This may piss off some people I respect a great deal. Nonetheless, after hearing it in several off-the-record conversations in D.C. last week, I believe it’s something that needs to be said publicly:
The 111th U.S. Congress is not going to pass a carbon tax. Calls for a carbon tax, to the extent they have any effect, will complicate and possibly derail passage of carbon legislation.
It’s possible that a carbon tax (and/or cap-and-dividend) bill will be introduced. One or both might even make it to a full vote, though I doubt it. But they won’t pass. If you want carbon pricing out of this Congress, cap-and-trade is what you’re getting. It follows that your energies are best spent ensuring that cap-and-trade legislation is as strong as possible.
Them’s the facts.
Through some process I find truly mysterious, the carbon tax has become a kind of totem of authenticity among progressives, while cap-and-trade now symbolizes corporate sellouthood. Across the interwebs, lefties now proclaim with absolute confidence and no small sanctimony that we should entrust our children’s future to economists (whose historical contribution to environmental policy has been hostility, doomsaying, and an unbroken record of error) and the Congressional committees that control tax policy (climate champions all). "Pay to pollute," once the scourge of the green movement, is now the sine qua non of keepin’ it real. It is baffling.
It doesn’t seem to daunt these folks that their hostility toward cap-and-trade and support for carbon taxes has been taken up by a growing cadre on the far right, including Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, economist Arthur Laffer, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and yes, even climate wingnut Sen. James Inhofe (R-Gamma Quadrant). Hell, throw in a refunded gas tax and you get America’s Worst Columnist© Charles Krauthammer too. Are we to believe that these folks understand the threat of climate chaos, want to reduce climate emissions the amount science indicates is prudent, and sincerely believe that a carbon tax is the best way to accomplish that goal?
Perhaps, if we slept through the last decade, we might believe that. Having been awake (and watching in horror), we understand that it’s a poison pill. It’s a way to avoid legislation at all if possible and secure the weakest possible bill if not. It’s a way to exploit disagreements within the climate coalition and derail momentum. That’s what they do. As usual, they’re fighting a knife fight and the left is holding a grad school seminar.
(Incidentally—and I realize this is open to dispute—for my money nobody’s more savvy about this than Corker, who is honing in on points of contention or weakness and exploiting them for all they’re worth.)
On a policy basis, I believe carbon tax advocates like James Hansen are wrong on the merits, convinced by arguments that are tendentious, airily academic, and/or overly conservative. I believe both carbon cap-and-trade and taxes have advantages, but ultimately that a well-designed C&T system is preferable to a well-designed tax. The most important thing is designing well, since either policy (contra tax advocates) is subject to loopholes, corruption, and gross insufficiency.
But that discussion is largely beside the point now. For a brief window of time we have a Congress and president ready to really do something on carbon pricing. What they’re ready to do is pass a cap-and-trade bill. They’ll face implacable opposition, which will be speaking in a single voice and with a simple message. If progressives don’t wise up, they’ll enter yet another battle with a cacophony of clashing messages and strategies, and will be easily divided and outplayed. If the progressive grassroots plays a role in scuttling the best hope for climate legislation the nation has ever had, it will be a bitter irony indeed.
Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) [UPDATED]
EPA demands attorneys remove video critical of cap-and-trade
Comments
View as Flat
Gar Lipow Posted 3:39 am
27 Jan 2009
NO giveaways 100% auctioning
NO offsets.
NO escape clauses.
Permits auctioned frequently and conveniently enough that buying them directly rather through traders is real option
Permits have a life of no more than three years, and a start date no more than three years from time of auction. (So you could buy a permit that takes effect three years from now and expires three years from that).
I think with those three provisions most carbon tax advocates will accept it as second best.
If you want well designed (as opposed to acceptably designed) I add the following. I think it will work well enough without the following, but for best policy add:
Minimum prices close to the best guess as to actual cost (greatly reduces volatility).
A quarter percent tax on resale of permits. (Discourages trading and encourages direct purchasing.)
