This is rather awkward, since the only sliver of a rationale left for the Waxman-Markey bill (which passed the House narrowly and still has to get through the Senate) is that US leadership will provoke other major countries to follow suit.

Yeah, good point, it's impossible for anyone to believe that other countries can be brought to comply by using a carrot-and-stick approach. Everyone who supports any form of assigning property rights in scarce atmospheric resources, believes that China and India will cap their own emissions merely because they see the USA doing it.

Taken in isolation, some experts contend that the Waxman-Markey caps on U.S. emissions will have virtually no impact on the trajectory of global warming,

Taken in isolation, some experts contend that refraining from unsustainably exploiting an unowned resource will still result in that resource being used up by others. What a shock!

It really gets tiring, Bob, when you assume away the existence of arguments for the opposing position.

You'd maintain a lot more consistency if you just quit talking about the environment altogether.
 

I'm guessing, in accordance with Austrian Business Cycle Theory, the price of oil increased in 2008 in part because of artificial bank credit expansion unsupported by real savings which illegitimately reduced interest rates, giving entrepreneurs the false impression that consumer time preferences were lower than they really were as well as making otherwise unprofitable business undertakings seem profitable. Entrepreneurs, acting on these false interest rate and savings signals, used the new bank credit to purchase factors of production and embarked on these undertakings, both widening and lengthing the productive structure as well as increasing their demand for capital goods which of course increased capital good prices. Oil is a crucial, non-specific capital good, therefore at least a portion of its price increase belonged to the artificial bank credit expansion on the part of the Fed.

Temporal speculators raise prices in the present by buying up goods but eventually decrease prices in the future when they sell their goods to make their arbitrage gains. Oil went from $16/barrel in Jan 1999 to $147/barrel in July 2008. Who in the mainstream wants to argue that was pure temporal speculation? Please.

Supply constraints also must have contributed to the price rise. Not only have we experienced no new significant drilling in the U.S. (thanks to Congress we can't even drill in that ANWR wilderness), as long as Congress prevents private builders from building further refineries (we haven't built one since the early 1970s) WHAT DO THEY EXPECT? You can drill as much as you want but without further refineries drilling for more oil would be analogus to trying to fit extra gallons of water through an hour-glass tube.

What happened to the overt overemphasis on jobs from the administration? Desecrating ANWR, buidling more refineries, offshore outer continental shelf drilling, oil shale drilling - where are the Keynesians on this? There goes your precious aggregate demand and employment. But more importantly, it harmonizes niecely with Austrianism.
 

...India was not going to sacrifice its economy to fighting climate change.

Of course, they're not going to. They're neither as empty-headed nor as gullible as the American people.

Snoop-Diggity-DANG-Dawg
 

there is no "I" in team, but there is a "me".
 

Well, "meat" is an anagram of "team" and "me" is located within "meat."
 

no one knows what s*las is talking about

he is sooo clever