So, the "Shrub" Admin admits that global warming does exist,

The BBQ Pit
21

Politics are certainly inefficient when it comes to solving such problems. That’s exactly the point of this thread. After all, what’s Bush doing but using the environment as a political tool?

Government action, however, has been known to solve problems like this. When government action mandated that lead be removed from gasoline, auto manufacturers grumbled but America made the transition, and we’re all breathing better for it. In 1950, you had to drive with your headlights on in downtown Pittsburgh because of the soot in the air from the steel mills, but the government figured it had to force industry to clean its smokestacks and stop killing Pittsburghers. (The failure of the steel industry is another issue, but as a native of a western Pennsylvania steel town, I can assure you it wasn’t caused by the expensive costs of keeping a lid on smoke and soot.)

Oh, and as to the term uninhabitable, perhaps I was hasty. I’m looking for a word that will describe what happens when coastal cities are flooded and former farmland is turned to desert. I realize we can all move away from the flooded cities and I also realize that people can live in deserts. Not as many as can live in lusher areas, but they still can live in them. Perhaps the operative, less-asinine term is less-habitable? How’s that suit you?

How much will I pay? You mean now, or later? I’ll put up with inconvenience now. Remember how much the auto makers groused about having to put headrests in all their cars, so that whiplash is less of a threat? They said that would cause the price of cars to skyrocket. Guess what: they didn’t.

Oh, and as to corporations: I work for one. Many people do. But just because I work for one doesn’t mean I can’t point out what coporations are doing wrong. In fact, I feel morally obliged to do so. Furthermore, changing the habits of corporations and heavy industry is only part of the solution we need. If they’ll produce better products that don’t require that individual wrapping that you eschew, we consumers will get used to it. I mean, if auto manufacturers could be mandated to install headrests and catalytic converters, as well as to convert their engines to unleaded gasoline, then there’s no telling what we can do. Tell me: did these government mandates bankrupt the auto industry? Don’t bring up Chrysler: that was poor management. And don’t bring up Packard and Studebaker, either. Those were also poor management, and they went out of business well before Ralph Nader wrote Unsafe at Any Speed.

It’s naïve to think that industry and people will get together and start doing the right thing. We can’t afford to sit back and hope that everyone decides to. Masses without leadership have a terrible track record of making the correct decision. Anarchy does not work.

22

I can’t speak for PLD, but I happen to think that bleeding-heart rhetoric like “killing the planet” is hardly the mark of a reasonable and rational person.

People are causing pollution. Period. Just because the pollution is generated at some plant a hundred miles from your home doesn’t change the fact that when YOU turn on a light, YOU are creating pollution. When YOU rant on a message board, YOU are creating pollution.

If individuals made themselves more efficient in their power use, then power plants will need to generate less, and less. Personally, I find this sort of voluntary efficiency a much better choice than Matt’s proposed “If they don’t do what I want, I’ll FORCE them to comply!” reasoning. I like freedom, thanks.

23

And if I had a non-polluting, perpetual motion machine, I bet I could patent it and solve all the world’s environmental and energy problems forever, and become rich, too! Since I can’t count on that if, I’ll have to keep going to work and see what we can do to address the energy and ecological problems. If we were all to follow conservatives’ examples, we’d all be wasting energy like crazy, as I’ve heard so many conservatives who “like freedom” brag about.

Hey, I’m efficient and a conservationist. Always have been. When Rush Limbaugh told me that as an American I have the right to rip the catalytic converter out of my car (and he did, too,) I left it in there. I don’t burn extra lights and I watch the thermostat. However, most people aren’t careful, and it’s hardly right to suggest the rest of us foot the bill for their excesses.

I’M the polluter, SPOOFE? Am I polluting more than, say, Union Carbide? General Motors? Goodyear? If those companies watched themselves, they’d be a lot cleaner. If Enron hadn’t lied to its investors, they’d still be in business. If people had eaten fewer Labrador duck eggs, that species wouldn’t be extinct.

You like freedom, huh? How do you feel about accountability? Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. Once we’ve saved the world through voluntary measures, there will be no need for accountability, since everyone will instinctively do exactly what’s right. Yay, team!

Oh, and since global warming and pollution aren’t “killing the planet,” please explain just what they’re doing and why we should care. I need to know the conservatively correct euphamism, so that I won’t offend you types in the future. You’re pretty touchy, I’ve noticed.

