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Comments
Also, to produce the fuel for each car several acres of land would be required to produce the alcohol. There might not be any left for food/feed and in any case diverting that much land to fuel instead of food/feed would surely raise the price of food.
Alcohol may help sometime in the future, when it can be produced from waste products or from crops grown on land that is not capable of growing food or feed crops.
I'm guessing there are a few workers in Kentucky that got a little something out of his purchase, as well...it's called a paycheck.
If the US took those same steps we could probably be nearly independent as well.
The problem is that we can't grow sugar cane in the volume that brazil can because of US geography.
Secondly I don't think our government is ready to make the kind of legislation necessary to do what Brazil has done even if we had the Sugar Cane production capacity.
Ethanol produced from corn is not even a partial solution. The only possible benefit it could be currently providing is establishing an ethanol infrastructure. When/if cellulosic ethanol becomes economically viable it may have a place in the oil independence collection of solutions. Actually, the E85 vehicles currently being produced are for the most part large, low mpg vehicles. This is not a coincidence. Despite the fact that these vehicles, in all likelihood, will never use E85 the auto-manufacturers get big CAFE credits for producing them. For example GM can sell a 12 mpg Silverado and get CAFE credit for something like a 30 mpg vehicle regardless of what fuel this truck ever uses. This allows them to sell more of these large, inefficient vehicles. Chances are this E85 policy is currently resulting in more gasoline being burned. It is a nice form of corporate welfare for Big Ag.
YES!!!!
Couldn't have said it better myself........
And we can't import sugar at the market price because...corporate/ag welfare, again...
How might it work with sugar beets which we can grow here? Just curious. I'm not against ethanol as any matter of principle - just against schemes like the corn one that pretend to be a solution. Meanwhile, I can go to any GM dealer and get an ethanol friendly car despite the fact that I don't think there is a station that sells it within 200 miles of my house.
Because new agencies will have to be set up to divide that extra 81 cents per gallon spoils. Programs and staff previously supported by payroll tax will not go away; nor will bureacratic supervisors easily allow their underlings transfer to a different department.
Here's a better analogy. Traffic tickets/fines for speeding, running red-lights, etc.. Doesn't this represent the government trying to discourage a behaviour through a financial penalty? Is this okay or not?
Traffic tickets issued everyday is a tiny number compared to the number of drivers on the road. If they started issueing tickets to 75% of drivers on a particular segment of highway, it's a safe bet that the speed limit would be raised :-)
If you don't believe that our dependance on foreign oil is contrary to our society's best interest then I'd say you are in the minority.
Thank you for sympathizing with minority positions following this quote sentence from yours (had to trim for brevity, but I really want to acknowledge the olive branch offered). What makes me in an even smaller minority is the understanding that if we cut our oil use, an even higher per centage will come from over seas. We import oil not because there isn't enough here but because it's cheaper to import oil. When world oil price goes down because lower demand, the first wells that get shut off are not some low-cost wells in Arabia but the high cost wells in Texas :-) What the "Peak" guys don't understand is that, we stopped pumping oil in Pennsylvania not because there is absolutely no more oil down there, but because new source in Texas was cheaper because land was cheaper.
Out of curiousity. What is your view on tax incentives.
I think they are corrupt bribary schemes for buying votes. They complicate the tax collection/compliance process quite unnecessarily. Governments should lower the overall tax rate, and let the people pursue what they want for themselves. By the time the lawmakers understand something is worth encouraging, chances are that it's already way behind the curve.
Then there's the issue of how to avoid sending two checks to the same people who have two houses in two different states? Do we now want to set up a nation-wide neighborhood watch and registeration program like the East Bloc had?
"Revenue neutral" is a poor excuse for taxation and redistribution.
My understanding is that sugar beets are a better source than corn.
In my mind pushing for E85 vehicles represents getting way ahead of ourselves. We currently produce enough ethanol to replace about 5% of our gasoline. It will be around 2015 before it can replace 10%. All cars made today can run on 10% ethanol. And we are currently using ethanol as an oxygenation agent to replace MTBE. So blending any E85 gasoline simply doesn't make sense since we can use up our entire supply blending E5 or E10 and not have to offer any of these boondoggle deals.
I'm not advocating making gas or oil cheaper, although if we significantly reduced consumption that might be what happens. It's not like we would be importing more oil just a higher percentage, as you noted. I'm not sure that equates to us being more dependent. Anyway there's other ways to impose a fuel tax. It could simply be a significant tariff on OPEC oil. I realize that is anti-free trade but OPEC is anti-free market. So it's somewhat justified.
