Also, CEO pay has skyrocketed in comparison to worker pay, and no company that pays hundreds of millions of dollars to departing executives can also afford to be loyal and supportive to the workers.
It's a shame to see an otherwise insightful post go down in flames with such a cliche as that sentence. I will not argue whether or not any given CEO should be paid any given amount, but I will be intellectually honest and admit that even if you brought the CEO's pay down to a 20:1 ratio of the average employee and distributed the remainder amongst all the employees, the amount added to each employee's paycheck would be trivial and not enough to make them any more happy or less disgruntled.
The reason why employees are treated the way there are isn't because anybody wants to treat them like expenses, but foreign competition forces them to look at that reality. It's all good and fine for an employee to complain about their company not caring about them because all they see is an endless paycheck coming twice a month; but the CEO (and others) face the reality that if they don't reduce costs, some foreign company is going to eat the entire company for lunch and no-one will have a job. So the CEOs/etc. are seen as the bad guys when they cut 10,000 jobs instead of looked at as heroes for saving the other 30,000.
The reality is, everyone is at risk. Having been self-employed for almost a decade, I know that all too well. I have to stay ahead of the curve or I will end up on the street. When I see employees complaining that they aren't happy with their retirement benefits or think they've been screwed, I just cringe. That's reality, boys. There is no way anyone can just join a company and think they live in some cushy bubble where they're good to go for the rest of their lives. Working as an employee only slightly insulates you from the cruel realities of the real world, but it's not a 100% effective force shield. And while you may resent that the CEO is making more money than you, it's not like his salary is really reducing yours in any substantial way. And when they axe 10,000 of your coworkers, instead of getting all negative on the CEO, be thankful that he was able to save the company and work extra hard to try to turn things around. If you don't like that, quit and start your own business and then you will realize just how good you had it when you were bitching as an employee.
The reality is that foreign competition is our threat. And we can't avoid it by taxing them to hell to make the problem go away; that will just sightly delay the inevitable, an the inevitable will be much more ugly when it hits. We can only win by being more innovative and far more productive. As long as the foreign competition is always playing catch-up, we'll be ok. But that means we have to work hard, just like we did in the 40's, 50's and 60's. That doesn't mean we get to argue for a 30-hour work week, it means we need to be ready to work far more than 40 to stay ahead, and we might not get any immediate compensation for that. But, hopefully, everyone will be able to keep their jobs and the U.S. can stay ahead of the foreign competition.
In closing, I'd just comment that the current situation never was sustainable. And I'm not talking about CEO's earning 20,000:1 what their employees make, but about U.S. citizens (and Europeans) making 100:1 what many others in the world make. That is simply not sustainable--and I'm not even sure it should be sustained. One of two things are going to happen: Everyone in the world is going to get richer, and we'll get even richer in the process (good thing for everybody). Or the third world is going to continue to slowly suck low-paying jobs out of the west until such time that misery is spread relatively evenly around the globe (sucks for everybody). If we work hard and constantly educate ourselves, we'll experience the former and everyone in the world will be better off. If, instead, the developed world just pisses and moans about all their jobs going overseas and we just sit on our butts and don't work hard and watch American Idol instead of improving our skills, we'll experience the latter and no-one will be particularly well-off.
Today's IPCC paper ups the ante to 90% certainty. That sounds strong enough to start demanding more from our politicians.
IPCC is a document written by scientists and bureaucrats. Get the bureaucrats out of there and I'll pay a little more attention. Bureaucrats have no place being a part of the elaboration of what should be a scientific document, and their presence makes me very suspicious. Even China forced the report to be softened, supposedly, and my understanding is that that was done for political/economic reasons, not scientific ones. The IPCC document is a hodge podge of science that has been tweaked, modified, edited, and censored behind closed doors to promote and/or diminish special political interests.
Your level of optimism is not to be tolerated by the scaremongering climate change fearmongers. Please shut up and read more IPCC scaremongering
until you are suitably afraid.:)
Seriously, some people criticize the right for using terrorism as a fear tactic without realizing that many of them use global warming the exact same way.
Definitely. I'm so sick of every time someone comes out against global warming, they're automatically a pawn of big oil. And if big oil wants to put money behind a study that attacks the IPCC report, the scientists must automatically be evil and dishonest. Hey, I do my job for money and that doesn't make me evil and dishonest. And, of course, someone pays the people that participate in IPCC and yet their motives are not suspect. The utter hypocrisy is astounding.
