That's just not good enough for me. There are higher principles involved here, which are the soverignty of the individual, universal rights and justice. In other words, liberty. The "solutions" I've seen all involve what is essentially the socialization of production and the subsequent central planning to achieve some intended result. Call them "carbon credits" if you want, or just outright bans and legislation. Either way, the political system is too corrupt and people are too greedy to just sit back and allow this to happen. Even if it means a warmer climate. Besides, it won't work anyway. Favored industries will have exemptions and lots of money will be made from the corruption. The government isn't capable of managing itself, let alone the climate of the planet.

The fact of the matter is that humans are going to continue to use fossil fuels until they are gone. That's going to happen. Even if the west economically cripples itself by refusing to use cheap, available energy, China and the rest developing world are still going to take advantage of it. Until it's gone. Industrialization and exploitation of fossil fuels have brought too much wealth and prosperity to humanity, and the rest of the world wants that. The oil and coal will be used until it's gone.

If we're realistic about the situation, we're talking about (slightly) slowing the rate of fossil fuel use and extending the use across 200 years instead of 150 years, or something along those lines (at a very optimistic appraisal of what the effect of these regulations will accomplish). I'm just not convinced this matters all that much. One thing I do know is that these regulations will impoverish those nations who won't be able to compete as a result.

I hear some really stupid things from the environmental Left on this topic, who obviously do not understand economics. One very bright person I know (not very knowledgable about economics) told me recently that he wished that gasoline was $10/gallon because "that would create an economic boom of jobs to create energy efficient alternatives."

But this won't work, of course, because nobody wants those products except for the people who saddle themselves with a huge economic disadvantage of refusing to use cheap energy. We can put the entire United States back to work by paying people to dig holes in their back yards, too, but this won't do a single thing for the economy, because nothing is being *produced* that anyone wants. Or, we could chop off everyone's right arm and then create a "boom" in the artificial limb industry. But in all these cases, people are actually vastly poorer.

Rather than the stupidity of lightbulb laws, what we really need is to crack the fusion energy nut.

I consider myself an environmentalist. I love nature and wilderness and the outdoors. I believe that humans do not have the right to poison the planet for their own greedy purposes. Of course someone is being a huge nuisance if they dump chemicals into the river. But this carbon business really stretches that, particularly since we don't know if we can do anything about it, and the rest of the people of the world are going to keep right on burning shit.

Since all human production requires energy, this attempt to control energy use in the name of climate change is nothing short of an attempt to control all human production and consumption. Philosophically, it amounts to the complete elimination of property rights and liberty. Nope, they're going to have to prove that humans will be unable to adapt to a warmer planet AND the measures being proposed will avoid this dire result. Extinction of humanity is MAYBE justification for (temporary) totalitarianism, and I don't believe this standard has been met.


You too! Even though the ideas of liberty, property rights and universal justice are not popular and shocking to most people, I like talking about it here because the people on this BBS are so intelligent.