Gar is right and it's an excellent piece, although Komanoff's quibbles are good (little) points. But the usually amazing Dr X is off base in saying we mustn't have a new tax during a recession (depression) and can only use positive incentives. By all means, divert subsidies now going to big polluters, but the point of the carbon tax is not primarily revenue, it's to influence behavior. When everyone gets the same return but we each control how much carbon dioxide we emit (up to a point), everyone has an incentive to cut emissions, and thus taxes, so they'll come out ahead.
I would love to see Dr Hansen respond to this piece.

If I am wrong, prove it, find a few legislators willing to vote for a "new tax" now?  It can't pass, even the mist historically uninformed congressman must have heard about Hoover's ill-advised tax increases to balance the budget, during the start of the great depression.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

of a global plan -- might be the best out there at the moment -- unless someone knows about a better global one (Lester Brown's Plan 3.0 is a good blueprint for the global destruction of ecosystems, perhaps not as focused on greenhouse gases).

By the way, there is no way taxes are going to be raised in the next two years.  They're not even going to raise taxes on the very wealthy, that is, the Bush tax cuts, which is a no-brainer.  The reasoning behind not revoking those cuts escapes me, except that maybe Obama is tip-toeing around the Republicans, which would not surprise me, in which case, again, there is no way he will try to push new taxes on the Republicans.

Hansen and Lipow may as well be talking to a brick wall. It's becoming quite clear that Mr. Obama is simply another neo-liberal free-market capitalist who is not interested in any of the ideas we as progressives are presenting to him. As the days go by, my disappointment is turning to anger as I see more and more signs that corporate fuedalists (apparently, here at Grist, "fascist", though perfectly apt, is seen as reactionary) are the dominant group in not only his transition team, but in the new administration. So we're back to fighting against roughly the same people we fought in the Bush I and II/Reagan years. Only the Democratic practitioners of fasc-, er, corporate fuedalism will be more polite and mannerly when they tell us to go fuck ourselves. And since he's "our guy", we'll take it with a smile and a thank you, Mr. Obama. He's a hard centrist with some of the namby-pamby Third Way rolled into the stinking batter. So much for "change"...

The mellotron is your friend.

And we basically printed money for the Vietnam war as well.

And for the Iraq war.

And for this current economic crisis.

-David Ahlport

How much more?  Didn't the global Ponzi scammers print up about 100 times the GNP in bad paper?

What about that?  Are other currencies in danger of becoming ruble-like?  Are they all?

What if this global scamming ties every national currency to bad paper?  I think it has.

With subsidy diversion, no new taxes, no new inflation, no new electronic derivatives.  And no new debt and currency devaluation.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Charles Komanoff

"How can you say that Jim Hansen's global-warming solution favors cheap over fast when one of its three pillars is a hefty carbon tax?"

You will note my use of the phrase "I'm sure completely contrary to your intention" However, I'm afraid looking for "cheap" is the only conclusion I can come to from his including this 4th plank. Safety valve? If you really want an R&D safety valve, you won't concentrate on just two technologies.  Nobody can guarantee that a particular R&D project will succeed, especially when there is a time limit and success includes cost constraints. If you are seeking protection against technical failure in R&D you will advocate a diversity in approaches.  What concentrating R&D on these particular technologies offers is a chance (I think a really slim one) of finding cheap replacements for fossil fuel that are non-disruptive of existing infrastructure.  But elevating this to a key plank in a plan to fighting global warming on grounds that known means are uncertain is offers a devastating weapon do delayers, deniers, and do-littlers. They can argue that even Hansen says that results from taking action on global warming are uncertain and that we should do little or nothing now, make large investments in R&D, and eventually come up with a more certain and cheaper solution. That is the opposite of Hansen's intention, but it is an obvious conclusion to draw from his elevating R&D to a fundamental plank of comparable importance to implementating things we already know how to do.