=========
In essence this is a call for a unified position. Fine, but if you want unity between different parts of the spectrum, you can't expect one faction to do all the moving on the grounds that "you are just being big sillybillies. Grow up and to things my way".
If progressives are important enough that you are afraid their lack of support will kill something, then they are important enough to be reached out to rather than scolded.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:59 am
27 Jan 2009
Politicians can't back any kind of carbon tax, because any tax increase vote would get them swiftboated out of office next election time.
That leaves the middle opposing both cap n trade and carbon taxes on the grounds that both progressive (do not use lefty, as GOP progressives exist too, like Ahhnoldt) and politico critics are probably right.
I say we put away the rhetorical six shooters and all embrace subsidy diversion, a tax neutral, revenue neutral, debt free way to stimulate the green economy and tax the GHG energy economy.
Take the 50 billion in industry subsidies away from oil, coal, nuclear, and agribizz corporations and give it to adopters of renewable energy and conservation technology.
Local, state, and fedral governments can lead in fostering mass production contracts for fleet vehicles and public buildings. The public can join in as mass production brings prices down.
Some of the 50 billion per year can go to mass transit and bike trails. And reviving and electrifying rail roads.
This is the only compromise left after the factions weigh in. And it would take a coalition og the extremes and the middle to beat corporate lobbying against subsidy diversion.
Corps like exxonmob give up billions? Not very likely without a fight. A grassroots effort like the Obama campaign would have to be mounted that mass emails and calls legislators to vote the right way, it would have to be a positive campaign.
Legislators would have to know that on voting day the grassroots would back their risk taking behaviour of opposing industry lobbying. If we abandon them after getting them to oppose corporate power, their re-election hopes would be dashed.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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David Roberts Posted 4:03 am
27 Jan 2009
Being realistic, I think progressives should unite around one or two big things that don't require expertise in climate policy. I'd pick auctioning the maximum possible number of permits and minimizing the use of offsets and off-ramps. Others will, I feel sure, disagree.
grist.org
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Gar Lipow Posted 4:27 am
27 Jan 2009
A an acceptable bill must have a real cap, with no takebacks, and allow only real emissions cuts, no imaginary paper cuts like so-called offsets.
An acceptable bill must sell all permits, not give them away to big polluters. And it must structure that sale so that polluters mostly buy them directly. It is not acceptable to end up with our greenhouse policy run by the same financial institutions who did such a bangup job with mortgages. We don't need carbon hedge managers collecting billion dollar bonuses, or carbon derivative swaps!
So just two points. I did not exactly change my position. Then again I don't have authority to speak for progressives and you don't have authority to speak for the EDF or USCAP.
Romm seems to think we are not going to get ANY bill in 2009. If that is the case, then the best strategy is to get a maximal bill introduced, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and make that the starting point for 2010 negotiations.
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sindark Posted 5:47 am
27 Jan 2009
a sibilant intake of breath
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Charles Komanoff Posted 6:09 am
27 Jan 2009
The case for taxing carbon instead of cap-and-trading it has been made elsewhere (here on video and here in print, for starters), so I'll limit myself here to your political miscalculations.
First, your post evinces zero awareness of Americans' newfound disgust and Congress's growing distaste for empowering financial wizards and speculators via a new half-trillion-dollar-a-year market in poorly understood financial instruments -- in this case, carbon-based. That sea-change in opinion alone has robbed cap-and-trade of its aura of inevitability that (like Hillary Clinton's 2007-08 campaign) was its strongest suit.
Second, your implicit but pivotal assumption that advocating for carbon taxing necessarily detracts from the chances of enacting meaningful carbon pricing is completely unproven and probably wrong. It ignores a rich history of legislative progress in which radical approaches ended up facilitating moderate ones, rather than impeding them.
