A bad argument against protecting polar bears

Last week, US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced that they are considering listing polar bears (Ursus maritimus) as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The department argues that the bears are threatened by declining sea ice, an impact of accelerated climate change in the Arctic. While their report has received mostly positive press, I have come across a common criticism that I would like to address. Critics claim that polar bears are not threatened by global warming because their current population (20-25000 spread over 19 subpopulations) is far greater than their ‘historic’ population (~5000 in the 1950’s). How could polar bears be threatened? Assuming both population estimates are correct (I believe they are), does this argument hold any water? Of course not. The intellectual dishonesty or sheer stupidity of anyone who maintains this reasoning is astounding.

Polar bears populations in the 1950’s were driven to low levels by hunting, which has been banned in the US (with the exception of native peoples*), allowing the population to rebound. However, in a species that is ~200,000 years old, the population dynamics of the past 50 years can hardly be considered historic. A proper benchmark is not the population of the 1950’s, but rather 1950 BCE!

Scientists may never know the historic population of polar bears before human intrusion, but that is actually irrelevant to the current debate. The USFWS contends that the polar bear is threatened today because global warming is causing arctic sea ice to melt, a demonstrable fact. They buttress their argument with data from polar bear surveys indicating that adult weight and cub survivorship have decreased concurrently with declining sea ice. Whether there were five thousand, five, or five million polar bears in 1950, that global warming is threatening polar bears today might still be true, as I believe it is.

To drive this point home (and get in a jab at Fox News), let me draw an analogy. I originally came across the anti-polar bear argument while watching The Big Story on Fox News, hosted by the insipid John Gibson. John Gibson has also written a book called The War on Christmas, which I haven’t read, that argues secular liberals are trying to take religion out of the holidays. By Gibson’s own logic, I could argue that the number of Christians celebrating Christmas in America is higher today than it was in the 1950’s. How could it possibly be the case that secularists are threatening Christmas? As with Gibson’s own argument, mine is a complete non sequitur, as the number of Christians in the 1950’s has absolutely nothing to do with the current “war” on Christmas.

John Gibson and his ilk are ideologues who realize that the average American, to whom they have no problem pandering their own brand of emotion laden nonsense, may see the plight of the charismatic polar bear as a convincing reason to take action on global climate change. I personally find many other cases than the polar bear more compelling reasons to mitigate climate change, but far be it for me to tell people how they should value nature. In any case, I can sympathize with the polar bears right now. Europe is experiencing an unusually warm winter, which has caused half of my study plants to begin flowering in January. Instead of a leisurely winter work schedule, I am outside from dawn until dusk bent over tiny plants. Maybe this would make for a good human-interest story on the adverse affects of climate change. Any takers?

* Native peoples may in fact not being doing enough polar bear hunting to cause any harm, but I find this to be an unwarranted exception in name of cultural relativism. As with female genial mutilation, there are some cultural practices that are simply beyond the pale of contemporary morality, and I find hunting polar bears to be one of them. As we ask the rest of our citizens to desist from hunting threatened species, so should we of native peoples.

Jagdish Bhagwati on Globalization

I recently finished Columbia economist Jagdish Bhagwati's book In Denfense of Globalization, in which he argues that global economic integration (free trade, foreign direct investment, and free movement of capital) alleviates poverty, reduces global inequality, enhances rights, and does not harm, and may actually improve, environmental quality. I won't review the book because it's time consuming, and I have addressed some related ideas in a previous post. I will briefly summarize his points on globalization and the environment, but mostly I wanted to share a passage that caught my attention.

On globalization and the environment, Bhagwati argues:

1. Multinationals generally have higher, not lower, environmental standards compared to their domestic counterparts. Firms do not generally have vastly different modes of production from country to country. Consequently, if a firm has factories in six countries with varying environmental standards, all six tend to resemble the factory located in the country with the highest standards.
2. While theoretically possible, there is no evidence for a race to the bottom on environmental standards. That is, countries do not lower their standards in response to firms relocating abroad. In fact, there appears to be, if anything, a race to the top, as developing countries are adopting higher environmental standards as their incomes rise.
3. The WTO should not make environmental standards a part of free trade deals. First of all, the WTO is small organization whose mission is to foster economic integration, not regulate the environment, labor, and so forth. Secondly, it would not be advisable to "level of the playing field" before trade can occur. Trade functions on differences between countries, including varying tolerance of pollution. Bhagwati offers a provocative example: the US has not signed the Kyoto treaty. Should the rest of world be able to place tariffs on all US goods that require energy? Right or wrong, our decision not sign Kyoto reflects the wishes of our elected government. Likewise, if the people of Cambodia decide they can withstand slightly more mercury in their drinking water than, say, the Netherlands, that is not a reason for the Dutch to place tariffs on Cambodian goods. Finally, barriers to trade are an inefficient way to achieve higher environmental standards. Rather than lobbying the WTO, civil society groups concerned with should work with international environmental agencies and developing country governments to adopt higher standards that meet the needs of local citizens and global environmental problems.

