Just a quick, off-topic question, but I thought you might have some insight.

A buddy of mine just recently bought a Prius. A cute little car, I must say, and drives pretty nice. But he’s noticed a small problem. It does get good mileage, most of the time, except when he runs the air conditioner. It seems like the battery doesn’t have the juice needed to run the ac by itself, so that results in the gasoline engine running all the time, which obviously greatly reduces the efficiency. Do you know if this is normal?

Bush went to Harvard Business School, of all places, but pretends to not have the slightest clue as to how business works or how the economy works. Externalities are called that for a reason. They are external to the factors that business uses to make decisions. It is up to Government to ensure that those externalities are accounted for through mandatory regulations, taxes, or other incentives and disincentives.

Those invited to this faux summit could do the world a big favor by boycotting it. Any conference engineered to discuss voluntary approaches to climate change is not worth having or attending.

People in the first group tend to see ‘mandatory regulations, taxes, or other incentives and disincentives’ as immoral - forms of robbery in fact. (If you don’t believe taxation is robbery, just don’t pay for a while and eventually the men with guns WILL come and take what they want.) People in this group don’t buy the ‘end justifies the means’ argument.

People in the second group tend to believe they know what’s best for ’society’ and dismiss the moral questions. They do believe that the end justifies the means. It’s kind of like mugging people, then buying their victims new shoes with some of the spoils. They get a nice warm feeling from their ‘charity’ as long as they don’t think too hard about it.

A few times a year I drive through Southern California on Interstate 10. There’s a wind farm near Palm Springs that is a good example of an environmental boondoggle. On both sides of the freeway, windmills are lined up to the foothills. Most of them are no longer working, and of those, many have fallen over, just trash now on what was once a beautiful piece of desert. The money to build it - many millions of dollars - was readily available of course from the millions of cash cows out there, but money to maintain it should have come from the electricity market. It didn’t come, because it was over-priced to begin with.

It’s easy to spend other people’s money, but when you don’t have a real profit incentive, your choice is either to take more and more money through taxation (or other incentives and disincentives) or throw up your hands and let the market march on by.

If you ‘progressives’ really want to change the world, you will need to learn some basic economics and do some deep moral thinking.

Those wind turbines you disdain helped bring the industry down the learning curve and helped make wind — with the continuing help of governments around the world — the fastest growing form of renewable power.

Either you see people as a resource or you don’t. If you don’t, then you can’t condone taxation and ‘other incentives and disincentives’.

And it remains to be seen whether a truly free market can “protect the environment or value future generations appropriately”.

As you rightly pointed out, there has never been such a thing as a truly free market (at least as long as we’ve had governments). But that’s not to say that the profit motive is the antithesis of conservation or sustainability. The ‘tragedy of the commons’ is a theory that hasn’t really been observed in the real world because, as you say, we haven’t really seen a free market. But there are, in fact, mutlitudes of examples in the real world of government good intentions gone awry; untintended consequences. And many examples, as well, of the benefits of minimally-regulated markets and low taxes.

You are correct that natural capital, such as fisheries, can be over-exploited. But you jump to the conclusion that the surest way to protect them is through regulation and taxation. There are also good business reasons to conserve.

You are doing what I said above: putting the ‘end’ before the ‘means’.

And you misunderstood me about the wind turbines. What I disdain is government subsidies to build the things, then letting them rot.

And interestingly you say that wind power is the fastest growing form of renewable power - “with the continuing help of governments around the world”. Do you hear yourself? Where do you suppose governments’ money comes from? And what do you think would happen (does happen) if governments stopped subsidizing wind power?

You can’t keep funding a losing proposition forever (and if it wasn’t losing it wouldn’t have to be propped up).

And so, Joe and tstreet, I don’t agree that “Any conference engineered to discuss voluntary approaches to climate change is not worth having or attending.”

To discuss INvoluntay solutions is just business-as-usual, and hasn’t ever worked well anywhere. And I’m not even mentioning again that it’s immoral….

Do you want to change the world or not?

Greens (aka lefties) have a firm belief that is government applies just enough coercive power, anything can be made to work. But in the real world, some things work, and some don’t.

The cap-and-trade scheme adapted by Europe is a scam, has produced exactly zero reduction in CO2, and just hampers the economy for no benefit at all.

When will you learn the futility of “good intentioned” giant social engineering schemes, backed up by force ?
Don’t be blinded by your ideology, in real life it won’t work.

Besides, don’t you see that when blackouts become frequent because you are hindering the building of new power plants that really supply power (not green feel-good) the public, the voters will kick you out. There is no way you can make people suffer blackouts just for “the future generations” (false) meme.

And stop believing in fairies. There is no green energy.