An externality is a cost or benefit to any party which is not part of a trade. That's it.

Ok, if we're going to argue some sort of prohibition on the basis of economics, what is your economics argument for it? I'll point out that the discrepancy between California and Texas is far, far greater than merely whether they allow people to smoke marijuana (something which California actually theoretically doesn't allow either BTW with a "medical marijuana" exception). For example, there's this notable law:

It's not hippies smoking weed which makes California gasoline a third more expensive than Texas gasoline. Similarly, there are plenty of gotchas and liabilities for employers in California that just don't happen to employers in Texas.

l approve that Texas doesn't do the brutal economy-killing approach of California. I just don't think that marijuana consumption has anything to do with California's economic problems or growing inability to compete with Texas.

Colorado's economy did a touch better than Texas's economy did in 2013 (though both states did much better than California did). That just doesn't seem to fit your narrative

Externality is a benefit or cost to someone other than the user/customer. For example, a package delivery business can deliver packages cheaper with cheap oil. All of the customers of that business are third parties which can benefit from the cheaper costs of delivering packages. The customers of the customers in turn get cheaper services. In other words, cheap oil results in cheaper costs of doing anything in society even for parties which aren't directly directly consuming oil products for transportation.

That is the positive externality to oil.

A typical dishonest challenge. So it takes "guts" to publish something on your own dime contrary to the climate change group think? Sure. But what does it take to publish what your sugar daddy paying all your expenses wants you to publish? It's inevitable and easy like water flowing downhill.

That wouldn't make sense, since by granting such an argument, they would destroy the strongest argument for relatively unconstrained use of oil, namely, it's incredible usefulness for transportation. I could see the foolish or naive thinking that if they allow some point of debate, then their opponents will reciprocate by allowing some other point of debate of similar magnitude in the reverse direction, but that doesn't work in practice. An experienced debater wouldn't make such a mistake.

Further, my experience has been that everyone who insists that oil has huge negative externalities never mention the possibility that oil has positive externalities. And they don't favor oil.

Show it then. Where is this evidence? I'll show as evidence of considerable positive externalities, the synergistic effects of cheaper energy and transportation on everything we do and make.

And I was talking about a way to make those reports more accurate in fact than merely in appearance.

It is applicable. There's no "perhaps" to it. In a mostly free world people will act in ways that we won't approve of.

And I get you think that legalized marijuana smoking is somehow worse economically than the current state of affairs with its destruction of people and the rule of law.

OR MAYBE YOU DO. You're the one glossing over the destruction of a person's life just because they smoke or possess weed. Putting people out of business merely because they smoke something you don't approve of is pretty damned similar to the straw man you accuse me of above.

How is it more "liberal" to regulate a business to death rather than a person? Instead, I believe both are equally illiberal.

I in turn ask that instead of glibly saying that we'll never agree due to some mysterious quirk of philosophy or geography, look at the actual harm caused by the War on Drugs and then repudiate it. This is not a California thing. This is a moral thing.

As I noted earlier, the civil forfeiture of assets is the most unconstitutional thing the US and state governments do. There's also the militarization of law enforcement and the hijinks of unaccountable law enforcement, such as the Fast and Furious case where the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) ran some alleged stings that had the sole outcome of providing considerable material support for the Sinaloa Cartel to kill people (and perhaps do other things like money laundering) in a nasty and bloody war across the border in Mexico.

Hasn't worked well compared to what? People are far less productive jobwise, when they're rotting in jail for committing a victimless crime like possession of marijuana than if they were casual marijuana users working some job within their abilities. And it costs a lot more to store those people in jail than it does to ignore their activities except in cases where they're doing something negligent, like operating heavy machinery while impaired.

And this War on Drugs (like marijuana), has resulted in the single largest current violation of the US Constitution, civil forfeiture of assets - the ability to seize assets of people without actually convicting anyone of a crime.

I voted for the Colorado marijuana legalization initiative in question because it was the right thing to do. I believe in time, Texas will follow the lead of Colorado.

