Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, whose members control eighteen trillion dollars in assets, has urged the world’s governments to shovel more taxpayers’ money into their pockets.
Source: http://www.iigcc.org/files/publication-files/Briefing_Paper_for_G7__G20.pdf
The most interesting point is the demand for carbon pricing. From page 5;
2. Include carbon pricing in climate-energy action plans – Investors reiterate the need for governments to provide stable, reliable and economically meaningful carbon pricing that helps redirect investment commensurate with the scale of the climate change challenge. This will level the playing field for low carbon technologies and factor in the costs of GHG externalities. These mechanisms are most effective when supported by complementary mechanisms such as public procurement measures, regulations, energy targets, carbon performance and energy efficiency standards.
- To ensure that carbon pricing assumptions are as representative as possible of the true cost of carbon – and in alignment with the policy trajectory of G20 leaders now and into the future – investors urge governments to commit to include carbon pricing in their climate-energy action plans, if they have not already done so. In this regard, investors encourage G20 leaders to support the work undertaken by the World Bank through the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition.
- Investors welcome the news that many nations are moving forward with carbon pricing programs. Investors encourage those countries that have not implemented some form of carbon pricing to do so promptly as part of their climate-energy action plans.
- Investors encourage those nations that already have carbon pricing systems in place to continue to look for ways to increase their ambition and improve the effectiveness of these systems in pricing the true cost of carbon as a negative externality.15 Recent efforts by some countries to move towards linking their pricing systems are welcome – international cooperation can make NDCs significantly cheaper to implement
Read more: Same link as above
In my opinion this document is a blueprint for rent-seeking. This group of merchant bankers, asset managers and others is offering to come to the party and invest big time in renewables, if governments provide them with a guaranteed income by siphoning the maximum possible money out of the pockets of the working class of their respective nations, by applying the most “ambitious” possible carbon price onto the energy bills of consumers.
French climate enthusiast Emmanuel Macron’s overwhelming victory against a nationalist climate skeptic party on Sunday, and President Trump’s dithering over the Paris Agreement, may have convinced this group of rich bankers that the climate game is still on – that they still have a chance to pressure politicians into granting them a permanent green tithe from the pockets of the world’s working class.
It is a worry that nowhere in the document is there mention of uncertainty or of plans to back down if Nature proves uncooperative.
As some would say, all here have drunk of the Kool-ade.
Geoff
Do not read Macron’s ‘win’ as an ‘overwhelming’ victory.
The Eurozone is fatally weakened, internal divisions and an eruption of sleaze around Macron means that he will be an ineffectual President. (not dissimilar to your own President Trump).
Of course the swamp is acting against Trump. No one said that draining the swamp would be easy, and most sensible people knew this would be a difficult task. But if Trump sticks to his gUns, and makes draining the swamp a priority, he could end up being a very effective President.
Macron will prove to be hopeless since he is just another Hollande. Hollande was so unpopular that he did not even bother to put himself up for re-election. The French have just voted for another 5 years of the same incompetence which has been gradually dragging France to its knees.
I agree that the problems in Europe will not be going away any time soon. Indeed, they will be getting worse over the coming years. Whether Europe can survive these problems is anyone’s guess but the prospects do not look good. Greece, Italy (especially its banks), Spain are very weak, and France is getting weaker by the day and with Macron’s left wing policies their economy will further nose dive. The Germans are going to be left with a very big bill if all of this collapses. .
Richard, I agree with your assessment of Europe. The EU is a moribund organization whose productivity is on a downward slope and will eventually implode as a result of its economic failure, in much the same way that the Soviet Union imploded. Like the Soviet Union it is controlled by an unelected bureaucracy which seems to exist for the sole purpose of dragging productivity down even further.
France has a number of problems which Emmanuel Macron will do nothing to solve and will probably make worse. Productivity is one; France still mandates a maximum 35-hour working week for everyone. Racial tension is another; France’s Muslim population is disaffected and growing at a much greater rate than the native French population. Finally, the French seem to be infected with ‘the world owes us a living’ syndrome, since any attempts at economic reform are invariably met with massive strikes and demonstrations.
Britain has seen the writing on the wall and will (hopefully) leave the EU. I suspect other European countries will follow in the next few years.