BTW, if we get really hostile with OPEC, they would just price oil in something other than the US Dollar, and that would be the end of US Dollar and our way of life. The only thing worse than cheap Japanese, Chinese and Indian imports supposedly taking away American jobs is a lack of imports and hyperinflation because they no longer need our Dollar to buy oil.
Assuming the premise that the US government is going to do something to discourage oil/gasoline consumption is true, what would you have the government do?
I think there is a good chance that will happen regardless of what we do.
and that would be the end of US Dollar and our way of life.
You're kind of making my point. We are vulnerable and it's at the hands of countries that are hostile towards us and Western culture. Maybe we should do something about that. The US spends 100's of billions of dollars annually on defense. I'd like to see us invest a little more on economic security. Now the government could invest by doling out grants for R&D but I think that it would be far more effective to raise the price of gas and put market forces to work. Despite your previous argument you won't convince me that there is a lot more overhead involved in collecting $1/gallon as opposed to 19 cents a gallon.
Do you accept the fact that a government needs revenue to operate? Where should this revenue come from? I'd prefer a consumption tax to an income tax. Afterall, if a tax has the effect of discouraging a behaviour why would you want to discourage working and making income?
You seemed to think it was okay for fines to be issued for speeding or running a red light. What about for littering? Let's not think of it as a fuel tax but a fine for littering the atmosphere. By attaching it to fuel you levy the fine in proportion to the offense.
Can you think of another oil importing country where gasoline is as cheap as it is in the US? I can't. Are we that much more enlightened than all these other countries. I doubt it.
Interesting. Is that because you don't feel our dependence on foreign oil represents a problem or is it that you think doing nothing is the best way to deal with it?
Collecting $1/gallon instead of 19 cents a gallon does not require much additional bureacracy in and of itself, besides a few thousands law enforcement officers hunting down "illegal" gas stations that will spring up. The real cost comes from dividing that new 81 cents per gallon loot. XOM makes about 8 cents profit per gallon gasoline sold, and their 20% US market share is enough to produce 10's of billions of dollars. 81 cents per gallon on 100% market share would result in a new bonanza of close to half a trillion dollars. I can just see thousands of lobbyists lining up trying to convince us all who are the most deserving of the money. All that food fight of course is a zero-sum game.
What about for littering? Let's not think of it as a fuel tax but a fine for littering the atmosphere.
Well, that's precisely what the Global Warming Religion is about: providing the intellectual basis for marketting indulgences by condemning normal human behavior and preaching apocalypse. What a lot of people don't realize is that what constitute "common good" do not automaticly belong to the government. Does the government own the atmosphere? Shall we collect tax on breathing or farting? :-) Let's take a look at some straight forward historical precedences: the Oklahoma territory land grab only required a $5 registeration fee, and the result was the rapid development of the American West; by contrast, governments decided to "auction" 3G spectrums around Y2k as if they owned it, the result was the catastrophy in the telecom industry, bringing the whole stock market and economy with it. What is yours is yours, what is mine is mine; what is neither yours nor mine does not necessarily belong to the government . . . because government is just an institution used by a small minority to control the rest of us.
Can you think of another oil importing country where gasoline is as cheap as it is in the US?
As a matter of fact, yes. Gasoline is cheaper in both China and India. Both countries had recent socialist past, so people there are quite used to government coming to the rescue of the "poor and needy" (read: friends of the officials, simply because when the price is under market clearance level, there is shortage, guess who gets in front of the line in a shortage?) It's a matter of government control in those countries; if an entreprenuer does not toe the line or bribe the officials, he can wait in line for his energy needs. That's the typical result of government manipulation of the market place, of course all in the name of helping the "common good."
A bit of both. More importantly, out of a sheer realization that, if we are indeed in a mud hole or quicksand, the best strategy is stop digging around just for the sake of keeping busy. Any government program is bound to hire more bureacrats and making people do extra things that they would not otherwise do, in addition to what needs to be done to improve their own lot to begin with. Take for example, the history of CAFE standards, people just pack on a few extra hundred pounds to get around the regulations in order to get vehicles that they want to begin with. All the CAFE board hearings, lawyers, do-gooders etc. have been making extra trips, both driving and flying, to indulge in the zero-sum (heck, negative-sum) food fight.
