Nah, the Bill Derington in China has no idea about the agreement, and if he did happen to know he would have no avenue to voice displeasure.
I understand science, but probability is one thing, voicing in absolutes is another and thats where I have an issue.
My concern isn't the status quo, its giving even more power to the Govt, and when you start taxing companies and causing electricity prices on possibilities it causes the average American to acquire more dependence on the Govt, kinda like the chinese me.
When global warming really took off we were in the middle of several years of US Hurricane impacts, remember when that was the new norm due to global warming? Only it wasn't it was cyclical. We were also in a stretch where the average monthly temp per state hadn't been below average in something like 5 years. That was also the new norm, only it wasn't, roughly 4 years ago that changed as well, cyclical.
Droughts-climate change
Floods - climate change
Hurricanes- climate change
lack of hurricanes-climate change
heatwaves-climate change
Too much snow-climate change
not enough snow-climate change
forest fires-climate change
I'm sure I'm leaving something out, but you get the picture, climate change is real it does happen, but it isn't any different than it's ever been we're just more attentive to it now, so we notice EVERY little thing thats out of the ordinary.
I think you're conflating headlines with the science. Hence, the article I linked chiding Obama for declaring something with an absolute without qualification. However, the scientists tend to use more precise, accurate language. Read the reports, not the headlines, and voila! You cannot state the bolded then say you understand the science. Again, it looks like you conflate headlines with science. Not the same thing.
Re: giving power to the government. If Company X harms third parties (in other words, people without possible contract rights to remedy the harm), the harmed have 2 options: 1) government regulation of that harm, and 2) litigation. I'm a litigator. It's what I do, and it's why I'm paid what I am. It is the worse option by far. Litigation is great for discovering issues in the first place, but regulation is much more predictable, stable, and beneficial to company and public in the long run. Courts are simply not equipped to handle these issues, nor should they be. But doing nothing is just accepting it - giving power to the person who caused the harm.
Your concern is absolutely the status quo. It's your baseline - electricity costs $X. Well, if the market is not taking into account externalities (imperfect input = imperfect market), then the cost was only X because the failure of the system in the first place. Just because it's death by a billion little paper cuts rather than one single wrecking ball moment does not mean it's not harm inflicted and not paid for. Your positions is too ****ing bad, that's the price because that's what it was, ignore those costs that are sloughed off on others because up to this point they haven't been measured. That's elevating the status quo over all.
Let me ask you a question - what should the price of electricity be? My answer is the market price, and I suspect your answer is the same. But I want that market to be a properly functioning market, and that will require adjustments when the information the market receives is wrong. Pollution (and similar things) is difficult for markets to price because it often has very small, very difficult to detect harms spread out across a wide array of people, not that different from the difficulties that class actions are meant to solve. We shouldn't lock ourselves into imperfect practices, imperfect inputs, and imperfect markets. I'm a capitalist, but a fully deregulated economy (as in zero regulation) has imperfect markets for the reasons I laid out above. Fully deregulated is Ford F-150 smog China. Now, there is a vast range of possible regulation outcomes, but only Von Mises quoters are calling for completely unregulated economies, and they're easily dismissed. Most of the work is done in the degree of regulation.
Consider the argument that renewables should be competitive on the market, and the only reason they are competitive now is the various subsidies and tax breaks that various levels of government have adopted. Very popular argument, but that's not the whole story, is it? Grossly oversimplified hypothetical, but bear with me. Assume that CO2 causes harm. Energy Supply A costs $X and creates $Y in CO2 damages. Energy Supply B costs $Z and creates $0 in CO2 damages. $X < $Z, so many would say that B is not competitive. But Energy Supply A does not have to pay for it's $Y damages due to imperfect markets, so the two competing supplies are not on even ground, so how can we argue that B is not competitive? We can't. What we can do is 1) make Energy Supply A pay for $Y (two primary ways are regulation and litigation), 2) give a subsidy to Energy Supply B, or some combination. If $Z = $X + $Y, then they are equal in cost, i.e. competitive. It's not artificial, it's not anti-market, it's simply correcting the inputs to account for actual costs, not just easily or traditionally measured costs.
Here's my final piece in this thread. Some dog occasionally poops on my lawn. That imposes a cost on me - picking up some other dog's steaming shit. That other dog owner is reaping a benefit - not having to pick up dog shit. So I finally find out who it is (some old man who just lets his dog run out and doesn't follow it) and tell him - hey, your dog is shitting in my yard. You need to 1) prevent that in the future, and 2) pick up that steaming turd that's there now. Should his response be that I am imposing an unfair cost on him because he's always done that? In other words, should it be my problem or his? Your clinging to the status quo counsels that it should be my problem because his current cost of owning a dog does not include picking up shit. I say no. Thankfully, he agreed with me.