The EU was a good idea in principle, but was far too ambitious in its implementation and will inevitably fail.
EU was only a good idea, if you managed to completely ignore human nature.
Roger Verney said: “Of course the swamp is acting against Trump. No one said that draining the swamp would be easy, and most sensible people knew this would be a difficult task. But if Trump sticks to his gUns, and makes draining the swamp a priority, he could end up being a very effective President.”
Trump is not draining the swamp in the slightest. He’s appointed a huge number of Wall Street execs to key financial posts, and has more billionaire Cabinet members than any other President. His health care reform bill is nothing more than a tax break for rich people, as will be his tax plan – and more tax breaks for big companies. Trump is as far from a swamp drainer as you can get – in fact, he’s filling it up more than ever.
Have no fear, Marine Le Pen did not expect to win….this time. But after another 5 years of leftist stagnation, she knows she has a much better chance. Note that she got double what her father did in his final run-offs. If she improves by the same percentage then she wins next time. I also hear that there were a lot of spoiled and non-votes this time.
“Trump is not draining the swamp in the slightest. He’s appointed a huge number of Wall Street execs to key financial posts, and has more billionaire Cabinet members than any other President.”
Being rich doesn’t automatically make one a swamp creature. Sometimes being real rich frees one from outside pressures. Like Trump. Trump is so rich he is not beholden to anyone. Nobody paid his way. Noone can buy him. He owes nothing to anyone, other than to the people who elected him, to which he owes everything.
Trump made all his appointees sign agreements where they could not lobby the government for five years after they complete their current service.
Trump’s health care bill is still being created so comments about what it will or won’t do are based on speculation.
Trump’s tax plan will benefit everyone. The whole U.S. economy will benefit, and tax revenues will increase as the economy picks up steam.
“Trump is so rich he is not beholden to anyone. Nobody paid his way. Noone can buy him. He owes nothing to anyone, other than to the people who elected him, to which he owes everything.”
Not true in the slightest. He’s giving tax breaks to the wealthy, and his proposed health law will kick 10M Americans off their health care. He’s giving the shaft to those who voted for him. No wall, no withdrawal from NAFTA, no call out of China as a currency manipulator. Every one of those things is contrary to what he promised to do.
“Trump’s tax plan will benefit everyone. The whole U.S. economy will benefit, and tax revenues will increase as the economy picks up steam.”
Wrong. Many studies have disproven trickle down economics. Kansas tried Trump’s tax plan in 2012 under Governor Brownback. It’s been a disaster. State revenues are down by 25% and have not recovered. Schools and highways are having their funds slashed. Brownback is the least popular governor in America – out of all 50 states – and this in a very conservative Republican state. https://morningconsult.com/state-governor-rankings/
Chris wrote: “Not true in the slightest. He’s giving tax breaks to the wealthy, and his proposed health law will kick 10M Americans off their health care. He’s giving the shaft to those who voted for him. No wall, no withdrawal from NAFTA, no call out of China as a currency manipulator. Every one of those things is contrary to what he promised to do.”
I think I’ll save this post of yours for later use. I have a feeling you will have to eat your words in the not-too-distant future. We shall see. 🙂
From what I understand, Macron is far from being an “independent centrist.” Rather, he is a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, if not a communist; in any event, a far-left ideologue, and by inclination no friend of either France (as an independent nation) or the U.S. Trump’s congratulations to him were proper, even pro forma; but he also sent notice that he (and we) will be watching.
You have to remember that in Europe, a right winger is someone who wants the government to grow slower than the outright socialists do.
Mocron’s win is mostly evidence that there are more people who benefit from government spending then there people who have to pay for that government spending.
In other words, takers out number the makers.
President Trump ineffectual? I don’t think so. You must be talking about some other Trump.
Mr Worrall, unrelated to your article, but have a look at https://www.crinklingnews.com.au/
This is widely read by young school children in Australia.
Jo Nova has covered their article on a river disappearing because of climate change here-
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/04/climate-change-steals-river/
Climate obsession is infecting and corrupting every aspect of society. The Church, now Wall St. ….both organizations seem to have been corruptly flipped into supporting this destructive social obsession. I frankly don’t see how this ends well.
