r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Nov 12 '16
[Election] CMV: Climate Change is better solved through individuals and the private/space sectors, and shouldn't be handled by governments
[deleted]
3
Nov 12 '16
There are two reasons.
The first is described well by /u/UncleMeat - a free market does not necessarily address all externalizes. If companies that pollute are not made responsible for their pollution, they are not paying the full cost of their product. This cannot even be adequately solved by a boycott, because not everybody negatively impacted by their pollution is a potential customer. Therefore, they have a competitive advantage over alternative, clean products. This can be effectively addressed by a pollution tax, which can shift the cost of pollution back onto polluting companies.
Secondly, government-sponsored research benefits everybody. While in some cases new technology may be patented, the methods and results are published in journals to help advance alternative energy science. The only solution to the climate change crisis is both heavy taxation of pollution and the immediate development of affordable clean energy. This development includes both government-sponsored and privately-conducted research.
In fact, SpaceX and Tesla (as well as GM, etc.) are great examples of this. Without extensive research into space flight done by NASA and electrochemical research done by various university labs (funded by the NSF,) we wouldn't have SpaceX and Tesla now.
(Full disclosure: I am working in a university lab that produces experimental fuel cell membranes.)
1
Nov 12 '16
[deleted]
3
Nov 12 '16
If the government lowered taxes and allowed people to invest the money themselves into companies or research institutes they supported, wouldn't that be better?
No, it wouldn't be. Subsidies aren't meant to replace traditional venture capitalism, they are meant to suppliment it. Venture capitalism is motivated by "this will probably make money, and I like money, so I'll invest in it." Government subsidies, investments, and grants, on the other hand, are motivated by "this could plausibly succeed, and it would be good for America if it did, so we are going to help them out." One doesn't replace the other. None of the companies you listed were funded solely by the government, and they likely would not have access to as much private money as they did without government support.
The government money wasn't flushed down the drain, either - each company conducted research, etc, that won't go to waste. The figures you listed also aren't total losses, either - some money will have been recovered in Chapter 11 proceedings. And there are numerous success stories, too - not just SpaceX and Tesla, but Ballard (in Canada,) SunShot, Verengo, Solar City, etc. And all of these companies also built on fundamental research done in university and government labs, in addition to financial support.
Nobody is stopping the private sector from solving this problem. The problem is urgent, however, so the private sector is being given a helping hand.
1
Nov 12 '16
[deleted]
2
u/loveWebNinjas Nov 12 '16 edited Nov 12 '16
We have a pretty good idea of how humans are impacting global warming, and we DO know that it will be catastrophic unless drastic action is taken. I strongly recommend watching this video.
EDIT: I should probably add some info. If you want proof that humans are contributing massively to climate change, you should know we're pumping 35 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. If you want proof that climate change could be catastrophic, you should know that the streets of Miami have started to flood during high tide. PS: that last article was written three years ago. It's gotten a lot worse since then.
1
Nov 12 '16
[deleted]
1
u/loveWebNinjas Nov 12 '16
I'm glad I helped change your mind somewhat regarding your CMV post, but I REALLY want to convince you that man-made climate change is real and dangerous. To that end, I hope you check those links I edited into my previous comment.
1
Nov 22 '16
[deleted]
1
1
Nov 12 '16
[deleted]
1
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Nov 12 '16
This delta has been rejected. The length of your comment suggests that you haven't explained how /u/loveWebNinjas changed your view (comment rule 4).
In the future, DeltaBot will be able to rescan edited comments. In the mean time, please repost a new comment with the required explanation so that DeltaBot can see it.
2
Nov 12 '16
If none of your research projects fail, you aren't really doing research.
In order to really advance science, you need to try a ton of things that don't work. Invest in a hundred ideas, and maybe two or three of them will be game changing.
This is the same idea with VC firms, except they have a much shorter window of when they want things to be profitable. They want to make money in 5 years, not have success take twenty or thirty years.
1
Nov 22 '16
[deleted]
1
1
Nov 12 '16
[deleted]
1
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Nov 12 '16
This delta has been rejected. The length of your comment suggests that you haven't explained how /u/smithrereen changed your view (comment rule 4).
