Does the Public Need to Understand "Cap-and-Trade"?
A new Rasmussen poll shows that just 24 percent of people know what "cap-and-trade" is. Even that is an optimistic gloss: in fact, only 24 percent of people know that cap-and-trade is meant to address environmental issues. Some 29 percent think it's a new Wall Street regulation; 30 percent have no idea.
Professional enviros seem quite upset about this. But...why? Why should the public know what "cap-and-trade" means? The belief that the public should be conversant with this technical policy term reveals a great deal about the gulf between how elites view this set of issues and how the public views them.
The public is aware that fossil fuels have problems. They make us less secure. They're messing with the atmosphere. They're dirty. We need more clean energy. But only if it's safe and reliable. Also, the economy sucks, so we don't want to get slammed with higher prices. So yeah, let's invest in a cleaner future and become global leaders in cool new industries.
That's it. Offer the public a "Good Jobs and Safe, Reliable, Clean Energy with Less Pollution at a Reasonable Price" bill and they're fine. That's all they know or care to know about it -- no talk of carbon or permits or offsets or auctions necessary. If you took a poll on what kind of alternator mechanics should use, the public probably wouldn't have an opinion on that either. They just want the damn car fixed.
Problem is, green elites fell in love with cap-and-trade a while back because it allowed them to dodge the dreaded "command and control" tag. It's "market-based," and everybody knows -- or thought back then, anyway -- that marketz rool. Finally, they could offer a policy of which Very Serious Economists approve. That's fine. It's a great argument to take to legislators and thought leaders. But professional greens fell so far in love with it that they let it become the public face of their climate/energy efforts, and despite many efforts to make the inelegant phrase "cap-and-trade" sound like both common sense and a rallying cry, it sucks for that job. S. U. C. K. S.
Now they're reaping the effects. Despite heroic efforts by its authors, Waxman-Markey is being discussed in public as a "cap-and-trade bill," which means nothing to the public. Stepping in to help the public understand are Republicans: ZOMG IT'S A TAX!!! The 75 percent of the bill that has nothing to do with capping or trading is going almost completely ignored.
Rasmussen notes, "There is always political danger when major legislation is enacted without engaging the public in the debate." And that's true. The debate we need to be having is, do we want to make an energy transition? Do we want to get past fossil fuels so we can remove a threat to our security, a drag on our economy, and a pox on our shared atmosphere? Yes or no? And if so, are we willing to be ambitious and really go for it?
That's the debate the public needs to be involved in. When the public tunes in, however, it hears about carbon caps and permit trades and emission reduction targets and zzzzz ...it tunes right out.
I don't care if the public knows what cap-and-trade is. I just want to stop talking about it. Our collective ship is sinking and we're involved in a heated debate about the kind of wrench to use to tighten the bolts on the lifeboat. How about first we all agree that we need to get off the damn ship?
This post also appeared on grist.org.
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Revolutionary alternatives to fossil fuels are likely to be widely available in a few years.
Breakthrough technologies will rapidly make possible future electric and hybrid cars that need no fuel or external battery charge.
The cars can turn into power plants when parked. Imagine vehicles that need no fuel and pay for themselves - by wirelessly selling power to the local utility.
This will become a cost-competitive alternative to building new coal and nuclear power plants.
It reflects one application of new technologies that tap energy sources never yet commercialized - such as ambient heat, Zero Point Energy, and hydrinos.
Scientists will be understandably skeptical until independent laboratory validation takes place.
That is on the horizon, as is production of self-powered generators - as well as demonstration devices for schools and universities.
See http://www.chavaenergy.com for more information concerning magnetic motors and generators, and self powered internal combustion engines that utilize hydrinos.
These technologies are inherently inexpensive. They have surprising potential to supersede coal and nuclear power and accelerate reversal of our economic and energy concerns.
The problem with the cap and trade plan is that production of products that are carbon intensive will be moved overseas. If China and India are not on the bandwagon then all we are doing is hurting our own economy. The real answer to the problem is to get to carbon free or carbon reduced energy production. This means wind, solar, geothermal, and yes-nuclear. The environmental movement is seen as unrealistic by the public because most people understand that wind, solar and geothermal cannot do it on their own. We need power sources that can generate a great deal of energy in a small area. Wind and the others take up to much land to generate the massive amount of energy needed to replace coal powered plants. Realism and no BS will help to sell a carbon reduced future.
BS indeed.
Solar can do it all by itself.
Either you shingle a lot of people's roofs with photovoltaic shingles or you cover one 50-mile square of desert with collectors and power the country. A mix is more likely, of course.
What about night? If everyone has to have battery packs and DC to AC converters in the house, what kind environmental impact will that have?
Do you have any idea how inefficient solar is? There's a solar power plant in Colorado covering 82 ACRES of land that generates 8.2MW of energy. To build a solar plant that would equal a 1,000 MW natural gas fired power plant, you'd need to cover 20,000 acres of solar panels. It's simply ridiculous, and that's exactly why we're not using it. That, and the fact that sometimes the sun doesn't shine, like at night.
I'm guessing the Enviros and solar fans won't be talking about this very much:
http://www.ghgonline.org/co2sinkocean.htm
Government's $900,000 solar house that froze this winter....
Regarding my previous comment, I'd like to add this thought:
Within weeks of the '04' elections, despite having a conservative Republican in the White House and Republican majories in the House and Senate, key members of the President's Council of Bioethics, congressional conservatives, religious lobbyists, and the president backed a huge compromise on stem cells/human cloning (known as the "ANT/OAR" proposal). This compromise split the anti-cloning coalition and betrayed patient advocates and women's organizations who had previously supported their position.
Once again, at the very moment that Congress and the White House should be primed to take long-overdue, agressive steps for the ultimate good of mankind and Earth, the politics of greed and ambition stand to insure that America's brief season of "hope and change" will end like so many before it.
Perhaps when the world's fragile ecological balance is trashed beyond saving, Americans will admit the political truth they hide from today: Our system of government has long been corrupted by those who feed off their species and ravage the Earth. Regarding monumental issues that concern trillions of dollars annually, the fate of mankind, and our planet's future, we do not have a two party system led by political leaders. Instead, small-minded politicians under the thumb of Big Oil, Coal, Pharmaceuticals, Biotech, and Detroit defraud Americans again and again to boost their master's profits.
For five years I saw the same tragedy unfold while taking part in the world's 'stem cells' debate as a disabled "pro-cures" activist. Swept aside by moral questions, the public never considered the heart of the matter, i.e., the efficient, cost-effective use of research resources for the sake of producing medical cures. Once again - in the Cap & Trade issue - powerful special interests and their political lackies have adroitly exploited human fears, ambitions, and conflicting worldviews to hijack the legislation process and divert the public's attention. If mankind, which has the potential to express intelligence and greatness in its actions, continues to play the role of sheep to the wolves of industry and politics (while denying individual responsibility for ecological abuse), we will have richly earned our ruinous ecolgical doom.
Well, the public should know that the preliminary bill runs 600 pages and doesn't address the issue of China and India. If their activities aren't included then all the US will have done is raise the cost of living and doing business in the US with no discernible effect on global warming.
You are so wrong, we need to keep talking about it, instead of trying to whitewash it and pass it off as saving the environment, which it will not do, or ending our dependence on foreign oil, which it will not do.
We need full debate on something this important. It's not that difficult afterall. Let's talk about the increase in costs that the average citizen will end up paying, lets talk about the potential job losses if companies close their plants and move to foreign countries in order to stay competitive. Let's talk about the Gov't bureaucracy that will have to be put into place to manage all of this, and let's talk about whether the Gov't is even capable of managing something as complex as this effectively.
I for one am not tired of talking about it, the discussion has just begun.
Here's what people need to know: Cap-and-trade worked for acid rain. Children didn't freeze to death because coal plants had to limit SO2 emissions. Scrubbing eventually became more affordable than trading. The program's target was achieved ahead of schedule. And when was the last time anyone worried about acid rain? Like anything, C&T can be done wrong, but we know it works when done right.
Hey Chicken Little... the Ship is just fine. Man-made global warming is a myth perpetuated now by environmental zealots. Every year more and more hard scientists are opting out of this race to the edge of the cliff. Bad computer modeling, innacurate assumptions and false premises are all at play here. Crazies like yourself continue to try to shut down debate by marginalizing credible contraty evidence... as if a year or two would make any real difference
Taxing carbon will do nothing but keep our economy down and ensure the impoverished third world never has a chance to climb out of their huts.