The game was always to make it “too big to fail”, what with all the governments’ involvement, cronyism, education system infestation, many jobs now depending on a phoney crisis, propaganda, arm-twisting…
hunter, Wall St supports anything that lines its pockets and was onboard with “climate crisis” since the beginning. The real question is, however, is Trump really onboard and talked as if he was not. The EPA actions “sound” like he’s onboard, but until I see the withdrawal from the Paris scam, I will assume he is at least “onboard in the closet,” But Wall St? Been there since day one. They know what makes money for investors, and that is the only thing that matters to them – turning a buck for the rich.
I do not know when the next G20 meeting is, but hopefully Trump will have killed the Paris Accord before then. Hopefully, within the next couple of weeks he will pull out of Paris, or refer it to the senate where it will not receive the necessary endorsement. That will be a game changer.
Trump, please keep your pre-election promise.
Sorry Richard, but that doesn’t look like so likely, if this story is true; forget it. I’ve generally found Breitbart to be quite a reliable source. However I sincerely hope it’s wrong this time…
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/07/ivanka-trump-to-head-review-of-u-s-role-in-paris-climate-change-agreement/
I read somewhere that big oil see coal as their main competitor. If so this might explain why they appear to be quietly but effectively pushing the global warming boondoggle. Here in the UK the lame stream media have already started predicting cooling in the UK next winter due to, you guessed it, warming! (This time it’s in the Indian ocean. A while back it was warming in the Arctic.) My guess is they know exactly how it all works and are smart enough to propagandise their way round it. Don’t expect them to just roll over and give up, even when we’re all freezing our posteriors off and people start starving due to crop failures.
With regards to Trump I’d like to believe, to use an old engineering saying, that it’s just a case of ‘it’s difficult to remember that the objective was to drain the swamp when you’re up to your armpits in alligators’. We shall see …
All it says in that article is that Ivanka wants Trump to get all points of view. Maybe Ivanka just wants to lessen the firestorm over Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement by making his action look measured and deliberate rather than a knee-jerk reaction.
I just have to refer back to Trump’s Pennsylvania speech a little over a week ago where he mentioned climate change and said he had a big announcement to make in two weeks, and he said it with a *lot* of enthusiasm, like he was really looking forward to it.
I just can’t see Trump getting that excited if his announcement is to be that the U.S. will remain a signatory to the Paris Agreement. I know his supporters will be up in arms, if he were to do that, and I’m sure he is aware of that. So I don’t see why he would be excited about that kind of prospect.
One thing about it, if Trump stays in the Paris Agreement or even hints that CO2 is a control knob of Earth’s weather, then there will be plenty of things to say about that on WUWT. And they probably won’t be too pleasant. And I’ll be joining right in. And no matter what Trump does, it won’t change the science or the facts.
Trump has done everything right up to this point. I just can’t see him stumbling and falling on his face over this Paris Agreement and the CAGW scheme. It costs enormous amounts of money. Trump cannot be for that. I just can’t see it.
TA
Thanks for your constructive and open-minded views, you’ve already put me back on track. I just saw red, so wasn’t in the frame of mind after reading the story, to look at it from your more balanced perspective:
@Alan – things going on behind the scenes, too. A lot of the parasites are being dumped from the EPA Board of “Scientific” Counselors – and it looks like most of them might actually be replaced with scientists, instead of “natural resource sociologists.”
We have to remember that this swamp isn’t a muddy patch of a few acres. It’s comparable to the Everglades – or, more accurately, the Mojinga in Panama…
The next G20 is in July so there is little hope of a “Paris” outcome particularly if they go the Legislative route.
At least it is still squarely on the Agenda.
More of the same in the EU
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Looks like the German moderate right leader of the EU net contributor country displeases you Douglas. What would be a better regime over there?
Well, Mr. Katneenkorva, for starters, one which bases its energy policy on data and bona fide science.
Ever since Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer and perhaps even before it, doubtfully such an option even exists.
Beyond that, after a decade each in UK, France and Germany, never seen such perfect people in all my life. Same applies to CCCP, which I had pleasure to live next to long enough. Now, why would a sane and compassionate person like you Ms Moore take sides in this contest? Or am I missing something?
Dear Mr. Kateenkorva,
Please forgive my misspelling your name above.
Re: your question — A “sane and compassionate” person (thank you, by the way 🙂 ) is highly likely to be for truth and for what promotes the health and happiness of humanity.
