HOORAY FOR OBAMA!

[Valynth]

It will get paid.  It will just take a long time to pay without introducing a large amount of new currency into the system causing inflation and thereby cheating our debt holders out of the "true value" due to the decreased value of the amount they were to be paid and thus ruining our credit as a nation.

Quick question.

If we increase the money supply, will that increase inflation?

Without a corresponding increase in goods obtainable with that money, yes.

[Reese Tora]

And you don't think that there aren't a lot of people who would try take advantage of the fairness doctrine to push their own views?

In any case...

Capping harmful emissions I have no problem with, it's capping CO2 specifically that I think is a bad idea.  Look at America as it industrialized, it was dirty, unhealthy, but we progressed and created better technology and made it cleaner and healthier.  If we cap CO2 emissions (or even force industry to back down to older levels, as the Kyoto protocol dictates), we cut down on the ability of the economy to grow as more resources have to be used to to stop these emissions, and potentially even have to give up progress already made.  If we don't cap CO2 emissions, we have more resources to sue developing better, more efficient, and cleaner technology... better, more efficient technology is generally cleaner.

And, since you mentioned the Kyoto protocol... the reason  the US didn't agree to it is because, at the time, the US was the only country that had significantly grown  since WW2.  the other signing countries either didn't have nearly s far to go to reduce carbon emissions to the old levels(Germany, which had a head start from phasing out old, inefficient Soviet factories, France, the UK), or were not required to abide by the protocol at all (India, China...).  even the signatories who were in a good position to hit the agreed levels are missing their marks now as everyone has been advancing since the signing.

Capping emissions that are prooven harmful to wildlife, humans, and so on is one thing, but the only reason I can think of that people want to cap CO2 is anthropogenic global warming, and you can't really make a case that the US capping their CO2 is going to make a large difference in the CO2 PPM as time goes on and third world nations begin to develop and pull themselves up towards the same levels of industry that we have. 
(honestly, it's a pet peeve of mine that so many people focus on alarmist cries about global warming driven by man-made CO2 when there are much more important issues like mercury in the oceans, carcinogens from cars and factories, improperly disposed of oil and computer parts, and so on)

[superluser]

If we increase the money supply, will that increase inflation?

Without a corresponding increase in goods obtainable with that money, yes.

Oh, good.  Now I don't have to make that point.

The GDP (in billions of chained 2000 dollars) for 2008Q2 was 11,727.  In Q3, it was 11,720.  That's a decline.

It seems pretty clear that we shouldn't even be considering paying back our debt now, but rather when we have a growing economy and actually have to print money to prevent deflation.  Since we're not paying back our debt, we don't have to consider printing money to do so, and we don't have to consider that element in inflation calculations.

[Brunhidden]

If we increase the money supply, will that increase inflation?

Germany did that after WWI to try and pay off its debt, this was a sad sad case of nobody knowing rule 1 of economics. the result was that their currency, then the mark, was worth slightly less then the paper it was printed on. people went to the store with wheelbarrows of marks in the paper bound bundles you often see in bank robbery movies as there was no point in removing individual bills. later on these bundles of marks were given to children to play with as building blocks, as this was easier then taking five or six bundles to exchange for a loaf of bread.


inflation of this magnitude can be lethal, in Germany's case it provided rich soil for hitler to sprout from, previously it had happened to Spain. Once ruler of the world, Spain's steady supply of gold from the new world ironically made Spanish gold next to worthless, Spaniards starved, and Brittan took their place making obscene amounts of money by shipping goods instead of cash, and soon the British navy was the only real power left in the world for several decades

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

*caughs*

Printing money and "increasing the money supply" aren't exactly the same thing. If I remember my Macro-econ lessons correctly, economists refer at times to M1 and M2. M1 is money in the form of hard currency, in bank accounts, in areas where it's liquid and can be easily spent. M2 is everything that has value, but can't be accessed at a moment's notice, houses, Certificates of Deposit, stocks tied up in funds that cannot be liquidated at a seconds notice (I don't want to get into the complicated legality of stock investment)

When the Fed "increases" or "decreases" the money supply, what they're essentialy doing is altering the core interest levels so that more or less peoplpe find it profitable to keep money in M1 rather than M2. It's not simply printing cash and putting it into the market.

[Cvstos]

And you don't think that there aren't a lot of people who would try take advantage of the fairness doctrine to push their own views?

In any case...

Capping harmful emissions I have no problem with, it's capping CO2 specifically that I think is a bad idea.  Look at America as it industrialized, it was dirty, unhealthy, but we progressed and created better technology and made it cleaner and healthier.  If we cap CO2 emissions (or even force industry to back down to older levels, as the Kyoto protocol dictates), we cut down on the ability of the economy to grow as more resources have to be used to to stop these emissions, and potentially even have to give up progress already made.  If we don't cap CO2 emissions, we have more resources to sue developing better, more efficient, and cleaner technology... better, more efficient technology is generally cleaner.