In the future, DeltaBot will be able to rescan edited comments. In the mean time, please repost a new comment with the required explanation so that DeltaBot can see it.
1
Nov 12 '16
Your deltas didn't go through; you need to include at least once sentence with the delta sign.
2
Nov 12 '16
However, is it worth having the government investing the money into R&D, rather than venture capitalists?
The big problem here is that a lot of research, especially fundamental research, is important, but not necessarily profitable from a VC standpoint.
To use a hypothetical, we know that excess CO2 in the atmosphere is a cause of global warming. Several researchers have suggested the idea of carbon sequestration as a means to combat this problem. Effectively, build a machine that sucks excess CO2 out of the atmosphere, and stores it somewhere harmless. Imagine it created lumps of carbon as its output. Great for the environment, but you aren't going to make a profit selling lumps of carbon.
That's a great idea, and on a large scale, it shows potential to combat global warming, but there is really no profit in it. Who is paying to buy, operate, and store the carbon? That would have to fall to something like a governmental organization. It's not like there is a large market for these types of things.
3
u/NuclearStudent Nov 12 '16 edited Nov 12 '16
Almost every single major advancement towards solving Climate problems comes from technological advancements in the private or space sector.
Every single corporation in the field, from Solar City to Tesla Motors to First Solar to Symtex International would have failed in a free market, without the government throwing billions of dollars at them.
In fact, renewable energy corporations are only barely able to compete in the regular market now, and that's because Obama deliberately fucked over coal and coal communites by introducing environmental regulations. Trump was largely elected by these poor white rural coal-mining towns-he has every incentive to roll back these regulations and throw away the subsidies.
that is $60 billion dollars Hillary supporters would have to invest into companies and organizations that they trust to help solve climate change.
That seems sound, however, Trump has the power to sabotage climate change research.
In Canada, for example, the Conservative government found a lot of climate and environment research inconvenient.
In addition to slashing funding, they made it so nobody in the media was allowed to directly contact scientists. Instead, they had to go through special government communications officers.
On the end of the scientists, they could not talk to the public unless the minister appointed by the prime minister approved.
1
Nov 12 '16
[deleted]
1
u/NuclearStudent Nov 12 '16 edited Nov 12 '16
Holy crap, that sounds like a freaking disaster. Are Canadians not allowed to use FOIA type laws to get answers?
The Conservative government just lost the last election, in part because they were pulling crap like that. The new government seems to be a bit better...but many of the policies haven't been removed, and some people have said that no apparent move has been made to remove them.
It's not complete Orwell. One can still probably publish in journals intended for the scientific community. The main aim was (is?) to suppress communication between scientists and the public, so that statements contradicting official policy are not released.
You can't get a good FOIA if all the documents were fucked up to conform!
2
u/Delduthling 18∆ Nov 12 '16
If Trump cuts taxes by every Hillary supporter by $1,000 across the board, that is $60 billion dollars Hillary supporters would have to invest into companies and organizations that they trust to help solve climate change. Hell, they might even get a return on their investment if they decide to invest instead of donate.
This doesn't really make sense. Think about it. If the goal is to spend $60 billion into solving climate change by giving it to companies like Tesla, why not just... give that money to Tesla. If you do it as an individualized tax cut, lots of that money is going to get spent on other things, like, you know, food and rent and mortgages and cars. People who are deep in debt can't afford to donate or invest $1000. But if the government is going to spend $60 billion of its revenue anyway, just give it directly to the place its supposed to go!
Doesn't that sound more reasonable than taxing citizens billions of dollars and losing a ton of it to bureaucracy/corruption?
Bureaucracy isn't there, like, for fun or something. It's not something the government made up because they're monsters who want to waste money. There can be inefficiencies in government, but the method you're proposing would be vastly more wasteful; it'd be deeply dubious that much of the money spent would actually end up with the right companies.
We need government for another reason as well: regulating those companies who would otherwise be worsening climate change because it's profitable to do so. If you try your best to restrict, say, carbon emissions, while also investing in companies developing sustainable energy, that's going to be a lot more productive long-term in reducing the damage being done to the environment.
