Man-made climate change may prove a disaster. No, I do not mean climate change itself. My concern here is rather over the policy responses.
人为造成的气候变化也许确实是一场灾难。不，我指的并非气候变化本身。在这个问题上，我更担心的是政府做出的政策回应。 For, as was predictable and predicted, recognition of the risks is generating a host of interventionist gimmickry, not least in the UK. 因为，正如可以预计和已经预计到的那样，对风险的认知正在滋生大量干涉主义花招，尤其是在英国。 People I think of as my friends - pro-market liberals - are suspicious of what many of them consider the "man-made climate change hysteria". They are surely right to note that it is a remarkably convenient banner for opponents of the market economy, be they egalitarians or deep-green environmentalists. This time, they fear, Malthusians and socialists may have a politically successful (albeit, in their view, scientifically false) argument in favor of a long-standing desire to throttle the life out of the free-enterprise economy. 我视为朋友的那些人——支持市场经济的自由主义者，对他们中许多人将“人为造成的气候变化看作歇斯底里症”的观点表示怀疑。他们指出（这点无疑是正确的），对于反对市场经济的人——无论是平等主义者还是环保主义者，这都是一个相当方便的旗号。他们担心，马尔萨斯主义者和社会主义者这次可能拥有了一个在政治上颇为成功的论点（尽管在他们看来，这种论点在科学上是错误的），来支持扼杀自由企业经济的长期愿望。 Lord Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government of Margaret Thatcher, partly took this line in a lecture he delivered to the Centre for Policy Studies last November. I do not know what he thinks of David Cameron’s adventures in the politics and policy of climate change. But I can guess. 去年 11 月，曾任玛格丽特 撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)政府财政大臣的劳森爵士(Lord Lawson)在政策研究中心(Centrfor Policy Studies)发表演说时，在一定程度上采取了这种姿态。我不知道他对英国保守党领袖大卫 卡梅隆(David Cameron)在政治和气候变化政策方面的冒险作何感想。但我可以猜到。 Yet even if one accepts the validity of concerns about man-made climate change, one should agree that market liberals also have a legitimate concern. Instead of policies that are minimally intrusive, well-targeted and efficient, we are depressingly likely to get the exact opposite. 然而，即使承认对人为造成的气候变化的担忧有其合理性，人们也应当同意，市场自由主义者的担心也不无道理。令人沮丧的是，我们看到的可能不是侵犯性最小、目标明确和行之有效的政策，而是恰恰相反。 This is partly because many on the climate-change bandwagon do not want to leave the market economy intact. "Are you enjoying yourselves?" seems to be their question. "Let's find some way of stopping you." It is also because politicians have a strong desire to tinker piecemeal. 这其中的部分原因在于，许多攀上气候变化大潮的人并不想让市场经济毫发无伤。他们的问题似乎是：“你很快乐？那我们要设法阻止你。”另一个原因在于，政界人士强烈希望修补残局。 Since climate change is likely to be a concern over decades, it is essential to get policy right. The big rule, as always, is: keep it simple, stupid. 气候变化可能会成为一个持续数十年的问题，因此制定正确的政策至关重要。一如往常，首要的原则是：要简单，笨蛋。 A good example of what many (though not all) economists would consider a mistake has been the decision to go for tradable emissions permits whose prices have proved disturbingly unstable. Predictably, the adoption of such permits is already leading to proposals to create a carbon emissions budget for every individual. Predictably, too, this return to rationing is, in the UK, supported by rhetorical appeal to the egalitarian spirit of the Blitz (Mark Roodhouse, this page, March 13, 2007). 许多（尽管并非所有）经济学家都认为是一个错误的恰当例子是：决定推行可交易的排放权。令人不安的是，事实证明，排放权价格非常不稳定。正如人们能够预见的到的那样，采用这种排放权制度已经导致有人提议，为每个人建立一份碳排放预算。同样如人们可以预见到的那样，这种向配给制度的回归在英国得到布利茨平等主义精神呼声的支持（马克 鲁德豪斯(Mark Roodhouse)，本版，2007年3月 13日）。 Yet the spirit of the Blitz, applied in the UK alone, will achieve just about nothing, since the UK is responsible for a mere 2 per cent of the global total. So what Mr. Roodhouse and his ilk should call for is a global system of individual tradable permits, to operate not just for a decade, but for the indefinite future. It is clear why an egalitarian with control-freak tendencies might welcome such a system of bureaucratic controls on most of humanity that this would require. But why should anybody else do so? And why should anybody believe it could be made workable?
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