Peter Barnes' proposal is popping up everywhere these days, most recently in U.S. News and World Report. The idea is simple: Put a cap on emissions, and divide that cap into permits. Sell those permits upstream -- mostly to just a few hundred fossil fuel producers and importers. They in turn will pass the cost of those permits on to consumers. Divide the revenue from the auctions among consumers, which makes up for the higher prices.
Read the article for details.
Update: "Rebate" changed to "Refund" as GreyFlcn suggested.
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Max8806 Posted 8:23 am
06 Jun 2008
Also, as much as I like the idea, (I wrote on oped supporting it, or at least something close to it)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008 ...
you really do need some investment in advanced research. The cap can compel companies to deploy today's solutions, but the public sector needs to be involved in finding tomorrow's.
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Gar Lipow Posted 8:35 am
06 Jun 2008
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:50 am
06 Jun 2008
Step 1. Separate the permit mechanism from the offset mechanism (Avoid Corruption)
Step 2. Create a physically/scientifically limited cap, rather than an esoteric tax (Avoid Corruption)
Step 3. Then play around with the money however you see fit, but ideally a significant portion of it could go to funding forestry/green-energy-finance-or-R&D programs.
If they wanted to get the most benefit from the rebate mechanism for people, they would give more to those who earn less. Effectively those who could least afford higher energy prices.
Or frankly they can mix and match how they feel like spending the pot of money in whatever way will get enough votes.
The crucial part though is the first two mechanisms.
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I like the acronym too.
CAR didn't really sound that good to me. And the emphatic addition of Rebate "Everything" plays out pretty well to get the rebate point across. And "CARE" has a nice sociological ring to it.
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Now to actually read the article....
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David Roberts Posted 8:58 am
06 Jun 2008
grist.org
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:16 am
06 Jun 2008
Rebate is certainly more wonkish, but for layman's Mail-In-Rebates are annoying and unreliable.
Refunds on the other hand are more semantically appealing.
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Gar Lipow Posted 9:25 am
06 Jun 2008
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Max8806 Posted 6:47 pm
06 Jun 2008
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hapa Posted 1:32 am
07 Jun 2008
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Max8806 Posted 2:31 am
07 Jun 2008
It also depends on how you define low-hanging fruit. Relatively, we'd be picking low-hanging fruit through 2030 under a carbon cap. That's because the entire electricity generation sector is the low-hanging fruit when you look at the entire economy. 82-92% of the cuts through 2030 for Lieberman-Warner were projected to come from the electric power sector (EIA). That says a lot, if you can go that high up the Marginal Cost curve in one sector and still be below most of the 'low hanging fruit' in the other sectors.
So investment in better batteries to allow the transportation sector to come under the electric power sector's umbrella, to ease emissions reductions since it takes very high gas prices to curtail driving even just a bit. Or next generation biofuels that are way more land-efficient, because you need to not just keep off of food crops, but even crops that compete with food crops for agricultural land if you don't want to accelerate deforestation with sharply rising global demand for food. Certain industrial processes are fundamentally energy intensive, or even directly emissions intensive for chemical reasons and will need major gains in efficiency or new processes.
Its ambitious enough just to halt emissions growth, much less curtail it 10, 20, 30% in the face of population growth, and sustained economic growth that like it or not is a prerequisite for continued political support. If we're serious about emissions reductions on the scale necessary to do something about climate change, vastly increased support for research is a necessity.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:33 am
07 Jun 2008
Guzzle gas, use coal fired electricity, and heat/cool your home as usual and you get no refund. Produce solar, wind, or biogas electricity, buy a plugin hybrid, and heat/cool your home with geo heat exchange and you get a refubnd to pay for it all.
If you don't, you pay up for your wasteful ways.
Of course this would be seen as punitive, especially as energy prices rise due to the cap and permit system.