Truth is, ExxonMobile should have made the offer $10,000 on acceptance of the paper that debunks the IPCC report and an extra $1 million if the report reasonably withstands critical scrutiny for a year. There are scientists that don't want to go against the grain because they're concerned about their future ability to obtain funding, their credibility in a field that is subject to people wanting to remove certifications for anyone that speaks against global warming, and their ability to be gainfully employed. $10,000 is not enough to address those concerns. $1 million probably is.
As others have said, I don't care about who funds what. Let's look at the hard data of both sides and let that stand on its own.
while i agree that this bill might have good intentions it doesn't address what will happen to people.
Most legislation doesn't, especially that passed by uninformed liberals. They know what's good for you, in theory, reality be damned. Next the liberals will just pass legislation mandating that no-one can get headaches from their previous legislation. Believe me, liberal legislation has been causing headaches for decades and it's only going to get worse. The headaches from this legislation are aimed only to prepare you for the massive migraines past liberal legislation will be provoking in the not-too-distant future.
Now go ahead and mod me as flamebait, but what I said was absolutely true.
In some respects it *is* a zero-sum game, and the fact that you don't get that it the problem. Yes, some wealth can be "created". Most transactions, however, do not create wealth; they just move it. When a transaction does create wealth, it is nearly always for the party that already has wealth, IE, has capital to "add value" or to force other people to strip mine someone else's land.
Wealth is created by the banking system. You're right, it is usually the wealthy that get the additional wealth. But then they spend it and "move it" in normal transactions and the new wealth improves the entire economy. No-one believes that by buying a Twinkee you are creating new wealth in the economy. But when you deposit your paycheck and the bank turns around and loans a large percentage of that to someone else who in turn spends it and someone else deposits it in their account which is then loaned to someone else... you better believe wealth is created. LOTS of it. And it's not just the rich that benefit from that. In fact, the rich would probably do well regardless--but the vast majority of the population that requires a loan to buy a house would be S.O.L. if it were not for the wealth-creation that the banking system allows.
Adopting your opponents methods to defeat them, doesn't work in the larger picture.
That implies that those that disagree with human-induced global warming have worked to censor those that believe in it. Do you have any examples of that actually happening?
Exactly right, and that's why the skeptics are more skeptical every day of human-induced global warming. When one group of scientists wants to strip another group of scientists of their credentials because they disagree with them on a scientific matter, we're no longer talking about science.
... unsuitabe for a specific purpose . . . what, like breathing?
Without CO2 there are no plants, and without plants there is no O2 for us to breathe. CO2 is a necessary part of the atmosphere and other than global warming-related hype about how it's bad, there are really no negatives to CO2 in the concentrations that we are reasonably talking about.
And by the way, CO2 does cause warming, look at Venus for an extreme case.
Emphasis mine.
There is no way you can argue that CO2 doesn't have the potential to damage our environment no matter how far into the sand your head is buried.
I most definitely can. Even if CO2 is causing excessive heating of the atmosphere, it's far from certain that global warming is ultimately a bad thing. There will be localized hardships and localized benefits. We do not know if the hardships will exceed the benefits. Until we have a good handle on that, running around like chickens with our heads cut off to try to avoid global warming is absurd.
As for the potential to damage our environment, the only real negative effect of CO2 is its supposed contribution to supposedly-excessive global warming. Other than that, it mostly helps plants breathe which helps us breathe. In other words, if our creation of CO2 is not creating excessive global warming--or if that global warming actually isn't harmful, on balance--then it's hard to argue that CO2 is a pollutant.
I like nuclear - too bad the eco-wackos prevent their very salvation. I'm kind of unsold on hydrogen, mostly because we need another technology to create the hydrogen.
You're right in both cases. And the technology we need to create hydrogen is nuclear. To heck with the eco-wackos, we can "save the environment" with nuclear energy even if the eco-wackos fight against saving the environment the whole way.:)
Personally, I'm doing it to save $$ - on my energy bills and at the pump;-)
And that's ultimately how/why everything in this world happens. Government cannot institute cost-ineffective technology before it's ready; and when the technology is ready, it'll be adopted even without government insistence.
I don't get why the "man has no effect" crowd are so vehemently against taking any action. If we assume man has no effect and global warming is a natural phenomenon, what's so wrong with taking steps to (a) reduce pollution and (b) reduce dependency on fossil fuels?
Because:
a. If human-induced global warming is not correct, CO2 can hardly be classified as a pollutant.
b. We should reduce dependency on foreign energy, period. But that should be done on the political, security, and economic merits and not accomplished by some environmental excuse used to deceive the people.
