Monday, July 6, 2009

First It Was Farting Cows, Now Its "High Emittiing Individuals"

Princeton University, the land where Paul Krugman and Ben Bernnake have roamed, has an up and coming new crew of interventionists, who, based on wacky theory, now want to control the "700 million top carbon emitters."

Writes Eurekalet:
"Our proposal moves beyond per capita considerations to identify the world's high-emitting individuals, who are present in all countries," the team says in the introduction. The authors include Stephen Pacala, the Frederick D. Petrie Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Robert Socolow, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Pacala and Socolow's concept of "stabilization wedges," a strategy that proposed concrete ways to prevent global emissions of greenhouse gases from rising for the next five decades, was featured in "An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore's 2006 film about climate change. The concept has given the climate change policy community a common unit for discussing how to reduce emissions and for allowing a comparison of different carbon-cutting strategies.

The lead authors on the paper are physicist Shoibal Chakravarty and economist Massimo Tavoni, both research scholars at the Princeton Environmental Institute, which is the University's interdisciplinary center for environmental research, education and outreach..."Most of the world's emissions come disproportionately from the wealthy citizens of the world, irrespective of their nationality," Chakravarty said, noting that many emissions come from lifestyles that involve airplane flights, car use and the heating and cooling of large homes. "We estimate that in 2008, half of the world's emissions came from just 700 million people."
Prepare for a long term cut in your standard of living. These guys are going to push for travel limitations, driving restrictions, who really knows how bad it will get? All based on wacky "science."

2 comments:

  1. I don't know much about the Bible but I'm pretty sure it has some harsh words about envy and jealousy, which seem to be the primary motivating factors behind proposals like this.

    I really can't take this stuff seriously. All I can think of when I read stuff like this is, "You have to be kidding me, you guys are such dicks." Kind of like watching "the popular kids" pick on someone in high school for no good reason. It's just deep-seated malice.

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  2. "...lifestyles that involve airplane flights, car use and the heating and cooling of large homes."

    Unlike the lifestyle of Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi. How many carbon credits do I need allocated to get my name off the list of 700 million?

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