Tell you what.
I'll drill a water well slanted down at an angle, and aim for directly underneath any refinery in the US.
You and your family can then drink all the unfiltered water from that water table for 20 years.
Then tell me how economically productive you collectively were as a unit at the end of that 20 years.
Because as we all know, a leather tanning factory with a revenue of $2,000,000 per year dumping unrestrictedly into a large river, won't kill off a $2,000,000,000 fishing and tourism industry, and cause every water utility on that river to have to pay a few hundred million dollars a year in extra treament to provide drinkable water.
I mean that would just be economic suicide to force that tanning factory to actually clean up its emissions.
Oh !
That scenario is the be all end all! I'm totally convinced all those buisinesses not going green earlier were all dittoheads, it's such a homerun idea!
doof.
Because allowing rivers to become so polluted that they catch on fire is great for the economy.
So what does that have to do with Carbon emmisions?
because killing baby seals is good for teen abstinence.
Because allowing rivers to become so polluted that they catch on fire is great for the economy.
Stringent environmental regulation has done wonders for California's economy.
Emissions in this case would be the emissions of toxic materials into the river that kill fish, and caused the clean up expense.
While the word "emission" generally used in english, means gaseous emissions, it also encompasses any type of physical expulsion of matter, such as liquid being dumped into a river.
I'm for limiting this kind of pollution.
What I'm against is taxing a trace gas that is necessary for all life on the Earth.
two things I'm reminded of when I read this thread.
1. The political forum is a huge waste of time
2. 2cents is the greatest financial mind ever to grace spurstalk
I'll check back in and try to help you poor souls in a couple of months.
I enjoyed RandonGuy's bold predictions but they seemed strictly economic without calculating potential political upheavals such as what may be occurring in Iran (+). Conversely to Iran where the youth are agitating for democratic progression, aging populations in Arab countries will most likely will dampen the fires of radical Islam. More stability in the Mid-East may offset to some degree the rising cost of oil and move countries' and organizations' investments away from military hardware to civilian goods and infrastructure.
As RandonGuy noted, on macroeconomic scale better environmental practices promotes efficiency. Being able to dump pollutants so that someone downstream goes bankrupt fighting cancer doesn't prosper society. Sick people are not a foundation for economic health.
Also to be factored in are technological advancements. Developing fusion/fission hybrid reactors (http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/26/fus...hs-fusion.html), plama-based waste recycling (http://www.recoveredenergy.com/) and other advancements are not pie-in-the-sky; in fact, I hope that some stimulus funds go in this direction if there is a second go-round.
I think that the greatest days for our country are ahead of us and I am glad that we have someone with a brain as our President. Hopefully, we will never have another Bush-type.
Cap+Trade != Environmental Protection
Go on . . .
Blasphemy!
What is really ridiculous is that it would take more than 7000 years at our current CO2 release rates to increase the atmosphere by 100 ppm.
We have not cause the increased CO2. The equilibrium between the ocean and atmosphere has been changing. As the ocean warms from global warming, it releases more CO2 than it absorbs.
the equilibrium is about 49:1. The ocean contains something like 39,100 giga-tons of carbon. The atmosphere now about 798 for 383 ppm. For every 8 giga tons we expel, if the balance was static, it would take 50 years at 8 gTons for the atmosphere to increase by 8, or about 4 ppm. At that rate, it would take 1250 years to raise the atmosphere 100 ppm. However, if the ocean warms by 1 degree average, it expels about 4% of it's Carbon into the atmosphere as CO2. 4% of 39100 is 1564 gigatons, or about 750 ppm. It would only take between a 0.1 C to 0.2 C increase in ocean temperature to see the 100+ ppm increase we have since the 1700's.
Temperature drives CO2. CO2 does not drive temperature.
Things to consider.
The free market regulates pollution to some extent, but not as much as environmentalists want. Why?
Government places restrictions on polluting to the point where the industry can become economically inferior to traditionally expensive alternatives. Consider things like subsidizing energy, the inefficiency of wind power and nuclear power in terms of cost per megawatt (before government taxes/regulation/subsidies).
The reason is that the producer doesn't bear the cost of the externalities they create. The perfect free market can never solve this unless the producers are benevolent and all internalize the cost. The problem is that government intervention is implied, but I think industry gets hit too hard. Taxes/regulations/fines/laws/subsidies all add up at the local/state/national level quickly. This makes us less efficient as we use more capital to produce the same amount of energy. It is not clear that this money equates to the cost of the pollution, and I don't trust that government would properly predict those costs without a large overrun.
My economic prediction: China will take advantage and gladly be the main polluter to close the gap (if any is left) between them and the United States. Pure industrial output can outpace the cost of pollution as the industrial revolution showed. It's a lot like sprinting in a race; you go all out and when you pass up the other guys and win, you can burn-out and recover. The effects of pollution take years to manifest. By the time China burns all their coal for pennies on the dollar, they will be far ahead.
It is important to think of environmentalism as a kind of free-rider problem. It only takes one country to harm the effects of widespread adoption of some policy. The entire world could vote to ban burning of coal, but as long as one country is importing it on the cheap and burning it, what does it really mean? Sure, the throughput of pollution is lowered by a large amount, but all the coal is getting used up either way. On a geological timescale, what is the difference between burning off all fossil fuels within 40 years or within 3000? None. Power requirements won't go down either. Every year people use more electricity, and population growth is exponential.
Reducing carbon emissions by reducing carbon-based "fossil" fuels will seem remarkably prescient when they are several steps ahead of us in converting their economies and we are having to play catch up.Socialized medicine and cap-trade have been wonderful success stories in Europe.
They will be insulated from the run-ups in the prices of oil/coal/gas because their energy sources and economic patterns will have already shifted, making their industry more compe ive, all things held equal.
Europeans are, by a large measure, satisfied with their health care, and that health care costs less than it does in the US.
The single largest cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is due to medical bills. You don't think that produces some inefficiency and drags on the economy?
Meh. "socialised medicine" is not the bugaboo for a lot of people that it used to be.
"can" being the operative word.
The problem with using the past to predict the future is that subtle changes in starting conditions can have huge impacts ending conditions.
I have always been a firm believer in the value of human capital as an underestimated driver of economic growth.
The industrial revolution accompanied a massive increase in population as farming methods improved at the same time.
China does not have that demographic pattern. As noted before it has the most rapidly aging population on the planet.
Further, the pace of growth, overall larger population, and consequently more dense population means to me that the analogy does not hold especially well.
Simply put, our ability as a species to pollute, and the impact of that pollution on the overall population because that population is more densely concentrated in polluted areas is FAR greater than it was during the west's industrial revolution.
I think the costs of Chinese pollution will outpace their economic development for this reason.
Your opinion. Duly noted and given the weight it deserves.
The only true fix to the Free Rider problem is convincing the free rider to pay up, either through shame, fear, appeals to their better self, or some other method.
So are Americans.
I pay $187/month for my Blue Cross/Blue Shield policy, that covers my wife and I. I'm satisfied.
Proof?
Does this include the tens of millions without health insurance or drug coverage?
The policy costs more than $187/month. What is your employer's share?
Prediction:
RandomGuy will continue reading Calculated Risk.
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