Listen, learn, read. Scientists are not out to bring America down, or trying to stop us having fun in cool cars. They're totally regular people whose only crime is knowing about the frickin topic they're talking about, and smart-arses like you seem to hate them for it.
It's not the science that some of us have problems with; it's the people that can't figure out if they want to be scientists or policy makers, and the groups that hijack science for political reasons. As soon as policy people (politicians, PACs, etc.) wrap their policy up in politically expedient science while ignoring other science that doesn't help (and even pretending it doesn't exist and that only oil-industry apologists believe in), I start getting not only suspicious about the specific science being used but about the intentions of those that are (mis)using the science.
My point is, so long as the GDP counts the extraction and use of a natural resource as a plus, but doesn't count the future unavailability of that resource as a negative, the accounting principles involved are hopelessly misleading.
That seems to be a different issue to me. The question of who's to "blame" for CO2 is a matter of CO2 production now, not whether or not we'll be "able" to produce it in the future. If we're going to come down hard on who's producing CO2 now, we should at least do so on the basis of how efficiently we are generating CO2 based on the wealth created. To just look at total amount of CO2 produced or the amount per person without considering how productive that person is is not reasonable. To ignore that would imply that we're going to reduce CO2 production in those that produce it most, even if doing so causes those people to be less productive which will make the world less able to search for a cure for cancer or feed the hungry in Africa.
We can easily increase and increase our GDP by simply choosing to extract at a faster rate, until it's gone, like a person with a big inheritance can live it up more by simply choosing to spend it faster.
And when we do that, the GDP will drop like a rock. GDP isn't the present future value. It's the present value of economic activity, period.
Which gets to my larger point: GDP is a bad number to base policy on. It makes no distinction between sustainable and unsustainable production, nor between investment in the future and pointless consumption.
It makes no distinction for the two because that isn't its intent. Perhaps what you need to do is come up with some new metric for that purpose. But when we want to measure the economic activity of the last quarter, we want to measure the economic activity of the last quarter--not try to guess how that will impact future quarters. There might be value in doing so, but that's not what the GDP metric is for.
"I'm not sure sloth is an admirable goal?" That's exactly the position the right took when we started passing laws against child labor, overtime laws, and the 96 hour work week.
There's a big difference between arguing against child labor, overtime, and 96/hr work weeks and arguing for 20/hr work weeks. Seriously.
You: Next, wealth distribution is a very important part of deciding whether GDP actually indicates that the CO2 is being emitted for a good cause. If half the CO2 from a country is going to support the lifestyles of 1% of a country's population, then the moral justification for that pollution is called into question.
Me: Do you have any evidence it is??? I'm just saying that looking at absolute CO2 production without looking at the amount of economic productivity produced is short-sighted. What happens within the country is a matter to be resolved by the country internally, not by the world community.
You: While my numbers are "hypothetical", in the U.S., 50% of all stocks and bonds are owned by 1% of its citizens. Of course, this ignores real estate wealth, which is more equally distributed.
Looking at stocks and bonds is an invalid way to determining whether half the CO2 is used to support the lifestyles of 1% of a country's population. Someone that has a billion dollars in stock does not generate a billion times more CO2 than someone who has $1 in stock.
Most CO2 is clearly produced by driving vehicles (something that even relatively poor people do), by power consumption (again something that everyone except the homeless does), and by consuming goods that require these energy products to generate--but if you look at the rich, you'll quickly find that while they spend more on stuff, the luxury stuff they spend money on generally isn't all that high-CO2 producing. I mean, if you buy a yacht for $5 million, does it really generate more CO2 to build than a house that cost $60,000?
Anyway, I'd shy away from using percentage of stock
The point is that it's a bunch of activist scientists changing the purpose of the clock so they can continue to opin on the political situation of the planet. What that has to do with science (other than political science) is beyond me.
Indeed. Given that the Doomsday Clock was a measure of the supposed threat of nuclear war, you have to wonder what the word "climate threat" is doing in there (unless they're talking about the threat to the climate caused by the nuclear exchange, heheheh, but I doubt it).
First you said: I think I understand economics better than your average citizen, but you'd probably be happy to disqualify me for not seeing it quite the way you do.
Then you said: First, let me state that I believe that GDP is little more than a measure of the rate at which we turn useful natural resources into landfill. A bit overstated? Maybe.
Try "definitely."
