mkayser
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Funny
It's a shame to see religion being appropriated against the environment.
Let's be careful to respect people who believe in God. This quote is different from "God gave us bananas so we could eat them" (which to me sounds equally silly but is much more benign) because this coal fellow is using the religious angle to serve a non-religious purpose. He's insinuating that we don't even need to reduce fossil fuel usage.
The absurdity is the stretched connection between "God's bounty" and "let's pollute." We should ridicule the connection, not accept the connection and attack both at once.
David, I'm sure you see it this way, but I want to get that out there because being a liberal I know how we often think about religion.On Notable quotable posted 2 years ago 12 Responses
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Lot of speculation in the above post
I speculated in two places, so don't take my word for it that:
- Policymakers really like clear answers and can't handle complexity. I don't deal with policymakers, I'm just stereotyping.
- Cap-and-trade policies etc. really are based on "first-best-guess" as opposed to a "smeared guess" that gives rise to many possible paths depending on what happens. I don't work on policy so I don't know these details, I'm just assuming.
- Policymakers really like clear answers and can't handle complexity. I don't deal with policymakers, I'm just stereotyping.
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Agree partly
Your points about the need for humility in economics are well taken. But economists aren't incentivized to be humble. Humble predictions aren't as clear, and policymakers like clear answers. That's where much of the problem is. Another is that people don't like to think in probability distributions. They like to focus on "the scenario that will happen," even when we don't know what that is.
There are mathematical ways to account for uncertainty. We could put some "give" in our cap-and-trade schedule. I expect this often doesn't happen because it's too complicated for the policymaker.
I'm appreciative of your helpful counterbalancing arguments in favor of experience-driven intuition over fancy math. But there are computers right now that basically run hedge funds, and some of them make a ton of money. That's just straight up math. Often using ridiculously unrealistic models of stock pricing, I might add.
The two schools of thought should continue to have a healthy tension. Humility on both sides is warranted. Your post is well taken.On Shellenberger & Nordhaus echo flawed economic assumptions posted 2 years ago 6 Responses
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Good point A Siegel
However I'd note that this problem also applies to emissions reductions per se, not just energy intensity goals.
Take a carbon tax. We can reduce emissions with it, but many emission-heavy activities can just move overseas. Of course this is not true of gasoline and not really true of power plants, so it's still a very good policy.
More subtly, even a "carbon-neutral" U.S. economy is not really sustainable if it depends on the ability to trade with emission-heavy foreign economies. If we are dependent on loads of cheap Chinese products that were produced using coal power, we are not carbon neutral.
That's why ultimately we need a global carbon price regime. But for the moment we at least need a U.S. carbon price.On The details on Obama's just-released energy plan posted 2 years, 1 month ago 10 Responses
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Next time you guys talk
I think none of the people in this flame war should be able to post anything more except
- What is the precise suite of policies you want enacted;
- How much will each policy reduce CO2;
- What are your calculations and assumptions.
- What is the precise suite of policies you want enacted;