the precautionary principle only applies when there are no downsides to doing such and such a thing. There is a colossal downside to limitation of CO2—namely that the world becomes much, much poorer than it would otherwise be. Which means, in common parlance, unnecessary millions more dead Africans

*Rolls eyes*. I’m not against industrialisation, just against anthropogenic climate change. With nuclear reactors, wind and solar energy there is no reason that developing countries can’t continue to develop. But there is a trade off if your country ends up being flooded/stricken with drought/unlivable due to increased temperatures.

Fair enough re the A1 scenario, which looks jolly leave-it-to-Beaver, but governments have a responsibility to hope for the best and plan for the worst, which leads me onto

@Rob:

Law protects property rights, Common Law independent of the State.

Indeed. But what good is English common law when it comes to global environmental problems? Your suggestion that “A powerful State is anathema to the property rights of individuals” is unhelpful because whether rightly or wrongly a powerful state exists and as such any action to deal with global environmental issues will probably involve states.

And I’m not even sure that your statement “A powerful State is anathema to the property rights of individuals” is even empirically accurate. We have had a stronger state in this country over the past 100 years or so than at any time in history previously, and property rights haven’t declined in strength.

20 years ago they would have been fighting to make mercury-based lights ILLEGAL.

Similarly the new bonkers sci-fi ideas about putting salt spray into the clouds and iron filings in the oceans. This is a new twist on the theme of ‘we had to destroy the atmosphere to save the atmosphere’ – just coming from left field this time.

Next up: Royal Society recommends lightweight foil-based headwear to protect from cosmic rays.

Thats true greenie language…nice
I know let the gormless state do whatever they like to stop (this non problem) dreaded CO2 emissions. Ban lighbulbs, stop car usage, measure CO2 output of your house and then tax you accordingly…..where next…..limit (CO2 emitting) children..thats what they want folks

Meanwhile, the world (sorry I should be saying “planet”) and its weather/climate will continue on its own merry course.

Finally I think we should limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees. Every hour on the hour everyone please stop breathing for 5 minutes

To say that “the state is the only tool with the power to develop and enforce the better property rights that are needed.” is absurd. Law protects property rights, Common Law independent of the State. A powerful State is anathema to the property rights of individuals.

http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/piebalgs/lighting-the-way-to-the-future/

Environmentalists are the ventriloquists’ dummies on this one.

“Therefore by the precautionary principle governments should take whatever action is necessary to reduce emissions of CO2 and other gases.

Lordy. Look, the precautionary principle only applies when there are no downsides to doing such and such a thing. There is a colossal downside to limitation of CO2—namely that the world becomes much, much poorer than it would otherwise be. Which means, in common parlance, unnecessary millions more dead Africans. But who cares—they’re only brown people, eh?

The IPCC itself recognises that reduction of CO2 is not necessarily the best way to go. The SRES A1 scenarios are the ones that makes us richest and best able to mitigate so that we can react if catastrophic climate change is happening. I stress that these are not some crackpot minority report: the IPCC reports are based on the SRES scenarios.

DK

I have added (reasonably substantially) to your comment.

But the gist of it is that one of the reasons that CFLs are not cheaper is that the EU has slapped a 66% import tariff on them…

DK