For example, had we decided in 1971 to devote all our increased productivity to working less rather than doing more, we'd have about a 1971 standard of living, but we'd be supporting it by working a mere 20 hours a week.
Hmmm, interesting thought. I'm not sure that sloth is an admirable goal, though. Working 40 hours/week hardly seems unreasonable or abusive. I'm also not sure your theory holds since the world economy has become much more globalized in the last 35 years and we're facing competition from countries we didn't used to have to compete with. Working 20 hours a week is not conducive to staying ahead of them.
Next, wealth distribution is a very important part of deciding whether GDP actually indicates that the CO2 is being emitted for a good cause. If half the CO2 from a country is going to support the lifestyles of 1% of a country's population, then the moral justification for that pollution is called into question.
Do you have any evidence it is??? I'm just saying that looking at absolute CO2 production without looking at the amount of economic productivity produced is short-sighted. What happens within the country is a matter to be resolved by the country internally, not by the world community.
This is even more true when we realize that the effects of global warming are going to be disproportionately laid upon the backs of the poor. Remember Katrina?
It is not reasonable to say that Katrina was due to global warming. There have been strong hurricanes in the past, this is nothing new. It just happened to have happened to a city that is on the coast, is in a hurricane zone, and is below sea level. Global warming didn't cause that catastrophe, human arrogance and stupidity did.
I figure that, if economic activity doesn't actually make people happier, then there isn't much point.
Figure that all you want, I will disagree. I'm not saying that money makes you happy, but economic activity has all kinds of side effects that are desirable. Being able to afford health care, advances in science, personal security, etc. None of these are possible at any meaningful level without economic activity to support them. I'm not sure what you've been reading, but economic activity is not only desirable to make us happy, it's absolutely necessary for 6 billion people to survive.
I think that if loosening CO2 quotas for a very poor country led to greater economic prosperity and hence to greater happiness for its citizens, it might be done even if a developed country could use it more "efficiently."
I agree. I think every country should be allowed to generate the CO2 it needs to generate in order to be prosperous... and that applies to both poor an rich countries.
Really, what's the point of increasing our economic activity, when the key to greater happiness has little to do with that activity? Will a trip to Europe make us happier than a deeper appreciation of our own cities? Will a cure for cancer make us happier than an unafraid respect for our own mortality? Does it make sense to buy pills to remove fat from our bodies and lower our cholesterol, rather than simply eating nutritious food in reasonable quantities in the first place?
I really admit I don't understand your point or, again, what you've been reading. A trip to Europe may very well make some people happy--maybe it'll give them time to relax, maybe it will give them a deeper appreciation of their own city... or of Europe, for that matter. Perhaps with more association between people of the two continent
This is not "The Day After Tomorrow." No, I'm not bothered in the slightest that you think I'm gambling with millions of lives. If I'm wrong, we're not going to get hit by a killer blizzard that wipes out millions of people in North America. Bangladesh is not going to be flooded in a matter of hours (no more so than it is every year, anyway). Millions of people are not going to die. The only way millions of people would die is if we accept the hypothesis that we'll no longer be able to produce enough food which is a hypothesis that is among the least substantiated aspects of the whole debate. Some areas that can grow food might not be able to anymore (or will have to change crops) while some cold land that is currently incapable of producing food may be able to when its warmer.
In short, I do not subscribe to the belief that even if I'm wrong, millions of lives hang in the balance.
Oh, and if I'm wrong, it's not because of political ideology. I have no political stake in whether the planet is warmer or cooler. I'll happily drive cars that run on water if someone can make them work. I don't have any stock in oil companies so I don't care if they go bankrupt. But I am skeptical and am not going to be pressured into making hasty decisions based on half-baked psuedo-science when the most common argument of supporters is, "Shouldn't we do something just in case?" No!
With Global Warming, it's just the opposite. Yes, the costs are high, but the potential RISK is the possibly biggest risk that humanity has ever faced.
That's far from certain. There are a number of questions that need to be answered:
1. Is global warming happening?
2. If so, is it being caused by humans?
3. If it's being caused by humans (in which case we could presumably stop or slow it down), how bad off are we if we don't?
These are listed in the order of increasing unknowns. #1 seems to have been accepted. #2 is up in the air. #3 is pretty much unknown. Some places will supposedly get warmer, other places will get colder. Some places will get more rainfall and maybe even flooding, other places will get less or maybe even have droughts. But we simply do not know that the "end result" (whatever you want to define "end" as) is really so bad as to justifying billions or trillions of dollars worth of policy changes today. No-one disputes that tomorrow will be different than today; but how much money should be spent on trying to make sure nothing changes which is ultimately impossible? Rather than spending money on trying to keep things from changing, maybe we should get used to the reality that things are going to change.
