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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the smoke-gets-in-your-eyes-and-lungs-and-clothes-and-environment dept.

Australia Doesn't Care to Break its Coal Habit in the Face of Climate Change:

Earlier this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a dire warning about climate change: unless governments of the world coordinate to implement multiple long-term changes, we risk overshooting the 2°C warming scenario that countries strived to target in the Paris Agreement. This would lead to ecosystem damage, increasingly dramatic heat waves and previously-irregular weather patterns in different regions, and subsequent health impacts for humans.

Retiring coal-fired power plants is a significant action that could limit our race toward an unstable future. But Australia's officials don't quite care. According to The Guardian, the country's deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said that Australia would "'absolutely' continue to use and exploit its coal reserves, despite the IPCC's dire warnings the world has just 12 years to avoid climate-change catastrophe."

McCormack also reportedly said that Australia would not change its coal policies "just because somebody might suggest that some sort of report is the way we need to follow and everything that we should do."

The country's previous prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, abandoned emissions reductions targets that the nation had agreed to, and Australia's renewable energy targets are set to expire in 2020. In September, government analysis showed that Australia's greenhouse-gas emissions increased last year, and independent analysts said the country would likely not meet the greenhouse-gas emissions reductions that it committed to under the Paris Agreement. Unlike the US, Australia has not exited the Paris Agreement, but the country's current prime minister has declined to add any more money to the global climate fund.

[...] Still, Australia ranks only fourth for economic coal resources, with the US, Russia, and China ahead of it. In the US, which has the world's largest economic coal resource, the Trump administration has had a difficult time fighting to save coal. On Wednesday, US coal supplier Westmoreland filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of $1.4 billion in debt. That makes the company the fourth major US coal supplier to file for bankruptcy in recent years due to the significant decline in coal use.

Internalize the profits, externalize the costs?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:53PM (20 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:53PM (#747507)

    Tax monies go to the government coffers.

    Why should the government get that money? WHY?!

  • (Score: 4, Touché) by Snow on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:57PM (8 children)

    by Snow (1601) on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:57PM (#747511) Journal

    Maybe to provide health care services to deal with the increased health problems that pollution brings?

    Maybe the gov't can use the money to build a seawall around Florida so it's not underwater in a few decades?

    Maybe the government can use the money to send a helicopter in to save your ass after being stranded by a massive hurricane or other natural disaster?

    • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:38PM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:38PM (#747526)

      Those are issues for The People to figure out amongst themselves; in a free society, people figure out those things through voluntary interaction, not mandate at the point of a gun.

      • (Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:46PM (6 children)

        by Snow (1601) on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:46PM (#747532) Journal

        Oh, okay.

        Can you provide an example of that working on a country sized scale?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:14PM (5 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:14PM (#747555)

          Look around you.

          The only reason any society can be maintained for any appreciable amount of time is because of Capitalism. This is even true of, for example, North Korea, where "black" markets are the only thing that actually keeps people alive.

          You see, your problem is that you think in terms of self-conscious, self-aware "governing" bodies who define themselves in terms of borders, and the like. Capitalism doesn't give a shit about those things; capitalism pervades all human interaction (even against people's wills), and is responsible for long-term, sustainable, productive allocation of resources—it's not the case that a Big Government creates a wealthy society, but rather it's the case that a wealthy society can afford the parasite that is Big Government.

          Capitalism is working even through the unconscious, un-self-aware: Solutions are being found without people even realizing; the problems being solved are often not even known to be problems! That is what "the Invisible Hand" means; it doesn't require "Intelligent Design" (though it doesn't preclude it, either)—it is a process of evolution by variation and selection, with or without deliberate, explicit thought.

          Government is like that guy who hops in front of a parade and pretends to lead it. That's why politics change with the winds; at a sufficient level of complexity, there is NO SUCH THING as Intelligent Design, and to think otherwise will only ever lead you to dangerous, wrongheaded, self-destructive choices at your so-called "country sized scale".

          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Snow on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:44PM (2 children)

            by Snow (1601) on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:44PM (#747568) Journal

            When I look around, all I see countries which tax their citizens/businesses to fund services.

            In places with little/no government you don't get this free market utopian dream. You get a place like Somalia, one of the only places on the planet that lacks the structure of government.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:05PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:05PM (#747579)

              Woah now check your privilege! You can't just drop truth bombs on idiots, either their minds will implode or they'll just dig deeper into denial.

            • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:07PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:07PM (#747615)
              • It's not surprising that warlords arise in the fall of an authoritarian culture.

              • People's lives have improved immensely (even outpacing the quality of life in nearby "stable" countries) since the fall of Communism.

