Comment by sfink

This is a great point, and I'm sympathetic to the problems raised, but it's not a great post. It's pushing the view that the relevant question is how much regulation there should be. That's just mechanism. Better questions are: how good are the regulations? What is the incentive structure to improve them? What are the mechanisms to improve them, by whittling away the problematic parts, modifying things that missed their target, and adding ones that would have better outcomes?

Even here, I wouldn't want injecting CO2 into old oil wells to get a free pass. I think we'd agree that injecting CO2 into deep lakes would be a bad idea -- or rather, it would be a great idea, up until the lake turns over and suffocates thousands of people and most of the life in the area. Do I know that that can't happen if the injection is underground? I do not. What's actually needed here is research, and regulation is the blunt instrument that you have to use when the research is not yet available or suspiciously funded by those who will benefit and/or there's no mechanism for paying for it (who should be paying, anyway?) [Note that this is speculative; perhaps this research does exist and is of good quality. But this dynamic will still come up when anyone tries doing anything new and potentially dangerous.]

I agree that over-regulation is a major impediment. I just don't think the argument "over-regulation bad, let's throw away all of our seat belts" is productive.