This scheme is self destructive and will do nothing to effect the climate. Its not too late... give it one or two more years and the science.. not the hype... will bear me out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io-Tb7vTamY
This is an important point. The Republicans have always taken the lead on framing the arguments. By equating "cap-and-trade" with a tax, it fits right into the right-wing tea bag message. As much as it would pain me to see it, it might behoove the Democrats to make this less of an environmental issue and more of an economic issue. Try bringing up that China and India and Brazil are emerging and their energy needs will only increase. If we don't start moving away from fossil fuels, the increasing demand will cause prices to skyrocket. Nothing lasts forever, including oil. Our entire way of life is predicated on cheap energy. Remember what happened when gas was close to 4 dollars a gallon last year? Imagine that permanently but even that is low-balling it. The "common man" views environmentalism as a fringe movement; they pay attention to their pocketbooks.
Hey Ben - if its not taxation.. what is it.? You can call it a duck and I can call it a chicken... but everyone knows which one can swim.
Your over-simplified worldview is depressing the hell out of all rational thinkers.
This country (and all countries really) needs to have locally sourced, sustainable energy. A market based system to limit the carbon emitted by our industries is the best solution as it doesn't rely on governments or other bodies to set prices, which would highly increase the inefficiencies of such a plan. Cap-and-trade did indeed successfully limit the increase in acid rain when imposed on Sulfur-Dioxide emissions, and it is the best option yet to be developed by economists, industry leaders, governments, and academics.
Civilizations have had to deal with limited resources before, We can't continue to be the Ostrich with our head in the sands. We need to continue the call for action by business and political leaders and work to inform the public of the facts behind the theory. It's the only way for societal progress as we know it to continue in the 21st century.
Ben, what would you call it? The government will et up a new bureaucracy to adminsiter and ultimately sell carbon credits, and reap the revenue. Gore's company, like others, will suck in millions selling carbon offsets. All of the costs of the carbon credits will just be added to the costs of energy and/or products, and paid by the consumer. It will make no difference to the environment, and a huge difference to our economy. Government is drooling over the new revenue source, so there's no doubt it will pass.
Cap and trade is a regressive tax that is paid disproportinatly by the poor. It takes away the tax cuts Obama enacted for the lowest taxpayers in the US.
The public should know but will not expend the intellectual discipline to find out. I finally gave up trying to explain the science of global climate change, evolution, the main sequence or the geologic time scale to most people. There is a way to have a cap and trade system that makes everyone a shareholder and earn an annual dividend. See Peter Barnes Capitalism 3.0.
Before we leap off the ship than we, the public, need to ask the very simple questions which the true believer of cap and trade refuse to answer....
- Will there be an acutal reduction in carbon/pollution output or will it be a simple passing off the waste to another?
- Will the cap and trade proposals result in significant increasing of costs?
- How many lawyers and money managers are bitting at the bit waiting to get rich under the cap and trade system?
- Andy finally, isn't there a better, simplier method to actually reduce the pollution?
"Will there be an acutal reduction in carbon/pollution output"
Yes. Initially as the system is phased in, it would just slow the growth. Then the cap would be lowered.
"Will the cap and trade proposals result in significant increasing of costs?"
Depends on the reduction targets. Deep cuts in emissions will cost no matter how they're done.
"isn't there a better, simplier method to actually reduce the pollution?"
Simpler, yes. Better, probably not.
Yes, the public should know what "cap and trade" means. Looking at a newspaper every couple weeks (either in print or online) doesn't make you elite. It's just part of basic citizenship.
The general public relies upon news headlines and sound bites to get the "gist" of a proposal. They don't look at the research and they don't review policy papers. The problem is that I'm not sure that the ones producing the news headlines and sound bites are either.
Yes, I'm talking about the media who are part of the problem and part of the solution. Our media is owned by corporations who dabble in manufacturing and therefore would be among the entities who would have to buy these credits and therefore oppose them; or they receive a great deal of advertising dollars from companies who would have to buy them and who may or may not be affecting reporting of these stories; and our media also employ some folks who either have ties to industry lobbyists or have been in positions to benefit them. So instead of getting some key details of the actual policy involved we get sensationalized talking points from partisan blowhards. We need more people in our media to be on our side and really detailing the truth.
Ever take a look at what GE stands to gain if Obama passes cap and trade, alternative fuel and health care legislation? Ever notice that GE owns NBC and MSNBC? Ever wonder why everyone at MSNBC treats Obama like a god? Come ON, the media are totally in the bag for Obama, and GE will make BILLIONS of dollars if Obama's policies are enacted. Manufacturing in this country is negligible, having already been run out of the country by environmental poliicies and over-priced union labor.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1698580/general_electric_the_obama_administration.html?singlepage=true&cat=9
all you people who rail about Cheney and Haliburton, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
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