Teršalų apribojimų ir prekybos leidimais teršti sistema veda prie manipuliacijų (taip ir buvo ES su leidimais teršti atmosferą anglies dvideginiu) ir tokiu būdu perkelia turtus nuo vargšų turtingesniems. Atmosferos teršimo anglies dvideginiu mokestis neturi šio trūkumo [2].
Mūsų bendruomenės tapo atomizuotos, žiaurios ir netinkamos žmonių gyvenimui [3].
1. "But there is something more profoundly subversive about Laudato Si’ than what it says on climate change. On the day it was published, the pope privately told his closest advisers in Rome that the encyclical was not really an environmental document at all. Global warming is merely a symptom of a deeper malaise.
The real problem, he insists, is the myopic mentality that has failed to address climate change to date. The rich world’s indifference to the despoliation of the environment in pursuit of short-term economic gain is rooted in a wider problem. Market economics has taught us that the world is a resource to be manipulated for our gain.
This has led us into unjust and exploitative economic systems that support what Francis calls “a throwaway culture,” one that treats not just unwanted things but also unwanted people — the poor, the elderly and the unborn — as waste.
Capitalism may maximize our choices, he observes, but it offers no guidance on how we should choose. Insatiable consumerism has blinkered our vision and left us unable to distinguish between what we need and what we merely want.
It is in this analysis that the pope’s replies to his conservative critics lie. Capitalism may have lifted millions out of poverty, but it has done so at a huge cost. That is shown by the catastrophic air pollution in China, which has replaced the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Worse than that, poorly regulated capitalism in the global south has left behind millions more — the weakest and poorest.
Technological solutions often just change the problem without truly solving it, the pope says. His critics have countered that gas from fracking is less polluting than burning coal. But that is like advocating dieting by eating reduced-fat cookies. Carbon-trading, Francis says, may just encourage speculation — and continued overconsumption.
Population is likewise a red herring, he insists. Poor people make hardly any contribution to global warming, according to one of the pope’s chief science advisers, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. A 10 percent cut in emissions by rich nations, he says, would be far more effective in combatting global warming than any birth control program.
In all this, the market has tricked us into confusing technological advance with progress. It has reduced our politics to a maximization of our individual freedom and choice. We have forgotten the common good as we have our common home, the earth.
Francis is saying that the environmental crisis is really a crisis in laissez-faire capitalism. And he is saying that the answer is a profound change at all levels — political, economic, social, communal, familial and personal. This is not Marxist, for it lacks a materialist view of history. But it is revolutionary — and deeply disturbing to those with a vested interest in the status quo."
2. "Pope Francis was right in his encyclical to criticize market mechanisms like cap and trade. Carbon markets invite volatility and manipulation, which invariably shift resources from poor to rich.
Carbon taxes, in contrast, are price mechanisms. They don’t create markets; they correct them by internalizing the costs of carbon pollution into prices of fossil fuels.
That Pope Francis grasps this crucial distinction is evidenced by his asking that “the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them.”
Internalizing those costs is what carbon taxes do. No markets required."
3. "The more practical struggle is to repair a society rendered atomized, unforgiving and inhospitable."
