it's a hunch but they may not know anything at all about long-term investment or risk management.

BTW did you know it also costs money to comply with banking laws?

would be a good step as well to move the conversation. There's hyperbole on both sides. While the overall macroeconomic cost of any reasonable, even aggressive carbon price should be very small, its mostly concentrated as relatively big costs in certain sectors and geographic areas. There's a big swath of this country that burns a lot more coal for electricity than the coasts, and relies on energy (and so emissions) intensive manufacturing and industry for jobs, local investment and tax revenue. Just brushing off their concerns with 'O you'll build wind mills' doesn't help.

I'm certainly as frustrated as the next (green) guy at the undue pessimism about epic costs, but I don't think we do ourselves any good by exaggerating ourselves. If we really do believe this is a net positive for the country, as I do, we should be willing to acknowledge significant distributional costs so we can start the discussion on how to adequately compensate them and move forward with a bill that's good for (almost) everyone. If, such as through cap & dividend, we continue to ask a particular part of our country to bear almost all of the cost, we will never get a bill passed with the targets we need. Plus its unfair. We get stuck with free allocation and offsets because we refuse to put forward better, more fair and more efficient means of providing transition assistance.

Start with cap/dividend, but reserve 15% of auction revenue for a fund to be distributed to states by their historical (say, as of yesterday) carbon-intensity of their energy supply. Another 15% would go into a fund to be distributed to states based on their historical levels of employment in energy intensive industries, like paper, bulk chemicals, glass, cement, steel and aluminum (maybe I'm missing a couple but the set is fairly well-defined).

These allocation decisions would be made to states not companies, with very simple formulas based on very simply and intuitive criteria related to need. It would not detract from the simplicity appeal of cap/dividend, and would in fact keep it simpler by deflecting calls for offsets and free allocation to affected companies. Since allocation would be on historical levels of employment and carbon-intensity there would be no perverse incentive to preserve those conditions going forward to keep getting revenue.

Max Epstein

It was an "economics" conference, right.  Forget the "eco", they were dollar thinkers.  WSJ at the front of the line.  And you're surprised?   It's their yardstick.  The problem of externalities needs to be repeatedly emphasized in their presence, as evidence their system is insufficient for society to use in measuring "progress".

The other folks in attendance, probably kept trying to point out that there is more to decision making than payback time.  Many folks buy depreciating assets and "use them up" with no expectations of payback.  Clothes, food, transportation, housing (rent or mortgage interest), etc.    

I believe we simply need a new yardstick. The dismal science can only inform us so much in regards to public decision making.  A sustainability index, a quality of life index,  both would be arguably better than a GDP to measure and communicate "progress" toward meaningful national goals that we'd want to strive for and proudly point to as we pass the torch to our children and theirs down the line.

Re-conceptualizing progress: that's the real challenge before us all at this time.  Not re-defining it for pragmatic reasons due to the economic downturn, but actually bringing in all those other values of quality of life, which the economists just can't begin to measure.   That work is still in its infancy, I'm afraid.  But at least Grist is shining a light into the territory we should be mapping.

Moving toward sustainability with hopefulness, one revolution at a time.