24

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - C. S. Lewis

I appreciate your efforts on behalf of public transportation (just to stay on that point for a moment), and I use it when it is feasible for me to do so. But there are reasons that cars are as popular as they are that go beyond them beying some “cultural default” that people adopt unthinkingly. (Which appears, btw, to be a bit of a swipe at your fellow man’s intellect, but anyway.)

Owning a car provides an inherent flexibility that public transport doesn’t, and cannot, have, no matter how much it gets beefed up. For people who need to be a lot of different places in a day, and on deadlines, public just isn’t going to cut it.

If I decide to take public transportation to work, I have to catch a bus which is going to take 20 minutes just to get me to the Metro station, because it has to follow the route and make the stops. Then, I have to change trains twice on the Metro to get to my office. So, either I leave a half-hour to an hour earlier, meaning I get up at 5:00 a.m., or I drive to work. No contest, there.

Buses cannot make the adjustments that drivers can. If I’m heading to work, flip on the traffic report, and hear that there’s a jackknifed truck on Rt. 1 North, I can cut over to the GW Parkway or get on the Beltway and avoid it. Buses can’t just blow off their route to avoid an accident or traffic snarl.

Public transportation is a nice way to augment personal vehicles, but it will never supplant it. Economically speaking, there’s a point (and I don’t know where) when there are too many people taking it, and the costs of building and maintaining the system equal or exceed the costs imposed by cars.

25

The potential US greenhouse gas reduction is small, realtive to the enormous increase that will occur worldwide in the future. There are billions of poor people in Asia, Africa and Latin America who aspire to live in our style of economic comfort. They are succeeding. In 50 years there may be five times as many automobiles, power usage, etc. in the world.

So, even if human activity is causing GW, changes in human activity won’t fix it, because billions of people won’t agree to be perpetually impoverished.

We’d better think of something else. All I can imagine is either

– new technology for directly controlling the planet’s temperature

– learn to live with global warming.

BTW suppose someone devised a method of cooling the entire earth. Would you trust that it would be applied properly, so as not to cause unanticipated problems?

I wouldn’t.

26

The potential US greenhouse gas reduction is small, realtive to the enormous increase that will occur worldwide in the future. There are billions of poor people in Asia, Africa and Latin America who aspire to live in our style of economic comfort. They are succeeding. In 50 years there may be five times as many automobiles, power usage, etc. in the world.

So, even if human activity is causing GW, changes in human activity won’t fix it, because billions of people won’t agree to be perpetually impoverished.

We’d better think of something else. All I can imagine is either:

– new technology for directly controlling the planet’s temperature

– learn to live with global warming.

BTW suppose someone devised a method of cooling the entire earth. Would you trust that it would be applied properly, so as not to cause unanticipated problems?

I wouldn’t.

27

Are you saying that these companies aren’t watching themselves and aren’t accountable? Do you have any idea how much regulations are already in place for these companies?

I work for a company similar to Union Carbide (slightly smaller). I do have an idea how much regulations are out there. We are under the rule of the following: EPA, OSHA, DOT, NFPA, NBE, DEA, NRA (Railroad, not Rifle) and Coast Guard just to name a few. And that list doesn’t even cover state agencies. To suggest that companies can do what they want and aren’t regulated is nonsense. Is it better then the days of old? Most certainly. But there are so many regulations now in place that it is almost putting a stranglehold on business practices. Please tell me what more needs to be done, or are you just bitching to bitch? Do you have any specific solutions, or are you just shouting “more goverment regulations”?

We are a manufacturing society. There will always be waste. Industry is extremely regulated. I’m sure that companies could do more utilizing such things as wind and solar power but how are they going to offset those costs? By raising prices and cutting jobs. There has to be a balance. If that balance is suffecient for you, then it is the individuals responsibility to do more personally. But please do not say that US businesses aren’t accountable or responsible for their actions.

28

december: *There are billions of poor people in Asia, Africa and Latin America who aspire to live in our style of economic comfort. They are succeeding. In 50 years there may be five times as many automobiles, power usage, etc. in the world. *

Right. So shouldn’t we be figuring out ways to achieve a comparable “style of economic comfort” with less dependence on fossil fuels and less greenhouse gas emissions, before all those other billions of people start buying cars and computers? Then they could make the transition to a more affluent lifestyle with cleaner technologies and thus a much smaller environmental impact.

