Daily Score by Eric de Place
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Listen and learn
How carbon markets work in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative 0
Posted 1 week, 5 days ago With all the hand-wringing over the alleged risk of market manipulation in cap-and-trade, you'd almost forget that the United States already has a carbon cap-and-trade program up and running. But it does. Read More -
‘Subprime carbon’: Risk or hype? 1
Posted 2 weeks ago Friends of the Earth argues that carbon trading could bring down the economy, putting climate policy into the hands of Bernie Madoff-style Wall Street bankers. Of course, this isn’t true. It’s not even sort of true. It’s just an attempt to torpedo the Kerry-Boxer clean-energy bill by sowing confusion about an important and sensitive issue. Read More -
Don't worry, be happy
Gaming cap-and-trade: Should we worry? 3
Posted 2 weeks, 6 days ago Worries 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. Read More -
More on gaming
Paul Krugman Versus Matt Taibbi 0
Posted 2 weeks, 6 days 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
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Cap and Trade doesn’t have game
Have Cap-and-Trade Programs Been 0
Posted 3 weeks agoI'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
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If Thoreau had been on the Internet
The future of storytelling? 0
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago Recently, 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. Read More -
The Right on parking
Free Market Parking From Canada 0
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks agoMy 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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First Impressions
Kerry-Boxer Climate Bill: Preliminary Thoughts 0
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago *** This is a preliminary summary of a huge bill, so it's not Sightline's final answer. Look for a more thorough and polished analysis next week. ***Weighing in at 821 pages, the Kerry-Boxer climate bill introduced into the US Senate yesterday is officially a whopper, though it's certainly more svelte than the companion House bill that it substantially mirrors. (Apparently, it's Kerry-Boxer, not Boxer-Kerry, despite what you may have heard.)
Update, 1:20: quick aside on the price ceiling: Lots of folks asking what I think about the "price collar" approach in… Read More
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Get ready to hear more of this
“It’s too expensive to price carbon,” the entrenched interests like to say 0
Posted 2 months ago Once the pending climate legislation gets active in the Senate, Americans can look forward to another outpouring of concern about low-income families. What's especially fun is that we'll get to hear it from political players who aren't usually too concerned about equity -- from record-breaking profiteers like Exxon to the same elected officials who slash social services. Read More -
Eat your spinach
Cap and trade works! 4
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago Why do people keep saying it's impossible to properly regulate a cap-and-trade system? They exist, and we properly regulate them! Read More