Energy poverty/disability doesn’t promote happiness and health.
Oh, yes (how could I forget), in the short-term, it promotes the happiness and health of the envirostalinist/profiteer elite (in the end, having run out of OPM, however, only a handful will be happy and healthy anymore).
Socialism fails (or prevents a much better scenario), in the end — every time. The right question to ask is not, “Under socialism, are we surviving?” Rather it is: How much better could we be thriving under free markets and ordered liberty?”
In short: I care about PEOPLE.
Bye for now!
Janice
Not at all – it simply shows where France is going.
@jaakkokateenkorva May 8, 2017 at 5:21 am
You say “Looks like the German moderate right leader of the EU net contributor country displeases you Douglas. What would be a better regime over there?”
Not at all – What i am saying is that France has surrendered – yet again in making this choice. Mutter rules!
jaakkokateenkorva May 8, 2017 at 5:21 am What would be a better regime over there?
Perhaps you could ask the 1,000 or more young girls that were sexually assaulted by the “asylum seekers” playing their vile Taharrush rape game in Cologne on New Year’s Eve or the 56 wounded and relatives of the 12 dead in the Berlin market attack that question.
Perhaps the taxpayers who are having to pay to support the 9,999 out of every 10,000 migrants who haven’t got a job yet – despite being assured by Mutti Merkel and her apparatchiks that they were all highly qualified doctors, engineers and rocket scientists and would be an unalloyed benefit to the economy may have something to say too.
Germany’s ‘open door’ immigration policy is a disaster, as will become – has already, in fact – increasingly apparent in the very near future.
Then there is the problem of the 330,000 homes disconnected from the grid in the past year because the families cannot afford to pay their electricity bills – a total scandal in a country as supposedly as rich a Germany.
I could go on at some length, but that will do for a start.
Ok this is getting WILDLY OFF TOPIC – no more replies on this
Marine Le Pen a skeptic? Well, explain this statement from her about it:
”Climate change is not a religion, it is useful for there to be a debate about what is harming the climate…I am not a climate expert, I think that human activity does contribute to a proportion, which I can’t measure, to this phenomenon.”
Seems reasonable to me. I think human activity probably contributes, but there is no evidence we face any kind of emergency.
No doubt there is a human influence, regarding land use if nothing else.
Farm fields are usually somewhat hotter during the day and cooler at night that woodlands, and cities are so much warmer than surrounding areas that plants can grow in certain places in a city several zones north of their usual cut-off point.
The part about plants is well documented, but all you really need to do is have a look around, or plant two identical plants or trees and watch what happens in different places.
There are sago palms which have been growing for decades in NYC, and even farther north than that, to name one example of something I was looking at recently.
Jaakko,
You didn’t apply for France presidency – did you?
Having read Le Pen’s programme in the original language, it’s in the national socialist side. I’m skeptic about socialism and feel sad the French had to choose between international and national variety.
Unfortunately in the first round the top 4 candidates were all some flavor of nationalist or internationalist socialist. That is what French politics have been pretty much since the beginning of the 20th century, but especially since WWII.
As far as I know, she did not call the ones who did not vote for her “deplorables”, unlike another female leader did.
And It hasn´t been any public outrage by her followers because she lost the election, again, unlike other followers who lost their elections across the channel or across the pond and they didn´t accept the results.
Anyway. the media classifies Le Pen as far right. But also wiki classifies the german naz¡ party as national socialist and far right in the same paragraph.
Since when you align yourself with media and wikipedia Urederra?
Eric, please call Farage back from the European parliament to start build his own independent cAGW BS-free ruled by centennial monarchs dreaming of reincarnation as a deadly virus. We can then both pour concrete in the Eurotunnel to ensure all these effects remain localised.
UN Agenda 21 in action. Wealth redistribution and worldwide socialist/marxist government are the goals. Trump needs to stand up to this. The future of democracy is at stake.
Trump has made a lot of money building just the type of high-rise developments the Agenda 21 types demand. I am still not certain he will recognize the Agenda 21 problem in time – it has been very good to him.
So far as I know, Trump has built a lot of high rises – the ones that fetch top dollar from people that want to live in them (either because they like it, or are willing to put up with it for the lifestyle that is only economically possible in high-density urbanized areas).
