Um, do you think companies are smart? Or are really run to benefit shareholders? They are run for the convenience of incumbent management.

Companies, like people, do not like being told what to do and do not like changing. I recall (forget the reason why) but McDonald’s was forced (in the UK?) to abandon its clamshell styrofoam packaging. Fought tooth and nail. Then when they switched, found an environmentally friendlier carrier that did as good on heat retention and saved them heaps. There are many other examples like this on the consumer packaging front.

And companies are HUGELY resistant now to making any kind of investment, and that was before the downturn. Cutting ad budgets, even for programs that had an 11 month payback, to make the current quarter look better. So we also have a very very short sighted mentality at work.

If you had read the McK piece, the savings come mainly from conservation type measures. The green tech is way overhyped. It will be important someday, but a lot of technologies are 5-10 years away from being cost effective on a mass basis. Mo

Lowering energy usage is a battle of lots of small steps. The Japanese, which are hugely energy efficient, are culturally better at that sort of thing than we are.

I can’t speak for our host, but the issue is one of computational tractability. To wit: climate is a matter of physical law, for which equations exist, while finance is one of human behavior, for which there are no equations at all.

Yves, not that you don’t have better things to do, but if you get a chance:

if the above statement is correct, then why do you think they persist in resisting?

Also, while on the subject of global warming:

Since global warming adherents rely on computer modeling for a large part of their argument—why do you accept the computer modeling of global warming on this issue, but then post about the problems of computer modeling in the financial sphere? Do you believe that modeling the climate is less complex? If so, on what basis do you make this claim?

Thank you.

That means ensuring rapid development of alternative green energy systems now. This will have the duel benefits of using the remaining supplies of our foundation energy resourse to provide the basis of its replacement while its cost is still reasonable and, with luck, keep that supply reasonably priced for longer.

Arguably the change over from fossil to renewable energy will need to be enforced if carbon is to stay locked in the ground. As the renewables become more widespread the price of fossil fuel will drop and people will still tend to use a lot of it.

Humm . . . well, the motivation to reduce emission as far as some governments are concerned seems less enthusiastic than the institutional investors reported in the post, e.g.,

Germany ‘s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is probably the woman most responsible for the Kyoto Protocol (when she was Germany’s Environment Minister), now calls drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, “ill-advised climate policy”. Her foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who last year pronounced global warming as a grave threat to world peace, now says that “this crisis changes priorities” and that “interest in protecting the climate will change because of such a crisis”.

The UK has some of the most progressive global warming taxation and regulation. This has pushed residential energy costs up to an average $600 per year OVER where they were a year ago. Britain’s National Housing Administration estimates that 5.7 million British households will spend more than 10% of their income on fuel and energy next year.

I would think the last thing any politician wants to deal with is massively falling employment AND rising energy costs from taxation and regulation.

Is it the case that BP’s initiative was purely/mostly private, i.e., they just did it themselves without regulation and taxes?

So saith Lord John Browne without any supporting evidence.

They made the decision in 1997 and Browne’s talk was in 2002. That doesn’t seem like three years to me.

He goes on to say that using better lubricants would reduce CO2 by 30 million tons a year. What is the deluded fob thinking?

He then talks about how he will save even more by using carbon credits earned by BP’s increasing use of methane. How does one reduce CO2 by using carbon credits? BP may reduce CO2 use by using methane and they may sell the resulting credits to other concerns but they certainly can’t claim the sale is decreasing CO2 emissions.

You can always tell when Lord Browne is lying. His lips move.

I’m am as big of proponent of energy eficiency as the anyone… but using the tools proposed (cap trade, taxes, etc.) do more to act as an impediment to progress / business than it helps.

You have to make a rational economic case for the change (such as the BP example)… or else you get the China Syndrome when it comes to pollution(Europe cracked down on pollution so all polluting manufacturing moved to China… and now pollute twice as much where you can’t see it).

We should focus on efficiency in every aspect of business and life and emissions take care of themselves. If you come up with efficient technologies, companies will use them.