Last week, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chair of the Energy & Commerce Committee, dropped this bomb (sub. rqd.):
My own judgment is that we are going to have to adopt a cap-and-trade system and some form of carbon emission fee to achieve the reductions we need.
Lest you missed it, "carbon emission fee" is clever poli-speak for carbon tax.
Meanwhile, the liberal grassroots group MoveOn has launched a full frontal assault on Dingell, with radio ads calling him a "Dingellsaurus." They're joined by several other groups, including Greenpeace, which has called for Dingell's ouster as chair of the E&C Committee. The focus of the attacks is Dingell's continued opposition to boosting CAFE standards.
This makes me very nervous. If Dingell comes up with a bill that is seriously and thoughtfully designed to make steep cuts in GHG emissions, and it includes both a cap-and-trade program and a carbon fee, that will be vastly more consequential than anything happening around CAFE.
I don't think people quite appreciate what Dingell's done here. He's the first member of Congress with any power or seniority to even mention a carbon tax, much less endorse it. He's putting up a trial balloon, nudging the Overton Window. It's an opportunity for the rest of us to run with it -- to take something that's suddenly got a toehold in the realm of political possibility and pound it home.
"Do you, like House Energy Committee chair John Dingell, support a carbon tax?" Kind of changes the tenor of the question, doesn't it?
Dingell needs political cover on this. A carbon tax is a huge deal, a game-changer, and if it's taking root, even tenuously, it needs to be nurtured.
In contrast, CAFE is -- all due respect to the political warriors who have spent decades doggedly pursuing the issue -- something of a sideshow. It's a symbolic fight. The Senate just passed, with much fanfare, a bill that would set CAFE at 35mpg by 2020. With fully electric cars on the road today, and plug-in hybrids that get 100mpg just around the corner, does anyone think 35mpg won't be anachronistic by 2020? CAFE worked incredibly well when it was first passed, but by now it is trailing, not pushing, fuel efficiency technology.
My point: Dingell is a prideful man. An insulting attack from the left right now could get his dander up. He's no spring chicken -- he knows how to win a political knife fight. He can have it with greens, or he can have it with opponents of carbon caps. I'd much rather have him on our side.
IMO, the smarter play on MoveOn's part would have been to blast its three million members with the happy news: The fight for a carbon tax now has a key congressional ally! Tie Dingell to his words, and signal to every other member of Congress that a carbon tax is now a live issue, not a theoretical one.
Anyway, I just hope this doesn't turn into yet another circular firing squad among progressives, when we all need to be pulling in the same direction: cutting carbon emissions. That's the ultimate goal, right?
New nukes? A fair shot, not a free ride
To unlock wind power, put a price on carbon
Comments
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Charles Barton Posted 3:39 am
27 Jun 2007
Ontario has just decided to phase out coal fired power plants by 2030. This was brought about in no small measure by the Canadian medical community, that focused on the health care social costs of Coal generated electricity. Numerous proposals for coal fired electrical plants have received dramatic public opposition in this country. The educational process is moving forward, and is beginning to have impact on energy related decisions. The process needs time.
Charles Barton
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sunflower Posted 4:25 am
27 Jun 2007
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DogsCatsAndStrays Posted 4:44 am
27 Jun 2007
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:49 am
27 Jun 2007
That said, the pressure shouldn't be removed.
Most politicians are only kept honest if they know people are watching.
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Matt Leonard Posted 5:39 am
27 Jun 2007
While the Senate's proposal is admirable in that it will at least stop the current stagnation of CAFE standards - it is still weak. Sadly, the existing CAFE standards (that haven't moved in a decade-plus) are still leading fuel efficiency - at least as far as fleet-wide averages go. It's no secret that the US fleet doesn't really meet CAFE standards - they exploit loopholes left and right (flex-fuel, truck exemptions etc) to at least come close. Overall real-world fuel economy has decreased in past years - so CAFE still sets the bar higher than the market is providing.
Yes, cars that can vastly surpass CAFE are on the road and in the engineering rooms - but they largely remain niche cars. Hybrids have been on the road for what? 6 years? And last year they hit only 2-3% of overall sales. Plug-ins won't be commercially available (widespread) for at least 4 more years (at best), then we wait another 6 years for them to catpure 3% of the market. That puts us right up to 2020 - without a substantial change in overall fleet average. Without CAFE (or dramatic increases in market pressures for fuel economy) - cars with good fuel economy will remain a niche.