Incidentally, I chose the term "refundable" quite carefully. Doesn't mean I'm right, but here is the logic: I don't like "revenue neutral carbon tax" because even if you know what a carbon tax is, if you haven't already heard a description of the proposal it won't tell you what it is. It also has no framing power, does  nothing to sell the concept.  Tax & Dividend, like Cap & Dividend meets the latter but still does not describe the system to someone who does not already understand it. In fact is is a bit misleading, because dividend usually implies a reward for ownership. Tax & Rebate would convey what is going on pretty well, because rebates tend to be fixed amounts, but manufacturers rebates are pains in the ass, and often scams, so the framing is awful. And given that we already have the word "tax", you need decent framing for the rest of the description. "Tax & Refund" coveys most of what people need to know. And you can then point out that is an equal distribution, not related to individual carbon consumption. Maybe we could say "Tax and Equal Refund", getting another positive term in there. At any rate that is the reasoning behind my use of the term "refund".  

if, as Grey suggests, it's actually an investment, as green investment type things would be.  However, today they're saying the deficit might shoot past 1 trillion dollars for years.  The problem is that the other economic shoe that hasn't dropped yet is that the dollar itself is vulnerable to a very steep fall, and if that happens, we're talking a very sharp drop in standards of living. So sloshing all of those dollars around is not sustainable, but the trade deficit isn't sustainable either...fun times.

We just gave out a bunch of loan guarantees for infrastructure projects?

-David Ahlport

Just build them, print the money if necessary (it should come out of the defense department, corporate taxes and top marginal income taxes, but assume you can't get money from those sources).

A safety valve is kind of a "well if it gets expensive or politically inconvenient, then we can just back out of doing it"

So yeah, a safety valve kinda does undercut pretty much all carbon pricing models.

-David Ahlport

>but energy will get very expensive under Hansen's (and my) carbon tax, which is the point, and I fail to see how a "safety valve" (?) undercuts that.

If a refundable carbon tax works well the carbon price will be only thing expensive about it. People pay more for energy and energy intensive goods, but they have more in their pocket to pay the difference. And the only people it hurts energy intensive industries that have to stay energy intensive and have to get their energy from fossil fuels, or who (like the automobile indusry) are reluctant to make the capital investment needed to switch to less energy intensive products. Basically the core carbon consituency. It is hard to win, but if you win it AND IT WORKS (a critical caveat) then very soon it becomes  politically much easier to keep. If, as I suspect, the technology needed to replace greenhouse intensive technology is comparable in price to BAU, and various positive externalities make up any difference, then even from a macro-economic viewpoint it is cheap to free.

What focusing on just two fairly high risk R&D programs can hope to accomplish is come up with a technolical end run around all these politics in case we fail with the first plan. It is trying to find a second cheap solution in case the first cheap solution fails. But if we really want a safety valve rather than just desperately flailing for a low cost alternative then we should pursue a diverse research program rather than focusing on rather iffy alternatives.

They have to print more money, electronically of course, and by trying to borrow, but how long will other nations keep buying our debt?  Bailout barons must also be mindfull of all that bad paper floating around too.

Normally, pumping money into the economy leads to inflation as eventual overheating occurs.  With all that play money somewhere in the system too, will this happen much more quickly?  

Could we see assets squirreled away buy the scammers reappearing to reinvest in a new boom, pushing another buble up again and threatening to erode the currency?  it's somethinmg that re-regulatyion might address.  Madoff is sending million dollar checks and jewelry packahes out to friends and family now.  

He made off with it right under his "house arrest" guards, hehey.

And yet new harsher bankruptcy laws, pushed by credit card lobbyists, have families begging for mercy from the system.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Colonos, that is an excellent report and I urge people to read it. Two things the toxics coalition might consider. First Concentrating Solar Thermal techniques (mirrors driving heat engines) eliminate many of those toxics completely. Also those same solar mirrors focused on advanced solar panels can reduce the use of those toxics by 80% to 95% because you need  95% fewer solar cells Those those fewer solar cells are advanced ones that can stand up to the high temperatures, so they may need more toxics per cell. But even if you need twice as many toxics per cell you still reduce toxic wastes by 80%, because you use that many fewer cells. It saves money too. So anyone worried about toxics from solar cells needs to advocate concentrating solal power as part of the solution. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do the other things, but reducing the problem by 80% or more per unit of power produced is not a bad step to include.

Solar concentrating cogeneration powered silicon foundries would produce inexpensive surplus power that could be used for 100% capture and recycling of any toxic materials involved in solar cell manufacturing.  Recycling used solar cells takes a lot of energy too.

Separating toxic doping elements from silicon and other metals can be done effectively and inexpensively if high temperature solar furnace energy is on tap.

There isn't much discussion of projects like this, instead we hear endless "clean" coal, nuclear, and fuel farming debates.  No wonder our representatives keep backing the wrong technology choices.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin