The first in a series of posts on cap and trade.
Where the climate is concerned, don't be fooled: it's ultimately about the "cap" not the "and trade" part.
The debate about climate policy is heating up. The House is getting ready to consider the Waxman-Markey bill. And many say the rubber hits the road on international negotiations on the climate this winter in Copenhagen.
| In This Series |
|---|
| Part 1: It's About the Cap, Stupid |
| Part 2: Walking the International Tightrope |
| Part 3: You Ask, "What?" I Say, "How Wide?" |
It's not surprising that much of the debate has focused on cap and trade; after all, that's what Waxman-Markey would put in place. Now, serious debate is great, but don't confuse it with obfuscation. I have the sneaking suspicion that some people enter the fray about cap and trade to block any sort of climate legislation rather than to make better climate legislation. They are the obfuscators in debaters' clothing.
Some obfuscators wag their finger at cap-and-trade legislation, scolding it as "cap-and-tax" legislation. (For an example, see this Wall Street Journal editorial published just before the Senate voted on the Warner-Lieberman climate bill last spring.) According to this mantra, cap and trade is no more than a not very subtle power grab by bureaucrats -- a backdoor ploy for expensive, big-government social programs foisted on the backs of the unsuspecting consumer. (Ironically, some of the same people who have cried "cap and tax" have also sided for a carbon tax. See here and here. What's that about?)
And then there are those who cry "cap and profits." To listen to them, cap and trade is a poorly disguised ploy by big business to reel in $ billions. You know, like it is somehow surprising and wrong that businesses would look for opportunities to make a profit from cap and trade let alone any new government policy.
On the other side of the spectrum, you hear the cry that cap and trade is really "cap and destroy American business." This scenario sees cap and trade as an anti-American plot to destroy the American economy and shift huge sums of money overseas -- like huge sums have not already found their way into foreign banks, in large part because of the absence of any coherent national energy policy.
Here's the thing. Ultimately cap and trade is not about taxes, or profits, or undermining profitability, To be effective, any climate legislation first and foremost must be about capping emissions. The data gathered from surface monitoring stations, ships probing the oceans depths, and satellites circling the globe are sobering. To a very high degree of certainty we know that:
Less certain but no less worrisome, storms may be becoming more severe and droughts appear to be lasting longer and occurring more frequently.
With a high degree of certainty these trends can be largely attributed to our own emissions of greenhouse gases. And while predicting the future must always be taken with quite a few grains of salt, our best model simulations say that things will get seriously worse unless we ... well, ratchet down our greenhouse gas emissions. And the best way to do that is by limiting them with a hard cap.
You don't have to take my word for it. Many countries, including our own, use an independent body of experts to resolve complex issues. In the United States, the body is the National Academy of Sciences.
The only prudent thing to do is to set in motion the policies and institutions that will halt the seemingly inexorable rise in greenhouse gas emissions and then bring those emissions significantly down -- by as much as 80 percent by the end of the century.
And so, the most important test of any climate legislation is: will it lead to significant greenhouse gas emission reductions? Everything else, in the humble opinion of this scientist, is secondary.
There are a variety of approaches to rein in greenhouse gas emissions:
On balance I favor cap and trade because it is the only approach that actually mandates emission reductions over time. For me, the operative part of "cap and trade" is, as I indicated above, cap.
Now it's true that in the case of cap and trade, and perhaps even more so in the case of cap and trade, the devil is in the details. And those details are encompassed in the "and trade" part of cap and trade. Debate on how to do the "and trade" part is appropriate and necessary.
In upcoming posts in this series on cap and trade, I will focus on some of those "and trade" issues, in part to address some of the concerns raised by the wolves. To be sure, the "and trade" issues are complex, difficult nuts to crack. But don't let the wolves get you to throw the "cap" out with the "and trade" bathwater.
Tomorrow I'll take a look at the wolves' cry of "cap and destroy American business" and examine what can be done to protect American businesses if countries like China don't take their own emissions cap.
Cap and Trade Part 2: Walking the International Tightrope
Dr. Bill Chameides is the dean of Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He blogs regularly at theGreenGrok.com.
Durham will still be hot in August, even with Cap'n Trade.
C&T advances the environmentalist agenda, strengthens government vs. the private sector, and will provide countless opportunities for clever operators to game the system. It will have almost no impact on AGW. Average Joes like me will end up paying the bill for useless policies dreamed up by smart guys like you.
It is clear that even the signers of Kyoto didn't come close to their commitments and there were no consequences....some would even say that several had no intention of living up to it.
Given a belief that the US wouldn't sign something it wasn't going to try to adhere to, I look forward to your article on how the US economy will perform under a carbon tax or cap and trade if, as it appears likely, China and India choose to abstain.
Kyoto had some major flaws -- not the least of which was the fact that the United States did not take part. Also, the term of the protocol was too short to send a clear signal to the market.
See my "Part 2" post (http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/capandtrade2) on our options if China and India choose to abstain.
Many of us agree that we need to solve climate--that doesn't mean Cap & Trade is the answer. And it certainly doesn't mean that the Waxman bill is the answer. I would be much more interested in your answering if the reductions called for in ACES are what the science tells us we need.
I hope in part two, you'll bring in an economist to explain why giving hundreds of billions to utilities and historic polluters makes sense or a political science expert to explain why there won't be significant political blowback when energy & gas prices go up.
Additionally, more than 30,000 American scientists have signed onto a petition that states, "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate." http://www.petitionproject.org
We pray that honest leaders – both Democrat and Republican - are able to save us from Obama's criminal global warming/cap-and-trade scam.
Cap and trade represents huge taxes and cost increases, which will hurt mostly the poor and the middle class. Cap and trade will give dictatorial powers to Obama and will further enrich his billionaire friends (Gore, Soros, Goldman Sachs, Obama’s Chicago Climate Exchange friends, GE, etc.) -- all at our expense and at the expense of our children and grandchildren.
Cap and Trade “would be the equivalent of an atomic bomb directed at the U.S. economy—all without any scientific justification,” said famed climatologist Dr. S. Fred Singer. It would significantly increase taxes and the cost of energy, forcing many companies to close, thus increasing unemployment, poverty and dependence.
If in fact our goal is to move to alternative fuels, and to REALLY impact GHG's, it would make so much more sense to put much more impetus on conversion of the entire auto fleet to CNG. This would increase employment in our economy, keep money in OUR economy, and lower GHG's immediately. The technology is readily available, and implementation could be virtually immediate.
I am concerned that cap and trade is being created to provide the federal government with a new and massive income stream, and has virtually nothing to do with the environment. Can you honestly see the regulation and rule-making process being complete within a year? We could have literally millions of CNG vehicles on the road in that time if we attacked it as a serious problem.
Frankly, I think the government's willingness to go with a slow, cumbersome, and waiver-dripping alternative only indicates that they don't really see global warming as that big of a problem...