If we were faced with an epidemic that left unchecked would kill off a substantial part of the population, we wouldn’t count pennies or say that we shouldn’t act until we develop an effective vaccine. We wouldn’t wait for market solutions. We would expect our common voice, the government, to do whatever it could.

The technologies to reduce CO2 emissions are already available, and in many locations they produce energy at lower cost than fossil fuels. The reason Republican dominated Great Plains states get a significant amount of their electricity from wind is that it makes sense, also economic sense. And when we figure in externalities, the cost of fossil fuel produced power is even higher. Transitioning to renewable energy ought to be a no brainer, but no brainers don’t work for persons with no brains.

By the way, the Danish electric bill consists mainly of various taxes. The cost of electricity is cheaper from onshore wind than from any other power source. This has been confirmed by the Danish Energy Agency and an EU analysis.
http://www.ens.dk/info/nyheder/nyhedsarkiv/ny-analyse-vind-billigst
http://ing.dk/artikel/analyse-vindmoeller-paa-land-producerer-danmarks-billigste-stroem-alt-inklusive-172015
http://www.information.dk/516914
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/13/wind-power-is-cheapest-energy-unpublished-eu-analysis-finds/print

Moreover, the Danish investment in green technology isn’t just a matter of cheaply produced electricity and low carbon heating. It also provides us with a significant number of well-paying jobs and increasing export revenues:

Eksporten af energiteknologi sætter rekord
Danske virksomheder, der producerer energiteknologi, eksporterede sidste år mere end nogensinde tidligere. I alt blev der eksporteret for 74,4 milliarder kroner. Det er en stigning på 10,7 procent i forhold til året før. Til sammenligning steg den samlede vareeksport med 0,6 procent.

(Export of energy technology sets record
Last year Danish companies that produce energy technology exported more than ever before. In all, exports amounted to 74.4 billion kroner. That is an increase of 10.7 percent in relation to the previous year. In comparison, the total export of goods rose 0.6 percent.)
http://www.danskenergi.dk/Aktuelt/Arkiv/2015/April/15_04_30A.aspx

You can’t win here. You espouse realism, but this blog is dedicated to fantasy perception is reality.

Like, the blog rules that Mark Steyn is going to be crushed, Reality is, Steyn was worried at the outset, but when given the choice to issue a retraction and avoid legal harassment,or not, and be destroyed, he inventively rejected the harassment, and then made millions proving his position. Mann loses. Which could have been predicted from his 5-year bachelor’s degree from Berkeley with only a B+ GPA, getting his first paper in engineering, getting admitted to second-tier Yale physics, then dropping down to Geology, taking 14 years from college matriculation to his PhD, granted by Yale, for work done at U Massachusetts. (Yale said, “we can’t give him a PhD done for research done here at Yale, but UMass work deserves a PhD from us.”

I’m sorry, but UC Berkeley excellent students want to do PhDs at Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, Princeton. Then did postdocs at Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, Princeton, Cambridge, and Berkeley.
We can add, for specific studies, Cornell, Columbia and Chicago.

Doing your PhD-completing research at U Massachusetts, are you serious? Did you read, Mann, Bradley and Hughes–coauthors at UMass, and U Arizona, accepted before Yale gave Mann a PhD? Where is Mann’s research-supervising Yale research advisor on this paper?

Greg, you know how this works. Was your Harvard PhD granted after you did research with SUNY and University of New Mexico researchers,without a Harvard professor named on your peer-reviewed capstone paper accepted by iNature, Science or PNAS?

“RickA, it looks like you are slowly getting it, apart from the strange idea that you think I suggest we always choose the more expensive option. The simple fact is that we often choose things based on a *lot* more than just pure economics, which is what you originally seemed to imply.”

Well shit, look at what USA citizens pay for via taxation— six trillion USA dollars is the latest estimate on what the Bush2 Regime’s invasions will cost just the USA, not counting nearly one million dead people and the loss of wealth production.

I spend large sums of money on utter garbage, since only utter garbage is available. One cannot buy a decent broom any more, nor good food, nor decent clothing, in the USA: one must look internationally for good axes, jackets, boots, socket wrenches, gasoline engines, pond pumps, pipe fittings, and shit. The USA sells Chinese crap that does not last long, constantly breaks, and is worth a small fraction of what it costs— yet humdreds of millions of USA citizens buy the crap.

We are willing to pay for things that economically do not make sense. We are often paying for things that economically may well not make sense, but where we have no other choice. We are often *not* paying for things that economically would make sense. For example, there is a consensus among economists that there should be a price on carbon (read: CO2). But in most places in the world there is no price on carbon, so we are not paying for something that economically makes sense.

To return to your first comment I reacted to: if you include externalities, many fossil fuels may already be more expensive than alternatives. But since those are not included, they are not. Why are they not included? Not because it makes economic sense to not include them, but because there is no political will to include them.
That is, the simplistic view of “we humans choose the cheapest” is in reality “we choose the one we like best, and arguments for or against may include the direct costs, but this is far from a given”.

A good example is given by the Danes, who obtain a significant proportion of their energy from wind turbines. Many Danes accept the associated increased price, because of ‘green’ thinking (“intangibles”), others accept it because it includes a substantial subsidy for local industry (Vestas), another form of ‘intangible’ benefit, and some like it because it makes Denmark less dependent on countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia (yet another ‘intangible’ benefit). At no time point has anyone ever used the argument that it is cheaper now, although some have stated that a benefit may well be that it becomes cheaper somewhere in the future.

But if everybody will always choose the more expensive option, due to their altruistic nature – why do we need laws to make cheaper things more expensive?

Problem solved – just need a tiny bit of education and whamo – everyone will do what you perceive as the rational thing.

That is indeed what you claimed, and then right away contradicted with the increased consumption of meat in China. There are plenty of similar examples where people *on aggregate* do *not* choose the cheapest option. Nike would be a fringe company if it were true. Pepsi and Coca Cola would be broke. No one would watch a sports game from the stands.

Yep – you nailed it.

In my opinion the “true cost” of something is what is on the bill.

Anything else is mental masturbation and can be made as expensive or as cheap as anyone wants. In other words, it is totally subjective.

For example, say we triple the cost of heating in America, by taxing carbon for heating oil, natural gas and other hydrocarbon energy used for heating.

What will the rational person do?

A bunch of them will rush out and buy wood stoves or heat with wood pellets or corn stalk pellets or other biomass (assuming it is cheaper).

Why?

Because people (in the aggregate) will always do what is cheapest. If natural gas and fuel oil is made more expensive than wood – people will heat with wood.

Will that externality be priced in? Nope.

If you want to include make-believe external costs you also have to include make-believe external benefits.

How much is that helicopter medical transport worth? Or the ambulance?

Hydrocarbon based electricity provides a lot of benefits – do those get priced in? Nope.

So you are right – I do disagree with you about the “true cost” of what people are buying.