What I would do if I were President
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, November 7, 2024 15:03
VIEWED: 1863
PAGE 3 of 3
the appraoch you suggest is 'pay to pollute' or 'credit for saving'.
there are two problems with that:
most credit schemes are scams. the whole 'carbon credit' scheme is ALREADY in operation, and has been since 1997 as part of the kyoto protocol.
Quote:
The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Carbon Credits
https://carboncredits.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-understanding-carbon-c
redits/
and while the MARKET has grown, it hasn't reduced atmospheric co2 measured at mauna loa, or anywhere, HAS IT? polluting companies like to buy 'offsets', often in other nations, but when the 'offsets' are physically tracked down and audited (to india where a coal burning power plant was supposedly replaced by sustainably fueled power plant, and reforestation in brazil and ethiopia, as real-life examples) they are found NOT TO EXIST or not be anywhere near the carbon reduction claimed. in the case of india, the 'credit' actually produced MORE greenhouse gases than it saved. in the case of reforestation projects, the credits are generated based on the number of saplings PLANTED, not on how many survive after a reasonable amount of time - five years. most reforestation projects are dismal failures with a failure rate in the realm of 97-99.9 pct. the people who did this study, tracking down credits in the real world, came away not recommending any sort of credit.
the air pollution agency for the la basin also launched a pollution-credit scheme (RECLAIM), and with the the best of intentions and honest administration stumbled across these fundamental problems:
1) how do you determine a facility 'baseline'? if you use a facility-specific history, by treating a pollutant as a commodity, the MOST polluting facilities are rewarded for reducing polluttion that they should have reduced decades ago, but facilities that reduced their pollutants early are punished for being good citizens.
2) how do you measure facility-wide, or company-wide, total emissions? you should try it sometime as a mental exercise, it's not as easy in practice as it is to imagine.
*****
AFA some sort of carbon tax, basically it is 'pay to pollute'. if the polluter is rich, or, in the case of government, can basically 'print money' (run a deficit) it doesn't reduce pollution.
****
you mention waterway pollution. waterways were cleaned up under command-and-control (NPDES) not any kind of credit system.
you like the idea of carbon credits bc you see it as a moneymaking scheme that doesn't impinge on your preferred wealth-acquistive mindset, but pollution control doesn't work like that, in the real world. you can't make money reducing pollution, in the REAL WORLD pollution reduction is a cost, and tax-and-credit schemes are just a way of tryig to shift the cost to someone else.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:You have a teeny-tiny view of "the world", JSF. How does it feel to be just like Biden*?
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
The world rejoices that you are not President.
Joe Biden has been a US senator and president now for more than 40 years. He is a foreign policy expert. He fixed NATO in no time after Trump tried to destroy it, and then expanded it to Putin's and your chagrin.
T
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Signym, if a President wants Americans to stop dumping billions of tons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere he would go about the job in no way nor in any form of what you mention.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
the appraoch you suggest is 'pay to pollute' or 'credit for saving'.
there are two problems with that:
the air pollution agency for the la basin also launched a pollution-credit scheme (RECLAIM), and with the the best of intentions and honest administration stumbled across these fundamental problems:
1) how do you determine a facility 'baseline'? if you use a facility-specific history, by treating a pollutant as a commodity, the MOST polluting facilities are rewarded for reducing polluttion that they should have reduced decades ago, but facilities that reduced their pollutants early are punished for being good citizens.
2) how do you measure facility-wide, or company-wide, total emissions? you should try it sometime as a mental exercise, it's not as easy in practice as it is to imagine.
Instead, there would be a fuel tax, just like there is a tax for the Highway Trust Fund. But this fuel tax on CO2 pays for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. It would be insane to directly measure the CO2 coming from hundreds of millions of chimneys and smokestacks but it is very straightforward to measure the fuel going to the furnaces that vent into smokestacks. Measuring the fuel is already being done by the sellers of fuel.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Why not? It worked for our waterways. Look up NPDES.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
the appraoch you suggest is 'pay to pollute' or 'credit for saving'.
there are two problems with that:
the air pollution agency for the la basin also launched a pollution-credit scheme (RECLAIM), and with the the best of intentions and honest administration stumbled across these fundamental problems:
1) how do you determine a facility 'baseline'? if you use a facility-specific history, by treating a pollutant as a commodity, the MOST polluting facilities are rewarded for reducing polluttion that they should have reduced decades ago, but facilities that reduced their pollutants early are punished for being good citizens.
2) how do you measure facility-wide, or company-wide, total emissions? you should try it sometime as a mental exercise, it's not as easy in practice as it is to imagine.
SECOND: Signym, if a President wants Americans to stop dumping billions of tons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere he would go about the job in no way nor in any form of what you mention.
Quote:But that's not what I proposed. I mentioned a number of options for reducing CO2 emissions, anything from eliminating gas guzzlers, requiring cool roofs, reducing DoD fuel consumption, and better forest and agriculture management. NOWHERE did I say anything about measuring CO2 emissions! That's just a straw man argument.