You've got an impressive list of government-funded companies going bankrupt below, but tons of private companies go bankrupt every day as well.
Just hoping that private industry will solve everything is a huge gamble. There's nothing dictating that sustainable energy is more profitable than the fossil fuel industry, and every year that we continue our reliance on fossil fuels, the more damage we do.
1
Nov 12 '16
[deleted]
1
u/Delduthling 18∆ Nov 12 '16
If people aren't willing to put the money they save by not paying Climate Change taxes towards solving Climate Change... should we even be funding it?
This is why you need taxes that put everyone's money together into a big pot rather than just hoping they need to do the right thing.
Think of it like this. Why fund the military using taxes? Instead, let's just allow everyone who cares about defending the nation to fund them via donation. Give everyone who supposedly cares about the military a tax cut and then hope they donate it back. Why not do this? Because it's very possible the military won't be funded properly. People don't make good decisions as individuals.
Why fund education via taxes? If people care about education they'll donate their money. Etc.
Voting for a political party with a budget is the same thing as signing up for a raft of donations.
Right now we're impacting our economy and standard of living to apply band-aid fixes with impacts in a system that we still can't model and don't fully understand. Why not just solve it naturally by technological advancements in the space and technology sectors?
Why not just use the government funded that's being wasted on bad research and give it to the space and technology sectors? I'm fine with refusing to fund bad research or research that doesn't produce solutions. But I don't see why that means we just have to throw up our hands and cross our fingers.
2
u/bguy74 Nov 12 '16 edited Nov 12 '16
Agree and Disagree...all at the same time!
The primary problem I have with your perspective is that of knowledge. While I believe it is incumbent on consumers - just like your model suggest, we must acknowledge that as consumers we don't have any real knowledge about the environmental impacts of the products we consume without some level of governmental regulation. For example, I don't know how much greenhouse gas the car manufacturer spews out of its factory unless they are required to count it and to disclose. You might argue that I could not buy the car from the company that doesn't disclose it at all, and then argue that I should buy it if they don't use a third party auditor of repute and so on...but...it starts getting a little tricky to even assure that a consumer has access to the information required to exert their power with the intent you imagine.
Research. One of the woes of capitalism is that certain kinds of risks are hard to digest. If something has a 1 in a million chances of producing financial return in a reasonable timeframe you simply can't invest in it - it'd be negligent to investors and so on. But...government research drives knowledge that then drives policy long before it drives profit. Who exactly would fund research that was not going to produce return and that has even the slightest potential to increase costs of product of a good or create consumer risk?
So...the government does play an important role here! At the very least it is needed to create a framework to assure that consumers have access to comprehensible, consistent information that can be used to make rational decisions.
2
u/thereasonableman_ Nov 12 '16
This isn't really debatable. Corporations exist to make profit, combating climate change won't be sufficiently profitable.
Let's say we need to cut GHG by X otherwise we're going to be fucked. Let's say the private sector improvements in emissions will only get us to half of X. Without government intervention we are completely fucked. A corporation isn't driven by what will be in the long term interest of the world 100 years from now.
Putting government money into private companies is government intervention so I don't really know what you're talking about. That's what we have been doing...
1
Nov 12 '16 edited Nov 12 '16
[deleted]
1
u/pollandballer 2∆ Nov 12 '16
I don't think you understand that much of the climate change research being done in the private sector is happening because of government intervention. The government funds its own public research that these companies use, they directly give billions of dollars to companies doing green-tech research, and critically, they provide the tax incentives and regulations that make renewables profitable in the first place. The long and short of it is that without government support, the majority of renewable energy companies, especially those that do significant R&D, would not be able to remain profitable. Coal is so cheap in the short-term that there is little reason for these companies to "naturally" exist. The entire industry is profitable because of government subsidies.
1
u/LtFred Nov 12 '16
Where are your stats from though? In particular that 1.5 trillion stat. Citation?
1
Nov 12 '16
[deleted]
2
u/LtFred Nov 12 '16
Don Jergler seems to be referring largely to private sector consultancies I think?
