As it turns out, many of the same people who deny that climate change is a problem also deny that government default would be a problem. No doubt there are several reasons: the fact that Barack Obama is on the opposite side of both issues; the general impermeability of ideologues to facts or expert opinion; a general suspicion of elite views. But I’d like to suggest that there is also a deeper belief about the invulnerability of systems to outside shocks, either on the view that the system is very loosely linked or has a very strong tendency to return to equilibrium. These are actually a bit contradictory since strong corrective forces imply tight linkage, but most people don’t notice that.
For example, you might think that changing one atmospheric gas wouldn’t really have much impact on the world or that counteracting forces like increased use of CO2 by plants would come into play. Or, you might think that making a few bondholders wait a bit to get paid wouldn’t be a big deal, or that it wouldn’t really happen because Treasury would come up with a response to avoid it.
There are actually some strong common elements here. Both climate change and a significant U.S. default are unprecedented historically, so we can’t rely directly on past experience. Both involve systemic risks, which by their nature are less frequent and less easily understood than an action’s immediate impacts. And in both cases, the deniers are not merely saying that the outcome is uncertain — which would still lead to serious precautions because the potential harm is so great — but denying that there’s any possibility of a bad outcome.
That means that all the experts are either incompetent or lying, but once we’re willing to leap over that problem, it’s not hard to reject their views. If you’re going to reject the views of nearly all climate scientists, why not reject the views of nearly all economists? In for a penny, in for a pound.
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Daniel Farber | October 11, 2013
As it turns out, many of the same people who deny that climate change is a problem also deny that government default would be a problem. No doubt there are several reasons: the fact that Barack Obama is on the opposite side of both issues; the general impermeability of ideologues to facts or expert opinion; […]
Erin Kesler | October 9, 2013
Yesterday, the Hill published an op-ed by Center for Progressive Reform Scholar Joel A. Mintz entitled, “The Government Shutdown and the EPA: the Environmental Dangers of Congressional Recklessness.” It can be read in full here. According to Mintz: The indefinite close down of EPA’s operations poses major risks, some imminent and others long term, to the […]
Erin Kesler | October 8, 2013
Last Friday, Executive Order 12866, which governs the work of OMB’s regulatory review arm, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reached its 20th anniversary. Center for Progressive Reform scholars marked the anniversary by examining the Order’s reach and OIRA’s influence on the regulatory process including on the issues of transparency, timeliness and the […]
Robert Verchick | October 7, 2013
Ever wonder how Professor Tom McGarity knows about all those delays in regulatory review? Or how Professor Lisa Heinzerling learns about food safety regulations that the White House appears to be burying? Well, now you too can be an OIRA ninja. In President Obama’s first term, the White House introduced an interactive Web portal stocked […]
Rena Steinzor | October 4, 2013
A series of catastrophic regulatory failures have focused attention on the weakened condition of regulatory agencies assigned to protect public health, worker and consumer safety, and the environment. The destructive convergence of funding shortfalls, political attacks, and outmoded legal authority have set the stage for ineffective enforcement, unsupervised industry self-regulation, and a slew of devastating […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | October 3, 2013
As indicated by the 20th anniversary of Executive Order 12866, which guides the workings of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at OMB, OIRA has become a fixture of the regulatory landscape. OIRA review of proposed rules is problematic, as other blogs in this series have indicated. In the Obama administration, however, this […]
David Driesen | October 3, 2013
This blog explains why President Obama should exempt proposals to mitigate climate disruption by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from OIRA review. First, the procedure that justifies OIRA review, cost-benefit analysis (CBA), just does not work for climate disruption measures. Second, CBA undermines just and legal climate policy. Third, climate disruption poses special risks that make […]
Nina Mendelson | October 3, 2013
On this 20th anniversary of the regulatory review regime of Executive Order 12,866, the appropriate thing to do would be to take stock. Has centralized regulatory review, on balance, improved the quality of federal regulation or interfered with it? Is this now-extensive regulatory review process worth it, given its costs? Sadly, the opaque quality of the process […]
Amy Sinden | October 2, 2013
It was 20 years ago this week that President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12866. That was a watershed of sorts, because it marked the adoption by a Democratic administration of a key aspect of President Reagan’s anti-regulatory agenda — the requirement that all major federal regulations undergo cost-benefit analysis. This was not a move that […]