And, since you mentioned the Kyoto protocol... the reason  the US didn't agree to it is because, at the time, the US was the only country that had significantly grown  since WW2.  the other signing countries either didn't have nearly s far to go to reduce carbon emissions to the old levels(Germany, which had a head start from phasing out old, inefficient Soviet factories, France, the UK), or were not required to abide by the protocol at all (India, China...).  even the signatories who were in a good position to hit the agreed levels are missing their marks now as everyone has been advancing since the signing.

Capping emissions that are prooven harmful to wildlife, humans, and so on is one thing, but the only reason I can think of that people want to cap CO2 is anthropogenic global warming, and you can't really make a case that the US capping their CO2 is going to make a large difference in the CO2 PPM as time goes on and third world nations begin to develop and pull themselves up towards the same levels of industry that we have. 

First off, Fairness Doctrine.

So, what you're saying is that the government making sure many sides are represented is a plan that's prone to exploitation, but a system where large corporations controlling the vast majority of media and controlling what gets said and what does not get said (while the same corporations want the government to buy weapons (GE) and increase media market control caps (Fox, Viacom, Turner, Warner) and telecommunications regulations (everyone) is a much better system?

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Now, global warming is a bit of a problem, and that is the major problem produced by excess CO2.  But there are two or three things (I didn't expect a bloody Spanish Inquisition!) you're missing here.

First, we were the only one to grow since WWII? Huh? I don't know if you noticed but the EU is an economic power that rivals the United States, and most of that is new since WWII (having been basically reduced to rubble during those years). France, for example: "...France today is one of the most modern countries in the world and is a leader among European nations." That's not me, that's the CIA World Factbook. (Which, by the way, is freaking awesome.)

The simple fact that so much that was destroyed is now built refutes that statement in a big way.

Next up, we cannot continue to expand using CO2-producing fossil fuels. They WILL run out. Peak oil is, at best, 40 years away, and is likely much closer (around 20 years for many estimates). We're using it way faster than bio-matter breaks down into petroleum. And coal is nearing peak, too, so even that will get expensive around the same time. Also, as I've said before, just getting coal out of the ground is extremely unfriendly to the environment, to say nothing of the horrors of burning it.

If we hit peak oil while we're still using that as the fuel of our economy, we're toast. Seriously. We're talking an economic collapse that will make this crisis look like a speed bump. We need to shift to a better system BEFORE that happens, and doing that takes a while. That's why this system is so important. This won't happen overnight but it must and will happen. The difference between starting now and starting at or after peak is prosperity and irrelevance. 

The big advantage of this system is that we can transition to a clean economy.  That's something I think you are missing here. First year out, only the worst of the worst polluters will have to cut back and make reforms, if any at all. Then, we make a schedule as to how fast it'll go down and let everyone know where our total emissions are and where the cap is and where the cap will be from here on out, each and every year. The best part of that means we don't just stop producing things. We change the way we produce those things for the better! We find new power sources that don't pollute! We SWITCH over to them!

That gives companies time to invest NOW to reduce emissions later. 

"If we stop polluting, that'll slow our economy." That's not true at all. The fact is that greening things up CREATES JOBS and improves the economy!  Remember, this is a SWITCH, not a slowdown!!

The way you're talking right now, the ONLY response to a cap is to slow down production altogether. That's not true at all. Companies that this effects will see this coming. (If they don't they're so stupid they're doomed to fail anyway.) They'll see that greener companies have a huge advantage because they don't have to buy any credits, only sell theirs. Any company with any smarts at that point will start to green up so they can get in on that action later on down the road.

And that greening is a thing that will take time. That's why this happens over the course of decades, not instantly. That's the transition. We switch from an economy powered by CO2-emitted fossil fuels to clean alternatives. And you know what? THAT CREATES JOBS!! That not only makes our economy immune to peak oil and peak fossil, it improves it overall with new, great jobs and additional economic activity!

As I said, someone has to make these renovations, and those jobs are hard to export. Solar, wind, and many other green techs that we need to grow here are job-intensive. We'll wind up with a better, cleaner economy than what we had before. Need to install CO2 scrubbers? Someone has to do it. There's a job. Installing solar panels? Someone has to do the install, that's a job. Someone has to make the panel, that's a job. Putting in a wind turbine? You're talking a large construction team there. And the making of the turbine is more jobs.

There's an area of Minnesota that put in place wind turbines in farms, giving extra income to the farmers there (who LOVE that system). The plan was so successful that the company that made the turbines built an assembly plant there in Minnesota, employing hundreds with a good-paying job!

Eventually we'll have to move to a Hydrogen/Electric system. It *has* to happen. If we start now, the benefits will be HUGE. If we wait, we'll be asking Europe to rebuild us to that kind of system, because we won't be able to afford it ourselves.

A couple of other benefits: As we transition to a green economy, gas prices will see their increases slow down since we'll be using less of it.

Since we're using less gas, we'll be sending less money to Saudi Arabia and similar countries that don't have our best interests in mind. We'll be switching our energy independence from the Middle East to the Midwest.

(honestly, it's a pet peeve of mine that so many people focus on alarmist cries about global warming driven by man-made CO2 when there are much more important issues like mercury in the oceans, carcinogens from cars and factories, improperly disposed of oil and computer parts, and so on)

Well, if man-made CO2 emissions aren't curbed we're all likely to wind up dead anyway, so I do think that's a very important priority. But I think those other things are important, too, and I would absolutely love to see legislations tackling those issues.

