Amateur global-warming skeptics can make me uncomfortable.... I sense that under the surface some of them are saying, “Global warming had better not be happening because if it is I see no way for the free market to fix it. Therefore I would have to accept major government intervention, and I don’t want to have to do that.”Read TGIF here.
Friday, June 04, 2010
TGIF: Fixing Global Warming for Fun If Not Profit
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Repost from Comments to Sheldon's article:
Comment by Mark D Hughes on 4 June 2010:
An interesting article Sheldon. Your analysis of the generally witless application of simplistic “public goods” and “free-rider” theory is spot on. These are virtually always technical problems of exclusion, as such they can be surpassed with ingenuity. Indeed, as Ronald Coase quipped so many years ago, economists (an others) who invoke these arguments tend to lack the imagination necessary to simply over come (or, alternatively, ignore) excludability.
Sheldon, you write: “Incidentally, it doesn’t really matter if GW is manmade or natural. If it is threatening and reversible, it is a problem.” Here is the rub. Is “global warming” threatening? (First, lets stop using the term “global warming” as it is decidedly inaccurate. Climate change if preferable and much more accurate).
Lets assume the climate is warming (who cares why). Why is this by definition a problem or threatening? It seems to me that fare to many scientists and armatures simply accept as fact that a warming environment spells doom for ourselves and our lovely little planet. This is not at all proven or even close to being proven. In fact, history shows that the periods of greatest human achievements always coincide with a warmer climate. I for one would love to see farms flourish on the north slope of Alaska.
This knee-jerk objection to change is at its core a conservative mindset and is fundamentally reactionary. It has no useful place in the advancement of human kind.
Far better we focus our efforts on genuinely frightening prospects such as toxic chemical and heavy metal pollution of the land, air and sea. Issues which are a proven human health threat.
Post a Comment