As Adam pointed out, it seems to have become conventional wisdom among media that the presidential candidates' positions on climate change are roughly identical. But the campaigns themselves don't see it that way. That became clear during a panel featuring the candidates' top energy advisors.
Obama was represented by Jason Grumet, whose day job is running the Bipartisan Policy Center. The Clinton campaign sent Gene Sperling, senior fellow at both the Council of Foreign Relations and the Center for American Progress and onetime (Bill) Clinton National Economic Adviser. In the Republican corner was Douglas Holtz-Eakin, widely respected former head of CBO, current senior fellow at the CFR, and McCain's policy director.
Let me just say that this was a fantastic way to explore the candidates' take on climate. With candidates themselves, you inevitably get variations on the stump speech. These guys were less programmed, less polished, and more authentically interested in policy. It was highly educational.
As everyone knows by now, all three candidates support a cap-and-trade system. Beyond that top-line commonality, however, the discussion revealed at least three substantial and significant differences.
Permit auctions
First was the issue of how to distribute pollution permits under the C&T system. Obama and Clinton both support auctioning 100 percent of the permits; McCain doesn't.
Holtz-Eakin dismissed 100 percent auction as a "blackboard exercise." He cited industries' "different historical costs" and "different ability to pass costs on to consumers" as support for McCain's mix of auction and allocation (mirroring the position of the coal utilities). What he didn't specify is just what that mix would be -- particularly whether he'd want more or less allocation than what the Lieberman-Warner bill provides.
Jason Grumet provided a succinct defense of auctions as "the right aspiration":
- Economists say 100 percent auctions is most efficient;
- one of the main problems with the debate is complexity and concern about pork barrel shenanigans -- 100 percent auctions is simple and transparent;
- our electricity sector is half-regulated and half-deregulated, and it's extremely difficult to come up with an allocation scheme that works fairly across both.
He added that we "need to get this done," implying that Obama would be willing to compromise (clear enough from Obama's co-sponsorship of three climate bills in the Senate, none of which have 100 percent auction).
Sperling also emphasized the key point that 100 percent auction is more transparent than the alternatives: It puts the money in public coffers where we can have an open, democratic debate about how it should be spent and how families can be protected.
Supplemental policies
It was Holtz-Eakin who made the point that beneath the surface of cap-and-trade is a broad philosophical difference. McCain's opponents, he said, would not stop with cap-and-trade. They would supplement it with additional policies and regulations: increases in CAFE, efficiency standards, renewable portfolio standards, etc. This, Holtz-Eakin contended, was a symptom of their addiction to the heavy hand of government control, used to "micromanage" the economy. McCain, he said, would pass cap-and-trade and otherwise get out of the way and let the economy do its thing.
Grumet made the point that to get the reductions we need purely with cap-and-trade, you'd need a price per ton of carbon so high as to be prohibitive -- on the order of $150/ton. A more reasonable price, say $35, wouldn't do much to affect, say, the transportation sector. That is precisely why you need CAFE and other supplemental policies (efficiency standards, utility decoupling, etc.).
(For what it's worth, as I understand it Grumet has the better of this one. Most energy policy analysts I know of recognize that a reasonable price on carbon is only the beginning, and will not in and of itself get us where we need to go.)
Nuclear power
McCain's position on nuclear is well known: he's fer it. Holtz-Eakin said the problems with nuclear are political, not technical (he dinged Reid for standing in the way of Yucca).
Sperling and Grumet took slightly different tones -- Sperling more skeptical and agnostic, Grumet more enthusiastic -- but they described basically the same policy: if nuke can solve its well-known problems with cost, waste, and proliferation danger, they're for it. But only if it can solve those problems. This is simple to say, but of course actually solving those problems is a huge, uncertain undertaking and would at the very least delay the start of a new round of nuclear plants.
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These differences are not small potatoes -- not the kind of things that should be glossed over by the media, and certainly not by voters.
Here's a video of highlights from the panel:
New nukes? A fair shot, not a free ride
To unlock wind power, put a price on carbon
Comments
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GRLCowan Posted 4:39 am
15 Mar 2008
Let the baby light matches in the fuel storage room!
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human power Posted 6:03 am
15 Mar 2008
Cap and trade would allow the wealthy class to continue living like Al Gore, with no sacrifices necessary. Individual quotas, especially nontradable ones, affect everyone equally. If we want to succeed in preventing the worst of climate change, we do need to dramatically reduce our carbon footprints and that is unlikely to happen if we don't work together.
