Reply #22: We're already seeing the politico-economic response to increasing .. [View All]

[struggle4progress]

.. energy costs: it is simply to gut environmental protection.

Unless we can construct an effective political response to THAT response, there's no reason to believe that increasing costs will have the effect of forcing conservation.

I supported emission taxes for years. But a similar problem applies: corporations will simply pay for the privilege (at costs that completely fail to reflect externalities) exactly as corporations simply "buy" mining rights on public land (at 1870's clearance prices). The standard economic theories only apply if government is strong enough to enforce, and enforces, the market conditions assumed in the derivation of the theory: this is not a given, because (for example) unconstrained capitalism appears naturally to tend to monopoly, with the corresponding loss of the always hypothesized competitive forces.