When climate activists ask, “why haven’t we been able to mobilize public opinion for the last twenty years?” they are showing their ignorance of what to you and me is blindingly obvious.

There are real reasons to worry about nuclear power.  Folks who believe the Magical Market will take care of everything cannot understand these reasons because they don’t seem to understand that corruption and incompetence trump market forces every time.

The US has reduced its CO2 emissions more than any other country in the world.

Let’s be clear here: when you got those “Most Improved” trophies as a child it was an attempt to salve feelings of sadness and humiliation.  Improvement is easy when you’re at the bottom of the curve.

Until the population starts to want more expensive transportation, more expensive food, and colder houses in winter/hotter houses in summer, I don’t see much happening on the climate change front.

Well of course people want cheap transportation, food, and climate control.  I don’t think anyone’s argued otherwise.  (Why do people always think they’re making such an intelligent, insightful point when they say this?)  It’s about as useful to the discussion as pointing out that the sky is blue.

As cheap as these things are, we can agree that people would like it if they were even cheaper?  But presumably they can’t be delivered any cheaper or competition would cause it to happen even cheaper.  So the fact that people want cheap stuff doesn’t actually constitute an argument that oil companies are doing everything exactly right.  Even assuming they are doing everything right people would still want cheaper energy. 

Furthermore, the people coming after us will still want cheap energy after the EROEI has fallen considerably from where it is today.  The higher price they’ll be paying is a direct result of the low prices we pay today.  According to mainstream economics the existence of your grandchildren is worth essentially nothing. 

There is some question of whether energy is actually priced according to how much it costs.  Surely an economic genius such as yourself has heard of the notion of externalities.

So we have a few reasons to think that your simplistic “invisible hand” reasoning should not be the end of the discussion on this particular subject.  I know, everything would be so much simpler if people would stop valuing things that aren’t money.

You seem to have a serious problem with sensible measures like CFLs, too.  “Magic lightbulbs” my ass.  Can you explain the downside of using 20% of the electricity for the same amount of light?  If households can cut their electricity consumption by 50% the total amount of energy use in the US would drop by 10%.  I get the impression that your position is driven more by your apparent distaste for “hipsters” than for any rational reason.

Take a look at a graph of oil prices vs. GDP for the last hundred years and tell me with a straight face that the reduction mentioned constitutes progress.

Energy is going to get more expensive either way, might as well act while we still have something worth saving.

So unless climate change continues, and the global temperature keeps increasing, the US might increase its output again because of an increased need for heating.

What a pickle.

Is that by percentage?  Because (and correct me if I’m wrong) the US is also the largest CO2 emitter in the world, which would make that a far less powerful statement, as that would be the least we could expect. I say ‘we’ as a representative of the rest of the world that suffers at your hands (not that we’re much better tbh).

And do these numbers take other important aspects into account? As I understand it the US is also the largest consumer of food; and last I checked the planetary devastation caused by farming is just as harmful (if not more so, according to some scientists) than the CO2 output.

Ultimately we shouldn’t be bragging about numbers either way, NOBODY is doing enough; governments are doing the bare minimum to keep the minority of the populace that cares about the planet happy, they couldn’t give a shit if the people that write their donation cheques were destroying the planet or not.

Unfortunately we need stupid laws to stop us from doing sensible things because we’re grossly overpopulated.

The US has reduced its CO2 emissions more than any other country in the world. 

True but this is just a by-product of the shift away from coal and towards natural gas, mostly due to hydraulic fracturing making it possible to access stores of gas previously unobtainable at an affordable price.

In other words, it’s market economics, not any conscious policy that has resulted in the US lowering its CO2 emissions.  It was accidental, not intentional.

This is important to understand because this means that there’s no guarantee that CO2 emissions will continue to drop. Even now it’s not decreasing as much as we need it to.

In much the same way, when I see a picture of someone wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, I can assume that he/she wants to overthrow a representative government and put the Pope in charge.

The US has reduced its CO2 emissions more than any other country in the world. 

http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2012/may/name,27216,en.html

Yes, China and India use alot of energy.  If you were Chinese or Indian, you’d say it was your manifest right to do so.

China and India, each, have 4 times our population.  You better hope they don’t use start using energy per capita the way we do.

If we do nothing, how can we hope to persuade China and India to make systemic changes that will be much more pronounced in their country because they’re still developing?