Your post is also rife with shots that are either cheap or ignorant. You conflate environmental economists with industry shills. You caricuratize the noble and essential work of internalizing the environmental costs of energy production in its price -- a precept personally imparted to me by David Brower -- with "paying to pollute." And you demonize your adversaries to the point of denying the possibility of finding even a scintilla of common ground with them.
Who anointed cap-and-trade as our chosen means of pricing carbon and driving down CO2 emissions, anyway? And which side has begun poisoning discourse by branding as dupes exponents of the other approach? Not carbon taxers.
Charles
http://www.komanoff.net
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Russ Posted 6:23 am
27 Jan 2009
If that's allowed to work every time, that's what they'll do any time they can to purge proposals from the debate.
Gar says:
If that is the case, then the best strategy is to get a maximal bill introduced, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and make that the starting point for 2010 negotiations.
That's excellent (and elementary) tactics for this bill and for any bill.
Too bad Obama already screwed that up in the case of the stimulus and tax cuts.
Hopefully he's learning a lesson from this (that appeasement doesn't work).
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Colin Wright Posted 6:31 am
27 Jan 2009
"But we will commit ourselves to steady, focused, pragmatic pursuit of an America that is freed from our energy dependence and empowered by a new energy economy that puts millions of our citizens to work"
No mention of C&T. Perhaps he knows he doesn't have the votes. Should he devote precious political capital to try to push C&T at this time?
I personally don't think so. I think it is untested. If he can find ways to reduce emmissions through regulation and infrastructure spending, he can watch how regional and European C&T fare over the coming year.
If he can get the votes for it, sure. But I think Greens need to rethink their frame, away from theoretical market solutions that might have worked in 1980, towards the new economic landscape and the implications of peak oil for the immediate future.
And no master strategies and false calls for unity! Let's look for the openings and adapt to them as they arise, and think on our feet. And not separate into opposing camps.
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ce1907 Posted 6:47 am
27 Jan 2009
on the larger point, it is all moot
the big O has zero interest in either capntrade or a carbon tax. only capntrade that might conceivably get passed would be a Bingam@n version with an offramp so wide and fast that the whole law will be a joke
there will be no significant 2020 cap, or 2030 cap, signed by the big O. too zany for him, because Bingam&n, Summ*rs and Ba&cus say so
move on, guys
best that you can hope for is some rear-guard action challenging permits for coal plants, and maybe some smart grid and efficiency stuff
but as the price for that small meal, get ready to give away tens or hundreds of billions to "clean coal" boondoggles and nuke power
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Ted Nace Posted 6:59 am
27 Jan 2009
Help build CoalSwarm -- a shared informational resource on coal and alternatives to coal.
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Sean Casten Posted 7:40 am
27 Jan 2009
I suspect your concern on the pollution side of the equation is that you don't want to let CO2 sources pollute indefinitely into the future. Which I understand, but keep in mind that you've got to keep visibility on the other side as well, since the goal of a good CO2 policy is not only to penalize sources, but also to reward sinks. Three year windows simply isn't long enough to do so.
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PeterWinters Posted 7:47 am
27 Jan 2009
... take a look at our Government Mandates free report at http://www.haddock-research.com
Peter
5764 Monkland Ave., Suite 13
Montreal (QC) Canada H4A 1E9
Understanding people's relationship with climate change and the low-carbon economy
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GRLCowan Posted 8:29 am
27 Jan 2009
Do the refund first, and the public is immediately on side.
--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
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Gar Lipow Posted 9:06 am
27 Jan 2009
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Sean Casten Posted 9:19 am
27 Jan 2009
Suppose, for example, that permits today are trading for $10/ton, and I am considering a $50,000 investment that would avoid the release of 1000 tons/year. If the only visibility I have into future permit prices is the three-year contracts being signed, then I'm faced with the prospect of a $50,000 risk that is offset only by a $30,000 guaranteed savings (in avoided permit costs). Yes, there will likely be some market in year 4, but since I don't know what the price is, I can't factor it into my calculus without taking on a lot more capital risk. That in turn will drive all but the highest-risk investors out of the space.
