Reply To: Bill Gates

[JimmyT]

You sound so victimized. Relax. Bjorn Lomborg, in his book The skeptical environmentalist page 274:

The case of the depleted ozone layer and the solution through restrictive protocols is seen as a success story, in which the world community finally pulled itself together and put the environment before money. … However, it is worth pointing out that the implementation of the CFC ban was strictly profitable. It was actually relatively cheap to find substitutes for CFC (e.g., in refrigerators and spray cans) and at the same time the advantages were quite clear-cut.

I’ve waited a long time to reply to this one. What do you suppose it means when an industry spokesman says that the implementation was strictly profitable? Do you think it means that consumers made money on it?

You see, I’m a practicing pharmacist and my most frequent contact with CFC’s was the propellant in aerosol canisters for asthmatics. I dispense a lot of these. Probably a couple of dozen each day. Over the last decade I’ve watched the price of these medications drop steadily, until they seemed fairly reasonable. (about $10 per canister). But then drug manufactures were forced to switch propellants. Suddenly the price for these went up to about $40 each. Oh, and the new ones don’t work as well.

Don’t tell me it’s a trivial matter for a patient who uses 3-4 of these every month and may be uninsured. This is a bit different than the styrofoam cups you referred to earlier. I’m not the victim here. My patients are.

Shall I tell them that you said just to hold their breath and relax?