Other developed countries, with far less money and a far smaller pool of scientific and technological expertise, are going great guns on all sorts of “clean technology” innovations, from new wind turbine designs to new zero-emissions automobile engines to more cost-effective passive solar heating systems to ultra-low-energy-use urban buildings to low-emissions manufacturing processes. And here sits America, the former global leader in technological development, whining that it doesn’t wanna bother with any of that boring stuff because it will cost money in the short run and anyway it would interferes with our freeeeeeeeedom. :rolleyes: In other words, business interests (naturally) don’t want to be hit with increased near-term costs, and a lot of well-meaning people have bought their PR.

Sure, ThunderBug, I have some specific recommendations for what should be mandated. Close the loopholes in the Clean Air Act for old coal power plants that produce high levels both of pollutants and of greenhouse gases. Mandate energy conservation practices in manufacturing similar to the ones some firms (e.g., Nike) are voluntarily undertaking with the EPA Climate Protection Partnerships Division. Provide business and consumer tax incentives for creating and using more energy-efficient products and processes. And yes, by all means, help industries absorb the pain of high short-term expenses in making these transitions by means of “clean energy” subsidies and/or “dirty energy” trading credits.

Certainly, we can’t afford to, say, halve emissions overnight (even if we had the technology in place for it), but we can certainly afford to do more than shrug and say “Oh well, we’ll just go on using fossil fuels as lavishly as we please and let our grandchildren deal with the consequences.” In fact, in the long run, we can’t afford not to.

29

Given: “Global warming is real, and if things continue at their present rate, they’re going to get worse.”

What’s the better solution? To (a) sit on our thumbs and do nothing, or (b) take steps to try to eliminate/reduce/stave off the problem?

30

As of June 1st -

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/06/01/kyoto.eu/

If anyone here wants to educate themselves a little about global warming via this board (and how to manage effective socio-economic change), I’d suggest searching on that phrase in GD in conjunction with ‘jshore’ – he/she’s posted a hell of a lot of good info there. But I doubt you will so hey ho…

31

I think we should do these things, and it will help a little, but basically, it won’t work. Look at the numbers:

US energy use increases over time. To even hold it constant would be a truly remarkable achievment. Let’s say we could actually reduce it by 10% – say from 100 units to 90 units. Meanwhile the third world goes from 100 units to 500 units. So, 50 years from now, we’re at 590, rather than something over 600. BFD.

I am really unhappy about this situation. It’s one reason I’m a population control freak. But, I do believe it’s reality.

The worst solution would be to take difficult, expensive steps that won’t even work, like Kyoto.

I think we need research to try to devise something that will work, if possible. We may need to move to nuclear energy, despite the risks in that approach. And, we to plan how to deal with GW, because we may not succeed in preventing it.

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**Thunderbug—**You’re missing my point. I’m not ranting about establishing more regulations. The whole point of my post is that SPOOFE’s argument that we can all self-regulate is tragically flawed. If industry were not required to follow certain regulations, do you think they’d do so? If the government approached, say, Union Carbide and said, “You can continue dumping industrial waste into the water table, but we’d prefer that you didn’t,” do you think they would comply? Maybe. But since compliance is mandatory, they comply.

Read this post (and my other one) carefully and you’ll see that I’m not slagging Union Carbide or any particular industry, even; I’m just saying that regulations are there to keep the unscrupulous people in line. Maybe the CEO of ToxiCo might decide that the company could overtake Union Carbide in a certain market sector if only it didn’t have to spend so much on these damned environmental precautions. Instead of safe disposal, maybe dumping directly into the Illini River for a couple fiscal quarters will help to cut costs. After all, you’ve got to stay competitive, and if there are no repercussions, well…

Same thing with people. If we tell them, “Your lifestyle has become a problem, and you ought to change,” will they change? Don’t bank on it. Like industry, if people are behaving in a way that’s detrimental to the world they live in, hurting others around them, will those people behave properly? Some will. For the rest, we need laws. Just like how I (and, I hope, you, dear reader) wouldn’t kill people even if I were allowed to, but I accept the need for laws to stop those among us who would. I like my freedom from killers, thanks.

33

And who will do the educating? Corporations, via ads. Same as they do now.

Sure, “these ‘corporations’ aren’t selling anything that the public isn’t rushing out to buy,” but how much of that is inherent demand, and how much is generated by corporate ‘education’?

I’m not suggesting that advertising be banned, but to ignore the role of advertising in exacerbating consumer demand, including creating demand that perviously didn’t exist, is to ignore the 900-pound gorilla in the room.

In a population of 280 million, individual decisions about anything tend to cancel each other out. But the steady barrage of corporate advertising pushes the aggregate of those decisions in an upward direction. That’s your education, and it’s working, from the POV of those doing the educating.