[Cogidubnus]

First off, Fairness Doctrine.

So, what you're saying is that the government making sure many sides are represented is a plan that's prone to exploitation, but a system where large corporations controlling the vast majority of media and controlling what gets said and what does not get said (while the same corporations want the government to buy weapons (GE) and increase media market control caps (Fox, Viacom, Turner, Warner) and telecommunications regulations (everyone) is a much better system?

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Sorry, but I don't buy it.

The way you are explaining it, the government will be able to dictate to anyone who is using standard television what they can and cannot say on the airwaves - for instance, that they cannot say one side of an issue without talking about another. And, the way your are explaining it, we are to depend upon the governement to decide what issues are important enough to the American people to merit enforcement of this law - not application or applicability, but enforcement.

If we go back to the way it was before the FCC would be able to judge which formats and issues this needs to apply to in order to protect the public debate. That would be the ideal scenario since it could be ignored in many cases and then enforced when something truly important comes around.

What your saying is, in essence, that we're going to turn all the broadcasters into criminals, but we will depend on the good judgment and benevolence of the government to only enforce the laws on the 'correct' broadcasts.

To me, this is utter foolishness, as well as turning the idea of law and justice on its head. I support having both sides of a debate heard, and undoubtedly today's media is fraught with misconception and lying by omission. This is, however, nothing short of censorship - by saying that 'you can't say this without saying this also'.
Your argument that the government couldn't be any worse than the broadcasting companies who already do a poor job is also a poor argument. Just because one thing is bad doesn't mean that it's alright for another thing to be bad also. Two wrongs don't make a right, as it were.

The idea of the government making sure that both sides of an issue are heard is prone to exploitation. Why, exactly, should we trust the government in this? Has it really shown itself to be an entity worthy of being trusted with what we can and cannot say?

"If we stop polluting, that'll slow our economy." That's not true at all. The fact is that greening things up CREATES JOBS and improves the economy!  Remember, this is a SWITCH, not a slowdown!!

That's a misleading statement. Pollution has nothing to do with the creation of jobs. Punishing corporations for not using more expensive means of production is a great way to slow the economy, though. As well, a switch that involves monetary penalties and possibly forcing companies into more expensive means of production would slow the economy, if anything.

A better way than putting shackles on companies (and risking bad economic repercussions) would be to make green energy economically viable first. If it's cheaper to go green than use another source of fuel, they'll switch themselves.

[Valynth]

This pretty much bashes "man-made" global warming in the head and steals his wallet.

Lets not forget this

and this

evidence that the environment crowd is full of crap

and this

Got any other views I can bash as completely as this?

[Eibborn]

The first: you can't reasonably compare one year to a century. Fluctuations do happen, after all. They even state that it's "the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down." So I would call it abnormal, and not a reliable way of determining anything.

Also, the article itself says, that "the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it." Even if the article is absolutely correct, it does not mean that man-made global warming doesn't happen, just that solar activity has more influence than some people believe.

...Oh hey, the third article is just the same as the first, but shorter. That's a time-saver.

I'm embarrassingly uneducated about climate change, but I'm not terrible at spotting holes in arguments. Perhaps if the cooling continues for a few years, that information will be be meaningful. For now, though, we can't conclude very much from it.

[Zina]

Got any other views I can bash as completely as this?

If you can't debate politely, then don't debate at all.
Banned for a day. Please try to keep things civil, team.

[Tezkat]

"Deregulation of the Market" (capitals intentional) did not cause the economy to get in the straights that it's in. Deregulation of a very specific sector of the economy (in a form), namely that of the financial institutions that deal in mortgage lending, was rather the cause. These so-called subprime mortgages were banks and institutions on a national scale lending money to people who could not afford the things that they were buying. If what I was told is also correct, this began back in the 90's (before Bush's administration, if you'll recall), as a sort of socially progressive program on the part of the government (that is, the financial institutions were encouraged to take these loans by government incentive, and the governmentally regulated entities that rate these loans gave them such a high rating that they were considered "safe bets", which in turn caused institutions which are normally required to be extremely conservative to put their money in these places), with the intent of getting more people to own houses. An admirable goal, certainly, but...
This is what I have been told, in any case, and what I understand to have happened.

That's not quite correct. Deregulation of the very specific sector you described happened a while ago, with the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (under Carter in 1980), and the Alternative Mortgage Transaction Parity Act (under Reagan in 1982). Subprime mortgages weren't widely used until the Tax Reform Act (under Reagan in 1986) effectively punished people for not owning homes. Since the Department of Housing and Urban Development took over regulating Fannie and Freddie in 1992, they've had a mandate to support affordable housing for lower income families. In 1995, they allowed certain subprime mortgages to count as "affordable", which made such loans more attractive. However, Fannie and Freddie had relatively limited subprime exposure and had been steadily toughening up standards on what loans they would support for years before the bubble burst. Non-bank (read: less regulated) lenders underwrote most of the bad loans and repackaged them primarily for private sector consumption--Wall Street types who knew that they were buying high risk securities but did it anyway. There was a slight downturn in subprime lending and securitization in the last few years of the Clinton administration; actual default rates turned out to be higher than predicted, and prices of subprime-backed securities fell. Nonetheless, things really picked up under Bush, with low interest rates, soaring housing prices, and increasing market consolidation bringing the big players into the game. Big players collapsing due to stupid investment decisions make much bigger waves than the smaller firms who had been failing for the same reasons. And thus we have the snowball effect rolling over financial services sectors today.