Tell me--in excruciating, 192-page report detail--about your plan for reducing CO2 emissions, that somehow manages not to disproportionately affect the country that both produces the most CO2 and the most CO2 per capita.
First, the U.S. isn't the largest CO2 producer per capita. Also, per capita is not a reasonable way to measure CO2 production. It should be based on per capita GDP. It's not how much CO2 each person creates, it's how much CO2 is created to generate a certain level of economic activity. It's the only reasonable way to analyze CO2 production and, it turns out, the U.S. really isn't that bad when looked at in that manner. We're doing better than Canada, China, India, Russia, Australia, Brazil, Israel, and New Zealand to name just a few.
Now before anyone comes back and says that money isn't a good "excuse" for generating CO2, let me just say that anyone that wants to see the world spend hundreds of billions or trillions on what is essentially a wealth redistribution program but that doesn't understand the economic realities of this world shouldn't be participating in the discussion.
No matter how much you may personally despise Al Gore, if there's even a 1% chance that he's right and we face the possibility of such disastors, isn't it crucial that we start to deal with those possibilities now, rather then waiting until it's too late?
No. I wouldn't play those odds with $10 in Las Vegas and I won't play those odds with trillions of dollars of wealth distribution in the worldwide economy.
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Also, CEO pay has skyrocketed in comparison to worker pay, and no company that pays hundreds of millions of dollars to departing executives can also afford to be loyal and supportive to the workers.
It's a shame to see an otherwise insightful post go down in flames with such a cliche as that sentence. I will not argue whether or not any given CEO should be paid any given amount, but I will be intellectually honest and admit that even if you brought the CEO's pay down to a 20:1 ratio of the average employee and distributed the remainder amongst all the employees, the amount added to each employee's paycheck would be trivial and not enough to make them any more happy or less disgruntled.
The reason why employees are treated the way there are isn't because anybody wants to treat them like expenses, but foreign competition forces them to look at that reality. It's all good and fine for an employee to complain about their company not caring about them because all they see is an endless paycheck coming twice a month; but the CEO (and others) face the reality that if they don't reduce costs, some foreign company is going to eat the entire company for lunch and no-one will have a job. So the CEOs/etc. are seen as the bad guys when they cut 10,000 jobs instead of looked at as heroes for saving the other 30,000.
The reality is, everyone is at risk. Having been self-employed for almost a decade, I know that all too well. I have to stay ahead of the curve or I will end up on the street. When I see employees complaining that they aren't happy with their retirement benefits or think they've been screwed, I just cringe. That's reality, boys. There is no way anyone can just join a company and think they live in some cushy bubble where they're good to go for the rest of their lives. Working as an employee only slightly insulates you from the cruel realities of the real world, but it's not a 100% effective force shield. And while you may resent that the CEO is making more money than you, it's not like his salary is really reducing yours in any substantial way. And when they axe 10,000 of your coworkers, instead of getting all negative on the CEO, be thankful that he was able to save the company and work extra hard to try to turn things around. If you don't like that, quit and start your own business and then you will realize just how good you had it when you were bitching as an employee.
The reality is that foreign competition is our threat. And we can't avoid it by taxing them to hell to make the problem go away; that will just sightly delay the inevitable, an the inevitable will be much more ugly when it hits. We can only win by being more innovative and far more productive. As long as the foreign competition is always playing catch-up, we'll be ok. But that means we have to work hard, just like we did in the 40's, 50's and 60's. That doesn't mean we get to argue for a 30-hour work week, it means we need to be ready to work far more than 40 to stay ahead, and we might not get any immediate compensation for that. But, hopefully, everyone will be able to keep their jobs and the U.S. can stay ahead of the foreign competition.
In closing, I'd just comment that the current situation never was sustainable. And I'm not talking about CEO's earning 20,000:1 what their employees make, but about U.S. citizens (and Europeans) making 100:1 what many others in the world make. That is simply not sustainable--and I'm not even sure it should be sustained. One of two things are going to happen: Everyone in the world is going to get richer, and we'll get even richer in the process (good thing for everybody). Or the third world is going to continue to slowly suck low-paying jobs out of the west until such time that misery is spread relatively evenly around the globe (sucks for everybody). If we work hard and constantly educate ourselves, we'll experience the former and everyone in the world will be better off. If, instead, the developed world just pisses and moans about all their jobs going overseas and we just sit on our butts and don't work hard and watch American Idol instead of improving our skills, we'll experience the latter and no-one will be particularly well-off.
