False Choices

Blue Climate flags this New York Times article about a study from the economic research arm of management consultant giant McKinsey & Company, backing strong government standards on energy efficiency.

Blue Climate makes the common sense point that: "Energy efficiency is only part of the solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions but it is an important part."

But common sense eludes the NY Times, which inaccurately poses a false either-or choice:

The solution, the McKinsey report suggested, is more stringent product standards so that all new appliances are energy-efficient models.

Robert N. Stavins, an environmental economist at Harvard University, who has not seen the study, said he was skeptical about the size of the efficiency gains the McKinsey study projected. The notion that “massive free lunches in energy efficiency” will result from tweaking the market with new regulations and standards, he said, is misguided.

...

So some economists, like Mr. Stavins, say that putting a price on carbon — through a tax on carbon emissions or a pollution-trading system — is the preferred method to promote efficiency and curb global warming.

Sure, putting a cost on carbon pollution, with a cap-and-trade and/or a carbon tax system, is the most important thing to do. But that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't do other things.

Getting bogged down in an unnecessary debate between different good environmental ideas, distracts from the overriding debate between doing something sufficiently comprehensive to fight global warming, and effectively or literally doing nothing.

The Times inserted a he said-she said storyline where none needed to exist. We should not get caught up in it.

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