That's a misleading statement. Pollution has nothing to do with the creation of jobs. Punishing corporations for not using more expensive means of production is a great way to slow the economy, though. As well, a switch that involves monetary penalties and possibly forcing companies into more expensive means of production would slow the economy, if anything.

A better way than putting shackles on companies (and risking bad economic repercussions) would be to make green energy economically viable first. If it's cheaper to go green than use another source of fuel, they'll switch themselves.

We've already crossed the threshold where sustainable energy generation can compete with fossil fuels on a price per kWh basis in some places, so it's mostly a matter of deployment and infrastructure now. And reducing emissions from fossil fuels isn't that big a challenge. Carrots help. Sticks do too.

But talking about economic repercussions...

Free market capitalism alone gives companies no incentive to address externalities. A tree, for instance, has absolutely no economic value until a company cuts it down to turn into furniture or whatever. They make money cutting down that tree. They make even more money cutting down lots of trees. But once the trees are gone, who ends up footing the bill for things like the resulting erosion damage to local infrastructure (or agriculture, or water supplies, or fish spawning grounds, or whatever)? Not the poor company! They need to remain competitive, hire more people, and not be shackled with evil regulations. Let's instead use my tax dollars and community investments as a stealth subsidy for their poor, starving CEOs and shareholders...

Yeah, right.

Pricing these factors into the market represents the ideal solution. Demand-side pressures can work for certain niche markets (e.g. eco-conscious consumers willing to pay a premium for green, organic, fair trade, etc.), but pricing things into the supply side requires a regulatory framework. Oh noes! Rules! Seriously... pay the true social costs of your economic activities or find a way to reduce them. Emission trading schemes place a price on pollution and unleash the power of the market on the problem. They've worked quite well for cost-effective reduction of pollutants with locally measurable impacts, such as sulphur emissions.

(honestly, it's a pet peeve of mine that so many people focus on alarmist cries about global warming driven by man-made CO2 when there are much more important issues like mercury in the oceans, carcinogens from cars and factories, improperly disposed of oil and computer parts, and so on)

Yeah. One of the tragedies of global climate change is the way it's completely overshadowed all other discussions about the environment.

First off, Fairness Doctrine.

So, what you're saying is that the government making sure many sides are represented is a plan that's prone to exploitation, but a system where large corporations controlling the vast majority of media and controlling what gets said and what does not get said (while the same corporations want the government to buy weapons (GE) and increase media market control caps (Fox, Viacom, Turner, Warner) and telecommunications regulations (everyone) is a much better system?

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Look, if media outlets want to spin something, they'll spin it. That garners viewers and sells advertising. These are businesses we're talking about, remember. Do you think being forced to present another side of the argument will seriously alter the spin potential?

FOX News regularly parades opposing viewpoints out for Fair and Balanced reporting. How's that working for you?

Obama doesn't support the Fairness Doctrine, and I doubt it would pass anyway. As it happens, the media will be the ones deciding how information on the bill is presented to the public, so it's in their power to influence the opinions of the people to whom the politicians are ultimately answerable. Said representatives, worried about funding and re-election, will vote against. And that's how a bill fails to become law, Billy.

Next up, we cannot continue to expand using CO2-producing fossil fuels. They WILL run out. Peak oil is, at best, 40 years away, and is likely much closer (around 20 years for many estimates). We're using it way faster than bio-matter breaks down into petroleum. And coal is nearing peak, too, so even that will get expensive around the same time. Also, as I've said before, just getting coal out of the ground is extremely unfriendly to the environment, to say nothing of the horrors of burning it.

If we hit peak oil while we're still using that as the fuel of our economy, we're toast. Seriously. We're talking an economic collapse that will make this crisis look like a speed bump. We need to shift to a better system BEFORE that happens, and doing that takes a while. That's why this system is so important. This won't happen overnight but it must and will happen. The difference between starting now and starting at or after peak is prosperity and irrelevance.

Um... you might want to check your production statistics. We've already hit peak oil in the countries that matter. That's not to say there aren't large untapped reserves out there, but they're increasingly expensive and inconvenient to exploit. I doubt that oil prices will remain this low for long. Peak coal is a little harder to place due to crappy data. We're also close to peak natural gas and peak uranium, by the way. But peak anything just means that it will continue increasing in price until we stop using it. Demand for energy is fairly inelastic, so we will keep paying for it until it becomes more effective to stop growing. We'll just complain more in the meantime.

Eventually we'll have to move to a Hydrogen/Electric system. It *has* to happen. If we start now, the benefits will be HUGE. If we wait, we'll be asking Europe to rebuild us to that kind of system, because we won't be able to afford it ourselves.

