[Paddlewise] [SPAM] Re: [SPAM] Re: CO2 output

Craig Jungers wrote:

> But perhaps Michael had something else in mind.

What I meant was exactly that "no one pays Mother Earth".  If you follow 
the money back from the consumer, you'll find lots of 
companies/governments/etc taking a piece of the pie.  But in the end, 
the actual cost of the resource itself is $0.00 - some entity, usually a 
government, lays claim to the resource and doesn't pay a cent for it. 
In some cases, such as resources outside of any country's territory 
(e.g. international waters) whoever gets there first grabs it for free. 
  They incur costs, but they don't pay for the resource.

Of course, anything that is free tends to get wasted.  This is part of 
the reason that we are seeing fish stocks worldwide diminishing, 
non-renewable resources being wiped out etc without concern for the 
future.  Economists can't get a handle on opportunity costs and 
politicians, always pleased to stroke the hand that feeds it, errr... 
them, will grab onto that as a reason for ignoring the future.  Hence, 
future value of non-renewables are wiped out.

We don't borrow the Earth from our children; we steal it.

If you do care about your descendants, you'll live responsibly now. 
You'll be in a small minority while you do.

Mike
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