Each passing day seems to bring more distress about climate change. A lasting solution doesn’t appear to be on the immediate horizon, though we should continue to seek one.
This complicated question has a secondary wrinkle: How should we handle it when some individuals or groups are able to improve their conditions as a result of environmental changes that are harming others? News that grape and wine production are now occurring in Slinde, Norway, which sits on the same parallel with Anchorage, Alaska, reminds us that global climate change, while undoubtedly costly to many, may also bring some benefits.
Here’s one answer: pay attention and learn.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Slinde resident Bjorn Bergum is taking advantage of the warmer climate. “There’s no doubt,” he says. “Climate change has been good for us.” Given the expectation that warming will continue, the change will probably be good for some other folks, too.
Whether North America’s grain-growing breadbasket expands its upper bounds by a bit or someday reaches far into Canada’s northern territories to help feed a changing world, we’ll know — perhaps even ahead of time. If these trends become more evident, we will see some early signals, at least in some locations. Land prices, for example, will likely rise.
This is not to say that we should turn a blind eye and simply embrace climate change. It is, however, a reminder that the market is a powerful form of measurement with a way of helping humans adjust to changing conditions. Rising prices tell us when we’d best be more careful in our use of certain assets. Falling prices let us know that we can relax a bit.
Perhaps if we wish to harness market forces so that they might be more effective in signaling climate change, it would help if we raised the market’s voice a few decibels.
How might we do that? Well, it requires embracing policies that might be beneficial both when adapting to climate change or in a situation where temperature and sea levels don’t rise as much as we fear. These are called “no regrets” policies, not because we shouldn’t regret climate change but because the world could be made relatively better off no matter what happens.
In other words, make it easier for people to pursue their best possible course in whatever world they live in. Enable them to more readily disinvest from old climate activities and move their money into new climate actions. Reducing the capital gains tax would, for example, allow for people to move into newer investment activities more easily.
If northern Canada is indeed on its way to becoming a heavy wheat-producing region, then making it easier for people to buy land and settle there will help facilitate the change. Accommodating government actions would involve mapping the territory, identifying property rights holders, and assisting in the transfer of ownership.
And if due to climate change large numbers of people do relocate as they have done in past centuries, then perhaps we need to revise immigration rules so that they are understood by those who seek to move and by those who will become their new neighbors. Given what is going on in the world now, revising migration rules is needed in any case.
And finally, as people change their behavior due to a combination of climate change and more freedom to pursue their own ends, we must observe it and learn something about how to adapt.
Today, it’s grapes and wine in upper Norway. Tomorrow, it will be something else. Any major progression of global climate change will surely bring dramatic changes to affected territories. And if that’s the reality we face, we’ll need to look for ways to make the world a slightly better place.
Bruce Yandle is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and dean emeritus of the Clemson University College of Business & Behavioral Science. He developed the “Bootleggers and Baptists” political model.
