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But raising prices on electricity would spur demand for improved energy efficiency. Consumers are notoriously short-sighted on things that don't impact them di

• mav3rick 8y ago
  While the market kicks into gear many people may lose lives or their livelihood. Capitalism doesn't work instantly.
  • blihp 8y ago
    You're absolutely right and it does take time. Unfortunately, when dealing with macro-level issues like this, putting in place long-term incentives and disincentives in the form of fines/taxes/etc. has been shown to work far better than just encouraging people to 'do the right thing.'
  • adrianN 8y ago
    You can increase prices slowly, or announce that you will increases prices in fife years. I find it quite unlikely that people's life will collapse when you increase energy prices by five percent a year or so.
    • mav3rick 8y ago
      Please try and live in a developing country. 5% is huge for a family that can't make ends meet. I don't want to generalize but utopian ideas seem to be propped up on HN without counting billions of other people and their circumstances.
      • adrianN 8y ago
        Luckily we can get 80% of the way to our carbon goals by completely ignoring developing countries and fixing things in the rich countries.
  • peteretep 8y ago
    Historically, many more seem to lose their lives in directed economies.
    • TeMPOraL 8y ago
      No one is proposing central planning here. Just normal methods of nudging the market out of destructive behaviours.
• laumars 8y ago
  I know the following is an unpopular view in the US, but I believe this is where regulation comes into play. Businesses will take shortcuts to save money because saving money is pure profit. And consumers will generally put their own financial needs above the concerns of the wider planet - because "what difference does one person make?" (a point I often read / hear). So the only alternative is to set mandatory guidelines for which products have to adhere to. Sure that will make products more expensive in the short term (R&D costs) but those prices will come down in the mid to long term and you end up with cheaper hardware to run (than if you just put electricity prices up) plus less energy consumption per device. It's a win-win. But as I said, this is more of a European opinion than a US one - who tends to favour a lack of corporate regulation. However I think ultimately there isn't a "correct" approach, just different opinions on the least disruptive.
  • blihp 8y ago
    Regulation another tool in the toolbox, but I don't think it should be the default tool to apply in many cases. It is pretty much the last resort: the market has failed (for any number of reasons) and there are no (dis)incentives that can be applied to alter the situation... so now the government needs to step in and tell the market what to do. This is not without risk as governments often screw this up whether intentionally due to lobbying/other interests or unintentionally as a result of just not understanding how to get the desired outcome. Then there's the reality that regulations tend to take on a life of their own as the regulators build their power bases on top of them. On the other hand, with anything that consumes energy (whether electric, petroleum, or other), there is a lot of opportunity to influence behavior as there's both an up-front capital cost and an ongoing operational cost involved. Usually, the purchaser is paying directly for the operational cost. As a result, there's a direct path from the price of the consumable to the user of it. In these cases, incentivizing via the pocketbook can work quite well. And if that turns out to not be enough, more incentives can be added on the front-end via credits/taxes on the new/old thing to help shrink the price delta between them. So there's quite a bit that can be done before you get to the point of regulating. It also has the advantage of being easier to fine-tune than regulation.