Frankly, most people don't even realize what "dependence on foreign oil" means. Is Japan more dependent on foreign oil than the US? Most would say yes because despite the fact that it imports less than the US in barrel counts, it's nearly 100% dependent on imports. So would reducing US consumption level to that of Japan (much lower than US), yet nearly 100% imported oil, make US more or less dependent on foreign oil? The answer to that question alone would lead to two diametricly opposed solutions. One would recommend reducing oil consumption; the other would recommend increasing oil consumption to drive up price so domestic exploration and production can be sustained.
Under such circumstances, any government policy of action has a much greater chance of doing more harm than doing good. There for do-nothing is the best policy choice.
Of course, do-nothing and ambiguity does not sell well politically. The sheeps want to be told what to do, even if it's being corralled to fleecing or slaughter. Certainty and unambiguous answers are always appealing to the youth. Few youths are used to asking questions like what they are supposed to do with 72 virgins after their own sex organs have disintegrated, for example.
Really, there are plenty of countries that impose far more than a $1 tax on a gallon of gasoline, do they have a problem with black market gas stations? I don't think so. As it is there already is an average of 43 cents a gallon tax being applied to gasoline. In my lifetime I've never come across black market gasoline. At what tax level will this phenomena manifest itself? If that's a primary reason for opposing a gas tax I think most reasonable people will consider it invalid.
81 cents per gallon on 100% market share would result in a new bonanza of close to half a trillion dollars.
Well we currently consume around 140 billion gallons of gas a year. At 81 cents a gallon it isn't all that close to 1/2 trillion dollars.
I can just see thousands of lobbyists lining up trying to convince us all who are the most deserving of the money
I realize you don't accept the concept of revenue neutral. This somewhat implies that you don't accept the concept of proposing a balanced budget. It also implies that you are opposed to any change in the tax code because it will necessitate greater overhead. So we're stuck with what we have, it may not be perfect but it's better than the consequences of change.
Well, that's precisely what the Global Warming Religion is about: providing the intellectual basis for marketting indulgences by condemning normal human behavior and preaching apocalypse.
Well I do like your use of the term "Religion", which by my definition is something that doesn't have to stand up to logic or reason. Normal human behaviour does not result in additional CO2 emissions. Whatever we emit through breathing, farting, et al was a result of consuming something that extracted this carbon from the atmosphere. I thought that was common knowledge. Is pulling oil out of the ground, refining it, burning it in an ICE powered vehicle normal human behaviour?
As far as the common good goes. That can definitely be a slippery slope that needs to be navigated carefully. There are worthwhile objectives that we can achieve collectively but are incapable of achieving individually. And sometimes there isn't money to be made so relying on the free market and private industry to provide this won't accomplish the objective. Does protecting the environment fall into this category? That's for the individual to decide. You and I have made it pretty clear where we stand on this one.
But you obviously do. Whether you import 100% of your oil or 60% of your oil the question is, what happens if those imports disappear? If both both society's collapse then they were both 100% dependent on foreign oil. Let's say you're driving through the desert and it will take 10 gallons to reach your destination. Failing to reach this destination will result in you perishing. Now suppose you have 4 gallons in your tank. Are you only 60% dependent on an additional source?
You may want to do a little research in to the topic of Russian mafia/mob and gas stations. There was a clever scheme of mob-run gas stations that were deliberately closed before tax deadlines in order avoid tax. It became such a big problem that FBI got involved.
Well we currently consume around 140 billion gallons of gas a year. At 81 cents a gallon it isn't all that close to 1/2 trillion dollars.
Thanks for correcting my math error, but that's still $113 billion! Still a huge chunk of change for the lobbyists to fight over.
It also implies that you are opposed to any change in the tax code because it will necessitate greater overhead
I'm not opposed to tax cuts. On the other hand, anything that is not an explicit cut inevitably works out to be an increase simply because of the cost of administering it and the new patronage that would be set up.
Well I do like your use of the term "Religion", which by my definition is something that doesn't have to stand up to logic or reason.
Global Warming is very much a faith-based theology. It thrives on apocolyptic visions. Much of the population is banboozled into it following it on the good old Rene DesCartes logic: even if there is only 1 in a thousand of chance that there is a God, wouldn't it better off to be a believer instead of a non-believer? The rub to that logic is of course, how can you be sure then that the real God does not hate the version of worship that you engage in? Analogously, what evidence is there that warming is worse for humanity than massive global cooling? If anything, the planet has gone through many cycles of warming and cooling in recorded human history. Warming always co-incided with periods of prosperity, including our own; periods of cooling were really catastrophic for civilizations.