Now, I do not understand those people at all, at all – you would have to lobotomize me to get me into one of those buildings, no matter what the amenities. But that’s OK – I think that the one daughter is absolutely nuts to like spinach leaves on her pizza.
A free market means that people will always do things that others find completely insane. That’s why you can’t have one without a free society, too.
‘This is Wall Street, Dr Burry. If you offer us free money we are going to take it’.
That quote was from the Big Short when Wall Street’s finest were happy to take everything that fell their way, yet it applies just as much today in the vaunted world of Big Green. Fixed outcomes, rigged data, manipulated reports, favourable assessments. It’s the same game, just different rules. Until governments regain their senses ‘tackling climate change’ will continue to be a self-perpetuating money-go-round.
Oh, and here’s the scene.
You seem to be expecting that governments will somehow “regain” their senses, something that they have seldom if ever had anytime in history. Governments, as a categorical bunch, are a disease that the people of nations insist on inflicting on themselves.
To become anocratic is the pursuit and the eventual state of all governments regardless of founding or philosophy of function. Then after achieving their destiny, they implode and collapse in upon themselves.
The following was “borrowed” from Wikipedia:
“An anocracy is a government regime featuring inherent qualities of political instability and ineffectiveness, as well as an “incoherent mix of democratic and autocratic traits and practices”.
“These regime types are particularly susceptible to outbreaks of armed conflict and unexpected or adverse changes in leadership.”
It’s something like Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. The wrong people figure out how to get their hands on the levers of power. At some point the elected government becomes powerless to drain the swamp. My favorite example is Robert Moses, a civil servant, who became so powerful and popular that no politician had the guts to can him.
So the people who set up this scam want it to become bigger? Okey dokey, then.
You are correct,it is indeed a blueprint for rent-seeking. The phrase “..helps redirect investment..” is a bit of a give away. They don’t want to seek investment opportunities by competing with other investors for the best opportunities. They want government to create investment opportunities by force of law.
Ultimately this is, of course, no different from the approach taken in the planned economies of the Soviet Union. That the new French President is on board with this is not really a surprise either: The word “dirigiste” is of a French origin.
There’s no better money than taxpayer money.
Crappy return these days due to low interest rates unless you have a killer product / idea (and even then…). So what could be better than forcing people to buy your product via government coercion resulting in a great ROI?
None of this would be possible without collusion with government, who provides the necessary regulatory and legal framework backed up with the compulsion and coercion that comes from giving the government a monopoly on the use of deadly force. The left complains about “crony capitalism” in other cases, but relies on cronyism to achieve their ideological goals in the case of environmentalism.
For every crony capitalist there is a corresponding bureaucrat or politician who seeks a special deal in order to get what they want. There is only “cronyism”, collusion and corruption of the proper role of government.
Wow. Two giant lies in one short phrase.
1. The playing field is level.
(subsidizing your industry thereby creating an artificially lower price for your product, enviroprofiteers, makes it UN-level)
2. Given the CO2 from production through spinning reserve (for wind) through maintenance through mothballing/scrapping, these technologies are far from “low” carbon {sic}.
Eric Warrall observes:
French climate enthusiast Emmanuel Macron’s overwhelming victory against a nationalist climate skeptic party on Sunday, and President Trump’s dithering over the Paris Agreement, may have convinced this group of rich bankers that the climate game is still on – that they still have a chance to pressure politicians into granting them a permanent green tithe from the pockets of the world’s working class.
Angela Merkel is the German chancellor, and she is a driving politician in the movement to combat climate change. She was one of the key leaders present when the Kyoto Protocol was hammered out in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty that sets a framework for the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Macron will drag France closer into Merkel’s clutches.
And to underscore my earlier comment and drawing – here is today’s (U.K.) Daily Express headline
Daily Express
Macron made FIRST phone call as President to this leader & it shows where his loyalty lies
EMMANUEL Macron signalled his intention to deepen Franco-German ties at the heart of the EU as he made his first phone call as the new president-elect to Angela Merkel last night.
Straight home to Mummy. Trump better be careful.
