kayser’s Recent Comments

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  Nice post

  You make a lot of good points very eloquently; however, this is not a fair point:

  
  Remember that the vast majority of contaminated food has come directly out of the industrial food system, not local markets.
  

  This is not fair because what we really want is the percentage of industrially-produced food that has contamination, not the sheer number of incidents. Since everyone is eating industrialized food right now, of course those numbers will be much higher than for organic.

  I found an interesting article online which pertains to this issue:
  http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-208.pdf

  It notes:

  The Centers for Disease Control and
  Prevention (CDC) has not conducted any study that
  compares or quantitates the specific risk for
  infection with E. coli O157:H7 and eating either
  conventionally grown or organic/natural foods.On Contact your legislators and take action on the sorry state of the industrial food system posted 1 year, 6 months ago 1 Response

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  A few more, 2-3-2

  How about:

  "Eat plants. Don't drive much. Tax soot."

  or

  "Consume consume. Consume consume consume. Consume consume."On Here's your chance to be the Pollan of climate change posted 1 year, 9 months ago 94 Responses

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  Possibilities

  "Tax carbon. Don't spend alot."

  "Use less juice. Burn less stuff. Use the sun."

  "Eat puppies. Roasted with garlic demiglaze" (OK, made that one up)On Here's your chance to be the Pollan of climate change posted 1 year, 9 months ago 94 Responses

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  This is what we're up against

  Pathetic.

  Yeah, to say he "shaped" this is like saying my 4-year-old nephew shaped my hundred dollar vase by breaking it.

  Kudos to the Democratic congress for pushing for something meaningful. Kudos to Mr. Bush for reminding us that we need a different president.On Does Bush deserve credit for the energy bill? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 4 Responses

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  Re: Jim

  Thanks for the reply. The point you are attempting to make would be an important contribution, though in my mind it is not established, due to things like
  

  1. the thickened tail which you seem to be getting ready to write about,
     
  2. the potential for bias in pulling so heavily from one study, albeit creditable (Nordhaus),
     
  3. the fact that a carbon tax should have less deadweight loss than an income tax (your response to "HCG" on the Am Scene site was interesting but did not dispute his point). In fact, it seems reasonable to say that all conservatives should support a revenue neutral USA carbon tax even if they don't think the environmental savings justify it. I will concede that many proposals direct the revenue to things other than income tax relief.)

  Anyways, those objections or sticking-points aside, I agree that your argument, focusing on the monetary impacts, is an important attempted contribution. But since you do not try to account for the existence-value of species, habitats, climate, etc. (not to mention human lives, if indeed those are not being counted), I would say that your conclusion "I oppose a carbon tax" is premature. Especially since at least Weitzman seems to believe that non-monetary losses are one of the main justifications for abatement.On A response to Jim Manzi posted 1 year, 11 months ago 9 Responses