Instead, there would be a fuel tax, just like there is a tax for the Highway Trust Fund. But this fuel tax on CO2 pays for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. It would be insane to directly measure the CO2 coming from hundreds of millions of chimneys and smokestacks
Quote:True, that. But there is more to reducing atmospheric CO2 than a carbon tax.
SECOND: but it is very straightforward to measure the fuel going to the furnaces that vent into smokestacks. Measuring the fuel is already being done by the sellers of fuel.
A carbon tax is just one of -literally- hundreds of options, and not a panacea for climate change.
And who says the carbon tax has to go to companies that are polluting, or paying companies to "store" CO2, I've seen proposals that send the tax directly back to people. Instead of putting the burden on people to pay for improving the environment (which is who eventually pays for this, since companies will simply pass on their costs to consumers) or concentrating the $$ in government hands (government is notably ungoverned) just recycle the tax $$ directly to people. By making carbon-heavy products relatively more expensive, it will SHIFT purchases to lower-carbon options w/o reducing people's overall spending power. And if you make it a straightforward per-person payment, you actually transfer wealth downward.
And that's what you've been agitating for, innit?
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Nothing will happen because nobody wants to pay more. Instead, the low CO2 emissions world will arrive very slowly over the next century as solar and wind power get cheaper and more abundant than fossil fuel. That way nobody is ever forced to do what they prefer not to. Slowly they shift to cheaper alternatives without any coercion from the President. The unfortunate side effect is that the Earth gets ruined by high temperatures, but that is a small price to pay for the freedom to be the cheapest, dumbest jackass you want to be. Jackasses believe "Climate Change is a Hoax". Carve that motto into a billion tombstones.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And who says the carbon tax has to go to companies that are polluting, or paying companies to "store" CO2, I've seen proposals that send the tax directly back to people. Instead of putting the burden on people to pay for improving the environment (which is who eventually pays for this, since companies will simply pass on their costs to consumers) or concentrating the $$ in government hands (government is notably ungoverned) just recycle the tax $$ directly to people. By making carbon-heavy products relatively more expensive, it will SHIFT purchases to lower-carbon options w/o reducing people's overall spending power. And if you make it a straightforward per-person payment, you actually transfer wealth downward.
And that's what you've been agitating for, innit?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:So, when your favorite money-making schemes are stymied, you reset to "do nothing".
Originally posted by second:Quote:Nothing will happen because nobody wants to pay more. Instead, the low CO2 emissions world will arrive very slowly over the next century as solar and wind power get cheaper and more abundant than fossil fuel. That way nobody is ever forced to do what they prefer not to. Slowly they shift to cheaper alternatives without any coercion from the President. The unfortunate side effect is that the Earth gets ruined by high temperatures, but that is a small price to pay for the freedom to be the cheapest, dumbest jackass you want to be. Jackasses believe "Climate Change is a Hoax". Carve that motto into a billion tombstones.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And who says the carbon tax has to go to companies that are polluting, or paying companies to "store" CO2, I've seen proposals that send the tax directly back to people. Instead of putting the burden on people to pay for improving the environment (which is who eventually pays for this, since companies will simply pass on their costs to consumers) or concentrating the $$ in government hands (government is notably ungoverned) just recycle the tax $$ directly to people. By making carbon-heavy products relatively more expensive, it will SHIFT purchases to lower-carbon options w/o reducing people's overall spending power. And if you make it a straightforward per-person payment, you actually transfer wealth downward.
And that's what you've been agitating for, innit?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Where's that urgent urgency you were so agitated with?
Really, SECOND you are SO transparent!! It's clear you see the problem as just another money- making scheme, and all of your posts on the topic are self-interested and hypocritical!
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Have you ever looked at one of those 'Explanation of Benefits'? It's a clusterfuck!
The two most expensive portions of Medicare are Rx and hospital corporations. I assume the same would hold for the population as a whole.
But buried in those expenses are profit and the paperwork/billing bureaucracy.
Looking at the problems with national health service (Britain. Works great,until the govt turns off the tap!) and single payer (a certain amount of price gouging going on) and HMOs (Hillary Clinton's fave approach, but substandard care. I'm sure she's not in an HMO herself!) maybe one way to get better health care cost-effectively would be to institute single-payer, eliminating that 20-30pct paperwork boondoggle, but require that each provider publish their standard pricing and also publish hospital ratings (already online).
As I understand it, Medicare has already introduced price competition for some Rx.
Something to look into!
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
'A Trump-Biden Rematch That Many Are Dreading'
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/24/opinion/trump-biden-2024-election.h
tml
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Donald Trump is heading back to the White House — and Kamala Harris’ own decisions are to blame
https://nypost.com/2024/11/06/opinion/donald-trump-is-heading-back-to-
the-white-house-and-kamala-harris-own-decisions-are-to-blame/
Kamala concession speech 2024: Biden breaks his silence on Trump's election victory as Harris addresses nation
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14048957/united-states-presid
ential-election-results-live-2024-donald-trump-kamala-harris.html
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME