<That was astonishingly out of character.>
I assure you I remain in character. Your misperception of my character is what needs adjustment. Maybe you have a grab-bag of false beliefs about what things go together automatically; "Extreme wacko right wing maniacs like Winn are in favour of destroying the earth, killing 99.99% of species and enslaving the proletariat".
That wasn't a leg pull [previous post]. BP paid me a lot of money to say stuff like that [over a period of a decade] and while I like a joke, and sometimes my jokes, which seem obvious to me, are taken as being serious comment by readers, that was serious comment.
Actually, they didn't pay me to say only that [that was a relatively small part of what they paid me for] but they got it thrown in for no extra charge.
I actually disagree with the idea that CO2 from people will fry the earth. I consider controls on CO2 a waste of money because I think that CO2 level increases are a good thing overall.
If CO2 is controlled, BP will sell more fuel, to handle the processing of CO2 into sequestered form. For example, if CO2 from power stations is liquefied and stored under 400 metres of water, that'll require a lot more fuel to be burned to do it. So it doesn't surprise me that BP is okay with CO2 controls. They'll just go along with whatever political mania develops and public support is given. They won't oppose it, for fear of being seen as big, bad, corporates. A shame, but that's the price of manic environmentalism.
We have moved from a time when the costs of pollution were unrecognized in the legal system and the economic benefits to a relatively few polluting people over-ruled the unpleasant effects on everyone else, to a time when the costs of uneconomic environmental actions are spread over everyone and wild-eyed environmentalists with no recognition of economics have their wicked way. It's the curse of democracy - diffuse costs and concentrated benefits in a fog of general ignorance.
Mqurice |
