Comment by KVFinn
8 years ago
>Every single person who claims they believe global climate change is a very serious, and man-made, problem absolutely should be taking personal steps now to address it. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally, now.
This being effective seems contrary to everything we know about economics. If even a huge portion of people voluntary lower consumption or energy usage, it frees up that energy to be consumed more cheaply by other people and so the overall consumption is hardly impacted. Historically this is the case.
If you don't price an externality into the market with a tax or credit or it's useless.
Put another way: if you're seriously concerned about global climate change, and do not support pigouvian taxes or other policy that will actually have an impact, you're not seriously concerned about climate change - and I can't take your concerns seriously because you don't. You're just concerned about projecting the appearance that you care.
This is a completely unnecessary, uncharitable attack. The reasonable interpretation of the parent comment is that they do actually care about climate change but the two of you disagree on which mechanisms will most effectively reduce it.
>This is a completely unnecessary, uncharitable attack.
Yes it is unnecessarily snarky and if I could edit my comment I would remove that line.
>> This is a completely unnecessary, uncharitable attack.
Not necessarily. If your parent had been a car-user and staunch supporter of Pigouvian taxes, they may have felt personally and unreasonably attacked by their previous poster and merely responded in kind. Notice that the language is identical, signaling a reflexive reaction.
Personally, I think they are both right about what needs to be done. Personal action and collectively enforced action.
If even a huge portion of people voluntary lower consumption or energy usage, it frees up that energy to be consumed more cheaply by other people
Not really, oil extraction is capital intensive, oil wells have finite lives, and you can count on people extracting the cheapest oil first. As fossil fuel demand drops, the risk of operating a well increases and that makes borrowing more expensive, the capital costs will be amortized across less energy so the energy will have to be more expensive, and energy should naturally get more expensive as time goes on and the easiest oil is depleted. Sure, technology changes and reduces the cost of extraction but moving away from fossil fuels isn't an incentive for developing more extraction technology.
Not to mention that people's investments in alternative fuels / transportation brings the costs down for everyone else and as costs go down, more and more people will be willing to pay the eco-friendly premium until some day they're less expensive and people select eco-friendly consumption out of their own self-interest.
I think this day is closer than most people realize for electric cars. Gear heads and regular folks are going to love electric cars when the batteries get better, at some point, it's going to cost a lot extra to get a ICE vehicle and that's going to be a rent extraction on idiots who dream of rolling coal in F250s.