If we let the markets have their way, Earth becomes unhabitable. Coal and oil plants aren't being shut down. In fact, we have more than ever with additional ones on the way.
It's because "free market" is and always has been a misnomer. Free to ignore externalities, yes. But our shared ecosystem is not seen as a market participant, so it can't charge the true cost of burning hydrocarbons.
We'd also still have industry dumping raw waste directly into our waterways. I'm not so sure that this wouldn't have killed more people faster than unregulated coal/oil plants.
Markets are constructed. It's possible to engineer toward the outcome you want by designing the market in a way that brings it about. Unfortunately, this is considered a socialist (which, in the US, is largely synonymous with "demonic") idea unless you want to change a market in ways that benefit entrenched elites.
Making it illegal (or expensive, via outsized taxes) to burn fossil fuels would ultimately just be another change in the rules of the market -- players will optimize within that space and find the best way to deliver energy and other services within those constraints (assuming enforcement is such that they can't just skirt the laws -- enforcement is also part of the market design).
One can frame this as "incorporating externalities" in order to help marketist ideologues swallow it, but the audience for that is almost entirely composed of people with second homes on islands with tax-cheating-based economies. Normal people are fine with the explanation of "this would have horrible and unpredictable consequences for the world your children are inheriting, so we're making it illegal".
tadfisher|4 days ago
dylan604|4 days ago
ElevenLathe|3 days ago
Making it illegal (or expensive, via outsized taxes) to burn fossil fuels would ultimately just be another change in the rules of the market -- players will optimize within that space and find the best way to deliver energy and other services within those constraints (assuming enforcement is such that they can't just skirt the laws -- enforcement is also part of the market design).
One can frame this as "incorporating externalities" in order to help marketist ideologues swallow it, but the audience for that is almost entirely composed of people with second homes on islands with tax-cheating-based economies. Normal people are fine with the explanation of "this would have horrible and unpredictable consequences for the world your children are inheriting, so we're making it illegal".