My response to redneck perel's latest on global warming

For those of you new to this discussion, you should at least read this post first.

http://redneckperil.blogspot.com/2007/03/skip-this-post-if-youre-bored-with.html

Let’s start by where we agree. Africa is poor, deadly poor. Africa is also among the most corrupt and corrupted continents in the world. We also agree at least in part that people in many cases are bad. I think big corporations that put profits and the interests of shareholders over the interests of the public good are bad. You are absolutely convinced that there has never been a good government. I suspect that this is an over simplification of what we both believe and the truth lies somewhere in the middle, probably that many governments are bad, and many corporations really don’t care about the common good.

I think we agree that bringing energy to Africa is a good thing. We disagree on how to do it. You think that a centralized power grid is the way to do it, I think decentralized power is the way to do it.
You say that I “seem to me not to grasp the single most fundamental of all principles of economics: you can't have everything.” Well that isn’t true. I know absolutely you can’t have everything. In fact, you brought up Africa in the context of global warming as a ruse to my comment about how pollution has impacted the Grand Canyon. I will comment on this below.

The real question we have here is what are the priorities. This discussion we are having seems to be based on the idea that energy is the most important thing that Africans need. I suspect that if we listed out the top ten things that Africans need, energy might not be the top number one, and I bet we might agree on that.

I personally think that clean water is more important than having a refrigerator, as I suspect you do to. I think that having medicines that either prevent or treat some of the worst diseases Africans are dealing with, including water born parasites, polio, not to mention AIDs, are more important than having an air conditioner, as I suspect you do to. We probably agree that energy may be tied up in all of this.

You think that it would be cheaper to build nuclear plants, and coal burning electricity plants than to build solar panels and wind mills. It may be true that building a centralized energy infrastructure may be cheaper in the short run, but in the long run, it will be more costly than building solar panels and electricity generating wind mills that have little or no longer term fuel costs.

I suspect our disagreements are more based on our personal beliefs and priorities than anything else. You are a right of center libertarian that believes that free markets are a cure all for everything. I am a liberal Democrat that believes that the common good is not served by free markets, and that some regulation is required to make people – big business or individuals not screw the common good.

I mentioned the Grand Canyon in one of my previous comments to illustrate the effects of pollution. I thought, but I guess I am wrong, that we might have agreed that pollution is a bad thing. Let me explain. Air pollution that is caused by burning fossil fuels causes many diseases in humans, including but not limited to asthma, lead poisoning, cancers including lung cancer and liver cancer.
My father is a pediatric surgeon (retired now). He did a lot of work for Medicaid. One thing he noticed was that there were several kids coming in to the hospital with the same types of diseases – all coming from the same neighborhood. Four kids with liver cancer from this neighborhood, fifteen kids with juvenile diabetes from this neighborhood. He started mapping a some of the multiple occurrences of the more rare cancers, and very much higher levels of certain diseases. He found that there was a high correlation of these diseases to proximity of high polluting industries.

There is evidence that many chemicals in the environment cause infertility. There is a class of chemicals called endocrine disrupters. These chemicals interfere with the normal workings of the bodies functions. One set of chemicals called pthaltes interfere with estrogen. Pthalates are everywhere – in perfume, in nail polish, hand cream, in many cosmetics that have fragrance. They aren’t just in cosmetics, they are in a lot of things including some types of plastics. These chemicals have been cited for the rise in infertility. PCB may cause cancer, but that is not all it does. PCB also causes neural changes in kids. Sometimes it is not the dose itself, but when the dose is applied. As kids develop these chemicals cause changes in their bodies that may or may not cause cancer. Pthalates have been shown to cause shrunken testes in males for four or more generations.

Part of the reason I have jumped on the global warming bandwagon, is I see the correlation between the production of CO2 and other major pollutants. If we screw the environment, we screw ourselves.

Will free markets solve this? I doubt it, but I am sure you will educate me as to how you think it will.