The Washington Post editorializes:
The IEA argues there are things that governments can do between now and 2020, at no net economic cost, at least to try to “keep the door open” to 2 degrees Celsius. Retrofitting buildings and constructing better ones could reduce emissions. More-efficient cars would help, too. These sorts of investments would also save consumers money over time. Phasing out the dirtiest coal-burning power plants would cut greenhouse emissions and other pollutants. So, too, would inexpensively reducing emissions of methane — itself a greenhouse gas — during oil and natural gas production. And, of course, countries should stop encouraging fossil fuel use by artificially lowering prices for the stuff, a problem here that’s much worse in other countries.
In the United States at least, those policies seem achievable, even without agreement among politicians on the scale of the climate problem. [Emphasis added]
I’d like to see all the money going into alternative energy diverted into DDT programs for the world’s seriously poor in malaria zones.
The UN is pushing to get an International Agreement to grant it taxing authority. That way ‘fighting climate change’ will not cost THEM but bring THEM money.
Taxation is already at the point of diminishing returns: every increase drives taxpayers away. Not very far in the future is the day when governmetns have all the money and citizens are all broke. Then the Midas paradox kicks in: “What good is having all the money when it is worthless?”
Taxing fossil fuels is “artificially lowering prices for the stuff”. These people don’t have a clue.
Climate change can’t be stopped by any human endeavor we know of, not at zero cost and not at enormous cost. The AGW gang remind me of King Canute flogging the sea, except he knew it was sarcasm.
“The IEA argues there are things that governments can do between now and 2020, at no net economic cost, at least to try to “keep the door open” to 2 degrees Celsius. Retrofitting buildings and constructing better ones could reduce emissions. More-efficient cars would help, too.”
The “Editorial Board” at the Washington Post is a financial/economic ignoramus. Government directing businesses has severe economic impact. That is why the United States has been in a depression for the last 5 years. Retrofitting buildings is a waste of capital. If it were viable, companies would do it on their own. More efficient cars is more government strangling of commerce. Americans have made it abundantly clear they don’t want more efficient cars, that there are other considerations that they value higher, like safety, capacity, and performance.
The Editorial Board needs to move outside the Beltway to regain some sight of reality.