All I have to do is look around me to see that people aren’t good at doing this for themselves. SOME are, but they are a small minority.
An awful lot of Pit threads lately have degenerated into remarkably good Great Debates. I think I like this trend.
Yesterday, on June 3rd, the EPA reported their agreement with mainstream scientific opinion that human activities are a likely source of global climactic change.
Today, on June 4th, GWB clarified matters. "President Bush on Tuesday called a recent report that blames humans for global warming nothing more than a product of government “bureaucracy” and said he would not accept an international accord to reduce heat-trapping emissions. "
Policy:
Scarcity (as defined in introductory economics) is a fact of existance. One variant of this is natural resource scarcity.
Commodities that are priced at zero, but whose costs are greater than zero, are likely to be over-used.
Carbon dioxide emissions place a cost on society. Charging a fee for emitting that CO2 (in excess - I’ll give you a free ride on breathing har har) is one way of aligning individual interest with collective interest. So I would advocate using the price system.
Well, Mr. President, you can color me confused.
Did EPA underlings sneak this report out without EPA Administrator Christie Whitman’s foreknowledge? Or did they somehow put it out against her will? Explain, Mr. President, how this action didn’t involve your personal Cabinet-rank appointee.
Just remember: next time John Ashcroft or Paul O’Neill open their mouths, don’t sweat it. They’re just government bureaucracy.
The Dallas Morning News (which is a conservative newspaper) had an editorial this morning criticizing Bush for doing nothing.
I’m a bit confused about some of the opinions expressed in this thread.
What is the libertarian position on the property rights of people living in coastal areas or relying on snow melt for water?
For the conservatives, what do you think about this:
Dear Pugnacious,
This made my head hurt when I read it. The L1 point you refer to is a LaGrange point. LaGrange points are theoretical points in space where the gravitational effects of nearby stars/planets cancel each other out. Placing an object at a LaGrange point would not be impossible but would also not serve the purpose you suggest. Solar sailing is a phenomenon caused by the particles emitted from the sun pushing on objects they crash into. Solar sails would not remain stationary they would quite literally blow away. I hope this helps.
I of course realize this does not in any way contribute to the rather thought provoking ideas presented here by other posters. I just had to say something.
I’ll be damned if I’m gonna leave it there.
Are you seriously saying you’d sooner allow the polar ice caps to melt and flood the coastlands (where most people live), to allow more diseases to flourish, and watch more people die from excessive heat, drought and famine than to adopt a political philosophy you find offensive and force people to do the things that would save every one of us?
What kind of a person holds a political philosophy more dear than the survival of himself and everyone else?
And C. S. Lewis wasn’t faced with the threat that we are.
Buses most certainly can avoid accidents; I’ve been on buses when the drivers did exactly that. It’s quite common here in L.A. for buses to leave the freeway and take an alternate route to avoid traffic jams.
Yes, jab, that’s exactly what I’m saying.
That’s the answer you want, right? Well, then, I grant you your wish.
I want the truth. If that answer is how you really feel, then, yes, that’s what I want.
But if that IS how you really feel, then don’t expect me to respect you.
You don’t want the truth, jab. You want an excuse to browbeat me. I think I am capable of recognizing a leading question. So, given that, I’ll stick with the answer I gave. The phrasing of your question made it clear that you want it to be my real answer so you can go off, so have at it.
And, regardless of what my political and policy opinions are or are not, if you think I’m spending sleepless nights thinking, “I wonder if jab, whom I’ve never met and lives 4,000 miles away, respects me” . . . well, let’s leave that there as well.
pld said
Bolding mine. Could you perhaps modify that statement. I understand that a LIbertarian would say that, and I agree, that in a perfect world I would be on your side.
But you certainly don’t mean that you would entrust your future to players at Enron(who were only trying to make a living) rather than to [your choice] of the top 4 respected Senators who might be trying to make a law to limit outrageous behaviour by those very Enron players?
