OK, so the long-dead B-L-W bill got propped up and dragged around for a few days. (Tagline: B-L-W may be dead, but it's the life of the party!) But I think the debate was quite useful for two reasons:
- The opponents of (even modest) action played and overplayed their cards. Now we know that the health and well-being of future generations is of no interest in them. Now we know what their primary arguments will be. This is the opportunity for progressives and moderates and hopefully President Obama to design a better messaging strategy -- and to get pro cap-and-trade businesses to weigh in.
- The many flaws in the bill (other than the fact it wouldn't actually save the climate) were exposed: not enough money returned to taxpayers, too much money given away to too many groups, too complicated, your flaw here -- I'd very much like to hear your ideas for how the bill could be simplified and improved.
I will be offering my recommendations for what a better bill would look like later this month. Clearly, the bill should be designed to achieve more reductions and to be easier to explain and defend.
After all, the original Weekend at Bernie's was kind of fun and made money. But did anybody actually see (and enjoy) Weekend at Bernie's 2? We don't want a lame remake next year.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Annie Leonard misses the mark in her new video, “The Story of Cap-and-Trade”
John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles
Comments
View as Flat
Pangolin Posted 10:04 am
06 Jun 2008
It would also have the effect of making solar, wind, geo-thermal, geoexchange and conservation measures that much more cost-effective. If the other 15% of revenue was used for zero interest loans to install solar/wind power that would put more than a few people now unemployed back to work. It would also economically favor legal US residents over those pesky H1-b visa holders.
Or we could just sit at the gates of the old, closed, auto plants until the car gods smile down on us once again.
Put the Carbon Back
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 10:46 am
06 Jun 2008
Easy Fix. Remove the Offsets. And make it an upstream pigovian tax auctioned permit process.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/5/183343/3839
And as for the pile of money collected, do whatever it takes to get enough votes to get it to pass.
-
The money could possibly be used for social refunds, forestry, green energy financing or R&D. Who cares.
But just so long as it avoids going into the coffers of fossil fuel mining/drilling companies it's doing it's pigovian job.
JMG and Gar seem to like the idea off killing off offsets too.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/5/16363/79202#com ...
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/5/183343/3839
_
Tax versus Auctioned Permit, both would work. But I think the Auctioned Permit, would be best.
Passing any law which overtly calls for the word "Tax" doesn't work very well against US Republicans. And I don't think politicians have the stomach to set a Tax at a level high enough to get results. Where as auctioned permits can be set at a level which is directly proportional to scientific reduction goals.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 10:55 am
06 Jun 2008
_
If offsets are equivalent to permits.
Then bogus offsets are equivalent to counterfeit permits.
Reducing the value of a permit to merely a bureaucratic platitude.
Making the whole process fall apart.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 11:11 am
06 Jun 2008
Since if you are truely Offsetting, then you aren't actually reducing emissions. You are merely holding the status quo.
Which isn't good enough if we're trying to reduce carbon emissions.
With any luck, axing the Offset provision from the bill will kill the concept of offsets entirely.
_________
Carbon fixation projects, (i.e. Maintaining Tropical Rainforest's) those could be funded enmasse as treaties between Federal-Governments using a slice of carbon legislation revenues.
The issue there being that we have less control over what happens in other countries. However thats what treaties are for.
Permalink
Delay And Deny Posted 12:27 pm
06 Jun 2008
The only lesson here is that one shouldn't make a move with two guys named Corey (Corey Haim and Corey...well, that other Corey...)
As far as climate. Sheesh...Kent, WA's looks like a cut and paste of Cloudy for the next umpteenth days...
Permalink
randino Posted 11:59 pm
06 Jun 2008
Now that I have dragged Sherrod Brown's name through the dirt, I think we need to study him to see what makes him tick and what would close off any potential excuses for him to make another dreadful vote like he did yesterday.
Brown made his reputation in Ohio as a friend of the working person, first and foremost. His great fear is that backing a climate change bill, he might add to the already horrendous burden that deindustrialization has put on the backs of working Ohioans, and leave him open to a challenger for the title of "friend of the people." Yes, we helped him get elected. But people holding on by their finger nails helped him even more and if the choice is between us and them, them will win (and in reality continue to lose.)
Also, and this is something that I think Van Jones is very on the mark with, the last thing we need is for demagouges on the pay of the fossil fuel industry to promote a populist backlash against environmentalists in general, and climate change action in particular. It does not take much of a political imagination to think up scenarios where people pissed off about $4 & $5 a gallon gas, look for a scape goat and find it in you and me. Any way you cut it, the changes we have to make, and in fact will make whether we like it or not, are the stuff of social dynamite and we have to give up smoking right now!!!!
If we can untie the Gordian knot in Ohio, we can handle just about anything.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Randy Cunningham
Permalink
randino Posted 12:29 am
07 Jun 2008
"The result of today's vote is wonderful news for working families, seniors and those trying to make ends meet, but tragic news for the environment."
In short one does not have anything to do with the other. The destruction of the environment is as irrelevant to the well being of Ohio residents, as a dust storm on Mars!
That is the mentality that will destroy us, my friends.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Randy Cunningham
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 12:48 am
07 Jun 2008
Ohio is an extremely varied crossroads state, as you know better than anyone, with different communities with different interests pointing in different directions.
Thanks for giving us some insight.
