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Fighting Climate Change With Trade
mdsolar writes with this story about the possible elimination of tariffs on environmental goods between the world's largest economic powers. The United States, the European Union, China and 11 other governments began trade negotiations this week to eliminate tariffs on solar panels, wind turbines, water-treatment equipment and other environmental goods. If they are able to reach an agreement, it could reduce the cost of equipment needed to address climate change and help increase American exports. Global trade in environmental goods is estimated at $1 trillion a year and has been growing fast. (The United States exported about $106 billion worth of such goods last year.) But some countries have imposed import duties as high as 35 percent on such goods. That raises the already high cost of some of this equipment to utilities, manufacturers and, ultimately, consumers. Taken together, the countries represented in these talks (the 28 members of the E.U. negotiate jointly, while China and Hong Kong are represented by separate delegations) account for about 86 percent of trade in these products, which makes the potential benefit from an agreement substantial. Other big countries that are not taking part in these talks, like India, South Africa and Brazil, could choose to join later.
Eliminating market inefficiencies in a way that benefits the environment seems like something everyone could find a reason to support.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You are making stuff up. We know the Jurassic was much warmer, being tropical or sub-tropical over most of the world. We think the sea level was much higher. There is no evidence of ice at either pole. Pangaea was starting to break up.
We have no reliable measurements of either O2 or C02 in the Jurassic.
The point you seem to be missing is that the climate change we are experiencing now is happening MUCH faster than any in the past, and we are causing it. Yes, life will go on, but it will disrupt millions of people if we do nothing about it. I'm not sure why so many people think the short term profits of large energy companies are more important than the general welfare of millions of people.
Anarchists never rule
The United States exported about $106 billion worth of such goods last year.
It's one thing to export $106 billion more than you import and quite another to export $106 billion while importing $250 billion.
A good rule of thumb is that if an article doesn't explicitly tell you that it's a net export, it's because it's a puff piece with a bias and the truth would harsh the whole slant.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
If people really care about global warming and economic activity, they should read the latest IPCC report. It says that the best way to avoid warming is economic development. If the economy freezes in place (something a high carbon tax could do) then the warming will be about 4C by the end of the century. If the economy in all the "third world" countries develops into something like first-world conditions by the continued march of progress, then the warming will be closer to 1C.
Anything that stands in the way of that development is going to contribute to the warming. Removing these tariffs is a good thing, but to get maximum environmental benefit they need to get rid of the rest.
I know, Overton's Window and all.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Actions like this are how you get the other half to agree to do things to reduce CO2 emissions.
Good step: Offer to eliminate tariffs on solar panels and other things.
Bad step: Call anyone who so much as questions ANYTHING a denier.
Good step: Get behind building LOTS of modern nuclear plants. LOTS.
Bad step: Say that anyone who so much as questions ANYTHING should be arrested. https://theconversation.com/is...
Good step: Get behind building LOTS of electric cars, and the technology to increase batteries' energy density.
Bad step: Say that anyone who so much as questions ANYTHING should be killed. http://www.americanthinker.com...
Much of the political opposition that the Global Warming people get is because they believe that all of their solutions are so good that they should be mandatory. They come to you and say that you'll have to give up your money, your freedom, your independence, and your quality of life. This is all demanded at the barrel of a gun with the implication that if you don't capitulate, you'll also have to give up your life itself.
Environmentalists have made many great missteps, the two largest being not loudly denouncing those among them that call for murder of anyone who dissents, and continuously pushing plans that they know half the population will never get behind.
You want to reduce CO2 emissions? Suggest plans for it that everyone can support. Leave the death threats at home. ; )
The US uses tariffs to offset subsidies by China, for example, on PV panels. If you agree to eliminate the tariffs without addressing the subsidies, then it doesn't solve the problem, and it certainly doesn't "increase American exports" as the summary suggests. Of course, you'd have to eliminate the US's green subsidies, too.
I'm sure you're all in favor of that, right?
> The point you seem to be missing is that the climate change we are experiencing now is happening MUCH faster than any in the past
Serious question: how could you possibly know this with any reasonable degree of reliability? Even in the last 70 years, our ability to measure global average temperatures has become orders of magnitude more precise, let alone O2 and CO2 levels. There is no way to determine whether tangential methods of measurement, like ice cores and tree rings, are accurate.
Who gave you the idea that we have to significantly reduce our standards of living to combat global warming? Only the CO2 production causes problems, and there's lots of alternative energy technologies on the cusp of being truly cost competitive - if not for the vast direct and indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industry it would already be crumbling under the onslaught of cheaper alternatives.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The US government applied tariffs to Chinese solar panels because the Chinese were dumping them in the US market. If they can agree to see their product in our market for a fair price, sure we can climate the tariffs; otherwise, forget it cause we're not killing our on shore manufacturing and watching the prices skyrocket.
http://rt.com/business/163552-...
Good step: Offer to eliminate tariffs on solar panels and other things.
Good step: Get behind building LOTS of modern nuclear plants. LOTS.
Good step: Get behind building LOTS of electric cars, and the technology to increase batteries' energy density.
Three great steps!
As to "and other things..." I have always favored a move in the direction of free trade in all things, as Jefferson (not Hamilton) intended. In modern context this involves rolling back tariffs altogether, including ones for which a reciprocal arrangement exists, with the objective of simplifying things in general, and Federal law in particular. Henry George's 1886 treatise Protection or Free Trade remains as relevant and thought-provoking as ever. I agree with other posters who have said that tariffs are a market distortion -- and would add that selective tariffs by technology category (within the classification of power generation) are an even more awful distortion. You're taking the rudder from market forces -- which reflect a combination of necessity and desire -- and placing it into the hands of those who get to decide what is save-de-planet environmental and what is not.
I consider the present worldwide system of tariffs a form of pollution and wasted energy. I believe the only sustainable form of wealth creation is meaningful innovation, not the borderline kind that results from some tech firm beating another to the patent office. I mean something new that can reduce the cost of living by reducing expenses. My chosen (workable) path is to reduce the cost of grid electricity delivered (and remaining hydrocarbons extracted) in North America by harnessing Thorium.
And it so happens that NOT ONE of those politically correct green solutions generates the base load energy necessary to survive a harsh Winter, let alone grow. It really has been two decades of bad road. "Cheaper" Chinese solar panels or wind turbines will not keep us all alive during a continent-wide hard freeze. Until the "Green" parties of the world agree on a some method of generating an incredible amount of energy 24x7 reliably, something that will work, we're screwed.
Suggest plans for it that everyone can support. Leave the death threats at home. ; )
Okay. Remember in all of this... NO PRESSURE!
It's fun to discuss nuclear energy on Slashdot ... sometimes you just have to point things out point by point ... some confuse Weinberg's '300 year best-fit for waste' two fluid design for other single fluid designs ... or using solid fuel Thorium, which is pointless so long as uranium is available ... yes it's full of dangerous glop, but it is useful and happy glop ... yes, I think a LFTR could be developed and built within $4B ... every path to biofuels leads to scorched-earth disaster, Thorium energy gives us the surplus to generate synfuels ... a move to LFTR may be the only way to preserve modern society in the face of disaster (volcanism, Maunder minimum) ...
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
An incompetent comedian blames his audience.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.