Normal human behaviour does not result in additional CO2 emissions. Whatever we emit through breathing, farting, et al was a result of consuming something that extracted this carbon from the atmosphere. I thought that was common knowledge.
I had no idea CO2-filled green houses for fruits and other cash crops are a natural phenomenom. Nor did I know that all the petroleum-derived fertilizers and pesticides that we pump into the ground in the name of farming are really natural phenomena. Or that cereal getting baked and shipped to our breakfast table, for that matter, were done with CO2 already in the atomosphere. Wow, nature is indeed wonderful. For what it's worth, without heavy intervention from all things derived from petroleum, 80% of US population would be engaged in back-breakig farming instead of the current 2% sitting on top of fancy combines. That was the per centage before tractors became available. You know what else? Vast tracts of reforested land would have to be cut down to make room for farms.
There are worthwhile objectives that we can achieve collectively but are incapable of achieving individually.
There are plenty ways of collaboration that do not involve mandate by the government.
And sometimes there isn't money to be made so relying on the free market and private industry to provide this won't accomplish the objective.
And remember this: Walmart brought food and water to Katrina victims much quicker than FEMA did. There was no money in it for Walmart, yet somehow private institutions are quite capable of doing good. Travelling the world, one would be quick to notice that private American citizens are a very kind and generous bunch, especially compared to citizens of countries that mandate them to be good to each other in the name of "common good."
I work for the government and in most cases today they can do the work much cheaper than the private sector. You don't understand how many millions are wasted on contracts for the private sector. Perhaps Halliburton, rings a bell ?????
I work for a company that spends every dollar it gets by the end of the fiscal year just so it can recieve even more money from congress the following fiscal year. We aren't talking about a few bucks either.
My company gets tens of millions in profit and bonuses when it would be more cost effective to the tax payers to have the government just do the work themselves and not have a contractor blow every dime it gets just so it can get more. It's flat-out ridiculous Kirstie. I'm a tax payer but also get tax payer money and I dislike waste. I don't want your tax money to be wasted either. If this waste wasn't going on perhaps you haven't paid enough attention to this new congress that is going "my god".
I know the old saying goes the privater sector is more efficient than the government. That might of been true 20-30 years ago but the government employs many of the same business models from the private sectors and thus doesn't have to pay a outside company millions of dollars in wasted tax payer money to do the work.
You can take what I posted and make up your own mind. I promise you if you did some research you'd change your views a bit.
Rocky
Well our last speaker of the house didn't have to stop and refuel to get back home because of his location. I have no problem with our current speaker of the house using a 747 to get from D.C. to SF without refueling. It would be a waste of time and money to have to land and delay other planes because she has to refuel. I think her being 3rd in line for the presidency poses a security risk.
She wants the big jet with lots of room for friends and contributors. And we are worried about a few extra gallons of gas. What does it cost to take a 747 from SF to DC?
Oh President Bush, and Tricky Dick are saints ???? Dubya, fly's to camp David or Crawford it seems like every other weekend. He's been on more vacations than any other president I know of in our history. Cheney, can fly down to Tejas and shoot birds and friends and nobody has a problem with that ???? :P
Conservation HAS to start at the top. Not the bottom as many would like.
Hey we agree !!!
I will give up my gas guzzler when Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Obama give up theirs. Not a minute sooner.
I'm curious about something....Is it only democrats that drive gas guzzlers ????
I guess it makes him feel good playing cowboy, and if that is what gives him pleasure I have no problem with him getting 9 mpg. across his ranch. I'm just thankful he drives an american made truck. It could be worse as he could drive a new Tundra, but even he isn't that foolish. :P
Rocky
The fact is gagrice, it's not a problem with getting oil but rather on the refining side. Sure the cheaper the barrel the cheaper the price is. However where you and I probably disagree is I believe or actually know for a fact that the oil cartel in this country shut down 150+ refining plants in order to keep the prices artificially high. They like to point the finger and blame OPEC. Well the big oil company's also are to blame because they can't buy a high enough volume to reduce costs for us consumers and why should they when you have a administration that owns a good deal of oil stocks and is making millions. He is willing to turn his head the other way as each one of us gets gouged at the pump as the oil cartel continues to make record profits each quarter and they continue to destroy the domestic auto manufactoring in this country. This is why the Feds need to step in and control this loose cannon of a industry and break up this monopoly using our Anti-trust laws we have on the books.
