Environment

Barone & the Ideal Climate for Baby-boomers

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As so often, Barone summarizes Gore (and, perhaps, the rest of us baby-boomers) quickly:

Gore and his followers seem to assume that the ideal climate was the one they got used to when they were growing up. When temperatures dropped in the 1970s, there were warnings of an impending ice age. When they rose in the 1990s, there were predictions of disastrous global warming. This is just another example of the solipsism of the baby boom generation, the pampered and much-praised age cohort that believes the world revolves around them and that all past history has become irrelevant.

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The Free Market Looks at the Environment

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Here’s someone who really sees the glass as half full:

It’s also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature – by eliminating private ownership and similar things – much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.

Generally, he’s seen as a bit too free market, a bit too hard nosed. But Klaus shares with Havel a tendency to speak his mind – with perhaps less wit and tact. Nonetheless, I suspect I’m not the only person charmed by his response when his interviewer asks: “Don’t you believe that we’re ruining our planet?

I will pretend that I haven’t heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person hardly.

(Thanks to Instapundit, then to Drudge.)

Update:   The interview was then translated in its entirety in the Prague Daily Post – although I retain some affection for the Czenglish quoted above; it is byLubos Motl from his blog, “The Reference Frame.”

It’s the End of the World as We Know It, and I Feel Fine

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Things were grim when I was growing up in the 1960’s. Natural resources were being depleted at an alarming rate, DDT was causing mass extinctions, pollution was destroying the ecosystem, and the time when the planet’s petroleum supply would run out was in sight. All the experts agreed that we were doomed in 50 years. I had maybe five decades in front of me to live a relatively normal life before things fell apart. After that, the natural resources that humanity depended on to survive would be completely gone.

So how do we fare now that 40 years have passed?

According to the WWF, things are grim. Our end times are in sight. We have maybe 45 years before the natural resources that humanity depends on for survival are completely gone.

I find myself unable to work up any sense of urgency. I wonder why this is so?

The Efficiency Paradox

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In a previous post, I pointed out the highly counterintuitive fact that increasing the energy efficiency of any technology leads to wider use of that technology and eventually greater overall usage of energy by that technology. As a result of this effect, attempts to foster energy conservation by using more energy-efficient technologies backfire.

I think I have figured out the economics of why this happens.

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