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You're unhappy with the amount we spend on entertainment and the Iraq war, and would like us to divert all the money towards global warming mitigation. Perhaps we could cork some volcanoes or do some cloud seeding to induce some rainstorms to get rid of water vapor. Let's take your $600 billion that you say would make a huge difference. As we're writing the check to the cloud-seeding company, or the volcano corking company, it occurs to you, that there's a lot of things you could do with this money. You could use it to try to stop Iraq from developing biological weapons to kill hundred of thousands with, for instance. Or, if you knew more than the French, the Israelis, and the U.S. did, or just didn't think that was a problem you cared about (let him do it, it's no skin off your nose), you still might think "Wow, I could buy DDT for every man, woman, and child in Africa with this, and save millions of lives." Or, if you didn't want to do that, since DDT is evil and might kill birds, you might think "I could build desalination plants to get the water to feed hungry people in arid climates. and give them relief now, not in 100 years." When you have the checkbook in your hand, and you are considering choosing to spend the money on volcano corking, or, god forbid, something actually foolish, you may, instead, say "Hey, maybe we should be sure before we blow this money." I think if I gave you the checkbook, you'd think a lot differently than when somebody else has the checkbook. |
First, economics isn't a zero-sum game. You could waste that check away on destroying a country and impoverishing millions due to the threat of imaginary weapons, or you could build something.
For a long time I thought wind farms were surely wasteful forms of energy. I thought about all of the energy required to manufacture them, install them, and maintain them, and compared that -- in my mind -- against all of the idle wind generators that I saw at farms like the Altamont and whatever huge one there is down in southern California.
Then I got some real numbers, and it turns out that I was pretty dramatically wrong: wind energy actually provides an even better energy-return-on-investment than nuclear energy.
So, potentially, that $600 billion could be spent building cheaper forms of energy generation using existing technology, and developing new technology, and now you've just made a steep initial investment that will pay returns for the rest of our society's existence.
That, to me, sounds like one heck of a good deal. And it's good for the environment too.
[1]: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_investment_(...