Craig <cchayniepub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The danger is in the inefficiency. Electric cars and wind energy, is not > present in the numbers you envision, because they are more expensive > than proven internal combustion engines and fossil fuel. I do not think so. Take for example, the cost of oil. It is three dollars a gallon but that does not include the cost of wars that we fight to secure supplies. If you would add that it would be $5-$10 per gallon I believe. The cost does not include externalities. Or, take the cost of coal-fired electricity. This is cheaper than wind turbines or nuclear power. However that is only because we do not pay the full cost. The smoke and particulates from coal kill roughly 20,000 people per year in the United States. The power companies pay nothing to their surviving families, and they do nothing to fix the problem, because these are poor people living downwind of the generators. If the airlines were to kill 20,000 passengers in crashes in a single year, we would abolish commercial aviation. We would spend trillions of dollars to eliminate it, with high speed mag lev trains or something. We would also fine the airlines enormous sums of money to recompense the families of the victims. We would do this because airline passengers are middle-class and upper-class people, not poor people. If a food company were to poison and kill 20,000 people with contaminated peanut butter we would again spend trillions of dollars to fix the problem and of course the food company would face huge lawsuits. Again, many of the victims would be middle class, and a corporation cannot kill middle class with impunity. > Forcing people > to use these alternatives makes the cost of transportation and energy > far more expensive than it would otherwise be. Not at all. It would be cheaper overall, and soon it would be cheaper to the automobile owner. > The market is the most efficient mechanism for supplying consumer needs. > The market places no value on the lives of poor people living downwind of coal generators. It places no value on wars for oil. It will do nothing to prevent us from being inundated with 9 m of water. So I do not think it is efficient. It works in some limited ways, for some purposes. - Jed
