Socialized Health Care in the USA

[Jester]

I guess the big difference that I see is that the Obama camp, to which you belong, is engaging in self sabotage on the present GDP and employment in the hopes that the changes will avert the ecological apocalypse forecast by only a radical fringe of climatologists.

This is not even close to true. The mainstream of climate science is pretty much unanimous on the idea that carbon emissions are warming the planet. The earth is almost certainly going to warm by about 0.5 degrees Celsius, if we just stop producing carbon right this instant, to 4-6.5 degrees, if we continue increasing our emissions without any check whatsoever. Even the middle range, 2 or 3 degrees, would have a *severe* impact on many aspects of global climate, from water level to rainfall to the viability of agricultural land. The 4 to 6 range would, as I said, completely collapse our current economic patterns. Billions would be displaced. Borders would have to be redrawn. Every major coastal city would be wading in 5 feet of water.

The 'radical fringe' are the climate change denialists, and they are notable in that very few of them are actually climatologists (as opposed to, say, moonlighting string theorists). Those who are in the field may be optimistic or pessimistic about the degree and impact anthropogenic climate change, but almost none who will tell you it isn't happening. Those who do are almost inevitably on the payroll of polluting industries.

Now, that the average climate is changing is a no brainer. I've seen no consensus that indicates that curbing the human contribution of world CO2 emissions (a few percentage points) will do anything significant.

That study tells you precisely the *opposite* of what you're claiming. It's saying that whatever we pollute now will stick around until our children's children's children's children's children are a distant historical memory! Business as usual isn't just stupid for *us*, it's stupid for our entire *species* for a millennium to come!

From your link:

“Our study convinced us that current choices regarding carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the planet,” said Solomon, who is based at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. (Italics mine)

Amen.

Everything I've read indicates that sequestering carbon would best be done by working to reverse desertification, and return more of the environment to grasslands and forests. But even then, it would be hundreds of years before we would reverse the damage done by 200 or 300 years of intensive agriculture and industrialization.

Forest sequestration is a generally poor mechanism. Forests burn, thereby tossing more carbon back up into the atmosphere. The more forest, the more this happens. They are a part of the carbon cycle, not outside it. They are also very, very slow: using them to sequester carbon wouldn't take hundreds of years, it would take millions. But yes, reversing the damage caused by carbon emissions is going to be long, and it's going to be hard.

Should we do nothing? Of course not, but should we drive ourselves into a current crisis in a Pyhrric attempt to avert the possibility of a future climate crisis? The sky is falling, and a piece of it landed on my head. Meanwhile, Foxy Loxy, who happens to own the carbon offset business is getting fat and rich at our expense. So, paint me skeptical of buying into the whole eco-indulgence business.

You don't advocate doing nothing, just not doing anything that costs money. Or takes effort. Or in any way violates peoples' right to live where they want, how they want, doing whatever they want, regardless of consequences. You got a better plan than cap and trade? One that avoids the problems you find so critical, but also solves the environmental problem at hand? I'd love to hear it.

A current crisis would be a trivial price to pay to prevent a future one, if the current crisis is merely economic, but the future one is environmental. We must all do what it takes to get our carbon emissions down. If we don't, the results will be anywhere from painful to catastrophic, for generation after generation to come. You can laugh about the sky falling and foxy loxy*, but there are plenty of other fables that apply here, and quite a few of them end with us freezing to death, or getting eaten by wolves.

That said, the ecologist in me is dead set against burning coal, and excessive pollution from internal combustion engines. I'm willing to change my vehicle for one that does not pollute, and I'm willing to help my energy grid transform to clean sources, but why do we need to do this in a way that is so very punitive? Surely there is a way to do this that is not so authoritarian.

We'll ask the coal industry very, very nicely if they wouldn't mind not burning coal anymore. And if they say no, we'll ask them again, but this time we'll wag our finger at them. This sounds less like a plan, and more like a parody of the United Nations.

Cap and trade is as non-punitive as it gets. You buy carbon credits. It uses the market to allocate scarce resources. It's as libertarian as an environmental program is going to be. How else are you going to get people to stop doing what they're doing? It's either an incentive or a ban, and between the two, I know which looks less authoritarian.

You don't understand my pessimism, but you have also not responded to my concerns about a supply chain that is designed and predicated on cheap energy. The perturbations of energy costs will have dramatic effects (meaning shortages and high prices) for staples and commodities.

As carbon prices go (slowly) up, rational agents will see this, and begin consuming less of it. This applies at all parts of the chain. Power plants will be built to produce less, or zero, carbon emissions. Transportation will shift either to lower carbon options like rail, or to more carbon-efficient cars and trucks. Supply networks will shrink slightly, as transportation costs go up, then expand again as more efficient transport becomes available.

The net result will be a reduction in GDP, and a more carbon-efficient economy. I'm not some crazy ecotopian who believes that there are super-efficient technologies being held down by the man that will save our economy as soon as the evil oil companies are out of the way. Nor do I believe in retreating to the backwoods and abandoning our civilization. But there are sacrifices that have to be made here, and if that means being slightly poorer, then that's just the reality.

For example, New Yorkers are used to eating fresh vegetables, and yet no vegetables are grown very near to the consumers. I just don't think this has been very well though through, as is typical of the idiots in DC. Couple that with the one size fits all approach to federal policy and you are futzing around with peoples lives and livelihoods. Maybe you think it is OK for the government to do that to its people, but I do not.

They grow fresh vegetables in Southern Ontario. That's not that far away. Plus, if you just got rid of the absurd amount of protectionism on your agricultural products, you could just ship vegetables to New York from Africa, at a relatively low carbon cost.

People will have to change. This is not going to be painless. If there was a painless solution, we would have done it by now. If we act soon, we may be able to use less painful methods, like cap and trade, to wean ourselves off of the carbon economy. If we leave it, we'll be stuck with the results for a thousand years, and will require much more draconian measures in the future.

This reeks of totalitarianism to me.

Everything reeks of totalitarianism to you.

-Jester