                Indeed, one of the reasons for this improvement is that old quasi-capitalist tribal rules started to fill the power vacuum.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:58AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:58AM (#747751)

            where "black" markets

            I saw the same thing in the Soviet Union. It's interesting that communism is perfectly legal in capitalist countries ( https://www.ic.org/ [ic.org]), but capitalism is illegal in communist countries (https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/neyyyw/we-met-the-young-hustlers-cashing-in-on-cubas-booming-black-market [vice.com]).

            • (Score: 3, Touché) by dry on Friday October 12 2018, @04:49AM

              by dry (223) on Friday October 12 2018, @04:49AM (#747782) Journal

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954 [wikipedia.org] and earlier, the Congressional Act that abridged the freedom of speech, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917 [wikipedia.org] was used to prosecute people with politics that the government didn't like, for example,

              Among those charged with offences under the Act are German-American socialist congressman and newspaper editor Victor L. Berger, labor leader and five time Socialist Party of America candidate, Eugene V. Debs, anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, former Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society president Joseph Franklin Rutherford, communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Cablegate whistleblower Chelsea Manning, and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden. Rutherford's conviction was overturned on appeal

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:16PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:16PM (#747519)

    Who do you suggest should get the money?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:41PM (8 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:41PM (#747529)

      I'm not sure how to solve the problem, but an externality (like pollution) is usually a sign that property rights are not well defined enough.

      Why can't you, as an individual, successfully sue the coal power plant owners for dirtying your air? Why can't you and others join a class action lawsuit on that issue in order to, you know, collectively bargain?

      You can't, because private property is not well respected in this world, even in the West. Our society is still very primitive with regard to individual rights.

      • (Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:48PM (7 children)

        by Snow (1601) on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:48PM (#747534) Journal

        The only people that win in a class action is the lawyers.

        Your example solution doens't solve anything though. It only (maybe) gives you money after you have already been harmed. Wouldn't it be better to not be harmed in the first place?

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:58PM (6 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:58PM (#747542)

          You haven't countered my point; you are just helping me identify the problem: Despite it being the explicit goal of the Founders, the various governments of the United States do a pretty poor job of protecting the rights of individuals.

          I agree with you; the compensation of lawyers is part of the dysfunction.

          I don't know whether you've noticed, but our Universe is an evolutionary one—through variation and selection, complex systems arrive at sustainable solution for the given conditions. You want protections? The only way to find them is to run the evolutionary experiment; a free market does not purport to solve problems immediately, but rather only to find solutions over the course of time, through iteration, through evolution by variation and selection.

          Anybody who tells you that he knows the proper shape of a complex system is either delusional or lying. The best any would-be "Intelligent Designer" can do is to set up conditions that allow a complex system to tap into this most fundamental process in our Universe: Evolution by variation and selection.

          So, no wonder the Founders' governments failed; a special, blessed, monopoly on violence is not conducive to (and even explicitly fights against) both variation and selection.

          • (Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:31PM (4 children)

            by Snow (1601) on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:31PM (#747562) Journal

            I agree with what you say above. The free market is perhaps the best problem solver we have.

            The government should play the role of the "Intelligent Designer". The government should set conditions to reward good things and punish bad things. Taxes are a tool to that end. Don't like carbon emissions? Tax them. The Free Market will work towards finding lower carbon alternatives because it is cheaper. Want the free marker to solve problems faster? Tax them harder.

            There is of course a trade-off. Pretty much everything we do, we do using energy from carbon. Carbon taxes make pretty much everything cost more.

            Unchecked, the free market will exploit something as long as it makes money. That is at odds with having an environment that is sustainable.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:08PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:08PM (#747583)

              Government control *REEEEEE* violently imposed monopoly REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE taxes...theft....freedumbs.....REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:09PM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:09PM (#747616)

              ... and welfare rewards failure.

              That's what you're saying.

              • (Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:49PM (1 child)

                by Snow (1601) on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:49PM (#747675) Journal

                Nope. Not what I said at all.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:47PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:47PM (#747694)

                  A tax on "vice" is indistinguishable from a tax on productive work.

                  And, you know what? WHY SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT GET THAT MONEY, ANYWAY?

          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:50PM

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:50PM (#747697) Journal

            I agree with you; the compensation of lawyers is part of the dysfunction.

            Easy solution: kill the lawyers of the losing party. In time, evolution will select only winning lawyers, the ones that will refuse (for their self-preservation) to settle the disputes in court

            (grin)

            --
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by jasassin on Friday October 12 2018, @07:34AM

      by jasassin (3566) <jasassin@gmail.com> on Friday October 12 2018, @07:34AM (#747809) Homepage Journal

      Who do you suggest should get the money?

      Me.

      --
      jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A