[extropy-chat] Hypocrisy and Preaching (was The great globalwarming swindle)

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Apr 07, 2007 at 01:55:45PM -0700, spike wrote:

> In the final analysis, everything is dollars and cents.  Algore and others

A lot of things do not have monetary value. How much is love worth,
in dollar and cents?

> make a fundamental error assuming governments should control our carbon
> footprint.  Governments do not control that, markets do.  If governments try
> too hard to influence markets (and in so doing depress the economy) they get

Governments are there to look at the long term and create new markets
by regulation. Unfortunately, governments almost uniformly fail in that,
but for a few rare exceptions.

> thrown out of office, as they should.  Give us hard numbers so that we can
> make market-based decisions.

Sometimes, markets fail. Pollution occurs on a time scale beyond which
the market optimizes. Pollution is global, which encourages tragedy of
the commons mode. 

Do you know anyone who would voluntarily buy carbon options whenever
taking a flight? It would easily add some $40 to your flight ticket. 

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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