Electric, sure. Hydrogen? No thanks. We're nowhere near mass production of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and retooling everything for them carries staggering infrastructure costs. It was a pretty cool idea in its time, but now all this hydrogen silliness is diverting resources away from more viable technologies.

Well, if man-made CO2 emissions aren't curbed we're all likely to wind up dead anyway, so I do think that's a very important priority.

Aren't you being a little melodramatic? We're still a ways off from making the planet uninhabitable.

Okay, so there's evidence that atmospheric CO2 levels aren't rising in a manner consistent with the usual 1500 year cycles, and increases at current rates will see end of century levels comparable to the last time Texas was an inland sea. But the continents have shifted a bit since then, so even in the worst case scenario (greenhouse warming melting significant chunks of the Greenland and/or Antarctic ice sheets), we'd really only lose Florida and have to shore up or move the coastal cities. Hey... millions of construction jobs that couldn't be outsourced!

Global warming could be great for Canada, too. The arctic passages would be permanently open. Our agricultural sectors would flourish and our wines would be tastier (well, maybe not Icewine... ). We have plenty of room for northward expansion. Oh, yeah, and I could do without it hitting -40 in the wintertime. Kthxbai.

[superluser]

Obama doesn't support the Fairness Doctrine, and I doubt it would pass anyway. As it happens, the media will be the ones deciding how information on the bill is presented to the public, so it's in their power to influence the opinions of the people to whom the politicians are ultimately answerable. Said representatives, worried about funding and re-election, will vote against. And that's how a bill fails to become law, Billy.

I kept meaning to say this, but I never did.

Thanks.

Electric, sure. Hydrogen? No thanks. We're nowhere near mass production of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and retooling everything for them carries staggering infrastructure costs. It was a pretty cool idea in its time, but now all this hydrogen silliness is diverting resources away from more viable technologies.

Here's my problem with hydrogen: it seeps through metal, so good luck keeping it contained.  Maybe they've come up with a cost-efficient way to transport it and which does not leave your car surrounded by explosive gas, but I haven't heard it yet.

[Lady Buggery]

I voted for him, he better do a good job. Not much more to say than that really.

[Zorro]

I look forward to the coming Second American Civil War after the First and Second amendments are done away with.

If you can't buy a legal gun might as well get the completely illegal AK-74 and since you can't talk anymore say it with bullets.   

[superluser]

I look forward to the coming Second American Civil War after the First and Second amendments are done away with.

Are you serious, are are you just having fun?

I find it very hard to believe that any court would overturn DC v. Heller.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Zorro, I think that's edging dangerously close to the "rants and abuse" line. Mmkay?

[Darkmoon]

Not just dangerously close, but fairly well over it.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Yeah, but I'm lazy, we all know that. ;-]

[Cogidubnus]

That's not quite correct. Deregulation of the very specific sector you described happened a while ago, with the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (under Carter in 1980), and the Alternative Mortgage Transaction Parity Act (under Reagan in 1982). Subprime mortgages weren't widely used until the Tax Reform Act (under Reagan in 1986) effectively punished people for not owning homes. Since the Department of Housing and Urban Development took over regulating Fannie and Freddie in 1992, they've had a mandate to support affordable housing for lower income families. In 1995, they allowed certain subprime mortgages to count as "affordable", which made such loans more attractive. However, Fannie and Freddie had relatively limited subprime exposure and had been steadily toughening up standards on what loans they would support for years before the bubble burst. Non-bank (read: less regulated) lenders underwrote most of the bad loans and repackaged them primarily for private sector consumption--Wall Street types who knew that they were buying high risk securities but did it anyway. There was a slight downturn in subprime lending and securitization in the last few years of the Clinton administration; actual default rates turned out to be higher than predicted, and prices of subprime-backed securities fell. Nonetheless, things really picked up under Bush, with low interest rates, soaring housing prices, and increasing market consolidation bringing the big players into the game. Big players collapsing due to stupid investment decisions make much bigger waves than the smaller firms who had been failing for the same reasons. And thus we have the snowball effect rolling over financial services sectors today.

I can't say I knew that much about the situation, but from what I can tell it really isn't really very different from what I understood it to be before. I think my point still stands.

We've already crossed the threshold where sustainable energy generation can compete with fossil fuels on a price per kWh basis in some places, so it's mostly a matter of deployment and infrastructure now. And reducing emissions from fossil fuels isn't that big a challenge. Carrots help. Sticks do too.

But talking about economic repercussions...

Free market capitalism alone gives companies no incentive to address externalities. A tree, for instance, has absolutely no economic value until a company cuts it down to turn into furniture or whatever. They make money cutting down that tree. They make even more money cutting down lots of trees. But once the trees are gone, who ends up footing the bill for things like the resulting erosion damage to local infrastructure (or agriculture, or water supplies, or fish spawning grounds, or whatever)? Not the poor company! They need to remain competitive, hire more people, and not be shackled with evil regulations. Let's instead use my tax dollars and community investments as a stealth subsidy for their poor, starving CEOs and shareholders...

Yeah, right.

