What’s the worst that could happen?

There is a bit of a flaw in the left column. Why do we get a global depression because we were wrong about climate change. I can imagine that people might be annoyed, but we will stilol have cleaned up our environment, our air will taste better, our ponds will look nicer,… the economic situation will not be worsened by the fact that the climate sceptics were right. If anything, the bottom left corner will be a grimmer picture than the top left.

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Treehugger Reply:
September 7th, 2010 at 6:36 am

“the economic situation will not be worsened by the fact that the climate sceptics were right”

If we do nothing, you are right.

But if economic strictures are put in place to ‘solve’ climate change, then no matter what, you’re talking about changing the pricing models of global energy (which has economic implications).

These implications don’t _necessarily_ have to be bad. Unfortunately, most people (evidenced by your post) don’t even fully realise the costs or consequences of the “solution” proposed, let alone that there are multiple solutions to choose from.

And if you insist on buying the media line and mixing issues like environmental degradation and climate change, then beware your clean ponds and world government.

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I wish this was on the table for the current election campaign in Australia. Does Anthill have any joint venture connections to get this on TV for the masses?

FYI: I think we should all take a look at where climate change summits are held on global warming and where the resent MONGOLIAN climate summit was held in a fast expanding desert vs Copenhagen’s coldmoderate climate in Air Conditioned luxury. There needs to be a more appropriate place to hold these summits like: The island of Carti Sugdub, one of the Panamanian islands, where people are already DISPLACED! (ref:http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/green-news/rising-sea-makes-panama-islanders-relocate-to-the-mainland/)

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Tristan, carbon pricing will make the economic situation much worse. It will lead to governments collecting a very large amount of tax. It will not make renewable energy cheaper, it will instead make non-renewable energy more expensive. If you want to use renewable energy, carbon pricing will not help you. All it will do is try to force people who are currently unwilling to use renewable energy into using it. At the same time it will give governments a large amount of tax, this will be a big drain on the economy; governments are always unsuccessful when it comes to knowing where and how to invest money.

But back to the video. There should be another column, that is to adapt to climate change if and when it happens. This means bringing solutions to problems that have presented themselves, rather then trying to prevent something that might not even happen, and, that, even if it did happen, we probably wouldn’t be able to stop it anyway.

The chart he has drawn could be applied to any implausible scenario. For instance, a meteor falling on your house. You could do nothing, or you could build a giant steal dome over your house. In the top-left, you have wasted your money on a giant dome; in the bottom right, you have prevented the death of you, your family and all your belongings. The bottom right is less desirable than the top left, but I don’t see many people building giant domes over their houses. This is because there is an unlimited number of unlikely but possible disasters that could befall any person. If we spend every hour of the day trying to prevent these scenarios, we still would have the time to prevent the infinite range of hypotheticals that might befall us.

But again to go to Tristan’s post, you are bringing up a point that a lot of people are confused about. A lot of people want cleaner air, cleaner ponds, a better looked after environment. A carbon tax has nothing to do with that sort of environmentalism. Carbon is a natural substance that doesn’t ‘dirty’ the air. The fact is that a lot of environmentalists, and also people who disfavor excess in general, have jumped on the climate change bandwagon. I think your efforts would be better spent if you dropped the idea of trying to prevent catastrophic climate change, and just focused on cleaning the environment. And if you do this, you will find that governments, the ones who you turn to to impose carbon taxes, are often the chief malefics when it comes to excess and environmental degradation. Look at the mining tax…. governments shouldn’t have control in this area. Unfortunately, in Australia, the government ‘owns’ all the minerals. If you have freehold title, you do not own the rights to the minerals, all you own is what is above the ground. If private property rights were properly respected, a person who wished to prevent a mine from going ahead could simply buy the land. He could then dictate the terms under which the land could be mined. Instead, it is the government who dictate the terms, and, as we can see, all they care about is staying in power.

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