The speaker is not an independent agent and is a proxy for a different group who’s motives are not clear, that should immediately raise some eyebrows. In any honest discussion of the agents message we should be looking at the agency behind the agent and trying to figure out what their angle is. Is climate change a problem, sure that’s pretty well established, but there are lots of groups out there that see it as an opportunity to make money or entrench their interests and we have to be highly cautious of that. Lots of the climate money is chasing ineffective solutions at a local level that have little impact to the overall climate change problem but add significant cost and regulatory burden. I have no idea what this Astro turf group is aiming to do but I would put money on climate change being simply a convenient vehicle for their objectives.
Capitalist theory presumes that if the need is real, efficient and effective solutions will drive out inefficient and ineffective solutions. The basic problem right now is that there is no economic case for climate solutions because the impact of industry on the environment has been historically externalized. From a legislative standpoint, the argument at hand is one of rewriting the equation over a longer time frame and across a broader system. Simply put, the argument is that the stakeholders of any physical process are anyone whose well-being is affected by the process. Which drags capitalism kicking and screaming into the socialist sphere which is why Western countries are fighting so hard.Is climate change a problem, sure that’s pretty well established, but there are lots of groups out there that see it as an opportunity to make money or entrench their interests and we have to be highly cautious of that. Lots of the climate money is chasing ineffective solutions at a local level that have little impact to the overall climate change problem but add significant cost and regulatory burden.
Which is probably near impossible to do with the political systems currently in place because the people writing the rules are the same people who are supposed to be dragged kicking and screaming to the finish line. Meanwhile half the players don’t have to follow any regulations at all. My biggest fear with all this climate stuff is that the western World ends up regulating itself to into an increasingly lower standard of living. We keep setting up more and more roadblock and regulations on domestic producers but allowing foreign ones a free pass, thereby getting rid of domestic jobs and eventually domestic knowledge. Countries like China will just cheat and use that as another competitive advantage. I dont worry about the actual climate change as much because that tipping point was reached probably a decade ago. It’s happened, it can’t really be stopped though it might be slowed down a bit. Resources would be better spent developing better trees, seeds and farming techniques than trying to setup a international regulatory framework for carbon in hopes of slowing down warming by a little bit. There are things like bunker oil burning that should straight up be banned but at the same time we shouldn’t go all climate nutter and ban natural gas heating.
A lower standard of living is precisely what the planet needs. I don't need strawberries from Guatemala, I need decent produce grown nearby. I don't need a $12 bluetooth headset from Shenzen that will crap out in a week, I need a $50 headset from Detroit that will last me five years. The problem right now is that economies of scale make globalization work because they externalize the impacts. Trade regulations are all about keeping countries from "cheating" - what you're complaining about, basically, is the toothlessness of international trade policing and this is exactly where we need to beef things up. Something everybody misses when discussing Piketty is he outlines chapter and verse the size of the shadow economy, and points out that the only real change made in the past 100 years was the US Treasury Dept pursuing black market funding. As a result, anonymous Swiss banking is effectively no more. Where there's a will there's a way and will is gathering. Bunker oil burning is banned as of January.