Adam Smith died in 1790, 37 years before Jean-Baptiste Fourier hypothesized that the atmosphere might act like an insulator, and 106 years before Svante Arrhenius argued that an increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide would raise the global temperature.
Thanks for this. Question: Why not focus on preserving the solid stocks of carbon rather than trying to regulate the myriad individual acts of converting those to atmospheric gasses? Viewed from the perspective of human practices, isn't it really a problem of conserving stocks rather than regulating flows, i.e. where in the carbon cycle the action is happening? And that would drive a much closer link between culpability and regulation. The gasses may be equivalent to each other in terms of their warming effect but the practices are not equivalent to each other, even if carbon markets try to make them so. In other words, it is not clear to me that this is a single problem with an elegant solution. Is that not just the effect of one's perspective?
Thanks for this. Question: Why not focus on preserving the solid stocks of carbon rather than trying to regulate the myriad individual acts of converting those to atmospheric gasses? Viewed from the perspective of human practices, isn't it really a problem of conserving stocks rather than regulating flows, i.e. where in the carbon cycle the action is happening? And that would drive a much closer link between culpability and regulation. The gasses may be equivalent to each other in terms of their warming effect but the practices are not equivalent to each other, even if carbon markets try to make them so. In other words, it is not clear to me that this is a single problem with an elegant solution. Is that not just the effect of one's perspective?