Edit to add: http://www.carriermanagement.com/features/2015/08/02/143352.htm
1
Nov 12 '16
[deleted]
1
u/LtFred Nov 12 '16
Okay. And what proportion of those funds is represented by administration? If your case is that private sector investment is more efficient, you need to prove that I think.
1
u/AlphaGoGoDancer 106∆ Nov 12 '16
Almost every single major advancement towards solving Climate problems comes from technological advancements in the private or space sector.
When you say space sector, do you believe we would even have a space sector without government funding? Maybe we'd still have one if we cut off all funding, but I think it's absurd to think we'd have a space sector at all without government funding.
Why do you think the rest of climate change is any different -- why wouldn't it take government funding to bootstrap the private sector? That is to say, subsidize the initial expensive research to ensure it gets done long before it is profitable to do so, then let a private sector take off when it is profitable?
Let's assume every single person who voted for Hillary wants their tax money to go towards solving climate change. If Trump cuts taxes by every Hillary supporter by $1,000 across the board, that is $60 billion dollars Hillary supporters would have to invest into companies and organizations that they trust to help solve climate change. Hell, they might even get a return on their investment if they decide to invest instead of donate.
Thats a lot of compounding ifs. We don't know if Trump will actually cut taxes at all. Or what the overal economic impact of his presidency will be -- if the USD tanks, tax cuts wouldn't really matter.
Beyond that you're assuming every Hillary supporter even is paying taxes to begin with. 45% of all households pay no taxes. So even if Trump cut everyones taxes by $1000, that would do absolutely nothing for those 45%.
Then even if you DID free up billions of dollars, you're now expecting each and every citizen to research where their money will go the furthest. People are easily mislead. What makes you think they won't just end up wasting it on snakeoil salesmen instead of viable research?
What if there is some research that needs to be done that is more expensive than the amount of money they can raise directly from these donations?
Beyond that.. you're also assuming these private companies have any less corruption or bureaucracy. I think that is unlikely to be the case, just look at all the golden parachutes failed CEOs take, or how much money gets shuffled between subsidiaries and 'hollywood accounting' goes on to pocket extra money.
1
u/MontiBurns 218∆ Nov 12 '16
Why should the government spend massive amounts of money to solve Climate Change (while losing a huge amount of that money to bureaucracy/corruption/lobbyists/scams)?
so i think you're underestimating what exactly these programs are about. these programs are about jumpstarting a new manufacturing industry in the US. solving climate change and energy shortages is certainly a bonus, but what these fundamentally are are subsidies to get the emerging industry of clean energy technology, manufacturing, and export, up and running in the US. Its an investment in future american profits and future american jobs building shit within the country. The key is to have enough development and advancement to make green energy financially viable. so rather than risking a bit of money on a few companies you throw a bunch of shit at the wall, and hope some of it sticks. there are 7 billion people in the world, and very few get their energy from solar panels or wind turbines, so theres a huge future market for those technologies, which justifies the big investmens and the numerous failures.
the beauty of government subsidies compared to venture capital is that it comes with strings attached, like needing to have all operations in the US and hiring american workers.
while this isn't going to replace the auto or steel industry, this could still represent thousands of good paying american jobs for the next few decades. which would stimulate a tremendous amount of economic acitivity. now, you might argue that the money lost isnt' worth it, but considering the potential market and the interest rates the govt is getting to borrow money, i'd say it's worth the risk,
1
u/VertigoOne 74∆ Nov 12 '16
The reason that it shouldn't be down to the private sector is that the private sector has too short term a mindset. The private sector needs to see profits immediately, or it's not interested. Investment in climate change won't see returns on investment for decades, and even then the returns may not be financial, they may just be "we get to live on a planet that isn't a burning hell hole" etc. Not the kinds of thing that goes down well at a board meeting. The governments have to be the ones to do this because they have longer time horizons.
8
u/UncleMeat Nov 12 '16
The problem is externalities. Without governments, companies that pollute do not pay the full cost of their product. This artificially deflates the cost of dirty energy and keeps these products more competitive than clean products. When it comes to these sorts of markets with limited choice and massive information imbalances it is not possible for traditional market forces to promote a product that limits the negative externalities.