On 6/12/07, P. J. Alling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sadly most people don't seem to understand supply and demand. It's all > a matter of cost. When prices rise high enough for a commodity suitable > replacements are found, or if a less costly alternative exists the > substitution will begin if prices simply stay the same. Oil was > substituted for Coal because total costs of using it for energy were > lower. Something will be substituted for Oil when either of those two > conditions is met. It's quite likely that the US will go back to Coal > for a while, (the US is the Saudi Arabia of Coal), abet with new plants > being much cleaner than the old, but the price of Oil in real terms will > have to be much higher than it is now. > > No matter what is causing global warming, (and if it's man made, all the > CO2 models, flawed though they may be, show that cutting back on > emissions is way to late to make a difference in the short to mid > term). Rich societies have a much better chance of mitigating any > untoward effects of global temperature rises than poor ones, so given > that the changes are coming and we can't stop them, it's best to not do > anything that will make any societies poorer. Unfortunately most if not > all of the prescriptions to "fix" global warming will do just that.
Supply and Demand works great as part of an economic theory. It does a great job of explaning price-levels in a free market. However, it seems to me that it's (in large part) the economics of the putative free market that's got our planet in the environmental mess that it's in today. cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