Today's IPCC paper ups the ante to 90% certainty. That sounds strong enough to start demanding more from our politicians.
IPCC is a document written by scientists and bureaucrats. Get the bureaucrats out of there and I'll pay a little more attention. Bureaucrats have no place being a part of the elaboration of what should be a scientific document, and their presence makes me very suspicious. Even China forced the report to be softened, supposedly, and my understanding is that that was done for political/economic reasons, not scientific ones. The IPCC document is a hodge podge of science that has been tweaked, modified, edited, and censored behind closed doors to promote and/or diminish special political interests.
Your level of optimism is not to be tolerated by the scaremongering climate change fearmongers. Please shut up and read more IPCC scaremongering until you are suitably afraid. :)
Seriously, some people criticize the right for using terrorism as a fear tactic without realizing that many of them use global warming the exact same way.
Definitely. I'm so sick of every time someone comes out against global warming, they're automatically a pawn of big oil. And if big oil wants to put money behind a study that attacks the IPCC report, the scientists must automatically be evil and dishonest. Hey, I do my job for money and that doesn't make me evil and dishonest. And, of course, someone pays the people that participate in IPCC and yet their motives are not suspect. The utter hypocrisy is astounding.
Truth is, ExxonMobile should have made the offer $10,000 on acceptance of the paper that debunks the IPCC report and an extra $1 million if the report reasonably withstands critical scrutiny for a year. There are scientists that don't want to go against the grain because they're concerned about their future ability to obtain funding, their credibility in a field that is subject to people wanting to remove certifications for anyone that speaks against global warming, and their ability to be gainfully employed. $10,000 is not enough to address those concerns. $1 million probably is.
As others have said, I don't care about who funds what. Let's look at the hard data of both sides and let that stand on its own.
Most legislation doesn't, especially that passed by uninformed liberals. They know what's good for you, in theory, reality be damned. Next the liberals will just pass legislation mandating that no-one can get headaches from their previous legislation. Believe me, liberal legislation has been causing headaches for decades and it's only going to get worse. The headaches from this legislation are aimed only to prepare you for the massive migraines past liberal legislation will be provoking in the not-too-distant future.
Now go ahead and mod me as flamebait, but what I said was absolutely true.
Who cares??? It didn't happen and doesn't matter.
Ridgecrest? I grew up there! Greetings!
Wealth is created by the banking system. You're right, it is usually the wealthy that get the additional wealth. But then they spend it and "move it" in normal transactions and the new wealth improves the entire economy. No-one believes that by buying a Twinkee you are creating new wealth in the economy. But when you deposit your paycheck and the bank turns around and loans a large percentage of that to someone else who in turn spends it and someone else deposits it in their account which is then loaned to someone else... you better believe wealth is created. LOTS of it. And it's not just the rich that benefit from that. In fact, the rich would probably do well regardless--but the vast majority of the population that requires a loan to buy a house would be S.O.L. if it were not for the wealth-creation that the banking system allows.
That implies that those that disagree with human-induced global warming have worked to censor those that believe in it. Do you have any examples of that actually happening?
Without CO2 there are no plants, and without plants there is no O2 for us to breathe. CO2 is a necessary part of the atmosphere and other than global warming-related hype about how it's bad, there are really no negatives to CO2 in the concentrations that we are reasonably talking about.
Emphasis mine.
There is no way you can argue that CO2 doesn't have the potential to damage our environment no matter how far into the sand your head is buried.
I most definitely can. Even if CO2 is causing excessive heating of the atmosphere, it's far from certain that global warming is ultimately a bad thing. There will be localized hardships and localized benefits. We do not know if the hardships will exceed the benefits. Until we have a good handle on that, running around like chickens with our heads cut off to try to avoid global warming is absurd.
As for the potential to damage our environment, the only real negative effect of CO2 is its supposed contribution to supposedly-excessive global warming. Other than that, it mostly helps plants breathe which helps us breathe. In other words, if our creation of CO2 is not creating excessive global warming--or if that global warming actually isn't harmful, on balance--then it's hard to argue that CO2 is a pollutant.
If you don't see the difference between the two, it's not worth discussing with you.
