The Green Paradox: A Supply-Side Approach to Global Warming

Contents

Contents Preface xi 1 Why the Earth Is Getting Warmer 1 Just a tiny little bit 1 The greenhouse effect 3 Why it all comes down to carbon dioxide 6 Other greenhouse gases 9 The human influence 12 One more degree already 14 The past 800,000 years 17 Correlation and causality: A solvable puzzle 21 On to the North Pole 24 How warm will it get? 25 What is so bad about it? 29 2 Reshaping the World’s Energy Matrix 33 The first climate accords 33 The Kyoto Protocol 35 The climate sinners 38 The world’s energy matrix 40 “Green” electricity 44 The nuclear alternative 48 Storing fossil-fuel waste and nuclear waste 53 Space or waste? 61 How long will the fossil and nuclear fuels last? 65 Cheap and expensive ways to reduce the emission of CO2 70 The law of one price and the European emissions trading system 72 viii Contents Feed-in tariffs, instrumental goals, and European policy chaos 79 3 Table or Tank? 85 Capturing the sun 85 What is bioenergy? 88 “Green” gasoline 91 More than electricity 93 A dubious eco-balance sheet 96 The BtL hope 99 Slash and burn 100 One hectare for me! 102 Farmers to OPEC! 107 The Tortilla Crisis 113 The Ratchet Effect 115 A tale of carbon and man 117 4 The Neglected Supply Side 125 Reckoning without one’s host 125 The missing regulating screw 130 Supply and demand 132 How “green” policies shift the demand curve 136 Rembrandts vs. cars: The carbon supply 140 Carbon leakage: Grabbing from the collection box 143 Nature’s supply 148 How much stays in the air? 149 At the mercy of the sheikhs 157 What drives the resource owners? 159 Greed and sustainability 163 Nirvana ethics 165 Wrong expectations 166 The social norm 167 Why extracting more slowly makes the cake bigger 172 Why carbon deposits should not be sealed off 175 The fear of a coup 178 5 Fighting the Green Paradox 183 The impotence of politics 183 The Green Paradox 188 A bit of theory 192 Contents ix The Green Paradox and carbon leakage 196 Will production costs and replacement technologies stop extraction? 201 Temporary and permanent price changes 207 Paling green 208 Super-Kyoto 209 Leading by example? 213 Source taxes: A supply-side policy 216 Carbon tax terrors 220 More forests 227 Instruments and goals 229 Notes 235 Index 261 ...