3 ms·
The free market has never been used to address global warming (it's badly used in general in fact, possibly in part because few people seem to actually understa
by xoa 8y ago
The free market has never been used to address global warming (it's badly used in general in fact, possibly in part because few people seem to actually understand what it is or even internalize that it's a tool at all, not an end, and like any tool there are applications it is a poor fit for). Amongst the foundational requirements for a free market to work at all is that the price should embody all costs. There are some problems of course where this simply isn't very practical, particularly ones that are heavily non-linear/non-reversible. But that's not the case for carbon emissions, in fact it's a pretty good fit. The problem is "release of fossil/long term stored carbon into the atmosphere", it's easy to measure at various points at the fuel level, and since it's a gas that will evenly diffuse worldwide and is uniform removal from the atmosphere can take place anywhere in the world by anyone using any method. That makes it well suited to abstraction, with a market system on each side of the equation and government acting as a pivot. Wouldn't even require global buy-in to make a difference given that the energy market is primarily globalized anyway, if a few major polities decided to require it and also made access to their own markets take it into account it'd have a major effect no matter what anyone else wanted.
- collyw 8y agoWe got carbon trading a while back. That doesn't seem to have made any difference whatsoever.