(This problem is one that bedevils current "restructured" power markets, where you can only buy 5 - 10 year forward contracts on assets with 20+ year lifetimes. This, in part is why we haven't built new power plants as fast as load has grown. That's not an environmental issue per se, but it is a compelling example of the problems innate to short-dated contracts, to the extent that they are intended to encourage investment.)
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randino Posted 9:44 am
27 Jan 2009
In Cleveland, we are discussing the launching of a campaign called Barack Talk to China, that will seek to do what past efforts like the push for a Test Ban Treaty did in the 1960s and the Nuclear Freeze movement did in the 1980s. Namely, mobilize a public push for diplomacy from below to remove the one big obstacle to climate progress - the US/China suicide pact.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Randy Cunningham
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Pompey Road Posted 9:52 am
27 Jan 2009
Keep it simple! 20 year period to get coal fired plants as clean as an in house ventless natural gas heater. This means co2 and particulate. Benchmarks every 2 years with fines, monetary penalties if you do not meet the standard.
Tax rebates and tax incentives for power produced by Solar, wind, hydro or whatever new green technology crops us in the next 20 years. Do away with all tax incentives now for coal, oil fired powered production. Reduce Corporate tax for the alternative energy power produced.
Don't cry if they do coal gasification to the standard of our highest quality natural gas. If that is what they want to spend their money on and not tax payer money it will still be a win win if they can get the co2 and particulate to high grade natural gas standards of a ventless home heater. If they can't and have to go the wind solar route, that will be even better.
T Bone Pickens has it wrong the natural gas he wants for transportation needs to go for power production. Hybrid 4000# and up Electric for everything else until the technology catches up.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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GreyFlcn Posted 11:12 am
27 Jan 2009
No Giveaways
No Ceilings
Then you might actually have yourself a worthwhile system.
The real question then is, "What do you do with the auction money".
Dividends?
Carbon Reduction Grants?
Both?
-David Ahlport
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Gar Lipow Posted 11:21 am
27 Jan 2009
That is why you have minimum prices on permits, escalating as caps tighten. Or better yet a carbon tax that escalates according to a schedule.
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Pangolin Posted 12:58 pm
27 Jan 2009
Yeah, those poor conservative shills or the Coal'N'Oil industries suddenly want anything but "Cap'N'Trade...." On Noes!! B'rer Obama! You gots us now and we know we have to change our coal burning ways. We'll do whatever you like just don make us deal with a "Cap'N'Trade"system; oh my, think of the paper work."
Now B'rer Obama he knows how tricksy Coal'N'Oil can get and he surely is tired of getting kicked by them so he thinks he just might toss 'em in a sack of Carbon Tacks where the more they kick the more they get poked. Yep, it's a little bit of the hike over the hill to the shed where he can get a good strong sack and them Carbon Tacks but to be rid of Coal'N'Oil he jus might do it'. Yer gone git the Carbon Tacks in a nice tight sack he tells Coal'N'Oil.
Coal'N'Oil he surely don't want no Carbon Tacks in a nice tight sack so he thinks quick looks around and sees the crazy Sierra Club bird hanging out on a nearby tree limb. Throwin his voice he sings out like it's the Sierra Club bird... "Give 'em to the Carbon Off-sets" he sings, "they'll tear him to pieces and starve him to death those Carbon Off-sets will."
"Well those Carbon Off-sets will fill my mouth with fur, bite me like a thousand house-flies and tear out my nails" sez Coal'N'Oil, "but surely that will be better than throwing me to the Cap'N'Trade system. Whatever you all do jus don' throw me there."
Now, anybody who knows their folklore knows that this scene is supposed to play out with Coal'N'Oil good as scott-free in the Cap'N'Trade patch while B'rer Obama ends up looking like a fool. We know that Ol'Coal loves a maze of regulations much better than a nice fat sack, er, tax that they can be tied up in/on and we all can watch.