Just as a general point, I haven’t read anywhere that human society has to suffer at the hands of capitalist ideology. IIRC, the idea is that capitalism should work for the betterment of society, not to its increasing detriment.
Of course we use the pricing system to influence personal choice. And, of course, that has to be led by central Government policy. As I understand it, the position of this Administration is:
Yup, we’re fucking up the world big time
Yup, things are going to get a whole lot worse
Yup, we could do something about it
Yup, we ain’t gonna do anything about it
Yup, the oil and gas energy industries up to their nuts in my arse
CNN: -
"The pact (Kyoto) would have required the United States, which accounts for about a third of the industrialised world’s greenhouse gas emissions, to trim emissions by 7 percent on 1990 levels, Reuters news agency reported.
But the Bush administration has instead announced policy changes likely to push them up by 30 percent by 2010, the European Commission says. "
- so, what we looking at by 2010; the US responsible for 40-45% of gas emissions by 2010 ?
Someone remind me again about the ‘moral highground’.
FWIW, I would be very surprised if the EU doesn’t eventually take legal action against the US (re emissions) based on unfair trade under the terms of the WTO – it seems, at this point in time, an almost natural (political) response in the light of this Administrations actions on Steel and Farming subsidy. IMHO.
How come no one every considers the 'good" points of global warming, such as longer growing time for food crops and less reliance on fossil fuels for winter heating?
Because these are moot points that are outweighed by the threat of human extinction?
samclem, sure, you can pick out specific cases in which one certain party in one certain situation is more deserving (all other things being equal) of trust. Although it should be noted that Enron wasn’t trying to make money, they were trying to steal it, and were able to do so largely because of a favorable legislative and regulatory environment that they bought. I was speaking in the general case.
The reason I feel that way is that, again speaking generally, a party that wants to make money legally has only a certain number of ways to do it. They have to offer a product or service that other people want, they have to offer it at a competitive price that the market will bear, and they set certain incremental earnings targets that they work towards. Even the most avaricious entrepreneur, again assuming they work within the legal framework and not around it, can’t make money if they offer something that nobody wants.
Lawmakers, on the other hand, are largely reactionary in what they do. Someone presents them with a problem that supposedly needs solving, and rather than look out our existing Constitutional framework and asking themselves how we should address that problem in that light, they figure that maybe if we just have one more law, or two more, or five more, that everything will work. And they can take (within certain practical limits) as much of my (and your) money as they want, whenever they want, to do it.
(Quick aside: This might sound weird coming from a libertarian, but part of the problem in my eyes is that given our form of government and the growth of Federalism, we don’t have enough representatives in the Federal government. On average, just dividing population by representation, every Senator represents around 2.5 million Americans. With the number of important powers vested in the upper house, that’s far too lopsided a ratio for the Senate to really be responsive to its citizens, and requires a support staff for each Senator’s office that really bulks up the size and cost of government. Similarly, each Representative represents around half a million citizens. But this is a topic for another thread.)
A lot of this is obviously simplistic and reductionary, but that’s the best I can explain it. Anyway, it’s interesting to me that so many people are more interested in my personal politics than whether or not I have any ideas about this emissions problem.
Here’s an idea for significantly reducing auto emissions: telecommuting. Offer real tax incentives to both businesses and individuals to encourage telecommuting and videoconferencing. I mean, given that taxes exist, as far as I’m concerned offering people a chance to get some it back isn’t coercive. Take away the need for people to commute to offices from 20, 30, 40 miles away, and you scale automotive emissions way back. So stop all of this nonsense with the Tauzin-Dingell bill, give ISPs and CLECs the ability to really expand broadband service at competitive prices, and make it realistic for wide-scale telecommuting to happen for people who want it. (Some of which might call for a relaxation of OSHA rules for people who work from home, too.)
