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Originally Posted by Professor S
Right now we are already seeing change, and it has nothing to do with Al Gore or government regulation. The powers of capitalism are already giving us the ends that Gore wishes for. High oil prices are pushing industry to greener fuel alternatives and the hybrid cars and industry. Increased regulation would most likely only increase the conversion process and limit our choices.
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Err...wait a second. Are you saying that capitalism is already correcting for global warming because higher oil prices are pushing us to greener energy? Because the connections don't quite flow through in that logic.
Also, the success of hybrid cars does not actually have all that much to do with gas prices. Hybrid cars cost significantly more than regular cars of the same type, and the increased gas mileage isn't enough to save you any money in the long run, even taking $3 per gallon gas into account. Economically, there is no reason for anyone to buy a hybrid car — unless they want to support green energy alternatives on principle. It's safe to say that if it hadn't been for activists and campaigners who made carbon pollution a mainstream topic of debate, hybrid cars would still sell but not nearly as well as they have.
Also, regulation doesn't always have to mean banning certain fuels or mandating certain technologies. One of the things I really like about the network of pollution credits that's being set up around the world is it essentially leverages capitalism. A set number of pollution credits are given out and those companies which have a surplus of pollution credits can trade them away to those who need them and in that way everybody is in competition to innovate and create new, cleaner technologies.
I could get into all your comparisons between environmentalists and the far right, Michael Moore and Al Gore and so on, but I realized that those are red herring issues which don't have much to do with the topic at hand. I could delve into how Steven Milloy (writer of JunkScience.com) is documented to be a paid advocate of ExxonMobil and Philip Morris and that his website has attempted to debunk evolution and the purported ill effects of smoking. But even if all that is true, it's beside the point because what he's saying
on this issue is worth reading and talking about and not simply dismissing out of hand (and to be fair, Steven Milloy also has two science degrees from Johns Hopkins and a law degree from Georgetown. He's no idiot, that's for sure). Just because the messenger's not perfect doesn't mean we should go throwing out the message, too.