I think main driver of why people deny climate change is that the market mechanism cannot deal with that situation. So if someone is a firm believer in market solutions to everything, the climate change reality is a tough attack on that personal belief.
Just give me the convincing evidence and I will do what I can to protect the Earth that my children will inherit. By contrast, you don't need to convince me that there's a desperate world-wide problem with pollution for instance. Mercury, cadmium but the list is seemingly endless. Where is the international disquiet on this front? Meanwhile CO2, the plant food which if its level dropped below around 125ppm all life on this planet would begin to die irreversibly and has greened the planet very significantly in the last few decades, is regarded officially as a pollutant.
Exactly. Climate change is the wrong conversation to the environmental problem. It's diverts time, money and energy that could be directed at addressing real environmental problems like air and water quality.
What is convincing evidence? Many prominent environmentalists consider the climate change to be the biggest problem. Even Mr. Lomborg eventually accepted that conclusion.
Sure the market can deal with it: someone creates a cheaper, easy to transport, clean fuel ecosystem. Problem is people keep denying they need a market solution and instead look with glee on instituting new regulations.
cap-and-trade will not fix the problem with up and coming economies. cap-and-trade is not a market solution, it just taxes the market.
you either figure out a equivalent or better cost way - or we have to deal with war or climate engineering. I would prefer we get something that works before we get into "the kill my neighbor to preserve what I have" mentality.
(given the voting, nope not going to respond further on this issue - no point in "debate" if silencing is the response)
Now, this article implies that we need to leave some coal and oil in the groud, even if it's economic to mine and use it up. My main concern is I don't think that markets can handle this task. Markets are great at exploiting all available resources; but how do you constrain them not to do that? You cannot set any price on a resource that you do not want to use at all. In a way though, yes, it's about externalities.
The market cannot take into account to cost of externalities, unless there is some mechanism to charge for them (meaning tax them). The other option would be to eliminate the concept of externalities by making everything owned by someone, but I don't see how that could work. You would have to come to an agreement with whomever owns air quality before you polluted and come to an agreement with whomever owns temperature before you caused warming...
... and ten years later, when the new research comes up, you'd get sued by whoever owns local wildlife lifecycle which you inadvertently affected without permission.
You're assuming perfect competition and no switching costs, while ignoring network effects. I like markets but they don't inevitably produce rational outcomes.
