July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

Re:July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa by CalRobert on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @09:37AM (#12343587)

There is a sad counterpoint, though, and one I think of often.

There are discretionary purchasers of fossil fuels - people/companies who would buy units of fuel but aren't because it's not cheap enough. All of the actions I named above reduce the demand for fossil fuels (by an infinitesimal amount, but still). Reducing demand reduces the price such that some other user will consume those fuels anyway. In this case it might as well be me, as a self-interested economic actor.

This is the idea behind putting a cap on emissions and selling the right to emit, but so far such schemes are a failure. And as much as I hate to admit it, they really do need to be global in scale - if cap and trade just results in more stuff being manufactured in nations that don't limit emissions, we haven't really fixed anything.

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Re:July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa by larkery on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @10:18AM (#12343893)

You are right about the problem that efficiency in one place will potentially cause consumption in another. In the literature, this is usually called a 'rebound effect' or Jevons' paradox.

It may be that an emissions / extraction cap could be implemented non-globally so long as a large enough block were willing to participate, and so long as they imposed tariffs on any non-participants to price in the emissions happening on the other side of the border.

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