Conor is probably correct in suggesting that politicians rarely undertake any ethical calculus in arriving at their decisions, many have nevertheless asserted that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a moral imperative. See, e.g., here. But what is the basis for this claim?

Conor Clarke’s third comment was: These claims are never accompanied by any analysis that compares the magnitude and urgency of climate change versus other problems that humanity faces today or in the foreseeable future. The only such comparative analyses that have been undertaken are those done as part of Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus exercise and my Cato paper [and their prior versions, see, e.g., “Potential Consequences of Increasing Atmospheric CO2 Concentration Compared to Other Environmental Problems.” Technology 7S (2000): 189-213 and Copenhagen Consensus 2004.]. And these provide no support for the oft-repeated but unsubstantiated claim that climate change is a moral imperative given the many other real problems that exist today.

… I’m suspicious of the ethical calculus that says we should not focus on one large global problem because larger global problems might exist. [Emphasis in the original.] That kind of moral math rarely corresponds to the political reality. (Do you think the average congressperson opposed to Waxman-Markey has trouble sleeping at night over new cases of malaria or global hunger?) Nor does it correspond to the historical responsibility: Industrialized nations are more responsible for the global problems created by climate change than the problems of population growth.

Finally, Conor raises the issue of historical responsibility of industrialized nations for global warming. As Henry Shue, an Oxford ethicist, notes, “Calls for historical responsibility in the context of climate change are mainly calls for the acceptance of accountability for the full consequences of industrialization that relied on fossil fuels.” [Emphasis added.] But a fundamental premise behind these calls is that the “full consequences of industrialization” are negative. This is one more unsubstantiated claim.

RESPONSE: I am puzzled as to why Conor suggests we should focus on one large global problem — presumably climate change — when larger global problems might exist. Why should we focus on any problem when other larger ones are unresolved? Nevertheless, Conor is correct, political decisions are rarely based on ethical calculus — the more’s the pity.

In fact, by virtually any objective measure of human well-being — e.g., life expectancy; infant, child and maternal mortality; prevalence of hunger and malnutrition; child labor; job opportunities for women; educational attainment; income — humanity is far better off today that it was before the start of industrialization, due to the cycle of progress and economic surpluses fueled for the most part by fossil fuels. In addition, hunger and child labor are as low — and job opportunities for women as high — as they are today partly due to the direct effect of fossil fuel powered labor saving technology. This is clearly true for industrialized countries. Figure 1 shows that life expectancy — perhaps the single most important indicator of human well-being — increased for the U.S through the 20th century, even as CO2 emissions, population, affluence, and material, metals, and organic chemical use increased. Matters have also improved in developing countries. And global life expectancy increased from 31 years in 1900 to 47 years in the early 1950s to 69 years today.

In any case, my paper doesn’t advocate twiddling our thumbs when it comes to climate change. Yes, it doesn’t advocate aggressive action (going beyond no-regret actions) to control climate change in the near to medium term. Instead it focuses on increasing adaptive capacity, technological prowess, and sustainable economic development which would enable society to respond to whatever problems it may face in the future, including climate change. As the paper shows, aggressive mitigation would not be the best approach to advance human well-being and deal with today’s urgent problems while advancing the ability to address tomorrow’s problems (see Table 5, here). Specifically, it would reduce vulnerability to today’s urgent climatesensitive problems — e.g., malaria, hunger, water stress, flooding, and other extreme events — that might be exacerbated by climate change. Second, it would strengthen or develop the institutions needed to advance and/or reduce barriers to economic growth, human capital, and the propensity for technological change. Together, these two elements would improve both adaptive and mitigative capacities, as well as the prospects for sustainable economic development. Third, my paper advocates implementing no-regret mitigation measures now, while expanding future no-regret options through research and development of mitigation technologies. Fourth, it would let the market pick winners and losers among the various no-regret options. Fifth, it would continue research into the science, impacts and policies related to climate change, and monitoring of impacts to provide early warning of any “dangerous”

Notably, much of the improvement of human well-being in developing countries is due to the transfer of technology (including knowledge) from industrialized countries to developing countries. Moreover, a substantial share of the income of many developing countries comes directly or indirectly from trade, tourism, aid, and remittances from industrialized countries. Consequently, developing countries are far ahead of today’s industrialized countries at equivalent levels of economic development. For instance, as noted here (pp. 20-21):

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in 2006, when GDP per capita for low income countries in PPP-adjusted terms was $1,327, their life expectancy was 60.4 years, a level that the U.S. first reached in 1921, when its GDP per capita was $5,300. Surprisingly even Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s developmental laggard, is today ahead of where the U.S. used to be. In 2006, its per capita GDP was at the same level as the U.S. in 1820 but the U.S. did not reach Sub-Saharan Africa’s current infant mortality level until 1917 when, and life expectancy until 1902, by which time the U.S. was far wealthier. [All GDP figures are in terms of real 1990 dollars, adjusted for purchasing power.] Thus, empirical data do not support the underlying premise that industrialization of today’s developed countries has caused net harm to developing countries. So what is it that industrialized countries have a “historical responsibility” for? For the diffusion of knowledge and technology that they developed and which helped developing countries improve their well-being, and for helping increase incomes in the latter through trade, aid, remittances, and tourism? As noted at Reason on-line: “Who knows, in accounting for both benefits and damages [associated with greenhouse gas emissions], Bangladesh would not end up owing the United States!”

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