As to your economic rationalizations, you can't study a problem like this by only considering one cost. Putting people in jail is a cost as well. So is creating a police state or spurring real shooting wars like the current cartel fighting in Mexico.

Impinging on other peoples' freedoms, even if you are of the opinion that the intervention is for their own good, has costs as well. My view is that we live in a free society. As a result, we have to expect and accept that people will on occasion act in ways that we don't like and perhaps even contrary to their own well-being.

Unless it happens to be fossil fuel production and usage. Then we tend to pretend positive externality doesn't exist.

So what? We were looking for something comprehensive that covers the whole issue and was more accurate than the Stern report and other such reports. I found one such.

To the AC who missed this most important half of the gasoline "wealth redistribution program", you fail economics. To the moderator who modded Chas's post as "troll", get off my internet. This is a basic observation about the oil trade that everyone should acknowledge from the start.

The two weren't correlated so your crystal ball would be broken.

Well, how much is an island worth? Again, I don't see anyone paying very much to protect these things. If it's not valuable to anyone else, then it's not valuable to me.

And if we're paying for our own externalities, shouldn't we also get compensated for our own externalities with the opposite sign?

How about the Stern report where you take the estimated cost of global warming and divide it by ten. Then take the estimated cost of carbon dioxide emission reductions and multiply them by ten? That's a report that probably has more accurate cost/benefit analysis than the original report.

No, it is a better idea because it reduces highway deaths (in the US) without a significant increase in the cost of driving.

Many tens of millions of people are already banned from driving in the US due to age, driving history, or current state of impairment. What's known about the US situation is that a considerable fraction of accidents in the US come from drivers who are already banned from driving either by not having a license or insurance or by driving while impaired. Something like half of all US accidents involve people who shouldn't be driving at the time due to some combination of these factors.

Here's a counterexample from Texas concerning uninsured drivers.

Partly responsible. Otherwise, I agree. So what? My argument hasn't been that AGW doesn't exist, but that there isn't compelling reason to act on it in a costly way.

What's your willingness to pay out of your own wealth to protect these things? That tells me exactly how valuable these things are. And that's how you transform any preference into a purely economic question.

Here's a propaganda lesson for you. These are first past the post arguments from authority. Just because they existed before most counterarguments were formulated. doesn't mean that they were the best arguments even at the time of their creation. For example, the Stern report's flawed time value factor was readily apparent, meaning that reinterpreting the study through a more appropriate time value is already at the time of the publishing of the Stern report, is already better than the Stern report was.

Huh, I've googled that phrase and have been told it's part of the "Summary for Policy Makers" for the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR). But when I actually look at the "Summary for Policy Makers", I see either the 0.2/decade increase for that scenario, baldly presented without error bars (see page 11 of the above link) or presented with far larger error bars (0.1 to 0.3 C/decade presented as 1C to 3+ C increase by end of century and the IS92a predicts near linear increase) than your statement suggests. So why do we have a graph with 0.1 to 0.3 C/decade and a written statement with 0.1 to 0.2 C/decade?

Also, let it be noted that IS92a scenario is not a scenario of the the TAR, but of a previous assessment report. Instead, the TAR presents its own scenarios depending on degree of adoption of non-fossil fuel energy technologies and global dependence on high tech industry. These scenarios uniformly predict a higher temperature increase per decade in the near future than IS92a does, even the scenarios that are more conservative in CO2 emissions.

Looks to me like someone took the boring prediction of 0.1 to 0.2 C per decade in the IS92a scenario and sexed it up to 0.1 to 0.3 C per decade for the graphs, forgetting to change the old written prediction. Here, we need more than merely being in line with inflated expectations. We also need someone who isn't consistently exaggerating the expectations.

There's some glaring abuse of charts as well. The chart on page 17, which claims that the effects of CO2 emissions will even in the face of substantial reductions in CO2 emissions from today will remain at elevated levels indefinitely even over the course of a 1,000 years. But there's nothing on the Y axis. It's touchie feelie curve drawing mixed with a huge assumption about how carbon sinking won't work.

You know, when I get told a story that just doesn't ring true, then I call people on it. And if you really want to be consistent, why don't you take your own advice?