CAFE sadly IS pushing fuel economy - its the current loopholes and stagnation that have rendered it inneffective. The Senate proposal is a step in the right direction, but we need regular increases beyond 2020 as well, that's the big ball that got dropped.
I think we need to hit this from all angles. I support a carbon tax (or "Fee" or whatever Dingleberry wants to call it) and carbon caps (but have little faith that the caps won't be determined by corporate interests), but we also need other regulatory incentives for efficiency and clean energy.
Strong CAFE standards can be a huge step towards developing efficienct vehicles- and it doesn't have to come with an economic hit to consumers. Just as with seatbelt proposals decades ago - automakers cry fears of bankruptcy in the face of CAFE increases - but it is will, not economics or technology, that is holding them back.
-Matt
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vball Posted 5:47 am
27 Jun 2007
CAFE is no panacea. Again, politically, CAFE is an attempt to regulate corporate conduct without touching the drivers (i.e., voters) who are (1) choosing what cars they are driving, and then (2) wasting gas and polluting with those cars. Thus, the CAFE mindset holds that carmakers are to blame for the conduct of consumers, which is surely not the whole elephant. Conservatives have made the dubious argument that increasing efficiency actually increases the incentive to drive. On this logic, inefficient SUVs are apparently our salvation, which is just the sort of crazyness one expects from loopy hacks. It is certainly the case, however, that raising CAFE does not have a direct and exclusive effect on the amount of emissions in this country. The amount of emissions from any emitting car is ultimately determined by the amount it is driven. Raising the cost of energy would have a more direct effect, but because it is politically unpopular we are left with a never ending debate over CAFE.
The "corporate average" (CAFE) system is in some respects bizarre. No fine has ever been imposed on the Big 3, which produce this country's most inefficient vehicles, because when their whole fleet is averaged their vehicles are more efficient than imports that essentially don't get the benefit of averaging. That is in some respects the poltical virtue and environmental vice of the system -- bizarre protectionism. Manufacturers, such as Ferrari and BMW, have paid millions upon millions of fines under the CAFE system. An inconsistently applied protectionist luxury tax is perhaps fine and dandy, but it doesn't really address the inefficient use of oil in this country.
Although there has never been any evidence that the CAFE system has had an adverse impact on the Big 3, Dingell has consistently sought to keep it that way by seeking to derail proposals that would transform the industry -- bizarrely or otherwise. What we need from Dingell and from the environmental community is a win-win vision of how to move this country's fleet from inefficient vehicles to more efficient vehicles. One of the best ways to do this without the bizarre effects of averaging is to create fee-bates, whereby fees placed on inefficient vehicles subsidize more efficient vehicles. Of course, that would mean that we would be honest about actually doing something that would have an effect on consumers. There is no reason to believe that Detroit cannot survive the transition to efficiency, and insofar as Dingell and the Big 3 insists that this is the case, we should be going after them both with verve.
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cjbtso Posted 5:54 am
27 Jun 2007
Sierra Club's MPG Calculator (http://www.sierraclub.org/mpg/) figures out how much current fuel-saving technology could save car owners - and the environment - based on the year and make of the car and the average cost of a gallon of gas in one's given area. There are other links for more information and ways to take action towards better fuel efficiency etc., as well.
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David Roberts Posted 6:02 am
27 Jun 2007
grist.org
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naturescene Posted 6:26 am
27 Jun 2007
CAFE is designed to lag the market. It's a political symbol for the people that care about those things (ahem, Greenpeace).
I do have a question though, slightly off topic. How important is reducing emissions from transportation. Don't emissions from electricity production dwarf those from transportation? I may be wrong, but I thought I saw that. Maybe we should focus on one at a time. Or better yet, has anyone done a Cost-Benefit Analysis to see where cheaper reductions can be made - energy production or transportation?
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Rune Posted 6:32 am
27 Jun 2007
That is simply untrue. Pete Stark, the number two person on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, has already introduced the Save Our Climate Act, which has at its core a carbon tax. Dingell had nothing to do with it, nor did he want to, it seems.
