From the Oil Drum:
Somewhere along the way, we-the-people seem to have reached a consensus that when it comes to allocating natural resources, money should do the talking. In fact many true believers contend money is the only legitimate communicator.
“How much oil should I be able to burn? Every barrel I can afford.”
“How big a house – how many houses – should I be able to buy? Just as many as I can afford.”
“How much CO2 should I be able to emit? Not one damned molecule less than I can afford.”
“And if I want to burn and buy and emit more, then acquiring more money naturally gives me the right to do so.”
If our economy fails to charge us the “true cost” of denying future generations the fossil energy they might need to feed themselves 50 years hence; if our economy suffocates vast swathes of bio-productive land beneath highways and parking lots for our Happy Motoring convenience, if our economy fails to extract “flood money” from us to recompense millions of coastal dwellers for the loss of their ancestral homelands beneath rising oceans; well…perhaps the solution is to internalize those costs somehow.
More here.
Probably unrelated, but the “How much CO2 should I be able to emit?” got me thinking of the Climb the Wall event that we are doing in February. The organizers are off-setting the carbon footprint of the event – now, I’m not sure, but I think that could cover the heavy breathing of the participants and the extra CO2 that they’ll generate by running up all the stairs.
http://www.bc.lung.ca/campaigns_and_events/stairclimb_green.html
Now what does that imply about the Vancouver Sun Run?
the world is slowly coming up with dozens of new and innovating ways to make energy. nuclear energy making a comeback; biofuel is in vogue; solar is getting better and better, hydrogen, wind, tidal….. and at the same time oil is getting more and more expensive. seems to me the market is working. its working slowly, but its working.
but the question is how do we cost our environmental footprint? do we want to raise the prices of our food, clothes and transportation? what about the poor, do we tax them too? and what about africa, or any other poor country that depends on our older technologies? do we force them to spend money they do not have on unproven technologies?
That’s huge issue – i.e. rich western countries exerting pressure on poorer countries under the guise of environmental compliance (when the western countries got to where they are by doing what the poorer countries are now trying to do).
The imposition of regulations (whether related to the environment, farmers, labour, food safety, etc.) is often seen as a non-tariff trade barrier that has the effect of shutting out the competition.