----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Tobis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2007 1:12 PM
Subject: [Global Change: 1981] The seventieth generation
> Economic arguments would
> discount the hunderds of generations in the future replay of the
> Paleocene/Eocene cataclysm to maybe fortyseven dollars and eighteen
> cents. Do we have a moral right to weight the distant future against a
> more or less arbitrary contemporary measure of value?
>
> mt
>
You seem to be suggesting there is some measure of value, or "moral right"
that is not more or less arbitrary. In reality we have a difference of
opinion about the discount rate: should we discount it to $47.18 or to forty
seven kazillion dollars and 18 cents? This leaves us with a political
struggle between those who prefer a high discount rate and those who prefer
a low one. Should we tax coal at $200 per ton or $200 kazillion per ton as
Hansen suggests (i.e. "ban coal")?
-dl
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