Summary of Peter Huber’s “Hard Green” book, from reading his chapter 1 (which appears to summarise the book)

On a social media discussion thread, someone referenced Peter Huber's book "Hard Green" (published in 2000, so 21 years ago).  Although the book is quite old now, some of its claims are still being made by AGW skeptics, denialists or delayists.

I've made a summary of the first chapter (available free online), and include it here, rather than try to cover all the relevant points in a social media post (where there is limited space to do so).  Rebutting Huber's claims in this way covers all the points without cluttering up "the socials".
 
The format is to sequentially number and list each 'Huber claim', against which I then include my rebuttal

Key:
Huber claims ("C")
Rebuttals ("R")

  

1
C - Limits are overcome by ingenuity.
R - Highly risky to assume ingenuity will provide new solutions that don’t currently exist to problems that most definitely do currently exist and have existing solutions we just haven't fully implemented yet.

2
C - Growing population makes people richer, because marginal new brains more than offset marginal new mouths.
R - That underestimates or underplays the environmental damages caused by human activities.  Global population is forecast by the UN to peak at about 10 billion, then fall from that peak.  So, the main challenge is to ensure the human footprint at peak population does not take us through climate tipping points.  Can this be done while continuing to make people richer?  Many doubt this.

3
C - The collective genius of humankind cannot be contained in a model.
R - Super-arrogant attitude.  Might be half-true, but it doesn’t invalidate climate modelling or the use of government intervention to prevent unsustainable futures.

4
C - Free markets elicit and distribute information and ingenuity in ways no other process can match.
R - Freely sharing information and ingenuity without any market process is easier and more effective – eg creative commons – putting a price on such things creates barriers to sharing/distribution.

5
C - Markets are the least bad economic option around.
R - Freely sharing information and ingenuity without any market process is easier, cheaper  and more effective.

6
C - Markets as a whole “know” things the rest of us don’t.
R - Verging on the mystic, so unreliable as a policy framework.

7
C - Efficient market theory, supported by a wealth of empirical evidence, establishes “quite conclusively” that the market always “knows” more than any player in it.
R - There is much evidence against efficient market theory providing sustainable outcomes eg because of the free rider effect, and the tragedy of the commons, overexploitation of natural resources because of under-pricing of externalities.

8
C - Impossible to model markets.
R - Might be half-true, but it doesn’t invalidate climate modelling or the use of government intervention to prevent unsustainable futures.

9
C - Intelligence and intellectual property not valued by accountants (including the sum total of what a populace has learned).
R - This is being addressed by national accounting standards.  There is little evidence that what populaces have learned about AGW has yet turned into effective actions to correct it, although this is now changing with increasing pressure from populaces around the world for the setting of net zero carbon targets.  If the sum total of learnings is applied effectively to make the future sustainable, then the point will prove to be true.  But the jury is still out on this one so far and potential societal/civilisational collapse before that happens is a concerning risk.

10
C - For the last 2 centuries at least, intellectual gains have surpassed environmental losses.
R - Both a highly questionable statement (eg difficult to make the comparison), and no guarantee that it would continue to be the case as the environmental damages rack up at an accelerating rate and there are disbenefits from further unsustainable human development in many highly developed countries.

11
C - We can’t model advances in silicon-based technologies (computing etc)
R - Super-arrogant attitude.  Might be half-true, but it doesn’t invalidate climate modelling or the use of government intervention to prevent unsustainable futures.

12
C - Resources of the planet are defined and extended by the power of silicon itself (and to human brains behind it).
R - Super-arrogant attitude.  Might be half-true, but it doesn’t invalidate climate modelling or the use of government intervention to prevent unsustainable futures

13
C - We can’t model human intelligence.
R - Super-arrogant attitude.  Might be half-true, but it doesn’t invalidate climate modelling or the use of government intervention to prevent unsustainable futures

14
C - There is a market.  It doesn’t fail.  We keep getting richer.
R - Patently false – markets do fail. Often, and with sizeable negative impacts. Environmental crises, including AGW, are some of the biggest examples of market failures so far experienced.

15
C - Proposed solution = ‘privatise pollution’
R - Could work, if by this is meant building the costs of all externalities into the regulation of the activities of the private sector, eg through effective carbon pricing

16
C - Proposed solution = ‘tech fixes’
R - Some tech innovation will be useful, but it is not necessary – we already have all the tech we need.

17
C - Proposed solution = greater public and private protection of the environment
My response - Yes – one proposal I can agree with!

18
C - Proposed solution = limit government power
R - Government power is already limited by the mandate of the people.  Nothing needs to change in that respect.  That power needs to be exercised more effectively by governments to create sustainability on behalf of the people, all other life and the planet itself.  We need governments and international negotiation processes to enact the peoples’ will to improve humanity’s collective stewardship of the planet, its biosphere, human wellbeing and all other life in balance.