Creating the Right Incentives for Environmental Stewardship
Here’s an article that illustrates what happens when regulators get clever in creating incentives for environmental stewardship and responsibility: smart people work around them, unintended consequences result, and windfall profits occur in random places that have nothing to do with environmental benefit.
If I were doing this, I’d make the whole situation incredibly simple. How about this?
Remove all subsidies, and tax behavior that has currently uncaptured externalities. Want to burn coal? No problem. But here’s a new price per kilowatt-hour that includes cleaning up the damage it’s doing to our lungs and environment. I don’t think you’ll find it too appealing, but it’s your choice.
Gasoline’s cheap now too, but it sure won’t be when all its costs to society are included.
You’d have renewable energy in one hell of a hurry, and no unintended consequences from people gaming the system.
I want to share a news here. Luis Solozarno and Eudes Vera, two Venezuela born inventors, now US citizens living in Miami, Florida, a machine capable of converting atmospheric heat into electricity. A small scale prototype is created and successfully tested with positive energy output. Now, they want to make a bigger prototype of 10 kW and need funding for that. Can anybody help?
They also applied for a patent.
I won’t be helping personally; I’m convinced that this is not a viable approach to energy.
Strange that you can be convinced without knowing it well. That’s a real “scientific” approach I presume.
I understand it well enough to know that it doesn’t make sense. I’ve had numerous discussions on the subject with people I find credible. No offense intended, of course. 🙂
Question is, whenever you make a comment on anything without having little knowledge of it, that it’s automatically an offense, whether intended or not.
In this case, a prototype is available and anybody can see that and taste too. Despite, you made a totally negative remark. I suggest you have some little idea before making any comment.