Similarly, given the large number of commuter students at colleges these days, encourage distance learning whenever possible. Reduce the cost of education for students willing to engage in distance learning, either by waiving the interest on guaranteed student loans for a certain period of time, or raising the ceiling on the student loan interest deduction, or even forgiving some of their student loan debt altogether. It worked for Clinton’s youth service initiatives, and it can work for something like this.
Is something like this going to cut back auto emissions in the numbers that people are talking about? No, obviously not, and certainly not in isolation. But it offers individuals real, tangible incentives for reducing the amount of time they spend on the road, and does so in a noncoercive manner. And that’s just one idea that an person of average intelligence like me can come up with. I bet there are a lot of people smarter than I am that can come up with a lot better ones, if people would ask them.
** pldennison ** – I’d recommend searching on ‘jshore’ and ‘global warming’ in GD if you want to get beyond the basics. FWIW, In the medium term, car emissions are the least of our worries as the tech is in the ‘pipeline’.
What is likely to be a bigger issue is industrial emissions – the thing Bush is going out of his way to protect in both the Steel and Farming industries by, amongst other things, protecting inefficient energy use. Now why would he be doing that…
I’ve read jshore’s posts on those topics, and I’ve found them informative; beyond a certain point, though, the science and analysis is waaaaaay over my head. I’ve never denied that anthropogenic climate change is occurring, in any case. I’ve only contested proposed mechanisms for fighting it, and then only on a political, not scientific, basis.
And I’m not going to defend Bush’s actions vis a vis the steel and farming sectors. If that’s his concept of “free trade,” I shudder to think what he thinks “protectionism” is. Cripes.
I can only offer useful suggestions based on things I know about. Broadcasting and telecommunications are two of them, and they have potential applications that could help to reduce both auto emissions and power generation inefficiencies.
I’ll throw my two cents into this fun discussion:
The earth’s getting warmer at least in part due to the fact that we’re still coming out of the tail end of an ice age.
How much that is being impacted or accelerated by the emission of greenhouse gases is a matter of speculation, not fact.
That being said the world would be better off with less of these emmissions. They’re not doing anybody any good, and they’re certainly causing harm.
Fossil fuels are also likely to run out at some unspecified point in the near future. The ideas of conservation and minimum impact are always sound ones in and of themselves.
It just so happens that one of my friends is an environmental lawyer. He worked for a number of state PERG organizations, and is now in DC.
You know what he’s focussed on?
Lawnmowers, and other small engines, specifically two-cycle ones. These are unregulated as to emmissions and put tremendous quanitities of waste gases into the air.
A well tuned car doesn’t put out that much in emmissions, so he’s looking for stricter emmissions testing and stricter requirements for SUVs.
His concern with SUVs is more along the lines of conservation than emmissions. As long as big vehicles are available people will feel compelled to own them. A big box offers a lot of protection, security and machismo. Sitting in a little plastic thing while these monsters rumble down the road simply isn’t a viable solution for a safety conscious consumer.
So, what he’d like to see is a weight and gas consumption tax. If you buy a heavy vehicle with a demonstrated need you’d be classified one way and pay a gas tax accordingly when you fill at the pump. If you just wanted the car, you’d pay at a much higher rate. If you owned just a normal car, you’d have a lower rate, and if you had a fuel efficient or an environmentally friendly car you might even get a credit.
Making this happen would be pretty simple. The cost about $25 per car, $150 per gas pump. When you buy your car it gets classified and that classification goes into a chip which gets read by the pump which bills you at the appropriate rate.
It seems like a good and fair system to me. No personal freedoms need be constrained. If you want to drive that big old Superduty Ford F350 extended cab to work, you can. You just pay for it.
If you decided to drive a Honda Insight, you’ll get a huge savings at the pump.
I can find nothing to argue about with such a system from my standpoint.
I’m sitting here not knowing what to think.
Phil?? Did you really say that?
My analogue of your C.S. Lewis quote is much simpler and to the point: no one should put ideology ahead of flesh-and-blood people.
Let alone on a massive scale like that.