Below is a passage I liked. It reminds me of my own naivete coming out of high school, and how my view of the world has been enriched by critical thinking. Enjoy!

“The very young care intensely for the environment. They rarely think in terms of trade-offs, implicitly ignoring the cost of reaching environmental goals and therefore never having to revise environmental preferences in the light of knowledge about the cost of indulging them. They have an oversimplified view of what must be done. They get upset when, confronting their parents and asking for cloth diapers to be chosen in preference to disposables, they are told that cloth diapers are likely to be washed in detergents and that, if you go yet further back in the chain of inputs, it is possible that a shift to cloth diapers may cause net environmental harm. And they are not alone: several environmental activists get agitated as well by they call “obfuscation,” which any systematic and comprehensive analysis often leads to. And that is precisely, of course, what economists bring to the table. I recall one of my Oxford teachers, Ian Little, a world-class economist, telling me when he had returned from a couple of years advising in Whitehall 'I thought we economists worked with models that sometimes abstracted too much from complexity. But I found that bureaucrats and politicians worked with even simpler, naïve models: if x affected y, that was the end of the matter; whereas the economists typically argued, ‘But y will affect z, which in turn will affect x and feed back on y as well.' In fact, the iconoclastic New York Times columnist John Tierney once told me that the greatest amount of condemnatory e-mail he had received was over a New York Times Magazine article showing how recycling programs had actually worsened the garbage problem.”

Unrelated Note: Regean used astrology?

Just came across this bit of old news. Apparently, astrologist Joan Quigley was quite influential in the Reagan administration. One of her major "accomplishments" was linking Reagan's assassination with that of Lincoln, since they were both born in February and were elected in a year that ended with zero. Incidentally, the chance of that happening is one in sixty, which is not particularly astounding, especially given all the astrological dissimilarities that she almost assuredly forgets to mention. Anyway, my point is not to insult Quigley - astrology is clearly an enormous load of bullshit - but simply to express how astounded and disgusted I am to learn that a president would seek advice from an astrologist as late as the 1980's! Of course, all the politicians like Bush who regularly council from their magic friend Jesus are no better. Anyway, the point is that the American people need to double check to make sure their elected officials are using reality as their guide.

Oil and the Trade Deficit

In an earlier post, I speculated that the US trade deficit is largely due to the increasing price of oil. I found this report by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransisco which bears out the claim, demonstarting that about 50% of the increased trade deficit is due the higher cost of oil. Interestingly, the article also predicts that in the near the future, US companies should move to more energy efficient production, which will both help the environment and reduce our trade deficit.

In addition, I made a graph that shows monthly changes in oil price and trade deficit over the past decade, and the relationship between the two. While correlation is not causation, the data clearly support the idea that the price of oil influences the trade deficit.

Population Density and Gasoline Consumption

In an earlier post, I suggested that rural citizens might use more energy than urban citizens, one reason being that on average they have to drive farther to get between places. To get an initial handle on this claim, I compared per capita gasoline use to population density by state. The graph below depicts the relationship with a linear regression that is statistically significant, barely.I did not include Washington D.C. because it's population density is well outside the range of all other states and skewed the data, though in the favor of the result from the other 50 states. What does this mean? Not a whole lot. First of all, correlation is not causation. Densely populated states contain more urban areas, which tend to elect Democrats, who might be more liable to enact energy saving laws. However, that would not explain why states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Colorado are among the least in gasoline consumption, or why Maine and Iowa are among the most. Secondly, the weak correlation indicates that other factors are important, such as policy, geography, and the distribution of people. Finally, gasoline is consumed for other purposes than driving, but my guess is that driving accounts for most of it. Nonetheless, it is suggestive that even a coarse-grained analysis reveals a signicant correlation between population density and gasoline use.

Unrelated Note on Mass Murder and Religion

On Christmas Eve, I overheard a brief radio conversation between its Christian hosts, I believe in response to Sam Harris' book Letter to a Christian Nation, speaking to the fact that the most recent major mass murders (the Holocaust, Stalinist purges, and Mao's killing) were committed by atheists. Actually, Hitler was probably not atheist, at least according to many lines in Mein Kampf, though I'm sure his version of Christianity does not accord with the vast majority of Christians. The radio hosts were responding to the common atheist accusation that religion provides moral justification for atrocities such as the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and so forth. Conveniently, the radio hosts forget to mention Christian dictators like Pinochet or the religously motivated killings in the Middle East. Both sides forget to mention the many wars and other atrocities that have little to do with religious affiliation. In actuality, arguing for or against religion by enumerating the murders committed by either side is an excercise in futility because it is a non sequitur. Simply because a Christian/atheist committed atrocities, it does not follow that Christianity/atheism causes one to commit atrocities. Besides, even if certain leaders, religious or not, committed an atrocity, would that say anything about the truth of religion or atheism? Obviously not. I think both sides would do well to avoid such specious arguments.