Voinovich has had his heroic moments of note, recently. But your criticism of his statement is perfect.
Meanwhile, I hope you can assure us that Dennis Kocinich will be returned to Congress in November.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
Permalink
Michael Shellenberger Posted 6:26 am
07 Jun 2008
One would have thought that with oil at $138 a barrel, and voter anxiety over rising prices, environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers might have considered an alternative approach, one focused on making clean energy cheap rather than making dirty energy expensive. But they couldn't get out of the pollution-price paradigm and cap and trade suffered yet another defeat. The most significant event was the letter from the Technology Ten in the Senate. The lesson? The new political center on climate will be defined around cost-containment and technology investment.
My full post is here:
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/06/who_killed_cap_an ...
Permalink
Colin Wright Posted 7:45 am
07 Jun 2008
In April 2007, the Financial Times (FT) launched an investigation into carbon trading that uncovered numerous problems with trading and offset schemes. "The rush to go green suggests easy money for investors in projects that reduce carbon dioxide output," the FT reported. "The reality is otherwise: many carbon projects turn out to be high risk." Carbon traders and analysts told the FT that because of project failures and over-optimism, "40-50 per cent of the carbon credits anticipated under the Kyoto protocol will never be delivered." Worse, as the FT's environment correspondent Fiona Harvey noted, carbon trading runs "the risk of fraud, such as sale of credits from carbon reduction projects that do not exist. It is often difficult for buyers and brokers to verify the existence and effectiveness of projects as many are in remote areas."
Also there, Tom Athanasiou writes:That the only way the Non-Annex 1 countries are going to make a "substantial deviation from baseline" emissions paths, in time, is if the wealthy countries provide them with the technology and development assistance necessary to do so without compromising their development prospects. Politically this can only happen in a progressive manner (not in the sense of "progressive politics" but in the sense of "progressive tax") as part of a package that mobilizes the longing for economic justice as well as the drive for climate stabilization. In other words, we need a new deal that's not limited to climate protection, but also reforms "development" and drives poverty alleviation in the wealthy world as well as the poor.
My own view is we need to combine some sort of Oil Depletion Protocol, actually an Energy Depletion Protocol, with appropriate greenhouse gas limits. Then we can actually have a functioning world economy that can provide for a carbon-free future without fear of energy bankrupcy.
Permalink
randino Posted 8:14 am
07 Jun 2008
The man is great. Really supported us with our Step It Up rallies, and was with us when we fought a coal fired power plant that Cleveland Public Power bullied the city council into buying into. He's the real thing.
Dennis is eternal.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Randy Cunningham
Permalink
Max8806 Posted 8:17 am
07 Jun 2008
But cap and trade is still the cheapest way to get an aggregate level of emissions reductions, if you want to be assured of getting anywhere near a certain level of reductions. Carbon tax will get you the cheapest reductions if you're fine with getting whatever mystery amount you get. And our modeling on predicting the level is not so solid, which I won't go into here. So if you feel compelled to achieve a certain level, which tends to be the case with the GHG/climate debate, we should still then be trying to figure out how to improve cap/trade, not replace it.
Permalink
Pangolin Posted 9:20 am
07 Jun 2008
Ohioans could be warm in the winters at an affordable cost if only we could structure the financing in a climate bill. If the goal was to convert all or most houses substantial savings on installation costs would accrue as drill rigs for the ground loops could stay on one block instead of driving around town.
All of this could be financed within the costs of their current utility bills if we just had a climate bill to provide a legal structure. Oh, and there would be substantial jobs created in the installation and maintenance of geo-exchange systems and solar panels. Jobs that could not be shipped overseas because they are attached to their houses.
Ohioans can understand warm houses for less money and more jobs as well as anybody. The problem with Lieberman-Warner is that it offered none of that. It was too easily attacked as an inside deal that would cost the average household.
Any properly constructed climate bill should be first and foremost a jobs bill in order to bring in the people who are watching their current jobs evaporate. Since conservation of energy and new wind, solar and geothermal power will require substantial labor to install this should not be a problem.
Put the Carbon Back
Permalink
randino Posted 12:05 pm
07 Jun 2008
Second, you would need inspired leadership. How are you going to get inspired leadership in a state like Ohio where the leaders in both parties are owned by Big Coal, Big Oil and the utilities. They aren't leaders. They are the employees of interests who think the status quo is just fine, and really don't give a squat what happens to the planet once they are clipping coupons in the hereafter.
Third, like the quote from Voinovich there is very little realization in Ohio that as goes the environment, so go we all. People came to Ohio not to enjoy the environment, but to chop it down, dig it up, put it into a blast furnace and turn it into wages and profits. They go somewhere else to enjoy nature. We are not dealing with a modern state. We are dealing with a state of nostalgia. A yearning for the good old days when the factories were booming, you could cut the air with a knife, and all the streams were dead. We are prisoners of a myth based on a reality that was never very nice or very just. An economic brutality that coarsened everything.
Until people let go of that nostalgia I don't know when they will come around on the climate. States like Ohio are the environmental equivalent to what the states of the old Confederacy were to desegregation. A bastion of reaction and resistance to change. The funny thing about the South, is that once segregation was smashed, it started prospering. The same thing could be true of Ohio, but as the case of Sherrod Brown shows, this is not going to be easy.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Randy Cunningham
Permalink