Perpetual Innovation

Category: pollution

  • Can jaw-dropping visuals on CO2. BIG smokes vs. BIG OIL | GreenBiz.com

    Can jaw-dropping visuals change the climate conversation? | GreenBiz.com:

    This week in the news we wave the merger of BIG tobacco. Lorillard Brands if getting bought out by Reynolds; that is, the Newport brands are getting married to a camel. This will make a formidable competitor to Altria’s Marlboro man. (I still love the genius of changing your name from  Philip Morris USA to “Altria”, it makes the company sound so Alteristic!:-)

    So these are products, when used as directed will either kill you, or cause you to die younger… i.e., kill you.

    The big difference between pollution into the atmosphere is that it is generally not the smoker (and their family it seems with 2nd hand-me-downs) that dies, it is everyone in the vicinity, down wind, and down stream.

    The problems with burning fossil fuels, in addition to any other pollution that pollute in the traditional science, they create vast amounts more Carbon Dioxide (CO2) for the atmosphere than what the earth systems have become accustomed to dealing with. If 60% goes into the oceans, that causes increased acidification; what remains in the atmosphere, hangs around for about 100 years — a deadly experiment that we are just beginning to see the effects of.

    At least with tobacco, people enter into the deadly agreement under their own free will. The externalities of the well documented costs in life, income and economic product is largely offset by massive taxes. And it is really other countries that have fast increases in smoking while we in the USA have a rapidly dwindling market. (You could say that the market is dying off, if you wanted to add pun to death and sickness.) Although, electronic cigs are growing rapidly.

    But, the BIG producers of fossil fuels, have it rather sweet. They tap a natural resource, like an oil reservoir, pump it dry, sell into energy markets and have no responsibility as to the costs of the use of their products. The jaw dropping visuals from the main article here, show the billions (with a B) of tonnes of CO2 created from/by the BIGgest oil producing companies.

    The oil company pays some taxes to the country where it permanently depleted a natural resource. That seems only fair. The health costs of burning coal, direct pollution, are huge but generally not covered by the companies the produce and use it. Countries have taxes on transport fuel, to offset some of the costs of the vehicles. But nobody really pays the costs of the CO2 externalities. Or at least very little is done in that directly.

    So the two, or three, questions for government: Should government shut down BIG tobacco? Or tax it more? Or allow it to move closer to a duopoly where they can keep raising prices to consumers and have them pay through the nose?

    And the questions for government: Should government shut down BIG tobacco? Or tax it more? Or move to cap-n-trade? Or subsidize renewables?

    The one that seems to work best, and economists all like best, is a direct tax. The tax increases need to gradually escalate, at least at the rate of inflation. This, of course is political suicide. So the tax is out, and no addressable solution is in.

    This is a supply and demand world. In fossil fuels you have the BIG consumers, namely China and the USA, and the BIG producer companies. Both are to blame if what they sell/buy kills people. Right?

    The sinful problems associated with the dirty companies go on.. and they keep getting BIGger.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • China Pollution Is Blanketing America’s West Coast – Business Insider

    China Pollution Is Blanketing America’s West Coast – Business Insider:

    Oh boy.

    We export raw materials and coal to China so they can make finished goods and export them back to us in the West/USA. They don’t have the safety worries that we do… Some of the externalities affect only China, but many affect us all, especially those countries and environments closer to the mainland of China.

    “Cities like Los Angeles received at least an extra day of smog a year from nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide from China’s export-dependent factories, it said.

    “We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” co-author Steve Davis, a scientist at University of California Irvine, said.”

    Yuk! 🙁

    A good economist would argue that  products (say coal, especially the really dirty, high sulfur stuff) that produce negative externalities should be assessed a tax that roughly matches the costs of the externality. Using this logic, we would tax coal (especially high sulfur coal) that goes to a developing country, and tax them even more if they intend to burn the coal without scrubbers and such. This might not stop them from burning coal, but it would make other options more attractive that are cleaner (less negative externalities).

    Unfortunately, China has a LOT of coal in the country. They now burn more than half the world’s coal each year, so they do have to import it as well.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • How China’s economy is choking on smog | Talking Numbers – Yahoo Finance

    How China’s economy is choking on smog | Talking Numbers – Yahoo Finance:

    Imagine your favorite city closed down because of the weather, maybe a blizzard… Many of China’s cities can have the same problem, but it is because of smog pollution.

    This is a country that burns more coal than the rest of the world, combined.

    Nice thing is that they share this pollution with their neighbors.

    Plus the burning of coal is a gigantic producer of CO2 emissions.

    At what point does this pollution start to curb the 7% economic growth that the company continues to experience?  Certainly down from decades of more than 10% growth, but it is hard to grow with the traffic congestion and pollution slowing down ad periodically stopping the economy.

    Things that are not sustainable, like rapid growth, have a way of producing their own remedy.

    ‘via Blog this’