Here we go again: Misplaced angst over free trade

Free trade has been a favorite punching bag for populists since globalization began near the end of the 19th Century. You read correctly. With the invention of the telegraph and the steam engine, global trade soared to levels that were not surpassed until the late 20th century. Duing the first globalization, populists tried to erect walls to trade under the erroneous belief that it would salvage the American farmer, who was being pushed into obsolescence by technology, not foreign trade. As economist Paul Krugman has argued*, neo-populists have, with striking similarity to their predecessors, rallied against free trade in order to salvage the American industrial worker, whose job has largely been mechanized, not stolen by foreign countries. I had hoped the anti-globalization movement would deteriorate owing to its specious reasoning and dirth of empirical support, but as pundits like Lou Dobbs and a recent op-ed by two Democratic congressmen in the Washington Post demonstrate, that is simply not the case. As the old adage goes, there is nothing new under the sun, and the latest assailments against free trade are merely updated rehashings of their tired ancestors. Below, I dissect the op-ed by Democratic congressmen Byron Dorgan and Sherrod Brown, who allege that free trade is responsible for the "shrinking middle class, lost jobs and exploding trade deficits." I apologize, but this post becomes a bit redundant. There simply are not enough synonyms for "wrong" and "in reality..."

1) Shrinking middle class
As an empirical fact, income inequality is increasing, though not because the middle class is going away, but because the rich are getting richer while everyone else stagnates. The authors do not make a clear case for why free trade causes the rich to become richer, but reading between the lines, they seem to suggest that the "new mobility of capital and technology" makes it possible for rich capital owners to export middle income jobs to low-income countries. Given the fact that international trade with low-income countries accounts for roughly 10% of GDP today, that seems unlikely. Paul Krugman provides some real reasons, (though I disagree on some points), why income inequality is rising. The bottom line is that the return to capital has increased contemporaneously with increased international trade (though the relationship is not necessarily causative), but capital is not evenly distributed. Rather than using fallacious reasoning to oppose free trade, as the congressmen do, progressive think tanks have proposed inventive ways to increase the equality of capital ownership without losing the gains from trade.

2) Lost jobs

This is as empirically wrong as it is illogical. First of all, the unemployment rate is low and has been throughout the period of increased global trade. The discrepency between perception and reality is propogated by visible, large layoffs that get a lot of press and the obscurity of new hiring done a handful at a time by nascent, growing firms. As economists have shown over and over, free trade has a negligable effect on jobs.

3) Exploding Trade Deficit

Once again, as an empirical fact, the US has a large trade deficit, (though it has recently undergone a precipitous decline), but the congressmen misplace their blame. They claim that free trade agreements "enable countries to ship what their low-wage workers produce to the United States while blocking many U.S. products from entering their countries." While free trade agreements allow us to import cheap goods from other countries, they also allow us to export the high-tech goods in which America specializes. The unspecified claims that other countries block American imports seems unprobable. How would countries brokering free trade agreements with the US (e.g. Latin America, Jordan, Israel) be able to strong arm our negotiaters? If anything, free trade agreements should favor hegemons like the US which have immensely greater political clout. In actuality, the rising trade deficit is largely due to increasing price of oil, which based on my own estimates, constitutes roughly 35% of our trade deficit.

Although Dorgan and Sherrod's polemical against free trade focuses on labor issues, they sprinkle in unsubstaniated claims about a global "race to the bottom" on environmental standards. Detailed analysis does not uphold their claim. Exporting firms are not dirtier than firms that sell domestically, and are often cleaner. Anti-globalization types cite countries like China that have greatly increased their pollution in response to export-oriented economic growth. Of course, we have to ask the counterfactual. If an equal amount of growth had occurred in domestic industries, would pollution be less than it is now? I doubt it. It is hypocritical for rich countries that have profited from decades of pollution to hold back poor countries undergoing rapid development. Walls to free trade will not reduce pollution in countries like China without lowering their standard of living. Instead, the US government should work with countries like China to increase domestic environmental protection laws to meet the needs of its citizens. Indeed, this is already happening, albeit too slowly, and the US is poised to begin exporting green technology to many developing countries looking to reduce their pollution. The congressmen and other neo-populists need to (re)examine the facts and revise their shoddy reasoning. Once they do, it will come as no surprise that free trade is conducive with progressive policy, a stance that think tanks like the Center for American Progress, the Progressive Policy Institute, and the Brookings Institution have advocated for years.

As a rhetorical tactic, I have cited left-wing proponents of free trade, to disabuse people of the notion that trade policy can be readily seen in a simple left-right binary. Of course, conservatives and liberatarians also advocate free trade, but tend to be more bilateral than multilateral and dismissive of some potentially destabilizing effects of globalization. Republicains also have their own form of neo-populism in the form of protectionism (e.g. Bush II's steel tariffs) and anti-immigration. Increasingly, both parties have elected to misinterpret and abuse economics to the detriment of trade liberalization. Dorgan and Sherrod do a disservice to liberals, their country, and the world to take part in the anti-free trade movement, rather than focus their efforts on policies that will actually make progress on liberal goals.

* Search for article titled "The uncomfortable truth about NAFTA: It's foreign policy, stupid." Though he addresses NAFTA specifically, many of his arguments apply to current trade issues as well.