You're right in both cases. And the technology we need to create hydrogen is nuclear. To heck with the eco-wackos, we can "save the environment" with nuclear energy even if the eco-wackos fight against saving the environment the whole way.
Personally, I'm doing it to save $$ - on my energy bills and at the pump ;-)
And that's ultimately how/why everything in this world happens. Government cannot institute cost-ineffective technology before it's ready; and when the technology is ready, it'll be adopted even without government insistence.
Because:
a. If human-induced global warming is not correct, CO2 can hardly be classified as a pollutant.
b. We should reduce dependency on foreign energy, period. But that should be done on the political, security, and economic merits and not accomplished by some environmental excuse used to deceive the people.
It's not the science that some of us have problems with; it's the people that can't figure out if they want to be scientists or policy makers, and the groups that hijack science for political reasons. As soon as policy people (politicians, PACs, etc.) wrap their policy up in politically expedient science while ignoring other science that doesn't help (and even pretending it doesn't exist and that only oil-industry apologists believe in), I start getting not only suspicious about the specific science being used but about the intentions of those that are (mis)using the science.
That seems to be a different issue to me. The question of who's to "blame" for CO2 is a matter of CO2 production now, not whether or not we'll be "able" to produce it in the future. If we're going to come down hard on who's producing CO2 now, we should at least do so on the basis of how efficiently we are generating CO2 based on the wealth created. To just look at total amount of CO2 produced or the amount per person without considering how productive that person is is not reasonable. To ignore that would imply that we're going to reduce CO2 production in those that produce it most, even if doing so causes those people to be less productive which will make the world less able to search for a cure for cancer or feed the hungry in Africa.
We can easily increase and increase our GDP by simply choosing to extract at a faster rate, until it's gone, like a person with a big inheritance can live it up more by simply choosing to spend it faster.
And when we do that, the GDP will drop like a rock. GDP isn't the present future value. It's the present value of economic activity, period.
Which gets to my larger point: GDP is a bad number to base policy on. It makes no distinction between sustainable and unsustainable production, nor between investment in the future and pointless consumption.
It makes no distinction for the two because that isn't its intent. Perhaps what you need to do is come up with some new metric for that purpose. But when we want to measure the economic activity of the last quarter, we want to measure the economic activity of the last quarter--not try to guess how that will impact future quarters. There might be value in doing so, but that's not what the GDP metric is for.
"I'm not sure sloth is an admirable goal?" That's exactly the position the right took when we started passing laws against child labor, overtime laws, and the 96 hour work week.
There's a big difference between arguing against child labor, overtime, and 96/hr work weeks and arguing for 20/hr work weeks. Seriously.
You: Next, wealth distribution is a very important part of deciding whether GDP actually indicates that the CO2 is being emitted for a good cause. If half the CO2 from a country is going to support the lifestyles of 1% of a country's population, then the moral justification for that pollution is called into question.
Me: Do you have any evidence it is??? I'm just saying that looking at absolute CO2 production without looking at the amount of economic productivity produced is short-sighted. What happens within the country is a matter to be resolved by the country internally, not by the world community.
You: While my numbers are "hypothetical", in the U.S., 50% of all stocks and bonds are owned by 1% of its citizens. Of course, this ignores real estate wealth, which is more equally distributed.
Looking at stocks and bonds is an invalid way to determining whether half the CO2 is used to support the lifestyles of 1% of a country's population. Someone that has a billion dollars in stock does not generate a billion times more CO2 than someone who has $1 in stock.
Most CO2 is clearly produced by driving vehicles (something that even relatively poor people do), by power consumption (again something that everyone except the homeless does), and by consuming goods that require these energy products to generate--but if you look at the rich, you'll quickly find that while they spend more on stuff, the luxury stuff they spend money on generally isn't all that high-CO2 producing. I mean, if you buy a yacht for $5 million, does it really generate more CO2 to build than a house that cost $60,000?
Anyway, I'd shy away from using percentage of stock
Then you said: First, let me state that I believe that GDP is little more than a measure of the rate at which we turn useful natural resources into landfill. A bit overstated? Maybe.
Try "definitely."
For example, had we decided in 1971 to devote all our increased productivity to working less rather than doing more, we'd have about a 1971 standard of living, but we'd be supporting it by working a mere 20 hours a week.
Hmmm, interesting thought. I'm not sure that sloth is an admirable goal, though. Working 40 hours/week hardly seems unreasonable or abusive. I'm also not sure your theory holds since the world economy has become much more globalized in the last 35 years and we're facing competition from countries we didn't used to have to compete with. Working 20 hours a week is not conducive to staying ahead of them.
