Comment Re:Isn't that anti-science? (Score 1) 1055
How can you be so certain about the harms you're claiming? Especially when the proposed mechanisms for reducing emissions -- a.k.a. "Cap and Trade" -- are virtually guaranteed to get rid of the most wasteful, inefficient uses of fossil fuel first?
I recall one study that showed that we could get CO2 emissions down 50% at a substantial profit to the overall economy. These extra profits could be used to pay for the rest of the CO2 reductions, meaning that we would get a zero-carbon economy at no cost.
Sounds too good to be true, right? To illustrate, let's take one famous example: The Empire State Building recently underwent an energy retrofit, at a cost of $20M. The expected savings (from utility bills alone)? $4M/year. That's about a 20% return on investment. Now, in theory, you could then take that $4M/year and pump it into new CO2-lowering initiatives, possibly even on a large enough scale to make the entire building carbon-free.
That's what the study is talking about doing for the whole economy. Right now, energy efficiency is by far the cheapest untapped energy resource that we have.