Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities

Post by davidw » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 12:21 AM UTC

cik2e wrote: post #61

KennyBlanken wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason carbon taxes work is because the upper echelons of society are responsible for far, far more carbon dioxide and pollution than the overwhelming majority of the world's population. Despite what we've been told, the planet won't be saved by worker-bees biking to work. It'll be saved by not having the ultra-wealthy flying everywhere in their private jets, and not spending tens of millions of dollars on multip…

I'm not here to defend the ultra-wealthy but what you're saying doesn't pass the sniff test. Aviation accounts for just 12% of global CO2 emissions and households account for 21%. Obviously, a very small percentage of that could be attributed to the ultra-wealthy flying around in private jets and owning multiple mansions. On the other hand, a reasonable argument against the wealthy elite would be that they are likely…

Post by ericd » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 12:49 AM UTC

kansface wrote: post #83

ericd wrote: post #70

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https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ Carbon tax is not being proposed on its own, it's meant to be combined with: - Paying out ~100% of the take equally per-person to make it so it helps rather than hurts the poorest, a "carbon dividend". Poor people use less carbon on average (directly+indirectly) than wealthy people, so they will usually be net beneficiaries. - Applying an equivalent tax on imports from coun…

> Applying an equivalent tax on imports from countries that don't impose a similar tax, called a Border Carbon Adjustment, to prevent domestic manufacturing from being disadvantaged ... to encourage companies to audit their supply chain Not that I'm opposed to the cause or aligning incentives in general, but practically, this just seems flat out impossible to implement in any way that has teeth. Do we punish poor cou…

Post by iskander » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:57 AM UTC

q1w2 wrote: post #86

iskander wrote: post #52

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In Florida and much of the Gulf Coast though... Check out this map of population density: https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/metropolita... All those dense spots in Florida and along the Gulf are also more likely than most US urban areas to use septic tanks. That's a lot of brackish poop, clogged toilets, and environmental contamination coming in the next few decades.

Given the high water table in Florida, only people living in the countryside have septic tanks. None on the coast would have a septic tank

Post by davidw » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

deltree7 wrote: post #60

davidw wrote: post #27

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Markets and capitalism are part of the solution, of course, but you absolutely do need policies to direct all that energy, at a high level. Absent "policies" and enforcement, the cheapest way for a factory to dispose of waste is to dump it in the river. Same thing applies to CO2: dumping it in the atmosphere is cheap right now because the policies to deal with that externality aren't quite there. An obvious example o…

Property rights, one of the bedrock principles of capitalism, easily handles externalities. Dumping waste/co2 is a violation of someone else's property rights. Try dumping waste into your neighbor's property and see what happens. The reason why externalities happen is because government is not enforcing property rights

Post by IntrepidWorm » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 5:39 AM UTC

nawgz wrote: post #44

IntrepidWorm wrote: post #38

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Probably because population control threads so often devolve into eugenics.

Sure, and Capitalism devolves into late-stage regulatory-capture wealth-inequality race-to-the-bottom massive globally scaled abuses of both people and the planet. To propose that we just simply have to let "capitalists" fix the solution they have wrought is facile at best, and honestly strikes me as clearly malicious when in the same breath it is implied regulation and policy are the the enemy.