Carbon Emissions vs Consumption

It seems that I've confused "carbon emissions" with "carbon consumption" - probably because I care a little about the latter, and not at all about the former - resulting in a thoroughly sketchy claim that BC's new gas tax won't reduce carbon emissions. It's a lot harder to get out of the carbon consumption chain than the carbon emission chain.

Thanks to Sacha for only quoting the least crazy part of that post!

So, does this mean that the environmentally friendly choice at Safeway is plastic bags because it raises the price of gas? It's all so confusing these days...

That being said, I'm not going to take too much crap from anyone that extols both the economic and environmental benefits of this tax restructuring - if there's one thing that economic growth does not normally lead to, it's a reduction in carbon emissions.


See also this chart at Google's Gapminder.

Sowell on Multinationals

Thomas Sowell on the economic stupidity that comes out of Hollywood.

He briefly touches on the concept of "Fair Trade", which I have always found to be mind bogglingly retarded. There is a relatively fixed amount of money people are willing to spend on something like coffee. How the hell does paying a small group of people decent wages to grow way less coffee help the much larger group that now starves?

Westerners are so desperate to "do good" that they toss out common sense if that is what it takes to convince themselves they are helping someone.

I do find Sowell's argument in favor of multinational corporations to be a bit over the top though. I have yet to see any evidence that it is possible for a company to not lose efficiency as it grows larger. In my experience, the bigger the company, the greater proportion of productive hours it flushes down the toilet.