The fools in Washington know that as long as Coal runs free they get a cut on the takings. Bread today being better than a field of grain tomorrow. Especially since it's not their field.
Put the Carbon Back
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Ken Johnson Posted 3:38 pm
27 Jan 2009
The underlying policy rationale for taxes and cap-and-trade are not inherently incompatible, and both approaches can be combined to achieve common policy objectives more effectively that either operating alone. We need to get past the polarizing which-is-better debate and start looking at these as complementary policies. Whether you call the policy a "tax" or "cap-and-something" isn't important; we need to look beyond the semantics and focus on what the policy actually does.
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:43 pm
27 Jan 2009
You guys need to keep up with the times. All this month the science world is abuzz with evidence that cosmic rays are directly related to instantaneous changes in weather.
http://oilismastery.blogspot.com/2009/01/cosmic-rays-dete ...
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and led by scientists from the UK's National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), this remarkable study shows how the number of high-energy cosmic-rays reaching a detector deep underground, closely matches temperature measurements in the upper atmosphere (known as the stratosphere).
Cosmoclimatologists are breaking down doors and taking names.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h2eLth ...
"Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of the earth's magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics," one of the two Danish geophysicists behind the study, Mads Faurschou Knudsen of the geology department at Aarhus University in western Denmark, told the Videnskab journal.
CO2 is exposed, routed, charged and booked in tiny cell with a six times recidivist who has the letters L-O-V-E tattoed on his fingers!
You know you're not a liberal when...
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s5 Posted 4:45 pm
27 Jan 2009
Let's try a thought experiment.
First, imagine Republicans demagoguing against a carbon tax. For good measure, imagine them going one further, by calling it a "green tax" and taking down the whole green movement in the process. They'll fill cable news with scare stories of working families going broke at the pump, all thanks to Al Gore's new green tax.
Now imagine Republicans on cable news, trying to argue against cap-and-trade. First they would have to explain it, and hope that the public will have a visceral response against the arcane technical details of an emissions trading regime. It's just not going to happen. The public will yawn, and the bill will pass.
A cap-and-trade plan would be highly effective, our president supports it (and even campaigned on it), and Congress won't run screaming like they would with a carbon tax.
Heck, as a bonus, McCain supports cap-and-trade; he campaigned on it too. Which means we're virtually guaranteed a filibuster proof majority on any bill that reaches the Senate.
Let's get 'er done.
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Ken Johnson Posted 6:08 pm
27 Jan 2009
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F James Handley Posted 8:28 pm
27 Jan 2009
If advocates of a revenue-neutral carbon tax were all people who months ago denied any climate problem, your "poison pill" argument might be plausible.
But economists across the political spectrum have repeatedly concluded that cap-and-trade is ineffective, volatile and rife with opportunities for gaming. Rob Shapiro, former undersecretary of Commerce and chair of U.S. Climate Task Force spoke at a Hill briefing December 9. "We're only going to get one shot at effective climate policy... Cap-and-trade just hasn't worked."
Rep. John Larson, chairs the House Democratic Caucus. His carbon tax bill, HR 3416 had 12 co-sponsors last session, including some prominent "greens": Earl Blumenaur, a stalwart advocate of bicycle and pedestrian facilities, Pete Stark, Jim Moran, Rosa DeLauro, Sam Farr, Raul Grijalva, Zoe Lofgren, Nita Lowey, Jim McDermott, James McGovern, George Miller, Jim Moran, Fortney Pete Stark and Edolphus Towns.
Not climate deniers or obstructionists. These legislators understand that cap-and-trade is a hidden, volatile, regressive tax. Its chief advantage (unless you're a carbon trader) is that it's not called a tax. Larson and co-sponsors take the flak for openly advocating a "tax" because the consequences of choosing an ineffective policy -- would be more delay. As Shapiro put it, "cap-and-trade would fail" and lead to "public cynicism that anything effective" can be done to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Larson's "tax" proposal actually would return the vast bulk of revenue to workers by reducing payroll taxes. In that sense, it's much less of a "tax" than cap-and-trade proposals like USCAP's and Lieberman's which hide the tax and divert the revenue to an array of insiders and favorite projects.
