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> the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year to $107 billion for energy-related emissions from oil and natural gas in the U.S. Within that, emissions from

> the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year to $107 billion for energy-related emissions from oil and natural gas in the U.S. Within that, emissions from transportation — the biggest source in the U.S. and the only one still growing — enjoyed a free ride worth $59 billion. > The cost of the federal tax subsidy for EVs is $2 billion OK, except the latter is an actual subsidy given directly, while the former is some made up pie-in-the-sky napkin calculation towards something we don't like. Let's talk about the "social cost of tobacco" then. Or alcohol. Or how about the "social cost of fast food" leading to obesity? What about the "social cost of single motherhood?" No other social factor predicts crime and prison time nearly as well, not to mention lack of future educational achievement and lack of future economic output. If anyone wants to play the theoretical existential threats game, I'll trade an acknowledgement of "global warming" for an acknowledgement of single motherhood. Anyways I don't think it's sensible to compare theoretical future economic costs to real costs paid by taxpayers right now.

sambull 8y ago
The Romans tried democracy faster than we fell to the great filter.
linkregister 8y ago
I agree that men who abandon their children should be aggressively pursued by the state to remedy the situation of single motherhood. That's your point, right?
- zxcvvcxz 8y ago
  Because only men are to blame for children out of wedlock? I've got news for you - women make choices too. They choose as well to partake in risky behaviors. They choose to act in ways that cast serious doubt in a man's paternity, destroying his incentive to stick around. Obviously someone has not had enough experience in human relations, particularly in places where the government will subsidize poor behavior.
millstone 8y ago
Global warming mitigation is not diverting resources from tobacco cessation. > I don't think it's sensible to compare theoretical future economic costs to real costs paid by taxpayers right now. "We should permit environmental destruction for economic gain benefitting today's taxpayers."
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  "Today's taxpayers" have been kicking the can down the road for half a century. The attitude should not be a surprise at this point.
- zxcvvcxz 8y ago
  Keyword: theoretical. We are coming out of an ice age from over 10K years ago, and the rate of temperature increase has been slowing on that scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record (Hint: don't worry so much about zooming into the 1970s to today, which is less than 0.01% of the time span of a larger trend.) Pollution is a problem, yes. Go to China and talk to them before you lecture me about paying carbon taxes in Any City, USA. But when it comes to this theoretical warming, we are likely to be a spec of noise in the overall trend of the planet doing its thing.
  - Jweb_Guru 8y ago
    The temperature has increased more rapidly in the last one hundred years than we can find it has at any period we have good data for (there is some evidence that at times in the distant past it rose fairly rapidly, though we can't tell exactly how fast, but that usually coincided with massive extinction events). This has been largely caused by the release of large amounts of CO2 in accordance with very well-understood warming processes. The idea that some nebulous "natural processes" of the earth just automatically overwhelm anything we can do is totally bizarre; we are a sizable portion of the active energy production on the planet's surface at this point (obviously, we have nowhere near the effect of the sun, but the sun's radiance does not and has not changed rapidly enough to explain the changes in temperature).
adrianN 8y ago
Are you seriously suggesting that single motherhood is similarly dangerous as global warming?
- zxcvvcxz 8y ago
  It's worse.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Single motherhood leads to something worse than a mass extinction event? Seriously? Could you maybe add some arguments so that I can try to understand how you could possible come to that conclusion?
erikpukinskis 8y ago
This doesn’t make sense. If I don’t want to pay the cost of alcohol I can just choose not to drink alcohol. If someone drives drunk and injures me, I can sue them. I can’t sue anyone for increasing the temperature of the planet. And I can’t opt out. That’s why it’s an externality. It’s a cost that’s forced onto someone with no legal recourse.

sambull 8y ago

The Romans tried democracy faster than we fell to the great filter.

linkregister 8y ago

I agree that men who abandon their children should be aggressively pursued by the state to remedy the situation of single motherhood. That's your point, right?

zxcvvcxz 8y ago
Because only men are to blame for children out of wedlock? I've got news for you - women make choices too. They choose as well to partake in risky behaviors. They choose to act in ways that cast serious doubt in a man's paternity, destroying his incentive to stick around. Obviously someone has not had enough experience in human relations, particularly in places where the government will subsidize poor behavior.

millstone 8y ago

Global warming mitigation is not diverting resources from tobacco cessation. > I don't think it's sensible to compare theoretical future economic costs to real costs paid by taxpayers right now. "We should permit environmental destruction for economic gain benefitting today's taxpayers."

toomuchtodo 8y ago
"Today's taxpayers" have been kicking the can down the road for half a century. The attitude should not be a surprise at this point.
zxcvvcxz 8y ago
Keyword: theoretical. We are coming out of an ice age from over 10K years ago, and the rate of temperature increase has been slowing on that scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record (Hint: don't worry so much about zooming into the 1970s to today, which is less than 0.01% of the time span of a larger trend.) Pollution is a problem, yes. Go to China and talk to them before you lecture me about paying carbon taxes in Any City, USA. But when it comes to this theoretical warming, we are likely to be a spec of noise in the overall trend of the planet doing its thing.
- Jweb_Guru 8y ago
  The temperature has increased more rapidly in the last one hundred years than we can find it has at any period we have good data for (there is some evidence that at times in the distant past it rose fairly rapidly, though we can't tell exactly how fast, but that usually coincided with massive extinction events). This has been largely caused by the release of large amounts of CO2 in accordance with very well-understood warming processes. The idea that some nebulous "natural processes" of the earth just automatically overwhelm anything we can do is totally bizarre; we are a sizable portion of the active energy production on the planet's surface at this point (obviously, we have nowhere near the effect of the sun, but the sun's radiance does not and has not changed rapidly enough to explain the changes in temperature).

adrianN 8y ago

Are you seriously suggesting that single motherhood is similarly dangerous as global warming?

zxcvvcxz 8y ago
It's worse.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Single motherhood leads to something worse than a mass extinction event? Seriously? Could you maybe add some arguments so that I can try to understand how you could possible come to that conclusion?

erikpukinskis 8y ago

This doesn’t make sense. If I don’t want to pay the cost of alcohol I can just choose not to drink alcohol. If someone drives drunk and injures me, I can sue them. I can’t sue anyone for increasing the temperature of the planet. And I can’t opt out. That’s why it’s an externality. It’s a cost that’s forced onto someone with no legal recourse.