If you look at what Dingell proposed in his CAFE standards legislation, it was dumb, dangerous, and deserving of scorn. Not only would his bill promote "clean" coal, but it would take away the power of states like California to set tougher standards than the poor excuses for farm subsidies and continued automobile pollution that keep coming from Washington in the guise of actually doing something meaningful about GHG or toxins that are making people sick and killing them before their time. On that basis alone, Dingell deserves a trip to the woodshed to remind him of what he already knew: CAFE standards were eviscerated by Reagan and they have been actively ignored (often by Dingell himself) ever since.
It is long past time to get CAFE admitted into the ER for some urgent life saving action instead of sitting by while Dingell and his backers in Congress act like uncaring hospital bureaucrats caving into insurance companies constructing routine roadblocks to necessary treatment while making it seem that there is some reasonable basis for handing out what are, practically speaking, death sentences for those they are being paid to protect. And that is what Dingell's proposal was: a death sentence for those who have been denied relief from the unnecessary pollution of millions of cars sold in the U.S., many of them by companies based in his state.
Offering to do something meaningful later when a "global warming" bill is rolled out this Fall is just another cop out. There is no reason why he needs to wait for a global warming bill if he wants to get something done about CAFE standards, which even the auto industry has admitted for years are quite attainable, if unpopular when SUV buyers thought cheap gasoline was here to stay. And let's remember that the global warming legislation he is waiting on is coming out of a new committee that was formed mostly as a means of getting around the road blocks that Dingell is known to throw in the way of real efforts to address the contributions of automobiles to energy waste, unhealthful air, and, now, global warming.
Dingell is in the way of progress on energy efficiency and practical steps toward decreasing the use of the dirtiest and most unsafe forms of energy. One of his primary tactics is to jump in front of these issues and then load them up with loopholes and trap doors, which is what he just attempted with his failed CAFE proposals. Good for MoveOn for finally doing something--maybe not the most effective thing, but something--to call him on his role in the matter.
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sunflower Posted 6:59 am
27 Jun 2007
We use oil and gas to heat homes, then propose liquid coal, ethanol, and CAFE for cars while we ignore the houses. How stupid can we get?
We use natural gas at food processors, by the millions of dollars per plant, while we subsidize wind and solar power to displace coal power. Really dumb.
I do not care about CAFE. Internal engines are dead cars rolling. Nothing will preserve that technology into the future. We won't even have a future if we continue grinding axes while our Earth burns. I will support anybody, even Bush, if the plan is to levy a meaningful tax on carbon, or just a meaningful tax on coal, like $100/ton.
I used to care about oil, cars, and spotted owls. But times have changed. TAX CARBON all the way to Hell...
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Biodiversivist Posted 8:18 am
27 Jun 2007
As for how much oil we use (via KS):
http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/photo/energyusegrid.jpg
I'm also with Sunflower,
Biodiesel producers even want consumers to heat their homes with this precious fuel scraped from the biosphere of the planet. We should be using better insulation, passive solar and other assorted methods for most of that.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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caniscandida Posted 8:39 am
27 Jun 2007
BioD, that is an amazing graph! Not easy to interpret, though. Is there anything about it that strikes you as especially surprising?
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:03 am
27 Jun 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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vball Posted 10:08 am
27 Jun 2007
We need pay-as-you-drive auto insurance, congestion fees, toll roads, gas taxes, carpooling incentives, better public transit, fee-bates and/or (real) gas guzzler taxes and/or some other type of efficiency regulation, safe streets for non-drivers, and land use that is not exclusively based on the automobile. We need a carbon tax and an enforceable carbon trading system wouldn't hurt at all insofar as some emissions just aren't going to go away anytime soon. I'm not going to fly to europe with renewables in my lifetime, and somehow the cost to the world of those emissions needs to be internalized.
Biodiversivist, your chart is unclear. Not all energy use results in the same amount carbon emissions (e.g., hydroelectric = none). What the heck is your chart supposed to represent?
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Matt Leonard Posted 10:28 am
27 Jun 2007
I agree - the amount we drive is more important (but related) to the per-unit emissions of that driving. CAFE certainly isn't everything, but it could be quite substantial. More than a few studies have been done projecting the required cost increase at the pump (either via the market or taxes) before driving habits would be substantially scaled back. Lots of people complain about rising gas costs, but so far aren't dramatically cutting back on their driving.
Unless gas costs get high enough to actually curb usage - making that usage more efficient is imperative. But it's not an either-or situation, we need incentives to encourage less driving and to make driving more efficient.
