Good enough is, actually, good enough
We do, entirely, grasp the point being made about carbon border adjustments:
A powerful incentive for the developing world to get serious about climate change, or just protectionism dressed up in green clothing? Whatever it is, the concept of carbon border taxes, once a faintly whacky fringe idea, is fast going mainstream, threatening to rewrite the rules of global trade.
The UK Government seems determined to tax just about everything else, but you may be relieved to know it has no plans to tax meat. So said George Eustice, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, at the weekend, even though livestock farming is a big emitter of greenhouse gases and environmentalists would much rather we didn't practice it at all.
Yet the Government very much does have plans for a "carbon border tax", Mr Eustice said, or "carbon border adjustment mechanism" as it is otherwise known. Designing one that works is another matter; even Mr Eustice admitted that it was some years off.
If we are to have carbon taxes - which we are repeatedly told is the thing to deal with that climate change, if that part of the science is right - then border adjustments to deal with the offshoring of pollution make perfect sense. They’re also difficult.
And the thing is that good enough really is good enough.
If we lived in a static world where equity and justice were paramount in the distribution of production, consumption and emissions then sure, border adjust away. The thing is we don’t. This isn’t a static world in the slightest, it’s one with a continuing maelstrom of technological change.
It’s also one where the actual problem, climate change, depends upon pushing technological change into a certain direction - toward non-emittive techs. Once these exist at economic prices then the problem is largely over.
Yes, OK, coal plants are bad but there are very few indeed who think that solar won’t be cheaper in 20 or 40 years time. Or nuclear, or fusion, or whatever. Steel from coal fired blast furnaces will be replaced, in that two to four decades, by direct reduced iron using green hydrogen.
Or rather, as long as the rich nations who do near all of the technological development in this world are pushed into favouring those low to non-emittive technologies then they will be developed. Once they have been developed and are economic then they’re something like a public good, something that can be and will be adopted by others.
A system that was perfect probably would include those carbon border adjustments. One without it will still be good enough as we still will have the incentives to develop the techs that make a mockery of the problem under discussion. Our suggestion at this point would be to leave it be.
Agreed, this is in part coloured by our general suspicion of governmental ability to do complicated and difficult things but rather more by the insistence that it’s just not necessary. Good enough for government work is a real thing after all. We care much less about the perfection of any carbon emission management system than we do getting there with the least effort and fewest mistakes along the way.