Pricing these factors into the market represents the ideal solution. Demand-side pressures can work for certain niche markets (e.g. eco-conscious consumers willing to pay a premium for green, organic, fair trade, etc.), but pricing things into the supply side requires a regulatory framework. Oh noes! Rules! Seriously... pay the true social costs of your economic activities or find a way to reduce them. Emission trading schemes place a price on pollution and unleash the power of the market on the problem. They've worked quite well for cost-effective reduction of pollutants with locally measurable impacts, such as sulphur emissions.

I never said regulation was bad thing. Regulation is a good and necessary thing. Profit is not the highest good one can strive for.

I disagree with it in this case. Forcing businesses to use non-carbon emitting sorts of fuel, or fining them, as you say, makes no economic sense - the market does not factor in externalities. Considering this, one can only them assume that it's either more expensive to use green sorts of fuel, or that it simply isn't practical. Making renewable or greener sorts of energy economically viable before forcing the economy into using them, in my opinion, is wiser than shoving them down businesses' throats.

I know that in Maine, for example, many hydroelectric dams are being shut down because of concerns about local eels and trout. Solar would not be an option in that climate either, and I don't know what the wind is like there either. Biofuels would work, except that for the long term they aren't really a viable source of alternative energy. Tidal generators, I understand, are not fully developed yet, or at least are not widely developed. What would you recommend here?

Unless I'm misunderstanding you somewhere, this is how I see it.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

... There are better solutions for eels and trout than shutting down the dam.

It's relatively trivial to build what I understand to be a perfectly acceptable way around the dam, which the eels and trout will happily divert into using...

This is all hearsay, though, so I'd be happy to learn otherwise, or be corrected, if this information is outdated...

[Noone]

... There are better solutions for eels and trout than shutting down the dam.

It's relatively trivial to build what I understand to be a perfectly acceptable way around the dam, which the eels and trout will happily divert into using...

This is all hearsay, though, so I'd be happy to learn otherwise, or be corrected, if this information is outdated...

Not really, I learned in my biology classes that hydroelectric dams, despite being renewable and non-polluting, is still not good for the environment. They can be designed to allow fish to run through unhindered, but it actually damages the river, and then by extension, the life that lives within.
First, hydroelectric dams gain energy from the potential energy of the flowing water, and stopping it. This actually has the effect of swelling up the stream behind the dam and indirectly draining the piece of stream in front. This of course, is unhealthy for those living in the lower waters, since it's more shallow and possibly unsuitable for life.
There is also a temperature modification part, water exiting the dam will have it's temperature raised due to being processed by turbines. That, combined with a reduced amount of water being sent down, will lead to some rapid depth and temperature changes. I'm not a marine biologist myself, but I can say with some certainty that there are several aquatic species that are very sensitive to those things and such a dam may make their habitat unsuitable for sustaining them.

[Alondro]

All this really means is that evil Charline is right and the only way to fix things is to exterminate humanity.

Evil wins.   

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Not really, I learned in my biology classes that hydroelectric dams, despite being renewable and non-polluting, is still not good for the environment. They can be designed to allow fish to run through unhindered, but it actually damages the river, and then by extension, the life that lives within.
First, hydroelectric dams gain energy from the potential energy of the flowing water, and stopping it. This actually has the effect of swelling up the stream behind the dam and indirectly draining the piece of stream in front. This of course, is unhealthy for those living in the lower waters, since it's more shallow and possibly unsuitable for life.
There is also a temperature modification part, water exiting the dam will have it's temperature raised due to being processed by turbines. That, combined with a reduced amount of water being sent down, will lead to some rapid depth and temperature changes. I'm not a marine biologist myself, but I can say with some certainty that there are several aquatic species that are very sensitive to those things and such a dam may make their habitat unsuitable for sustaining them.

... Granted, but once they're in, surely it's better to come up with solutions than to just shut them down entirely, right?

Shutting them down en masse, leaves you with all those problems, and removes any source of funding to resolve them. Or, at least, so I would have thought...

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

All this really means is that evil Charline is right and the only way to fix things is to exterminate humanity.

Evil wins.   

I think you were joking, but I've encountered this attitude in earnest and it's always puzzled me a little.  *puts on coat that is impervious to thrown stones*

To me, there are two levels involved. There is environmentalism for the sake of Humanity, and enviromentalism for the sake of "The World". Disregarding specific facts here, working purely in qualitative terms, I, and I think anyone with a reasonably working brain, would agree that environmental damage done to our own species is a bad idea in the long run. Deforestation or animal destruction or Co2 emission to the point of parboiling the planet=Dumb.

Then comes the more (to me) problematic hypothetical. Is destruction of an animal species that has no real "use" (And I hesitate to use that word, because use is such a vague term) to humanity. Is it our role to preserve sections of the environment for its own sake? When the choice is between benefit for humanity and benefit for a non-human species. *I* at least think that the choice is fairly clear, we come first. I always wonder at all those people who advocate demolishing any pre-industrial use of technology, because that would necessitate the removal of several billion people for want of food or medical techniques to support them. To me, environmentalism is a form of special self help. We want to keep our house clean so we can live in it in good health and safety, not for the benefit of those other things that happen to be there.

Ok, you can all jump on me now.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I'm inclined to agree.

It's summed up in one small phrase: Don't shit where you live.

... problem is, "where you live" is a very very big place.

