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Comment by eulers__number | Hacker News Reader

why can't it just be a free market

Because the free market gave us a ~2°C increase in average global temperatures.

And changing over only the new houses in one single state is going to fix that? Most of the world's pollution is coming out of developing countries anyways. This move is at best virtue signaling and at worst a step towards destroying California's economy.

That's completely false.

For example, the per-capita CO₂ emissions in 2013 were of 20 tons/cap for the US, whereas it was 8.5 for China (world mean is 6.3): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

China produces twice the CO2 emissions as the U.S. China produced 29% of global CO2 emissions in 2015, and the U.S. produced 14%. (wikipedia)

Per capita numbers are rather misleading here. For example, Qatar has by far the highest CO2 emissions per person.

Yes, but china has _much more_ inhabitants than the US. Per capita numbers are not misleading in this case as we want to know the mean commitment of every person.

Not completely, but neither will hoping that the free market changes it's behavior suddenly.

Climate change demands aggressive action all over the place. This is one component.

Also this is the literal opposite of virtue signalling. They passed a law. Virtue signalling is when you do nothing except express opinions.

If they cared about climate change they would have put tariffs on CO_2 emitting electricity generators. Then q combination of things would happen:

1. Industrial-scale renewable generation would become more competitive and a larger fraction of grid power would come from solar/wind/hydro,

2. Prices could go up, and less electricity would be used,

3. It might become efficient for users to put rooftop solar on their houses. (If the initial capital outlay is a problem, that's what loans are for.)

This law, by comparison, is just a bad idea all around. It enforces one (pretty bad) solution in a nasty way.

False. The US the biggest CO2 polluter per capita and the second biggest CO2 polluter overall. California contributes a significant chunk to that equation.

>US the biggest CO2 polluter per capita

Your statement, while true, did not refute his, FYI.

Being the second biggest polluter of CO2 pretty clearly refutes that “developing countries” are the biggest polluters. The US has a lot of problems, but I’m not sure I’d call it developing.

Remember how you responded to someone who was talking about the biggest polluters, and you couldn't attack that statement, so you changed it to biggest polluters per capita? That's where your logic failed.

Do you see that there was more to my comment than what you quoted in yours?

It's not automatically a bad idea, just because it's not changing the entire world. E.g. me choosing not to fly is not making any significant difference, but that does not change the fact that my carbon footprint is lower as a result. If I choose to share my motivation for not flying, it may affect others flying habits. The same could be the case for California

China is a free market?

Relatively speaking (I don't think anywhere developed has a true free market), yeah

Literally signing an energy monopoly into law. Even if they mandated max power consumption it would be better. It's literally mind-boggling to me how many people support this initiative.

negative externalities, ie. climate change.

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