Random Reaction

This article has a concept that I have been thinking about for a while, ever since I wrote up a draft of a response to a friend on Facebook, who posted about the "danger" of a carbon tax. The concept is to think about what the ramifications are of being wrong about the climate "debate" (there really isn't any serious debate about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or even warming, but whether we are responsible and whether we should do anything about it) on either side. If we act on the concern over climate change by implementing a carbon tax to help drive sustainable energy innovation, and we are wrong, then we have perhaps put a bit of a brake on economic development. But maybe not even that, because perhaps the energy innovations create a self-sustaining economic benefit of their own, both in technology, and the fact that pollution of any kind is waste, and waste is inefficient economically. So the ramifications of the climate concern crowd being wrong are

I heard that it costs BP (and presumably other companies  as well) $1 million a day to run these oil rigs.  There was another huge number as well regarding the costs of deep water drilling, but I can't remember what it was.  But this just kind of staggered me.  I mean, think how much money it costs with shipping, refining, transportation, et cetera to actually produce energy from these fossil fuels.  It prompted me to post this comment in the NY Times Dot Earth Blog: I agree that in terms of seriousness, the BP spill is *relatively* small potatoes compared to climate change, but what it does in my mind is provide an additional non-disputable reason to get off fossil fuels. Not only do they pollute the air when burned, they are dirty and risky to extract. Not to mention the wars we have fought for oil, or the funding we provide to regimes that hate us when we buy their oil. Mountaintop removal mining, other mine disasters, etc. Human, monetary, military, environmental costs are just