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In some ways, that's even a reasonable argument, but it completely ignores the long-term effects. A large part of the trouble is that we don't ever tend to acco

In some ways, that's even a reasonable argument, but it completely ignores the long-term effects. A large part of the trouble is that we don't ever tend to account for the cost of large-scale environmental damage. For instance, under many climate change forecasts, the coffee growing industry is going to be much, much less profitable (http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2009-02-19-brazil-coffee-climate-change_N.htm http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2009-0...). Beyond just the economic costs, though, we don't tend to evaluate the quality-of-life costs of environmental damage. Of course, there's also people like me who see environmental conservation as a moral imperative, beyond any economic motives. My only point here is that even from a purely economic standpoint, there are many good reasons to spend immense amounts of money fighting pollution. Even 1% of the Iraq War budget would be hugely beneficial.

jacoblyles 17y ago
>"In some ways, that's even a reasonable argument, but it completely ignores the long-term effects." Not if you do it seriously. The thousands of scholars who study these kind of issues for a living have thought of such simple objections a long time ago.
- cgranade 17y ago
  It's not a simple objection at all. Of course there are scholars who do so, but in practice, the costs are largely ignored, just like any externality tends to get ignored by individual agents in an economic system. That leads to an argument that environmental effects must fall under the umbrella of governmental responsibility, since those calculating cost/benefit ratios are rarely those who will pay the brunt of the costs of climate change and other such effects. This is especially evident if one considers the quality-of-life concerns, which are by their very nature cross-cutting, and thus hard to account for at the level of an individual or single corporation.

jacoblyles 17y ago

>"In some ways, that's even a reasonable argument, but it completely ignores the long-term effects." Not if you do it seriously. The thousands of scholars who study these kind of issues for a living have thought of such simple objections a long time ago.

cgranade 17y ago
It's not a simple objection at all. Of course there are scholars who do so, but in practice, the costs are largely ignored, just like any externality tends to get ignored by individual agents in an economic system. That leads to an argument that environmental effects must fall under the umbrella of governmental responsibility, since those calculating cost/benefit ratios are rarely those who will pay the brunt of the costs of climate change and other such effects. This is especially evident if one considers the quality-of-life concerns, which are by their very nature cross-cutting, and thus hard to account for at the level of an individual or single corporation.