Idiots -- all who believe this shit. Oil is the life blood of any economy.

Change to Green is coming. But it has to come when market forces make it mainstream. Not by Government edict.

Idiots—all who believe any of this is untrue or unimportant. Oil is the death nail of any ecology, without which economies simply cannot exist.
(Saying oil is the life blood of any economy is like saying “Plants crave Brawndo, it’s got electrolytes.”. Plants can survive on Brawndo temporarily, but quickly fail.)

Change to green is coming, but far too slowly. Market forces and “scientific debate” (read-misinformation campaigns) have been manipulated by enormous industry pressures and coffers to keep it from being mainstream. (You likely STILL think Solar and wind aren’t economically viable when they both have been for decades, and still deny climate change even though the oil industry knew for a certainty it was a real and existential threat in the 70’s, but industry supplied misinformation has duped you time and time again into being on the wrong side of the science, ecology, economy, and/or sanity.)

Because market forces are artificiality manipulated and driven by industry whose existence depends on staying Crude (as opposed to Going Green), government edict is not just necessary, it’s an overdue urgent imperative.

FTFY.

*promote truth in advertising

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Sunday, November 6th, 2022 5:36pm PST - promote requested by newtboy.

Moving this video to BSR's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

Professional economist here (hence, perceived as right wing) who began studying economics due to concern about climate change (hence, perceived as left wing).

[1] The classic statement of when markets 'work' is the 'first fundamental theorem of welfare economics'.

[2] 'work' in this sense means 'leads to a Pareto-optimal outcome', which means an outcome in which no one can be made better off without making someone worse off. This is a low standard: an outcome in which I have everything is Pareto-optimal.

[3] the conditions for the welfare theorems are generally not satisfied in practice. Here, as alluded to in the ad, carbon emissions are 'externalities': if an oil company sells you gas, which you then use, both of you are better off, because you're assumed to have taken into account the effects of your exchange, and decided to proceed; other parties have not, so may be worse off.

[4] in general, failure of the welfare theorem conditions isn't enough to make the case for government intervention: the outcome may still be 'constrained' efficient - meaning that, given the inherent constraints in the problem (e.g. asymmetric information), the market outcome is Pareto efficient.

[5] again, even if it is, you may not like the particular constrained efficient outcome the market yields (e.g. I get everything).

[6] in the case of externalities, the theory is pretty well established - if we want efficient outcomes, we need to align the private and social costs. There are two basic market-based tools for doing that: quantity tools (e.g. carbon permits) and price tools (e.g. carbon taxes). Which performs better depends on the sort of market imperfections.

[7] obviously, we will never have a perfect estimate of the efficient price or quantity of carbon to emit in a given year. Equally obviously, to me at least, this is a classic case of an externality with a well developed body of theory pointing in the direction of some level of controls.

[8] in my experience: people familiar with the economic theory tend not to be 'pro-market' or 'anti-market': they tend to want to understand how the market can be used to deliver societal objectives and, when it can't, how to correct its imperfections.