Virginia Postrel writes about the economic ignorance of the global warm-mongers, a group that unfortunately includes all three presidential candidates. I just hope that Phil Gramm or someone can get McCain to come to his senses on the issue once he’s actually in office.
The connection between higher prices for energy and reduced carbon dioxide emissions may not have hit the national consciousness yet, but the LAT’s Margo Roosevelt reports that California utilities–and eventually their customers–are beginning to realize this isn’t just a symbolic issue.
…The DWP, to whom I pay my electric bills, wants out of the carbon dioxide caps. It apparently thinks the law shouldn’t apply to socialist enterprises.
Isn’t that always the way? The laws are for “the little people.”
The Greens are making up for lost time now. I’ve never seen a publicn relations onslaught for any issue that matches what’s happening in the push for AGW sanctions and lifestyle changes. It’s like the country has been occupied by a foreign power which is in the process of brain washing the country to their will.
Umm, sure, there is a price to it. How would it have an effect on behaviour if it didn’t cost anything?
Energy will certainly be more expensive in immediate costs in a world with some carbon emission limitation technique.
Catalysators on cars cost a lot too. Or waste water cleaning. And a million other things. Disregarding their external effects, they are a huge loss to people who have to do them. Hell, stopping at a red light is a huge time loss. Think how much time could be saved by YOU if the evil fascists stopped their freedom-hating traffic control freak attitude.
By the way, what and who do you mean by warm-monger? A war monger is someone who wants to wage war. It does not translate directly, since people who admit the science of anthropogenic global warming (unlike Fred Thompson or CEI or some others of your “friends”) do not usually want to have more warming, or want to try to moderate it in some way.
A warm-monger is someone who wants to wage war on the free market and capitalism using global warming as an excuse. Also known as a watermelon socialist (green on the outside, red on the inside).
And all the three presidential candidates are clearly not after mitigating global warming but only using it an excuse to “wage war on the free market and capitalism”, which they really want?
Can you name someone who you think is a honest person about his or her motivations about mitigating global warming and not a watermelon socialist? Say, James Hansen, a climate scientist?
Or are all people advocating mitigation socialists by definition?
Do you think voluntary efforts by the free market is an adequate mitigation strategy?
Or do you think mitigation is not cost effective, or do you think it is morally wrong to regulate?
I think that Hansen is a tool.
Do you think voluntary efforts by the free market is an adequate mitigation strategy?
It may be. We don’t have enough data to know.
Or do you think mitigation is not cost effective, or do you think it is morally wrong to regulate?
I think that most of the mitigation strategies put forth to date by the warm-mongers are not cost effective. The costs of mitigating in the future will be much less than doing misguided and ignorant mitigation now (e.g., biofuels), when one considers both the future growth of the economy and the discount rate.
Didn’t NASA admit a few months ago that Hanson “massaged” his temperature data to the point that one honestly couldn’t tell if it was based on the satellite measurements or simply made up out of whole cloth? I thought that was the rationale behind moving the “historic maximum global T” back to 1998 instead of whatever (most recent) year it was.
Ah, Hansen a tool, but no watermelon socialist?
I haven’t seen libertarians put forth any mitigation strategies, and I don’t count “let’s not do anything” as one.
I don’t view voluntary industry efforts worth much – who would put themselves in a competetive disadvantage? There is no incentive for a company to do such a thing, except perhaps for PR but that’s minor. That’s why stuff like democracy and laws exist – to prevent polluting for personal gain if it is a loss for others.
I also don’t see all the mitigation strategies proposed as being the work of watermelon socialists, and saying such starts bordering on paranoia.
There have been good experiences from emissions trading in sulphates in the US in the past – the whole cap and trade thing was insisted by the US to be in the Kyoto scheme.
Was that cap and trade for sulphur emissions a socialist approach in your mind? What should have been done? Nothing?
