Pielke has a letter in today’s Financial Times about the economics of emissions caps – something I know a fair bit about – that abundantly confirms his bad reputation. Better still, the letter offers a teachable moment, a chance to explain why claims that we can’t limit emissions without destroying economic growth are nonsense.

Here’s Pielke:

Carbon emissions are the product of growth in gross domestic product and of the technologies of energy consumption and production. More precisely, this relationship is called the Kaya Identity – after Yoichi Kaya, the Japanese scientist who first proposed it in the 1980s.

Thus, by definition, a “carbon cap” necessarily means that a government is committing to either a cessation of economic growth or to the systematic advancement of technological innovation in energy systems on a predictable schedule, such that economic growth is not constrained. Because halting economic growth is not an option, in China or anywhere else, and because technological innovation does not occur via fiat, there is in practice no such thing as a carbon cap.

This is actually kind of wonderful, in a bang-your-head-on-the-table sort of way. Pielke isn’t claiming that it’s hard in practice to limit emissions without halting economic growth, he’s arguing that it’s logically impossible. So let’s talk about why this is stupid.

Yes, emissions reflect the size of the economy and the available technologies. But they also reflect choices – choices about what to consume and how to produce it, choices about which of a number of energy technologies to use. These choices are, in turn, strongly affected by incentives: change the incentives and you can greatly change the quantity of emissions associated with a given amount of real GDP.

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As it happens, by the way, the Obama administration’s tightening of fuel economy standards is by some measures as important a move as its power-plant regulations. Still, the power plant policy is what’s in the news and motivate Pielke’s letter. Where are the choices there?

The answer is, everywhere. Electricity consumption isn’t in a fixed relationship with GDP: there are many choices to be made on things like insulation and building design. Even more important, there are many ways to generate electricity: coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar — and the alternatives to coal are more competitive than ever before. That doesn’t mean that reducing emissions has no cost — but again, the idea that, say, a 30 percent fall in emissions requires a 30 percent fall in GDP is ludicrous.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/05/energy-choices