4 ms·

(most) libertarians are perfectly happy to structure a market to internalize the externalities of pollution, since it's not practical to privatize air O2 and CO

(most) libertarians are perfectly happy to structure a market to internalize the externalities of pollution, since it's not practical to privatize air O2 and CO2. A different, possibly more market-oriented, solution would have been a carbon tax on emissions instead of mandated efficiency standards. I think it would have gotten us to a similar place. But there's not anything inherently anti-market in saying "you cannot fill up collectively owned air with emissions." Libertarianism are against regulations they consider paternalistic and which prevent free exchange of goods and services -- for example, minimum wages and taxi unions.

Pxtl 9y ago
While small l libertarians may support that, my experience is that Libertarian political parties in the US and Canada are firmly against any action on climate change.
- MR4D 9y ago
  To put an even finer point on that, big L Libertarians would like to see the governments (federal & state) stop subsidizing insurance for people who build or live in flood plains and tidal regions. So you could argue both sides of that, although I get your drift. Reason I mention that is they believe the market should be the master, and currently, the government won't let the market work in this particular area.
- saosebastiao 9y ago
  You should see the things the Libertarian party fights about internally...they aren't anywhere near as unified as you claim.
- hueving 9y ago
  The Libertarian parties are tiny in the US. Every libertarian person I know ends up making a sacrifice of ideals and votes with Democrat or Republican when it comes to elections. The Libertarian parties in the US are not representative of many libertarians.
m_mueller 9y ago
Does anyone here know how accurately current sensor technology could map O2 output on a satellite? I.e. could we get down to, say, 10 meter precision? Here's what I was thinking: Take the current approach with the Carbon certificate and decentralise it using blockchain technology (e.g. Ethereum) hooked up to (to be made) publicly available sensor data on O2, as well as a public data on land ownership; Give every patch of land globally a wallet address. Make an App and API for the payment process, based on liters of gasoline / oil bought / electricity used for a certain area / KM of flight taken (convert to Mols of CO2 assuming a perfect flame). Distribute the payments evenly among O2 wallet addresses. For unclaimed land and international waters, make a fund that can be distributed among national governments, e.g. by how much unclaimed land and coastline they have. At first the payments are completely optional, made by users that want to become carbon neutral. However, businesses and governments can choose to use this system to easily implement mandatory carbon neutrality without the need to trust a third party. Blockchain powered Dapps allow just this - having code running on a network that everyone can audit, but no-one can change.
- falsedan 9y ago
  Atmospheric sensors have to be deployed at the location they're sampling, so step 0 is: cover the earth with air quality monitoring stations. Step -1 is convincing someone to pay for this (governments have limited funding for this, so choose their monitoring sites carefully & extrapolate from the recorded data). There's a few sites which aggregate the public datasources, like http://aqicn.org/map/world/ http://aqicn.org/map/world/
  - m_mueller 9y ago
    Isn't there a more scalable solution? I'm imagining reflective stripes at specifiv GPS positions, so satellites can target them with lasers and measure the reflection. Too much refraction?
    - falsedan 9y ago
      The refraction doesn't matter, its the precision. Given a reading (of 02 ppm), how can you prove that it matches the reading a ground station would have made? How could you filter out the noise from materials in the ~100km of atmosphere between the satellites and the targets? More pragmatically, could you explain it in a courtroom & convince the jury that it works? I understand that you're disappointed that this extremely useful idea doesn't have a simple solution.

Pxtl 9y ago

While small l libertarians may support that, my experience is that Libertarian political parties in the US and Canada are firmly against any action on climate change.

MR4D 9y ago
To put an even finer point on that, big L Libertarians would like to see the governments (federal & state) stop subsidizing insurance for people who build or live in flood plains and tidal regions. So you could argue both sides of that, although I get your drift. Reason I mention that is they believe the market should be the master, and currently, the government won't let the market work in this particular area.
saosebastiao 9y ago
You should see the things the Libertarian party fights about internally...they aren't anywhere near as unified as you claim.
hueving 9y ago
The Libertarian parties are tiny in the US. Every libertarian person I know ends up making a sacrifice of ideals and votes with Democrat or Republican when it comes to elections. The Libertarian parties in the US are not representative of many libertarians.

m_mueller 9y ago

Does anyone here know how accurately current sensor technology could map O2 output on a satellite? I.e. could we get down to, say, 10 meter precision? Here's what I was thinking: Take the current approach with the Carbon certificate and decentralise it using blockchain technology (e.g. Ethereum) hooked up to (to be made) publicly available sensor data on O2, as well as a public data on land ownership; Give every patch of land globally a wallet address. Make an App and API for the payment process, based on liters of gasoline / oil bought / electricity used for a certain area / KM of flight taken (convert to Mols of CO2 assuming a perfect flame). Distribute the payments evenly among O2 wallet addresses. For unclaimed land and international waters, make a fund that can be distributed among national governments, e.g. by how much unclaimed land and coastline they have. At first the payments are completely optional, made by users that want to become carbon neutral. However, businesses and governments can choose to use this system to easily implement mandatory carbon neutrality without the need to trust a third party. Blockchain powered Dapps allow just this - having code running on a network that everyone can audit, but no-one can change.

falsedan 9y ago
Atmospheric sensors have to be deployed at the location they're sampling, so step 0 is: cover the earth with air quality monitoring stations. Step -1 is convincing someone to pay for this (governments have limited funding for this, so choose their monitoring sites carefully & extrapolate from the recorded data). There's a few sites which aggregate the public datasources, like http://aqicn.org/map/world/ http://aqicn.org/map/world/
- m_mueller 9y ago
  Isn't there a more scalable solution? I'm imagining reflective stripes at specifiv GPS positions, so satellites can target them with lasers and measure the reflection. Too much refraction?
  - falsedan 9y ago
    The refraction doesn't matter, its the precision. Given a reading (of 02 ppm), how can you prove that it matches the reading a ground station would have made? How could you filter out the noise from materials in the ~100km of atmosphere between the satellites and the targets? More pragmatically, could you explain it in a courtroom & convince the jury that it works? I understand that you're disappointed that this extremely useful idea doesn't have a simple solution.