Eric de Place’s Posts

• Don't worry, be happy

  Gaming cap and trade: Should we worry? 3

  Posted 3 days, 3 hours agoWorries about “gaming” or market manipulation sometimes crop up as an objection to cap-and-trade, often with reference to recent shenanigans in the financial markets. While distrust and concerns about scamming a carbon market are understandable, they’re not warranted.

• More on gaming

  Paul Krugman Versus Matt Taibbi 0

  Posted 3 days, 3 hours ago

  I love reading Matt Taibbi. I mean, who else puts together a sentence like this?:

  The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

  Funny and righteous at the same time. Good stuff. But in a piece he wrote for Rolling Stone this past July, he made some awfully curious -- and curiously unsupported -- allegations about carbon markets:

  ...if the Democratic Party that [Goldman-Sachs] gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble,… Read More

• Cap and Trade doesn’t have game

  Have Cap-and-Trade Programs Been 0

  Posted 4 days, 6 hours ago

  I've got an emerging obsession: the risk of market manipulation in cap and trade programs. It's something you hear about all the time, at least in carbon policy circles, but the details about "gaming" always seem to be in very short supply. Still, it's something we should take a close look at because the alleged consequences are so severe.

  So at the moment, I'm gearing up to read everything important that's been written on the subject. (If you know of good stuff, please send it my way.) In the meantime, I want to share this recent short brief written by economist… Read More

• If Thoreau had been on the Internet

  The future of storytelling? 0

  Posted 4 weeks, 1 day agoRecently, I had the good fortune to encounter some folks who may well be the next generation of great environmental storytellers: Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele.

• The Right on parking

  Free Market Parking From Canada 0

  Posted 1 month ago

  My cries have been answered.

  In Canada, at least, there is such a thing as a free market think tank with a free market perspective on parking policy. The Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy recently published a concise little position paper, "How Free Is Your Parking?" by Stuart Donovan.

  It makes three points, briefly:

  1. Parking regulations suppress economic activity:

  Parking regulations suppress economic activity in a number of ways. Most importantly parking regulations tie up large areas of urban land and reduce the space available for other, potentially… Read More

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Eric de Place’s Recent Comments

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  But JMG, not a single issue that you raise is a problem for carbon cap & trade.
  
  Procedurally, cap & trade will work very much like a carbon tax. It will require permits for carbon UPSTREAM, at the first place where carbon enters the economy (mine mounth, oil wellhead, pipeline, tanker, etc). It has nothing to do with lawnmowers or individuals. It's just like how we have a federal gasoline tax now and people mowing their lawns don't have to calculate what they owe.
  
  In fact, we already carefully track and tax nearly all of the carbon that enters our economy before its combusted. Because of the physical properties of fossil fuels, we already know in advance their carbon content -- every gallon of gasoline is nearly carbon-identical to every other -- so we can easily require energy importers and producers to hold permits equivalent to volume of carbon that they introduce. Roughly 90% of US carbon emissions are like this: EASY to quantify, track, and enforce.
  
  The other roughly 10% falls outside the boundaries of cap & trade (and outside the boundaries of taxes too) -- these are things like agricultural emissions and logging.
  
  Plus, a properly conceived cap & trade wouldn't deal with carbon sinks and all their complexity. (An offsets program, which could be a feature of c, taxes, or regulation, might try to deal with sinks.)
  
  Your carbon cycle objection is irrelevant too. CO-2, the vast majority of emissions, is a very well-understood gas. Other ghgs treated by converting their carbon content into "CO-2 equivalents" usually on a 100-year basis. This is the recommended methodology of the IPCC, among others. So permits are required for the volume of CO-2 on a 100 year basis (which, again, is exactly how a smart carbon tax would tax carbon).
  
  In fact, a carbon cap & trade system would work -- no, already DOES work -- just like the SOx and NOx markets. To quote you: "the participants have every incentive to keep each other honest, because the value of their emissions reductions depends on everybody participating honestly." That's a great point!
  
  If you'd like to do some reading about cap & trade, you should check out Sightline's primer: "Cap and Trade 101". I suspect you'll find it illuminating:
  http://www.sightline.org/research/energy/res_pubs/cap-and-trade-101

  On Cap and trade works! posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago 4 Responses

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  Sure it does

  vakibs,

  I think you're being a little unfair. Huntsman said it would help reach the 20% goal. And I think it pretty clearly does help.

  Obviously, Utah will need more tools in it's energy efficiency toolbox, but there are some really good indications so far. For one thing, Utah's joined the Western Climate Initiatve -- which means at least an executive-level commitment to carbon cap & trade. On Taking a three-day weekend for the planet posted 1 year, 3 months ago 2 Responses

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  Jon Rynn -- brilliant!

  Jon, I SO wish I'd included that calculation. I just crunched the numbers via spreadsheet. Here's the nut:

  You save more gasoline trading from 15 to 18 than you do trading from 50 to 100. On When is a Tundra a better buy than a Prius? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 47 Responses

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  you're right, odograph

  Obviously, the BEST thing would be to swap out the Durango for a Prius. No argument from me!

  I just think it's interesting that the low-end improvements make a bigger difference than the upper-end fixes. On When is a Tundra a better buy than a Prius? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 47 Responses

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  Agreeing is fun

  "They need to act on their own, no matter what we do; we need to act on our own, no matter what they do; everyone has compelling internal reasons to act, independent of what the other players do. That's my point."

  Yep. Whether or not it was clear, that was sort of the point of my original post: we in North America should just STFU about how big and dirty China is. Instead, we should actually do something about the mess we've created. On China and the U.S. are both obliged to act on climate change, quick-like posted 1 year, 11 months ago 7 Responses