For more on revenue-neutral carbon taxes see http://www.carbontax.org. To send letters to Congress and sign our petition go to http://www.pricecarbon.org.
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Russ Posted 8:50 pm
27 Jan 2009
I know, if I were a coal-industry strategist, and I became convinced some sort of "mandatory" carbon policy was inevitable, then I'd be thinking along the lines, Let's get as weak and industry-friendly a c&t policy as we can, then shortly afterward start howling about how we can't meet the burdens, it'll drive us out of business, the economy's too lousy, the sky is falling etc..etc.., and get the (probably already anemic) cap further weakened into meaninglessness.
And meanwhile they'd still have the "asset", they'd still have the rationed property right (they could probably also use the system vs. the entry of new, perhaps putatively less-emitting competitors).
I know there are also ways to game a carbon tax, or direct regulatory controls*, but it just seems like a c&t is crying out to be manipulated.
*Why is there so little talk of replicating Bush's dual legislative-administrative assault tactic? E.g., the supreme court has already said the EPA can regulate CO2. So why not, alongside whatever legislative initiative they come up with, also draw up plans threatening to essentially shut down large-scale emitters on direct regulatory authority? Not that they'd even have to be dead serious about it - the threat itself, that if we don't get a real carbon bill in congress, we might have to go the route of bureaucratic decree, should be a salutary brace of chilling wind to the obstructionists.
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davedenali Posted 4:55 am
28 Jan 2009
-------
You are absolutely right about the political realities of this and I am surprised at the naivete from some very smart people - Hansen included. Al Gore proposed a BTU tax in the early 90s and it had the shortest life of any trial balloon in history -- they shot it down before he let go of the string. The evil men who lead today's Mean Southern White Guys Party -- aka the GOP -- have been enormously successful in changing the public discourse such that any discussion of taxes is politically hazardous -- especially carbon taxes that would drive up the cost of heating and driving and loafing on the internet during work hours. Sacred stuff, that.
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KenGreen Posted 5:14 am
28 Jan 2009
There is a word for people who are fundamentally unable to acknowledge that anyone who disagrees with them on anything might be sincere in their beliefs. It's called "incivility." This affliction seems particularly rampant in the environmental movement, where if you disagree on absolutely anything, from the interpretation of a science study to the pros and cons of alternate environmental policies they resort to slander rather than reasoned response. Incivility is fundamentally destructive of people's ability to work together on anything, and simply sows discord and grievance.
Is it so hard for you to believe that people who who see cap-and-trade threatening, might offer up an alternative approach that they sincerely believe will accomplish the stated goal (whether they value it or not) without side effects of cap-and-trade they consider more destructive? Don't you find that a wee bit arrogant?
And consider the hypocrisy here: for ages, environmentalists have screamed at conservatives for not offering up positive alternatives to policies they favor. Now, when that's actually happening, they're screaming that it's an insincere tactical maneuver.
Obama has called for the return of civility, Dave: don't you think you ought to give it a try? Try allowing for the idea that someone who disagrees with you might actually be a sincere human being worthy of the basic human dignity you deny them with your incivility.
Kenneth Green
Resident Scholar
American Enterprise Institute
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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davedenali Posted 10:28 am
28 Jan 2009
I have witnessed eight years in which the GOP right added seven trillion dollars to a national debt that stood at five trillion in 2000. Much of that went to reckless tax cuts for the rich. In the meantime, millions of American citizens went without desperately needed health care, shelter or heat -- often through no fault of their own.
I have seen a Republican Senate majority select a Senate Environment Chair, James Inhofe, who calls global warming a hoax. Their majority knowingly gave us this clown.