Rocky
It was more fun going at it with you but :P
I actually don't think gagrice and I are going at it are we ? We just are discussing a important topic and I respect his opinion on the subject.
Rocky
Well you have one group that believes global warming is for real and another group that believes its a myth or maybe even a conspiracy of misinformation to further a particular agenda. Can't it be said that both groups are following some faith-based theology? Unless there is definitive proof one way or the other no matter what you believe there will be some degree of "faith" involved. Do you have definitive proof that global warming is a myth?
When I hear spokespeople for the oil/gas industry dispute global warming it is very easy for me to see a financial motive behind this position. It is not as easy for me to detect a self serving motive from the scientists, researchers, academics that are warning us about global warming and its consequences.
The fact that you mentioned periods of prosperity coinciding with warming trends tells me that you are somewhat accepting that global warming could be taking place. BTW, these warming and cooling cycles take 1000's of years. What data are you using when you draw this corellation between prosperity and warming?
And remember this: Walmart brought food and water to Katrina victims much quicker than FEMA did. There was no money in it for Walmart, yet somehow private institutions are quite capable of doing good
Would you eliminate all services provided by government and just rely on individuals and the private sector to do the right thing? If not provide an example of a service you would keep and tell me why. For instance, would you keep law enforcement? If so, is it because its for the common good or is there another reason? If you accept that government needs to occasionally step in and become the mechanism that achieves this "common good" objective then its just a matter of when this is appropriate. Reasonable people will disagree on this. Like I said previously, I believe protecting the environment falls into this category.
With regard to your response, though, you rejected my premise and did not really answer the question. Kind of like how politicians will answer the question they want to rather than the one posed
I may well agree with most of your libertarian philosophy, however the fact is that the majority of the population does not. So given that the voters demand that the government "do something", my preference would be that the something be a tax on gasoline rather than CAFE or rationing or other non-economic methods of curtailing consumption. While in an ideal world we might agree that would be better that the government do nothing about this "problem", we don't live in that world.
Global cooling costs too much
With it having been between -15 and +15 for the last week, I think I could cope with a few degrees of warming.
But the more complicated ideas for distributing the money only came up because of your scepticism that it could be revenue neutral via simpler schemes. If the tax was simply offset by reduction in payroll or income taxes, such that it was expected to be approximately revenue neutral, this would not create an new bureaucracy for redistributing the new money.
You're correct. Less dependence is not a worthwhile goal. Granted on the road to energy self sufficiency we will go through a period of decreasing dependence and that will be positive as a way of measuring progress.
I agree. This whole notion of the overhead involved in increasing a tax that already exists is pretty weak. My cable bill mysteriously goes up by a couple bucks every now and then. I can tell you that there is no more overhead on my part to right a different number on the check. I wonder what overhead the cable company incurs by collecting this check with a larger number on it. As far as the government is concerned these larger checks will get dumped into the general fund. Since it won't increase the amount in this general fund there won't be people scrambling to get their hands on it. Really, if that's the best argument against this proposal then it is pretty sound.
I think you are believing a myth or some ignorant blogger. According to the EIA there are a TOTAL of 144 refineries in the USA. Those conspiracy theories sound good when you want to believe something is wrong. I do think we could use a few more refineries for times like Katrina. Right now there is no shortages and the West Coast is still paying 30-50 cents per gallon more than you all.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/rankings/refineries.htm
NO, they just preach against them. It is the "do as I say, not as I do" crowd that I pick on. You are all wet on commuter aircraft my friend. Any number of commuter planes on up to 737 jets have no problem flying non-stop from DC to SF. Most airlines are using 737s because of the range and low cost of flying. It is prestige and status that Ms Pelosi is after. If you can remember President Carter the first time he flew in Air Force One. His statement was to the affect that it was worth the hassle of getting elected just to have access to that plane. It is for the President and staff. Not every Tom, Dick and Nancy in Congress.
I can certainly agree that there are numerous warming and cooling cycles superimposed on top of each other as part of the natural process surrounding the planet; some of these cycles run into thousands of years if not longer. However, that's not the version of global warming and cooling history that the Global Warming crowd is interested, is it? There is no human behavior to blame in that reality. A politically much more expedient set of theory would have someone to be blamed for flooding; hundreds of years ago, the fornicators got blamed, today it's the CO2 producers.