An even better way to actually make this all work, would be to simply divert the 10s of billions in subsidies (now going to fossil, nuclear, and agribizz fuel farming) to subsidize consumer's renewable/conservation energy choices directly.
It would not be seen as a new tax.
The danger of cap and refund is that nothing will be done, money will change hands from industry to government to consumers and right back to industry again. A fruitless cycle that won't encourage investment in solar panels or plugin cars or geo heat exchange systems.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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RL Posted 11:45 am
07 Jun 2008
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RL Posted 11:47 am
07 Jun 2008
The environmentalists' alleged "scientific consensus" is much like the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, behind which the supposedly infallible wizard dictated to his minions. Beyond that curtain, however, the wizard was nothing more than an ordinary little man perpetrating a fraud upon those who worshipped his doctrine. And once Toto removed that curtain, the fraud was exposed for all to see.
Similarly, environmentalists' mythical "scientific consensus" has served as a shroud behind which they have sought to maintain an air of infallibility. By falsely claiming a closed consensus and excoriating anyone who speaks out against their flawed orthodoxy, environmental extremists seek to prevent any objective, scientific debate that might inhibit their political agenda.
That shroud, however, was further torn this week by a 31,000-strong petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM). According to the OISM's board of scientists, "a review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th Century have produced no deleterious effects upon global weather, climate, or temperature."
To the contrary, the OISM notes that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide have actually increased plant growth rates, among other positive effects. On this basis, the OISM concludes that "predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are in error and do not conform to current experimental knowledge."
Accordingly, the straightforward petition reads:
We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
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. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
The petition itself appears alongside a letter from the late Frederick Seitz, a former President of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Seitz stated that "the United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and technologies that depend upon coal, oil, natural gas and some other organic compounds." He therefore warned that, "this treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research into data on climate change does not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful."
It should be noted that the OISM's petition effort receives absolutely no funding from the energy industry, or from anyone else with a financial interest in the ongoing climate change debate. Rather, its funding derives entirely from private, non-tax-deductible contributions from individual donors.
Global warming alarmists will nevertheless exclaim, like the "wizard" in The Wizard of Oz, "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" Their agenda simply cannot tolerate dissent, contrary evidence, or objective discussion of the matter. Instead, they cling to the claim of a false consensus, and liken any objective disagreement to flat-earth proponents. According to Al Gore, for instance, "there is as strong a consensus on this issue as science has ever had."
Oh? Is it as strong as the supposed consensus when Newsweek announced on November 23, 1992 that "the advent of a new ice age, scientists say, appears to be guaranteed," and that "the devastation will be astonishing?"
Gore's comment is obviously absurd on its face. A scientific consensus does exist in well-settled scientific subjects, such as the laws of gravity or physics. But this is certainly not the case when it comes to climate change.
We can thank the OISM, its leadership and its 31,000 participating scientists for helping shatter the environmentalists' myth.
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:28 pm
07 Jun 2008
To start with Sietz was a lobbyist for RJ Reynolds Tobacco, in their campaign to deny that smoking had any link to lung cancer.
And of course, OISM has only 1 paid staff member in it's entirety. It's a propaganda front.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institu ...
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But yeah, just saying that you can get a bunch of signatures from people who may or may not even exist, and may or may not have any scientific credentials at all, much less relevant ones, over the course of ten years, isn't really saying much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
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Anyways, the easy counter-argument to your claim:
There isn't a single scientific institution in the world that says that manmade actions aren't a primary cause of the warming we've experienced in the past few decades. (Including the American Association of Petroleum Geologists)
Even the US Whitehouse now agrees to the above statement.
"[M]ost of the recent global warming is very likely due to human generated increases in greenhouse gas concentrations." While there are still questions about the role of sunspots and other natural variations, the report says that "emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use and from the effects of land use change are the primary sources of this increase."
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/05/29/whit ...
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amazingdrx Posted 2:21 pm
07 Jun 2008
http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/legislative_issues/federal_iss ...
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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