Just reading the Washington Post article on EPA boss Pruitt changing out 1/2 of an agency advisory board
They serve 3 year terms and have been kept prior for two terms
Pruitt ended that and is putting in new real people
Example if one who Obama put on this board “PHD in Energy Resource Sociality”
Major move by Trump to clean out the fakes
Yeah, letting the fox guard the henhouse makes a lot of sense. Let’s do the same and let the auto mfrs decide their own regulations, pharma companies do the same, banks, etc. You know, because trusting the banks served the US so well during the global financial crisis.
US auto safety regulations had no positive effect on auto safety. The rate of motor vehicle deaths was decreasing before 1966, and the rate of decline slowed after the regulations were in place (Peltzman 2004). As if it is a good idea for manufacturers to kill off their customers, a common theme of the hysterics.
@ Chris:
Your fox/henhouse analogy is inapt. It is merely competent versus incompetent, here. Qualified versus unqualified.
Further, since the rats being removed from their posts were only watching out for the other rats (enviroprofiteers and envirostalinists, sucking the life out of the U.S. economy using junk science-based regulations)
your analogy, to the extent it might be used at all, is backward.
Janice, please provide evidence that those being appointed are more competent. It’s easy to trot out cliches like that, as well as your “qualified versus unqualified”.
I’ll ignore claptrap like envirostalinists – and this is supposed to be a scientific blog.
Tom Halla said: “US auto safety regulations had no positive effect on auto safety. The rate of motor vehicle deaths was decreasing before 1966, and the rate of decline slowed after the regulations were in place (Peltzman 2004). ”
Wrong. US fatalities per 100,000 rose in the 1960s until 1969, then began a slow decline. The mandatory seat belt law was passed in 1968, but of course it took close to a decade for that to impact the majority of car owners. Another safety feature were air bags, made mandatory in 1998, which over time have helped to keep the rate trending downward.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
Points off for citing Wankerpedia. I hate typing in long addresses, but http://aei.org/publication/regulation-and-the-natural-progress-of-opulence. Peltzman is based on NTSA figures.
Chris, please describe the Utopia you’d mandate for us all if you were omnipotent. I’d be very interested in that.
For Chris:
1. Re: qualified/unqualified
(Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/07/epa-dismisses-half-of-its-scientific-advisers-on-key-board-citing-clean-break-with-obama-administration/?utm_term=.9d8bc49c76b5 )
The non-renewed contract board members are only being required to compete for their job to see if they are, indeed, the most qualified for it.
***********************************
2. Re: envirostalinists (heh, heh, heh) — i.e., those promoting AGW for personal gain of some sort or another (since you are clearly interested in the politics — or did someone FORCE you to write about foxes and henhouses, etc., etc., ? “this is supposed to be a scientific blog” LOL)
I’m only going to take one case (sorry, I have other stuff I’d rather get done today), that of Robert Richardson. “I was kind of shocked to receive this news,” Robert Richardson, an ecological economist and an associate professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Community Sustainability, said in an interview Sunday. (Id.)
— From Mr. Richardson’s bio page: …. with interests in the study of the environment and development, particularly the contribution of ecosystem services to socioeconomic well-being. His research, teaching, and outreach program focuses primarily on sustainable development, and he uses a variety of methods from the behavioral and social sciences ….
(http://www.canr.msu.edu/people/robert_richardson )
There are likely MANY better qualified scientists in the applicant pool for the EPA board positions than he, given his academic expertise.
— Example publication: Denying Bogus Skepticism in Climate Change and Tourism Research
(Source: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=fCsfSRkAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=fCsfSRkAAAAJ:BqipwSGYUEgC )
Actually, this example publication is evidence of two reasons for having Mr. Richardson compete for his job:
1) it shows his blatant pro-junk science (i.e., AGW) bias.
2) he is only listed in the second group of researchers and this was published in a rather unscientific (at least as to atmospheric science subjects, e.g., physics or meteorology) journal, “Tourism Management” both of
which indicate a lack of robust (lolol) science credentials.
“Points off for citing Wankerpedia. I hate typing in long addresses, but http://aei.org/publication/regulation-and-the-natural-progress-of-opulence. Peltzman is based on NTSA figures.”
Points off for your source being a right wing think tank that is anti regulation. Gee, do you think they are going to publish ANYTHING that shows benefits from regulations? Of course not.
