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US Carbon Emissions Hit 20-Year Low
Freddybear writes "A recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Agency says that U.S. carbon emissions are the lowest they have been in 20 years, and attributes the decline to the increasing use of cheap natural gas obtained from fracking wells. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for 'cautious optimism' about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that 'ultimately people follow their wallets' on global warming. 'There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources,' said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado."
It could also means that CO2 release is correlated to the general state of the economy which as of currently is in the shitter.
About 1/3 of carbon emissions comes from manufacturing, and most manufacturing is now done in asia.
"There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources"
Sure, that's what everyone's been saying. The disagreement is over how to get there. Should we offer insurance guarantees for nuclear power plants? Should we mandate feed-in tariffs for household solar? Should we loosen restrictions on fracking? Should we increase science funding for alternative energy R&D? Should we institute a carbon tax?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Now instead of burning coal we are using shitty methods to create natural gas that will pollute our waters.
Or you could simply fix the original market failure by adding the cost of emissions (a negative externality) into the price of energy. To prevent this from burdening the poor, return an equal share of the revenue to everyone.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
No, not at all.
If you look at the article (it's not that long, won't take that long), they discuss whether the level of economic activity has changed because of the state of the economy. It makes it very clear that this has nothing to do with the state of the economy being in slow-growth.
And it's not the state of the economy is bad for everyone, you know? Luxury cars, yachts, diamonds, high-end houses and condos aren't doing all that badly, and in some cases are doing very very well.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Story has nothing to do with Democrats vs. Republicans except to dumbasses like you determined to find a dark cloud in every silver lining.
Now, this ruins the whole leftist meme.....no government involvement....this cant be happening, waa, waa, waa. Mayor Bloomberg will be quite unhappy.
And look at the carbon trading disaster hitting EU and its silliness. Skyrocketing prices in a marker saturated with energy....heh. Just now starting to frak in parts of EU. Finding massive amounts.....oops. Imagine market at work....
I was about to post a comment about how this would get turned into a free market circle jerk, but I was beaten to the punch with this inarticulate drivel.
Well, I guess we just need to wait for roman_mir to come forth and spew his garbage about the Free Market Deities.
The market doesn't really care about lowering pollution, though, since pollution is an unpriced negative externality.
It's quite well priced. Companies know there are legal risks, and they also want good relations with the communities they are in. They know the costs of cleanup of various materials, there's a ton of comparative data now.
It's a fallacy to claim that every company totally ignores pollution, many companies try to be responsible in this regard. You have to be or you generate a lot of bad press.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Kyoto was never about saving the Earth. It was about holding the US back so the rest of the world could catch up economicly.
You're half right. Kyoto was never about saving the Earth. Kyoto was about politicians pretending to care about saving the earth to improve their reelection chances by making promises that would be delivered far enough in the future that those making the promises could not be held accountable.
Or you could simply fix the original market failure by adding the cost of emissions (a negative externality) into the price of energy.
It's bizarre to claim you can "add the cost of emissions" to a product. How would you honestly come by such a figure, when there are myriad sources that can cause health issues (including people who smoke!)?
The fact that you can't price perfectly (particularly since there is no market here) doesn't mean you can't price at all. Right now, we price CO2 emissions at 0. For those who agree on the basic premise that CO2 emissions are a problem, 0 is obviously too low a price.
If you agree that CO2 is a problem, pricing CO2 emissions is the right answer.
But CO2 seems more like a finite resource than a toxic emissions.
Why? CO2 is the ONLY emission that the biosphere of the entire planet is built around consuming.
CO2 is not pollution, in any sense of the word.
Rather than chasing after black unicorns based on the uncertain idea that possibly the earth MIGHT warm enough to cause any issues at all, we should address real pollution that effects real people living now.
That is the biggest crime in my book, people are focused on CO2 so much they are missing real pollution much closer at hand.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh poppycock. Fracking is an old (over 100 years) well-proven technology. If it weren't any good we would have known it 50 years ago.
Nothing is 100% safe and effective. Been that way for 50,000 years.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!