Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Well that's a stupid question

Matthew Yglesias:
I think the reaction to David Obey’s “war tax” idea is telling—nobody seems to really think there are national interests at stake that are critical enough to be worth paying slightly higher taxes for. But if a war’s not worth paying for, how can it be worth fighting?
Wars are always good, and cost nothing. Climate change mitigation, on the other hand, will be ruinously expensive, so we need to instead invest billions in CO2 sequestration and geo-engineering, which will be less expensive than not emitting CO2, even if it isn't.

Public policy in the West, for the last 30 years and for the next 30.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Even disregarding climate change:

900,000 people die each year from air pollution (external) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution)

Yet we do nothing. Many of the sources of CO2 are also sources of "traditional" pollution, combating one, combats the other.

But kill ~3,000 in a terrorist attack (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/10/29/wtc.deaths/)

And we'll go out and kill 700,000 people in retaliation! (http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html)

If they keep this up, war deaths will exceed air pollution deaths. Yay!