These fascist-inspired cap and trade schemes divide us by wealth; individual quotas would put us all in this together. We could start with gasoline/diesel (which would make improved CAFE standards moot), move on to grid power (okay, the wealthy can get a break by buying P.V.panels) and then tackle the beast of consumables (which has the added benefit of reducing imports from coal-intensive China).
Has Thirty-five years of nearly nonstop fascist leaders caused us to completely forget what a human-based, as opposed to corporate-based, society would even look like? For the sake of a future for life on this planet, I sure hope not.
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bigTom Posted 9:22 am
15 Mar 2008
Of course taxes are better -and would generate government revenues which could be distribted to the people. But that is a political nonstarter.
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GRLCowan Posted 9:50 am
15 Mar 2008
It would be much, much better to get the distribution going and then forget to raise the taxes than to ... um ... there's another way it could happen, right? How would that go?
Let the baby light matches in the fuel storage room!
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BlackbirdHighway Posted 12:16 am
16 Mar 2008
An immediate ban on all new coal plants.
A plan to elimiante coal plants over a period of time, preferably as quickly as possible. Since this is going to encounter extreme reistance from the coal lobby, and coal state congresspersons, we will need a realistic way to convince them to go along. That probably means spending lots of cash to buy them out. Throw cash at coal produceers to get them into some other business. Throw money to coal states to get them to realign their economies to some other industry.
Huge incentives are neeeded for solar and wind and other alternatives. We need to look at the German solar program and setup something similar here.
The reality of the situation is that we will still need nuclear power. We need to solve the waste issue, and it is solvable. We can learn some lessons from France. They reproccess used fuel into new fuel, while we just treat it as waste. Their method means must less waste, and less need to mine fresh uranium too.
A huge push is needed to get electric cars on the road. Ethanol and biodiesel can help some, but are not really effective fixes overall. Higher taxes on oil, investment in electric and battery research are needed. Also incentives for both makers and buyers of BEVs and PHEVs.
Setting a goal for emissions in 2050 is not very helpful. That's like setting out on a drive from NY to LA, without determining the route first. You need to have intermediate goals, or you're not going to get there. You need to know whether you're going to go through Chicago, or St. Louis or what. We need emissions goals for 2012, 202, 2030, 2040, and 2050.
We won't have the money to do any of this unless we end the Iraq war, ASAP.
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Jay Alt Posted 9:55 am
16 Mar 2008
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/7/235140/6275
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lorna salzman Posted 4:14 am
17 Mar 2008
As for nukes, we not only don't need them if we unleash renewables by ending fossil fuel subsidies and implement serious efficiency measures and regulations across the board, but we wont GET THEM because they are too expensive, take too long to bring on line in any meaningful time period, divert money away from efficiency and renewables, and because efficiency can reduce our end uses of electricity quickly and more cheaply , thus replacing BOTH coal and nukes. As Amory Lovins once said, nuclear power is a future energy source whose time is past.
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amazingdrx Posted 5:15 am
17 Mar 2008
But please, no carbon tax or C and T. More boondoggle fuel farm funding, oil warring, and hedge fund scamming will be the only results.
Divert subsidies instead. Dis-incentivize carbon energy monopolies and directly subsidize homeoners, farmers, and small business with 10 cent per kwh subsidy for renewables and conservation. Checks for solar panel, geo heat exchange, farm biogas, wind farm, and plugin hybrid owner/investors.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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wgartist Posted 6:02 am
17 Mar 2008
As for sulfur? Yeah I want whoever wants to use my sulfur allotment to buy it from me. Each year.
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amazingdrx Posted 6:12 am
17 Mar 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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mwildfire Posted 10:34 am
17 Mar 2008
On the suggestion above by Dr X: No. You CANNOT pay people not to reproduce, thus making parenthood of the next generation a privilege of wealth, without huge social justice complications. Better to deal with the need to reduce population the only fair way: give every woman the right to one child. Doesn't matter who you are, you can give birth once. If you're male, you have to persuade a woman to choose you as the father (and some would father more than one). Anyway, this certainly won't happen until problems are very much worse than now, and it's much more likely to happen via the usual Horsemen (famine, War, pestilence)than through policy choices.
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