AE 1.3 Environmental damage The technology for converting wind, solar, and geothermal energy into a form easily used by machines has not existed until very recently. Greeks used windmills 2000 years ago! Windmills have been widely used in Europe for 100s of years. Boise and Klamath Falls harnessed geothermal energy to heat buildings in the early 1900s.

AE 1.3 Environmental damage The cost of the environmental resources consumed in production has generally not been paid by producers. A key driver of innovation in the capitalist system is firms’ quest to reduce costs. If costs are zero, there is no incentive to switch to less pollutive resources.

AE 1.3 Environmental damage Government policy promotes fossil fuel energy use in favor of cleaner alternatives. This is true but is a secondary cause of the problem where the failure to price environmental resources is the primary cause.

AE 1.3 Environmental damage The harm done to the environment by much modern economic activity has been largely unknown until very recently. “No sooner had I left behind the oppressive atmosphere of the city [Rome] and that reek of smoking cookers which pour out, along with clouds of ashes, all the poisonous fumes they’ve accumulated in their interiors whenever they’re started up, than I noticed the change in my condition,” wrote the philosopher and statesman Seneca in A.D. 61.