[Cogidubnus]

I would agree with you, actually. There is, of course, the law of unintended consequences - you don't always know what one very small factor could have on the environment as a whole. The line between what is harmful environmentally to humans and what is not isn't always entirely clear, or even knowable until after the fact. As well, there is something to be said for preserving the environment for the sake of preservation - the egregious abuse of resources and wanton environmental destruction is wrong, even if it's just wasteful. But in terms of a choice between human concerns and the environment, I think the choice is very clear, yes - humans come first.

[Lysander]

Even if all the possible outcomes have been determined the residual butterfly effect can't always be determined. I've seen many instances of deterministic chaos where even if the original intention is for good the outcome can be ultimately the opposite. Things that are produced to be used for good always have a way to be used for something not good, and people have a tendency to exploit the latter. Even though bad things can have unexpected results that travel far and wide, good things can travel just as well even if they aren't noticed as easily.   

[Noone]

... Granted, but once they're in, surely it's better to come up with solutions than to just shut them down entirely, right?

Shutting them down en masse, leaves you with all those problems, and removes any source of funding to resolve them. Or, at least, so I would have thought...

It in part depends on how long they've been up. If they have only been up a short amount of time, and it's caused noticeable damage to the environment, then it is certainly considerable to prevent further damage or to reverse damage already done. Of course, if they've been up a while, enough so to cause a change to the habitats, then it may actually cause damage to remove it, adding depth and reducing temperature of the water in front of the dam, which may cause aquatic life that has settled in due to the changes to be forced to relocate. It will eventually revert to it's previous state, but such a transition could take a long time.

Now of course, I don't know *too* much about the specific instance in Maine. If it's the dam itself killing the eels and trout, then it would probably be best to simply refit the dams so they don't. Occasional casualties are expected but a well designed dam should be able to let them through with few issues. Another possibility is that the ones living downstream cannot live in the waters with raised temperature, which would force them to relocate, either upstream, or elsewhere. This may of course, cause crowding issues in the part behind the dam, though since that part's depth would increase, there would also be more space. The third possibility, (and I know this is true for salmon, but I'm not sure for eels or trout), is that for whatever reason, they need to be able to at some point, be able to exist up the dam and below it, and yes, a dam would cause issues here, since the downstream habitat would then be unsuitable. If the second or third case is true, then yes, it would be environmentally harmful, and may affect industries that rely on such resources (aka fishing). Whether the damage is worth it or not... is up to debate. Destroying an existing dam is an unfortunate waste of resources, but again, sometimes if it's causing too much damage, it's best to pull out before it's too late. As I said, I don't know much about this specific instance, so I don't really have an opinion as to what's the best route to take.

[Tezkat]

I disagree with it in this case. Forcing businesses to use non-carbon emitting sorts of fuel, or fining them, as you say, makes no economic sense - the market does not factor in externalities.

Let's not confuse markets not considering externalities with said externalities not having an economic impact. Consider the recent success in cap and trading sulphur dioxide emissions in the USA. Prior to 1990, the "market" didn't price this industrial pollution into its products, but lots of people were paying the price of acid rain and smog anyway. Emission trading systems encouraged industry to come up with some innovative solutions for reducing pollution at well below projected costs. And what kind of numbers are we talking about? Total cost of reducing SO2 emissions: About $2 billion per year (plus another $1 billion for NOx emissions), most of which is passed on to consumers anyway. Total savings: Upwards of $122 billion per year. That's over a hundred billion dollars of your taxes, health care premiums, etc. that would have been going to subsidize pollution. Even if those estimates are off by a bit--heck, even if they're off by an order of magnitude--we're still talking about a huge net economic benefit. (For the curious, source on that is a 2005 study in the Journal of Environmental Management that the EPA likes to cite but I'm too lazy to look up.)

If anthropogenic carbon emissions are altering the climate at the rate they seem to be, the total "external" costs could easily reach trillions per year. Even if you're willing to gamble that they're not, there's still a business case for greener energy and energy independence.

Considering this, one can only them assume that it's either more expensive to use green sorts of fuel, or that it simply isn't practical. Making renewable or greener sorts of energy economically viable before forcing the economy into using them, in my opinion, is wiser than shoving them down businesses' throats.

Clean energy technologies that have not already achieved grid parity in pricing are expected to reach it within a matter of years. They're competitive now. They're practical now. But their deployment is dwarfed by coal, which accounts for nearly half the country's electricity generation. See... coal used to be quite cheap, and the US has the world's largest supply. However, despite being depressed due to the current financial meltdown, fossil fuel prices are likely to trend upwards over the next few decades no matter how much drilling or digging you do. More demand, less supply--you do the math. Investing in coal fired boilers or diesel generators may have made great business sense ten years ago. Today? You might get more long-term bang for your buck investing in renewable power generation.

The thing is... big businesses don't like to innovate so long as they can get away with doing what they've been doing. That's especially true for energy companies. They're very conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies. It's a cultural thing. They have large capital investments in existing toys with enough resources and bureaucracy to provide lots of inertia. And let's not underestimate their political clout. Dump a bunch of new rules on them (like emission standards), and they'll bitch and whine. Heck, they might even sue if litigation costs less than compliance. On the other hand, business managers like to win. Give them a new playing field (like an emissions market), and they'll find surprising new ways to beat their competition.