Next, wealth distribution is a very important part of deciding whether GDP actually indicates that the CO2 is being emitted for a good cause. If half the CO2 from a country is going to support the lifestyles of 1% of a country's population, then the moral justification for that pollution is called into question.
Do you have any evidence it is??? I'm just saying that looking at absolute CO2 production without looking at the amount of economic productivity produced is short-sighted. What happens within the country is a matter to be resolved by the country internally, not by the world community.
This is even more true when we realize that the effects of global warming are going to be disproportionately laid upon the backs of the poor. Remember Katrina?
It is not reasonable to say that Katrina was due to global warming. There have been strong hurricanes in the past, this is nothing new. It just happened to have happened to a city that is on the coast, is in a hurricane zone, and is below sea level. Global warming didn't cause that catastrophe, human arrogance and stupidity did.
I figure that, if economic activity doesn't actually make people happier, then there isn't much point.
Figure that all you want, I will disagree. I'm not saying that money makes you happy, but economic activity has all kinds of side effects that are desirable. Being able to afford health care, advances in science, personal security, etc. None of these are possible at any meaningful level without economic activity to support them. I'm not sure what you've been reading, but economic activity is not only desirable to make us happy, it's absolutely necessary for 6 billion people to survive.
I think that if loosening CO2 quotas for a very poor country led to greater economic prosperity and hence to greater happiness for its citizens, it might be done even if a developed country could use it more "efficiently."
I agree. I think every country should be allowed to generate the CO2 it needs to generate in order to be prosperous... and that applies to both poor an rich countries.
Really, what's the point of increasing our economic activity, when the key to greater happiness has little to do with that activity? Will a trip to Europe make us happier than a deeper appreciation of our own cities? Will a cure for cancer make us happier than an unafraid respect for our own mortality? Does it make sense to buy pills to remove fat from our bodies and lower our cholesterol, rather than simply eating nutritious food in reasonable quantities in the first place?
I really admit I don't understand your point or, again, what you've been reading. A trip to Europe may very well make some people happy--maybe it'll give them time to relax, maybe it will give them a deeper appreciation of their own city... or of Europe, for that matter. Perhaps with more association between people of the two continent
In short, I do not subscribe to the belief that even if I'm wrong, millions of lives hang in the balance.
Oh, and if I'm wrong, it's not because of political ideology. I have no political stake in whether the planet is warmer or cooler. I'll happily drive cars that run on water if someone can make them work. I don't have any stock in oil companies so I don't care if they go bankrupt. But I am skeptical and am not going to be pressured into making hasty decisions based on half-baked psuedo-science when the most common argument of supporters is, "Shouldn't we do something just in case?" No!
That's far from certain. There are a number of questions that need to be answered:
1. Is global warming happening?
2. If so, is it being caused by humans?
3. If it's being caused by humans (in which case we could presumably stop or slow it down), how bad off are we if we don't?
These are listed in the order of increasing unknowns. #1 seems to have been accepted. #2 is up in the air. #3 is pretty much unknown. Some places will supposedly get warmer, other places will get colder. Some places will get more rainfall and maybe even flooding, other places will get less or maybe even have droughts. But we simply do not know that the "end result" (whatever you want to define "end" as) is really so bad as to justifying billions or trillions of dollars worth of policy changes today. No-one disputes that tomorrow will be different than today; but how much money should be spent on trying to make sure nothing changes which is ultimately impossible? Rather than spending money on trying to keep things from changing, maybe we should get used to the reality that things are going to change.
First, the U.S. isn't the largest CO2 producer per capita. Also, per capita is not a reasonable way to measure CO2 production. It should be based on per capita GDP. It's not how much CO2 each person creates, it's how much CO2 is created to generate a certain level of economic activity. It's the only reasonable way to analyze CO2 production and, it turns out, the U.S. really isn't that bad when looked at in that manner. We're doing better than Canada, China, India, Russia, Australia, Brazil, Israel, and New Zealand to name just a few.
Now before anyone comes back and says that money isn't a good "excuse" for generating CO2, let me just say that anyone that wants to see the world spend hundreds of billions or trillions on what is essentially a wealth redistribution program but that doesn't understand the economic realities of this world shouldn't be participating in the discussion.
That's your opinion, sir, and many--myself included--would disagree with you.
No. I wouldn't play those odds with $10 in Las Vegas and I won't play those odds with trillions of dollars of wealth distribution in the worldwide economy.