5 ms·

So, what is the environment worth? Cause that seems awfully cheap.

adventured 11y ago
The US environment overall is doing extraordinarily well in fact. And it's not cheap, the EPA is one of the toughest environmental regulators, which has helped lead to a dramatic improvement in US environmental quality in the last 40 years. What's having a functioning economy worth? Are we going to pretend that we could have had a US economy, with ~50% of global manufacturing in 1965, running on solar and wind? No? Then it's obviously understood that the renewable shift inherently requires vast, prior energy systems. What was battery technology like in 1965 or 1985? Let's say we had deployed an all-nuclear infrastructure (built courtesy of what? fossil fuels of course). What would that have done for electric cars? Nothing, we haven't had the ability to build practical electric cars until the last decade, due to huge improvements in batteries. We still have horrible batteries for the home. Even Tesla's Powerwall does not (yet) work as a practical battery for the home, according to their own statements on the matter. The US could have done a lot better. There's just no sense in pretending that you get from there to here, without a massive fossil fuel industry.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > The US environment overall is doing extraordinarily well in fact I strongly disagree; climate change is likely on track to be catastrophic, and the United States is the biggest cause.
  - brucefancher 11y ago
    No, "climate change" is not on track to be catastrophic and b) the US is not the largest emitter of CO2, China is.
- vonklaus 11y ago
  > The US environment overall is doing extraordinarily well in fact. Record draughts in California. Mild drought on East Coast. Sea Level Rising. World Temp Rising. 11 inches of Rain in Texas in one day. inb4 these are not conclusive. Sure they aren't. The environment is an unpriced externality, and it is very difficult to measure the effects that humans have on it. Let's keep running uncontrolled experiments here until we have a problem. Luckily the Mars colonial transporter will be built by the time we do real damage. /Somewhat snide and sarcastic. Somewhat.
  - wtallis 11y ago
    Why did you include so much bullshit in with the one good piece of evidence?
    - vonklaus 11y ago
      I had to leave in haste. It's not like there isn't a plethora of well documented scientific sources describing the ecological problems our earth is facing.

The US environment overall is doing extraordinarily well in fact. And it's not cheap, the EPA is one of the toughest environmental regulators, which has helped lead to a dramatic improvement in US environmental quality in the last 40 years. What's having a functioning economy worth? Are we going to pretend that we could have had a US economy, with ~50% of global manufacturing in 1965, running on solar and wind? No? Then it's obviously understood that the renewable shift inherently requires vast, prior energy systems. What was battery technology like in 1965 or 1985? Let's say we had deployed an all-nuclear infrastructure (built courtesy of what? fossil fuels of course). What would that have done for electric cars? Nothing, we haven't had the ability to build practical electric cars until the last decade, due to huge improvements in batteries. We still have horrible batteries for the home. Even Tesla's Powerwall does not (yet) work as a practical battery for the home, according to their own statements on the matter. The US could have done a lot better. There's just no sense in pretending that you get from there to here, without a massive fossil fuel industry.

hackuser 11y ago
> The US environment overall is doing extraordinarily well in fact I strongly disagree; climate change is likely on track to be catastrophic, and the United States is the biggest cause.
- brucefancher 11y ago
  No, "climate change" is not on track to be catastrophic and b) the US is not the largest emitter of CO2, China is.
vonklaus 11y ago
> The US environment overall is doing extraordinarily well in fact. Record draughts in California. Mild drought on East Coast. Sea Level Rising. World Temp Rising. 11 inches of Rain in Texas in one day. inb4 these are not conclusive. Sure they aren't. The environment is an unpriced externality, and it is very difficult to measure the effects that humans have on it. Let's keep running uncontrolled experiments here until we have a problem. Luckily the Mars colonial transporter will be built by the time we do real damage. /Somewhat snide and sarcastic. Somewhat.
- wtallis 11y ago
  Why did you include so much bullshit in with the one good piece of evidence?
  - vonklaus 11y ago
    I had to leave in haste. It's not like there isn't a plethora of well documented scientific sources describing the ecological problems our earth is facing.