Dan Minette wrote:
...
Even if those that predict doom and gloom in the near future, other
than some (probably even more exaggerated) economic discomfort, there
is very little down side to cleaning up our act.
If this is true, than why has world usage of fossil fuel gone up after a
tripling of price? Every indication is that a worldwide recession is the
only thing that will stop the growth of fossil fuel usage. The widespread
use of nuclear power will slow it, but is not projected to stop it.
Dan--
I would argue that it takes a few years for people to adjust
to higher fuel prices. So in the short term they put up with
the increase and pay more, although it does affect their long
term decisions.
For example, take automobile purchases. My family has three
cars, one of which gets around 17 miles per gallon (no metric
conversion, tough). The plan is to keep driving it for the
short term, but you can be sure the next car we buy will get
much better mileage. So you get no short term reduction in
fuel usage, but definitely a long term one.
Similar arguments can be made for energy used for heating, etc.
It takes time to insulate and modify buildings, but if it's
economically favored, it will eventually happen.
It would be worthwhile to see a single site that had a serious analysis of
the costs of converting from fossil fuels to a PC form of energy (i.e.
nuclear is not PC) which comes up with the cost of stopping global warming
at <10 trillion dollars. I've Googled and have not obtained anything close
to serious analysis.
I'd like to look at some analyses too. I believe that
an analysis that does not factor in a large increase in
energy conservation is simplistic. But it's not at all
clear what should be counted as a "cost" of energy
conservation. Greatly reducing energy use would change
the economy significantly. Some sectors would lose, but
others would gain. People would change their behavior
as well. What is the long term cost of driving less, and
in a smaller car?
So, if you think it is the equivalent of vacuuming, then it should be
straightforward to come up with a demonstration of how cheap and easy it
would be for the US to meet Kyoto.
Dan M.
I've partially dealt with "cheap". It certainly would not
be "easy", as many aspects of people's lives would change.
On the other hand, they'll change anyway. Going back to
the vacuuming analogy, the problem is that the vacuum is
under a pile of stuff in the closet. It will take awhile
to dig it out, and by then we might discover that sweeping
would actually work better.
---David
Let the price climb, and see what the market does. Maru
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