Cap and trade – if done right – actually is a mechanism that uses free markets and cost minimization, it’s a way to reduce pollution in a cost effective way that libertarians should embrace.
It has flaws of course. Carbon taxes could work better in the sense that you could slap an import carbon tax on stuff for example.
In the end they are just means of putting an immediate price for CO2 emissions, which would otherwise be free. I view it as probably the most sensible way to make it actually enter business decisions – and it IS based on free trade and even capitalism.
Umm, sure, there is a price to it. How would it have an effect on behaviour if it didn’t cost anything?
Ah. In other words, the goal is not to solve the problem, but to change peoples’ behavior? Thank you for your honesty.
I haven’t seen libertarians put forth any mitigation strategies, and I don’t count “let’s not do anything” as one.
The libertarian (and rational) mitigation strategy is to deal with the problem as it actually occurs, rather than to spend a lot of money now to fend off something that may or may not occur decades from now.
Given the double-exponentiating nature of technological advance, “let’s not do anything” is a pretty smart answer for the next decade or so.
Umm, sure, there is a price to it. How would it have an effect on behaviour if it didn’t cost anything?
Ah. In other words, the goal is not to solve the problem, but to change peoples’ behavior? Thank you for your honesty.
Stop the intentional misunderstanding.
The problem is CO2 emissions. The goal and solving is reducing those emissions. This is done by effecting behaviour of the instances that do decisions on how much to emit CO2, when and where.
It’s really hard to talk about this since you go to knee jerk “evil evil, socialist socialist” mode constantly. Grow up.
Sigh…
Changing behaviors IS a solution to the problem. That’s why it is referred to as anthropogenic warming.
The problem is CO2 emissions.
Actually, the problem is build up of CO2 in the atmosphere, and subsequent effects on global climate and ocean chemistry (and possibly other undesired effects). It’s possible these problems could be addressed without limiting emissions, and it’s likely (IMO) that a solution that only attempted to limit emissions would not be sufficient.
(Non-emissions-reduction measures would include such things as efforts to accelerate removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, to counteract warming by large scale albedo engineering, and to compensate for ocean acidification by dissolution of neutralizing minerals.)
Didn’t NASA admit a few months ago that Hanson “massaged” his temperature data to the point that one honestly couldn’t tell if it was based on the satellite measurements or simply made up out of whole cloth?
Didn’t you stop beating your wife?
Carbon taxes are an issue for coal, not gasoline. $20/ton of carbon works out to less than $0.05/gallon or about 1% of the price of gasoline. It works out to about 100% of the price of coal.
Yeah Sam, coal is the single biggest issue. It’s a low hanging fruit.
Especially in the US where it is not used for district heating and thus is easily replaceable.
If a power company is pondering between a new coal plant or a new nuke plant, if CO2 emissions have a price, it kinda tends to affect the decision – and thus the CO2 emissions.
The free market will find the lowest cost ways to reduce emissions – but only if emissions have a price.
Yeah Sam, coal is the single biggest issue. It’s a low hanging fruit.
Especially in the US where it is not used for district heating and thus is easily replaceable.
50% of U.S. electrical power is generated by coal. Southern Cal Edison just asked for a 20% rate hike as they use mostly oil and gas for power generation. The CPUC is going to give them 3.6%. Watch for power problems in CA this summer.
We have some pretty strict rules regarding electricity generated with coal in this State. We are also trending toward making the investor owned utilities shoulder some of the market risk for their assets instead of placing them in the rate base.
This stuff is of particular interest to me lately as I work at the California ISO now. We know that carbon emissions legislation will drive the nuclear permitting process rate. 8)
Yep, the laws are for the little people. Or, to put it more relevantly, state control doesn’t mean more accountability; it just means the offenders can’t be sued.
P J O’Rourke said something to the effect that anyone who thinks that state control over industry is the way to cure pollution ought to drink deep from the Volga or take a big breath of air in Smolensk.