09-23-2016, 03:10 AM
This is exactly the kind of market-fundamentalism we're so against. Yes markets are wonderful and efficient, but they can't solve every problem, there is a wide literature on market failures, and externalities like pollution is one of them. If you leave that to the free market companies will just keep on polluting..
So here is libertarian candidate Johnson not denying humans cause climate change, but leaving the 'solution' to the free market. The whole point is, there is no free market solution..
There is no "free-market" approach to carbon emissions, just as there is no free-market approach to health-care. In the first, there isn't a market for carbon, so it keeps being blown into the air and the cost falls on society at large. Producers simply externalize the cost and burden society with it.
In health-care, markets for insurance suffer from adverse selection as the least healthy have the biggest reason to insure whilst insurance companies prefer the healthiest, a free market would suffer from adverse selection.
So here is libertarian candidate Johnson not denying humans cause climate change, but leaving the 'solution' to the free market. The whole point is, there is no free market solution..
Quote:The former New Mexico governor did acknowledge that humans are making the world warmer in the near term, too—but he doesn't think the government should do much about it. In the same speech, he denounced "cap-and-trade taxation," said we "should be building new coal-fired plants," and argued that the "trillions" of dollars it would cost to combat climate change would be better spent on other priorities.Gary Johnson Wants to Ignore Climate Change Because the Sun Will Destroy the Earth One Day | Mother Jones
All of that makes Johnson's popularity among younger voters pretty surprising. Surveys have consistently found that millennials care deeply about climate change. A November 2015 ABC News/Washington Post poll, for example, found that 76 percent of 18- to-29-year-olds see global warming as a serious problem, and 64 percent want the federal government to do more to combat it. Nevertheless, a recent Quinnipiac poll found that Johnson is now running second among 18- to-34-year-old voters, just 2 percentage points behind Hillary Clinton.
"At a point in the very distant future, the sun will actually encompass the Earth. So global warming is something that's going to be inevitable."
Johnson's 2011 comments weren't an aberration. Over the past few years, he has spoken out repeatedly against environmental regulation. In a 2011 NPR interview, he instead called for a "free-market approach" to reducing carbon emissions, arguing that consumer demand for cleaner energy, coupled with cheap natural gas, was causing a shift away from coal. He made the same argument during a Libertarian presidential candidate debate in May 2012. "If government gets involved" in fighting climate change, he said, "we are going to be spending trillions of dollars and have no effect whatsoever on the desired outcome."
There is no "free-market" approach to carbon emissions, just as there is no free-market approach to health-care. In the first, there isn't a market for carbon, so it keeps being blown into the air and the cost falls on society at large. Producers simply externalize the cost and burden society with it.
In health-care, markets for insurance suffer from adverse selection as the least healthy have the biggest reason to insure whilst insurance companies prefer the healthiest, a free market would suffer from adverse selection.

