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Comment by hokumguru | Hacker News Reader

A common misconception. I think the average conservative definitely believes that we need to take measures to protect this planet. We just don't necessarily believe that government should be the method of action. Traditionally the market is vastly more efficient at solving these hard problems...

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The precondition here is, of course, incorrect. The latest Pew survey puts the percentage of Republicans who believe in anthropogenic climate change at about 25%.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/14/many-republi...

Markets are efficient because firms optimize along essentially one dimension. It is naive to think that markets will magically solve any problem that does not naturally align with that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

I’d appreciate hearing a conservative history of markets correcting unpriced externalities.

Here you go:

The problem is that the market is not great at solving "Tragedy of the Commons" situations. The ideal solution, IMO, is to agree a cap on CO2 emmissions, but make them tradable, so that the market can be used to figure out the most efficient way to limit the emissions.

The market needs incentive to solve these long term problems, but our entire economy is built around incentivising short term growth over long-term stability.

https://www.npr.org/2014/06/03/318414868/gop-demonizes-once-...

I am curious, how could the market efficiently avoid the continued increase in atmospheric CO2 without government interventions? Isn't the continued use of incredibly cheap energy sources like oil too tempting?

I think the misconception is on your side here. For the longest time, conservatives said that climate change was a hoax, then that it might be happening but it's no big deal, then now it seems the position is that it may be a big deal but it's a natural process and humans shouldn't try to solve it.

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