Check world history, especially those of Roman and Chinese at two ends of the Eurasian continent; it's easy to see that babarian invasions resulted from cooling periods in which land in the northern regions more amenable to grazing than farming. In converse, warming periods brought on restoration of farming communities in the north and renewed civilization. There were periods in history that the planet was a much warmer place than it is today. For example, in the 9th century, the Vikings settled Greenland and turn it into farmland for regular Scandanavian crops. Greenland is tundra today; not even grass grow there today. Going a little east, 9th century through 12th century also saw the rebirth of cities in Europe; cities that had not been around since the collapse of Roman Empire; going a little further east, trade and commerce was so active in east Med that the Islamic world managed to become the center for (western) world knowledge that had not been seen since classical times; going further east, 9th through 12th century also saw the peak of East Asian civilization in China's Tang ans Sung dynasties. In the 13th to 14th century, climate got cold again. Viking colony in Greenland went into decline and eventual extinction. All the civilizations of Eurasia, West, Middleast, South Asia, and East Asia, all suffered from the monster that came out of the cold steppes: the Mongols.
Would you eliminate all services provided by government and just rely on individuals and the private sector to do the right thing?
Given how quickly the government has grown in the past 150 years, we probably should worry more about the other extreme of having government taking over all aspects of our lives than worrying about the disappearance of governments. Also, why is it advisable to rely on the monopolistic government official to do the right thing?
For instance, would you keep law enforcement?
This is a common collectivist train of thought: if something can be found to be necessary then anything can be promoted to be just as important. Police, school and firefighting are always the good excuses for raising taxes, yet not much of the new money raised get put to these three departments. Why? Because if Police, school and fire department actually worked to people's satisfaction, there would be no excuse to raise taxes and benefit the friends of politicians. Therefore Police, fire and School have to be dysfunctional by design, once you take out the assumption that politicians are there to do good. What the collectivists don't realize is that, law enforcement, firefighting and education existed long before there were publicly funded police, fire department or public schools. In fact, the most fundamental aspect of consitutional law making is that police shall not enjoy special privellges beyond that which is accorded private citizens. The understanding that individuals do not become saints just because they put on the garbs of government officials.
Private citizens band together voluntarily to achieve what they consider "common good" all the time. Government enforcement only serve to run rough shods over individuals; over time, an expanding government is bound to be tyrranical.
Perhaps I'm a little too optimistic, but IMHO, while we are on the subject of what is best for the economy, as opposed to what is best for the decision makers with patronage network to support, an education program on why do-nothing is the best policy would a worthwhile enterprise.
Like I said, the cost of collecting extra tax, even if only to be redistributed back in checks to (almost) everyone, entails enormous overhead and economic distorsion.
I have a working theory why the Global Warming High Priests are out in full force lately. The global climate is about to turn from a warming cycle to the cooling side of the cycle. The politicians and their lackeys are desperate to have taxes in place and interest groups assigned before the weather gets cold and the supposed reason for raising taxes go away.
I agree that global warming will happen regardless of what actions we take. That doesn't mean we can't have an impact. Reducing GHG emissions might make the difference between a 5 degree increase and a 7 degree increase. BTW, I just made those numbers up to make a point. So what would be the cost and benefit of accomplishing this objective and, as you mentioned, could this money be better spent preparing for the inevitable warming? That's a very reasonable discussion that should be taking place.
As far as that LA Times article is concerned, I think the author has a little problem with cause and effect. He seems to imply that the increases in wealth during the 1900's were somehow due to the fact the temperature rose .7 degrees that century. The increases in wealth were a result of the rapid pace of new inventions and technology. Many of these inventions involved CO2 production but that didn't have to be the case and these inventions would have taken place even if the earth was going through a cooling period. What if mankind invented really good batteries before gasoline. Would we be any poorer for never having the ICE? I don't think so. Also, a lot of this money that will get spent reducing GHGs will actually create new industries with relatively high paying jobs. It won't represent money being just pissed away. As far as individuals burning less fuel or using less energy goes. How does that represent a cost? That's a savings.
You have a much more positive view of human nature than I do. I think that corporations have made it abundantly clear the type of pollution and hazardous waste they are willing to expose us to in the name of profit. Should we do away with the EPA and just trust corporations to do the right thing? I grew up near Los Angeles and while they still have a significant problem with air quality I believe it is better than in 1970 despite having probably twice as many vehicles. How did this come about and was it worthwhile? I personally think so.
The dishonesty and political posturing on this is disgusting.