-Matt
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Charles Barton Posted 12:56 am
28 Jun 2007
Charles Barton
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Chris M Posted 4:23 am
28 Jun 2007
Reductions in transportation related emissions are essential and failure to get on a path toward major reductions from tailpipes will make it impossible to reduce total emissions by 80 percent by mid-century. Our analysis shows that even if we cut transportation related emissions in half, the sector's share of total emissions will double from one to two-thirds of the problem by mid-century.
Our concern with Mr. Dingell's position does not come from his rhetoric on climate change, but rather the initial legislation that he and Mr. Boucher submitted to the Committee. The draft legislation was not only inadequate because it did not include a renewable portfolio standard or increases to mandatory fuel economy standards. The larger problem with the draft was that it included several extremely harmful provisions. Although these provisions have been removed from consideration today and yesterday they have not been taken off the table by Mr. Dingell yet.
I'd like to encourage David and anyone else who's interested to check out my recent blog post that reviews what the draft legislation would do. In the end, Mr. Dingell must lead or get out of the way.
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Rune Posted 9:36 am
28 Jun 2007
Rather than pontificating about the wisdom or realism of continuing to play the games of U.S. politics and policy that have put the country in a deep and sinking hole when it comes to GHG emissions (as but one concern of relevance to this discussion), I think it makes more sense to look to countries that are actually succeeding and see what they regard as the best ways to make further progress. Sweden was featured last week as a modern, industrial country that is making great strides toward reducing both the use of fossil fuels and GHG emissions. Here is what the head of Sweden's EPA, Lars-Erik Liljelund, said it would take for his country to satisfy the goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 25-30% by 2020:
We can accomplish this with relatively small effects on the Swedish economy. But it is crucial that the state takes powerful measures to direct the process. This is not going to happen by itself.
The news article from which the quote was taken makes clear that Liljelund's comment was made in the context of both carbon taxes and markets for carbon emissions trading.
As we have seen in the S&L scandal, the banking scandal, the Alyeska pipeline scandal, the lack of double hulls and clean up crews in Alaska scandal (commonly known as the Exxon Valdez disaster), the energy trading scandal that brought down Enron and the associated accounting and auditing scandal, to name but a few striking examples off the top of my head, big business tends toward corrupting market functions in mature industries when not subject to diligent and proactive government regulation and oversight. It's just too tempting to try to lie and cheat when (1) the responsible decision makers can usually get rich and move on before the scandal is discovered, (2) the eventual punishment is generally less costly than the rewards of cheating (note, for example, that Exxon still has not paid even the greatly reduced damage award it was ordered to pay years ago), and (3) competitors are likely to cheat and run the honest companies out of business before lengthy, expensive, and uncertain litigation can correct the situation.
Which brings us back to Dingell and the corporations he does his best to protect in return for their support. He knows all this as do the lobbyists of his business benefactors. They know that conditions have finally gotten to the point that the public won't stand for doing nothing any longer, so he tried the next best thing from the standpoint of the local car companies--a nonbinding efficiency standard with lots of loopholes and giveaways to other polluting industries whose favor he is courting. That failed, so now it's onto a carbon trading scheme that can probably be designed to allow just the sort of abuse that led to the host of business scandals I mentioned above. I think those who truly want meaningful change on the GHG emission front in the U.S. in their lifetimes are naive to think that a market based system of taxes and carbon credits trading--especially if done internationally--will do the trick unless it is backed by tough regulations, inspections, and enforcement with criminal penalties. There is every reason to believe that such a scheme will amount to nothing more than a new way to make money using old tricks in the name of genuine progress if it does not include some robust and unfettered verification and enforcement. Given how little attention is being paid to that point, I doubt that there much chance that we will get anything of the sort if we don't start pushing that point hard and immediately.
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kduble Posted 2:07 am
04 Jul 2007
A reasonable motor fuels tax would rise 5 cents a year for the first five years and 10 cents a year for the next 10. As the typical motorist would change vehicles two or three times in that 15-year time span, drivers would have plenty of time to replace their vehicles with more fuel-efficient ones, and Detroit would have plenty of time to supply them.
Although petroleum scarcity will increase prices as much as the tax during this period, by accelerating the demand curve for clean transportation we buy ourselves more time before the oil runs out, and reduce emissions at the same time.
Ken Duble
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