I have seen a large portion of the last genetically wild herd of North American bison shot for no good reason. I have seen a President and a VP candidate encourage the senseless, horrible slaughter of wolves and seen a President turn over pristine public lands to his industry cronies -- now ruined for centuries.
I've seen a Republican House Committee Chair try to systematically sell off public lands.
I've seen a great leap backward in addressing climate disruption as an oil-industry-owned Republican Party gave subsidy after subsidy to fossil fuels.
You criticize me for being "uncivil" to the party of Tom DeLay, John Boehner, Richard Pombo and a pack of hundreds of industry-owned hacks who have done more harm to this country than any political party in modern history?
Let me recommend Paul Krugman's recent column "Bigger than Bush."
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FreeGreen Posted 1:39 pm
28 Jan 2009
Except that the concept of auctioning credits was created by economists...but other than that, nothing!
Except cap and trade, which was created by economists as an alternative to technology mandates for emissions reductions (and ended up reducing SO2 faster than had been the case).
OK, except cap-and-trade and auctioning, what have economists ever given us?!
Carbon credit banking?
Oh, nevermind.
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:50 pm
28 Jan 2009
Not faster than Germany or a bunch of nations in Europe who used mandates to reduce emissions from higher than the U.S. to lower
Not faster than the mandates were scheduled to lower them. C&T was instituted in the U.S. as an alternative to mandates that would have been put in place otherwise. There was one year where emissions were lowered more than scheduled. But the credits were banked and came back to bite us in the ass later when a bunch of people were exposed to pollution thanks to banked credits.
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Ted Clayton Posted 2:49 pm
28 Jan 2009
Snot-nosed kids in Boot Camp are first taught to be civil, then to kill. In Iraq, most of the 4,000 who have died, did so being civil. Most of the perhaps several hundred thousand dead Iraqis were killed in observance of civil protocol.
The British, famous for & proud of their capacity for exceptional civility under exceptionally uncivil conditions, were given Basra for exactly that reason.
Civility is not a noble or romantic indulgence. It is not about presenting an affectation. It is a code of conduct by which one sets aside weaknesses & liabilities, and best-deploys strengths & assets.
To be uncivil is to be ineffective; or, a loser.
Even George W. Bush fessed up: 'I shouldn't have said 'Bring 'em On''. That was the inadequate weenie in him coming out - and bringing him down.
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msandler Posted 6:18 am
30 Jan 2009
Of course there are versions of a carbon tax that are just window dressing. There are types of cap and trade that enrich polluters and don't reduce emissions. There are also good versions of each (and Gar Lipow mentioned some design aspects: upstream, auctioning, returning revenues to consumers, etc.).
In the end, I think we will need both a quantity control (cap) and a price floor (fee, etc.). It's not an either-or question. It's a question of design, political feasibility, and timing.
So before we divide ourselves into ever-smaller infighting factions, let's try to get the carbon taxers and the cap-and-traders to unite behind the message of "putting a price on carbon."
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snedunuri Posted 10:08 am
31 Jan 2009
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hapa Posted 12:20 pm
31 Jan 2009
fundamentally unable ... affliction ... rampant ... slander rather than reasoned response ... arrogant ... hypocrisy ... for ages, environmentalists have screamed ... screaming ... [denying] basic human dignity [to their political opponents]
ROFLMAO!!!!!
respectfully, of course, as i am the soul of propriety and decorum.
did you know, if you take one letter from the word "shrill," you get "shill"?
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jwl Posted 2:02 am
04 Feb 2009
Jon Warren Lentz, Inc. is a business consulting firm offering high level strategic advice to select sustainability sector companies.
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GRLCowan Posted 3:34 am
04 Feb 2009
Paraphrasing snedunuri,
net-zero taxes? couldn't the newly empowered left do something on the framing front that? Everyone gets a rebate check back from the gumt, since the point of this ...
... is to compensate those doing less-than-average harm to the common atmosphere at the expense of those doing more harm than average, thus directing the top half away from carbon-intensive activity.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, (How fire can be tamed)
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