jmog;963675 wrote:lol, so your solution, in a nutshell, is to tax the hell our of fossil fuels to raise the prices of them so high that renewable technilogies are around the same price as the now higher priced fossil fueles.
Yeah, and that won't cripple the economy...
Here's the difference between myself and the conservatives you have so eloquently tried to paint me into the corner with.
I have actual scientific background on this particular subject, I have published papers or been involved in published papers regarding scientific combustion models of fossil fuels.
I have worked in research and development on fossil fuel combustion for going on 10 years now and I actually understand this subject.
If you do NOT believe there is "politics" involved on the side that adheres to man made climate change, then you are just as biased as those "conservatives" that you rail against.
It's not "taxing the hell out of fossil fuels." It's using taxes in the regulatory scheme to correct for the market's inadequate pricing of the costs of coal. Here is a quote I found on Greg Mankiw's Blog...A proponent of the use of Pigovian taxes to correct prices to what the would be in a freely competitive market that accounts for all the external costs of a product. Mankiw is (or was?) an adviser to Romney's presidential campaign and served on President Bush's economic team.
"The need for taxes on energy externalities such as carbon emissions is central to our ability to reduce the harmful side effects of economic growth. It is striking how the political dialogue in the US has ignored a policy that has so many desirable features. Perhaps, in the near future, faced with the deadline of a dire economic situation, negotiators will formulate such a policy. It would generate substantial revenues while bringing so many long-run economic and environmental benefits. Simply put, externality taxes are the best fiscal instrument to employ at this time, in this country, and given the fiscal constraints faced by the US."
Taking into account the external costs of coal, it would already be drastically more expensive per kilowatt hour than say solar energy. What this means is that the coal industry does not charge the price it ought to charge but passes those on to others in the form of healthcare costs, environmental protection, etc.
Even without the correct price of coal, solar power may surpass it very soon. Prices of solar panels have been dropping very rapidly (and that's part of the reason Solyndra failed...)
And as to your argument that "politics" is involved in either side. Even if you accept that as true, that does not outweigh the vast amount of evidence. Indeed, The Koch Brothers just funded a Global Warming Skeptic to attempt to refute global warming and he came out to accept it as to true. The facts are that there is more pressure on climate experts to say that man made global warming
isnt' happening. But either way, even if we take into account political pressure, 97 out 100 experts will say that the evidence shows that man-made global warming is happening on a private survey.
And, the bottom line with regard to taxing fossil externalities is this; If the price of coal was what it would be in a truly free and competitive market, it already would be more expensive than several renewable technology's. Using taxes to attempt to correct for this market failure would actually make the energy markets more in line with the notion of a freely, competitive market without even taking into accounts the benefits for our climate that would result. Conservatives, even engineers, are supposed to believe in free and competitive markets. The energy and utilities markets are about as un-free and un-competitive as they come.
But I will reiterate, trying to make regulatory reforms in a depressed economy is usually a bad policy choice. Recovery is more important than Reform. As Keynes said, "
even wise and necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action, before you have had time to put other motives in their place."