Who’s going to spend the money to do the educating that will counteract that? For the corporation, the education is an investment; they’re spending money to make money. Those on the other side of the issue are just kissing their money goodbye.

34

So give the corporations tax credits for spending on pro-green and pro-energy-conservation advertising. Or (and I hate to hear myself say this, but given the context our government operates under . . .) place the same burdens on them that were placed on cigarette advertisers, requiring them to spend an equivalent amount of money on pro-green advertising. If consumers are being miseducated and/or subjected to “manufactured demand,” (which, to us crazy libertarians, would be a fraud :wink: ) then make the ones doing the miseducation bear the cost of it.

It does bother me somewhat to hear these kinds of things about people being too lazy or dumb or whatever to get the message, though. If I figured out ways to conserve energy, and you did, and a bunch of other people in this thread and throughout the United States did, then there’s some signal getting through the noise, right? I mean, you guys aren’t really that pessimistic about your fellow man’s ability to do the right thing, are you?

35

The day they made murder legal: a parable by Ruben Bolling.

36

Absofuckinglutely. Any ideology that depends on human goodness is doomed to fail.

37

pld: I mean, you guys aren’t really that pessimistic about your fellow man’s ability to do the right thing, are you?

I always think it’s interesting how libertarians often vehemently defend the basic competence of individual humans to fix problems and create a good society, when acting in voluntary roles such as that of consumer—but simultaneously pour contempt on the suggestion that individual humans, acting as representatives or constituents of government, can handle such tasks. (I’m not attributing all these views specifically to pld in this case; his remarks just reminded me of this odd phenomenon.)

If I said “You aren’t really that pessimistic about the EPA regulators’ ability to do the right thing, are you?”, libertarians would jump all over each other to tell me gleefully how much they loathe, distrust, and despise the employees of the EPA, in their professional capacity. Apparently there’s nothing wrong with believing that people are stupid, incompetent bozos, as long as they happen to be working for the government. As the daughter of an extremely intelligent, dedicated, and effective federal employee, I find that kind of distasteful—besides contrasting rather oddly with the faith we’re supposed to have in the competence and goodness of those of our fellow men who don’t work for the government.

38

Kimstu, you’re sort of comparing apples to Oreos. I trust individual human beings of normal intelligence to make decisions with regard to their own interests, no matter who they work for. An EPA regulator, by definition, is not making decisions with regard to his or her own interest. He or she is making decisions with regard to the interests of the EPA administrator, the Departments of the Interior and Health and Human Services (among others), Congress and the President, all of which interact in complicated and sometimes contradictory ways.

See, the problem isn’t with the people in the government. (Well, not all of them, anyway–as an Army brat, I grew up on the public teat, too, but you and I both know we can do with a lot fewer Jim Traficants and Jesse Helms in charge.) The problem from where I sit is with the structural inefficiencies in the government itself. It’s too subject to manipulation, ideology, cronyism and patronage, and all sorts of other things to simply trust it to do the right thing.* And when it comes to agencies like the EPA and other Federal and State agencies with appointed administrators, we can only hope that the Presidents, Governors and representatives that we elect will appoint people up to the task. We don’t get to elect them ourselves.
*Yes, I know corporations are subject to those same inefficiencies, and are equally capable of doing the wrong thing. I don’t trust them implicitly either (the less so the more in bed they are with the government, in fact), but people trying to make money frighten me somewhat less than people trying to make laws.

39

pld: I trust individual human beings of normal intelligence to make decisions with regard to their own interests, no matter who they work for.

But that seems to be assuming that individual human beings’ “own interests” somehow don’t “interact in complicated and sometimes contradictory ways.” On the contrary, an individual’s personal interests can be just as self-inconsistent as the professional interests of any regulator. For example, when some environmentally destructive practice is the sole source of your livelihood, your own interests conflict with each other: you don’t want to go on polluting your environment but you don’t see how you’ll make a living if you stop. Or your children or your spouse or your parents or your community may be leaning on you to make what your conscience thinks is the wrong decision. The professional regulator may have other conflicts of interest, but at least s/he’s not subject to those particular mutually competing pressures. I don’t think that the individual is intrinsically any freer from such pressures than the government or the business.

40

Yeah, but only one of those three can bring the full force of Federal law down on one’s head when they feel that their interests should trump yours. Anyhoo, it’s a difference of perspective that is tangential to the thrust of the thread, and that I am not really capable of clearly articulating.