Chris, if you actually look at the graph of fatal accident rates over time, there is a long term decline. The rate of decline was inflected to a lower rate of decline after the passage of auto safety laws in 1965.
The parallel to this is the purported effect of the 55 mph speed limit, which coincided with a gas shortage and recession. The graph in that case looked like there was a bite taken out of the previous decline, with the rate returning to the previous tendency after a few years. Unless one is Saint Ralph Nader, who accused Bill Clinton of “mass murder” for repealing the 55 mph law, the law had no positive effect.
Mickey, who is talking about utopias? I am simply saying that choosing industry folks to decide regulations for those industries is a poor idea. I’ve lived in Asia for 20 years and seen first hand the impact of weak environmental regulations, as well as the impact of strong enforcement (in a few countries). Can you enlighten me and tell me about an example where self policing by industry has worked out well? Industry in the US fought against the EPA, and Clean Air and Water Acts. Take a trip to Beijing and let me know if you’d like to live in a place that grew economically with little to no environmental oversight.
Banks in the US are trying to unwind Dodd Frank, and kill the CFPB. You know, the CFPB that punished Wells Fargo for falsifying customer signatures and opening new bank accounts and credit facilities for their own customers so they could meet their sales targets. Yeah, let’s just let industry police themselves because they have such a good track record of doing so.
Tom, here is a graph of the fatality rate over time: http://www.businessinsider.sg/traffic-fatalities-historical-trend-us-2016-4/#HA51jSAdO5sqKEPr.97 Many safety innovations have happened over the early years, for you to imply that the only ones occurred after 1965 is simply untrue. In the early years, it was stuff like speed limits, better roads, streetlights, and improvements in road design. In later years it was car features like better brakes, better headlights, and optional seat belts. Those solutions began to be deployed in the 1950s, when fatality rates were still declining rapidly. Because of the potential to save lives, seat belts were made mandatory nationwide in the late 60s. Here is a summary of the safety timeline for the automotive industry: http://amhistory.si.edu/onthemove/themes/story_86_1.html
Chris, look at the yellow line on the graph you found, of the rate per million miles traveled. The rate of improvement in safety flattens out about 1965. The improvements were not primarily due to legislated changes.
I agree with Commiebob at 6:20. Pournelle’s rules on bureaucracy apply when there is no effective external controls over an organization, like actually having to do what the organization purportedly was established to do. People who are good at the internal politics of the group tend to take over, and neglect the supposed purpose of the establishment.
Rent-seeking and other forms of corruption can get dominant, and the end state sometimes ends up like Venezuela.
The Social Cost of Carbon (dioxide) may well be negative. Suppose it turns out to be true – should we include carbon pricing in climate-energy action plans even in this case? How does a negative tax rate looks like?
Are these really ‘fat cats’?
Look at their membership – seems to me very largely pension funds and asset managers who are ‘fiduciaries’ (look it up)
http://www.iigcc.org/about-us/our-members
Griff==> who exactly the hell manages those pension funds ( and takes a percentage for management)? Unicorns?
Griff, I don’t think you’re actually making a bad situation any better with your remark. Suffice to say, the quicker the swamp is drained, the better.
Disgusting, disingenuous F’ers.
AKA “The Deep Green State”
And we were worried about the Military Industrial Complex?
EPA / Earth First / Green Peace Commies screaming like the corrupt commie’s they are!
Along with these attendant useful fools!
Only increased solar activity will save us now!
U.S. Department of the Treasury, January 2017
Tax Policy – Tax Analysis, 28 pages.
RE: Carbon taxes and greenhouse gas emissions.
P.4, Livestock might eventually covered by a carbon tax.
Remember Gov. Brown’s rants on cattle emissions?
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/tax-analysis/Documents/WP-115.pdf
Sheldon Whitehouse: U.S. Senate speech, Feb.13, 2017
Sen. Whitehouse quotes sources from the financial sector on climate change and the need for carbon taxes.
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/time-to-wake-up-will-the-new-treasury-secretary-show-common-sense-on-climate-change
UN News Centre, 29 November 2006
‘Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns’
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772
Cattle emissions issue has a UN connection.
With $US18 trillilion one would think they could build windmills at will and still donate the change towards paying off the US National debt.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
our climate: http://www.davdata.nl/math/climatescience.html (cartoons)