I know that in Maine, for example, many hydroelectric dams are being shut down because of concerns about local eels and trout.

Generating hydroelectricity is admittedly bad for the local wildlife. But it remains, on balance, a fairly clean, usually inexpensive, and renewable power source. So... um... just give all those starving fishermen jobs at the new hydro plant. On the other hand, trout and salmon are yummy... and increasingly valuable economically.

The trend we're seeing is that a lot of smaller hydroelectric generating stations, particularly the ones tacked on to existing older dams, are no longer economically viable given the cost of complying with current environmental and safety regulations.

Take the Edwards Dam in Maine that was removed in 1999. It had a generating capacity of 3 MW and annual production of about 19 GWh. That would have brought in... $1 million/year? Maybe less... hydro was cheaper back then. The price I saw quoted to build a fish ladder was $9 million. The owner chose to tear down the dam rather than fix it up for the fish. Property values went up, tourism increased, and fish stocks returned, so the removing the dam turned out to be a good deal for the community. Silly externalities...

Solar would not be an option in that climate either, and I don't know what the wind is like there either.

You can fit about 3 kW worth of photovoltaics on a typical house in Canada, for a total annual output of around 4 MWh. I'm sure you'd get similar performance in Maine. And that's just residential solar. Grid solar could be much cheaper, given new technologies. Not living in the Sahara doesn't take solar off the table.

Maine also has enough wind resources to support several GW worth of turbines. Many are already deployed or under construction. That's kinda useful, because solar and wind are complementary. Solar peaks in summer. Wind peaks in the winter.

For the record, Maine already generates more than a third of its electricity from renewables.

All this really means is that evil Charline is right and the only way to fix things is to exterminate humanity.

Evil wins.   

Naw... you don't have to exterminate all of humanity, merely reduce it to sustainable levels. In any event, environmental destruction and climate change eventually lead people to exterminate themselves. Water's a big one, since you die without it. For instance, when desertification in Darfur reduced water supplies beyond the ability to support everyone, the locals embarked on an aggressive campaign to reduce the population. Quite successful, by all accounts--they eliminated half a million people and got millions more to move. Unfortunately, that route gets kinda messy and unpleasant. Yet nobody but China bothers to implement preventative measures against overpopulation.

We're heading towards similar water shortages in many parts of North America...

Then comes the more (to me) problematic hypothetical. Is destruction of an animal species that has no real "use" (And I hesitate to use that word, because use is such a vague term) to humanity. Is it our role to preserve sections of the environment for its own sake? When the choice is between benefit for humanity and benefit for a non-human species. *I* at least think that the choice is fairly clear, we come first. I always wonder at all those people who advocate demolishing any pre-industrial use of technology, because that would necessitate the removal of several billion people for want of food or medical techniques to support them. To me, environmentalism is a form of special self help. We want to keep our house clean so we can live in it in good health and safety, not for the benefit of those other things that happen to be there.

I don't particularly care for protecting specific endangered species, if that's what you mean. The whole point of natural selection is that unfit organisms have the good sense to die off and allow their superior competitors to prevail. That's how life evolves. (Alternately, for the intelligent design crowd: God only wants the winners to live.) Plenty of plants and animals are thriving as the environment changes around them.

That said, we've displayed a propensity for decimating entire ecosystems, and serious anthropogenic damage to the planet's biodiversity is a Bad Thing. Besides, nature is pretty.

[Cogidubnus]

I'm perhaps not being clear. No matter how it's phrased, forcing business into using green energy cannot be a boon to the economy. At the very least, things would stay the same - anything more would be a detrimental effect to the economy.
Of course, you say that there's a billions being saved by a reduction in pollution emmissions - I would ask, saved by who? If the government spends less, I still pay the same amount in taxes. If businesses are spending more, those costs are passed along to me. The way I understand it, reducing pollution is an environmentally laudable goal, but from an economic standpoint it is not beneficial.

I generally do not pay attention to environmentalist issues, because in general I've found it alarmist, and made up of a group of very frightened, ecologically minded people making ridiculous demands, lest the sky fall on all our heads. Hence, peak oil, peak gas, peak uranium, grid parity, are not terms I'm entirely familiar with.
I can only assume by Grid Parity you mean that you can sell green energy for the same price as you can energy generated by conventional means. I do wonder if that means that it costs the same amount to produce, of if it's simply possible to sell it for the same price without going out of business.

I do know that businesses are not using what you want them to now - that means that it's either impractical because what they have now works fine, or better, and switching would be expensive from an infrastructure standpoint, or that what you want them to use is prohibitively expensive, or unfeasible in that location.
Again, even assuming that green energy is just as good as conventional fuels, it is a bad economic decision to force it down businesses' throats. I'm saying that a better course would be to make green energy practical, useful, or attractive enough that businesses would switch by themselves, rather than forcing them to use a system that is more expensive in the short or the long term, and punishing them if they do not. I feel this is the better course of action. I imagine what you're saying would work, if your main goal is to reduce carbon emissions - I do feel, however, that it would have a detrimental effect on matters not related to the environment.