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Comment by michaelmrose | Hacker News Reader

C02 isn't a pollutant insofar as any amount being a pure negative but too much of it is obviously negative. This is a distinction that nobody including the parent poster or you are confused about.

The free market might over time get us cleaner engines when interests align but in all honestly the biggest factor driving cleaner engines has always been regulation and the next logical step for that regulation is to move towards forbidding the manufacture of new gas powered consumer vehicles which we can likely accomplish by the 2030s with regulation.

If too much money is spent lobbying we could very well make the productive part of that equation where money changes hands illegal, watch it become vastly less effective, and watch companies investment in same spin down quickly.

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>The free market might over time get us cleaner engines when interests align but in all honestly the biggest factor driving cleaner engines has always been regulation...

One scientist learned that smog was a result of automobile emissions as early as 1948 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arie_Jan_Haagen-Smit). That was 56 years after automobiles were first produced. Shortly thereafter, the Federal government started tackling the issue in 1955 (https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/evolution-clean-a...). Why would companies invest in cleaner emissions if the government was going to make mandates that would throw a wrench in their investments? It has been better for them to wait and see what they have to do. They were never given the chance to self regulate.

> One scientist learned that smog was a result of automobile emissions as early as 1948 .... That was 56 years after automobiles were first produced. Shortly thereafter ... in 1955 .... They were never given the chance to self regulate.

60 years is 'never given the chance'?

Fortunately all of history exists and we can look at the fact that where regulation wasn't imposed and see that the majority who were most willing to foist high external costs on society were able to out compete any minority that behaved more admirably and most markets tend to end up dominated by a few players nearly exclusively from the less ethical fellows as even a small initial advantage is magnified because higher profits in one cycle provide a successively higher advantage in future cycles. Economists have been explaining why this is for literally centuries. Markets don't handle externalities without external regulation. Despite centuries of examples we still have folks asking for "self regulation" which we know doesn't work.

Companies have and will kill thousands of people to have slightly more money.

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