The key here is that we need to price carbon--the mechanism is only important in so far as it's efficient, politically viable and can react to new information.

Because a Cap & Auction prices carbon by starting with necessary the carbon reductions than allowing the market to figure out the price, I think it's a better way.  

A tax allows the politicians to set the price to try to drive the necessary reductions-- I think it's unlikely that electeds could be trusted to year after year pass the necessary carbon tax increases.

My sense is that most people agree that either way is fine.  

Right, most tax proposals I have heard make it revenue neutral for the consumer -- no money lost to the individual.  It kills Republican arguments.

Now I am a neophyte when it comes to economics, so someone tell me why having BOTH a cap and trade AND a tax cannot be done?  Al Gore told Hillary Clinton that it could be done on national television when he had his 2007 congressional hearing.

Is it a false choice between the two?

Instead of imposing taxes on poor people who are just trying to get to work, how about the elites such as Hansen using their own money to fund change?

For example, a Prius costs $20,000.

Al Gore supposedly is spending $300 million to put ads on tv extolling global warming.

So, why not find the ( $300,000,000 / $20,000 = ) 15,000 poorest people and buy them Priuses?

On the same note, I would take 1/2 of Hansen's salary and use it to fund CO2 sequestering.   I would also take 1/2 of anyone's salary who want to tell the rest of the world what to do and use it for buying poor people fuel efficient cars.

Then everyone would be happy.   I mean, Gore and Hansen would be happy living in smaller homes and not drinking wine every night

...right?

2 reasons you are wrong Jabailo.  You are a liar.

1.) every tax or cap and trade proposal includes relief for the consumer, especially low income consumers.  The current bill that your Republican friends just killed in Washington had those amendments.

Its not a new tax, its a tax shift.  Stop lying.

2.) a tax shift, with its punishment and reward for industry behavior, will do one million times the amount of good as a tiny hand-out to the poor.

And finally, these "taxes" are the most gentle and pro free-market way to start this endeavor. Its pro free-market because it  assumes faith in the creative competition amognst private industry.

 If rejected, the next steps to accomplish the desired goal can only be more disruptive, uncomfortable, and harsh.  Beware of corporate propaganda claiming that this is "big government" wanting to tax the consumer to death.  It's not.  It's the will of the people who wish to see a sustainable world for their grandchildren.

-Christopher

1.) every tax or cap and trade proposal includes relief for the consumer

What exactly is industry supposed to do to not have to pay these taxes?   I don't see how individually a person or even a business can make a real decision that would escape the penalty.

Therefore, this is not any type of behavior modification, it is a tax plain and simple -- an unavoidable tax by any definition.

2.) a tax shift, with its punishment and reward for industry behavior

Why not reward personal behavior?

For example, why doesn't Richard Branson renounce his CO2 intensive lifestyle.

How about this:  All rich Libs who fear CO2 should "sequester" any assets above $1,000,000 -- that way they won't be blowing so much (invisible) smoke our way.

I am not an economic expert, as I said in my first post.  Someone credible here correct me if am wrong.  This scenario below is as plain as day and answers your question:

Tomato soup from a carbon free company will cost less than tomato soup from a polluting company.  The carbon free tomato soup company will make sell more and more profits to pay for their new CO2-free energy and equipment and hire more workers.  Basic economics will dictate the rest of behavior.  

Don't you have faith in the entrepreneur and the creative passions of competition?

And this DOES reward individual behavior.  I am rewarded for buying carbon free tomato soup by paying less for it!!
 

Tomato soup from a carbon free company will cost less than tomato soup from a polluting company.

What you fail to say is how one tomato soup company gets "carbon freer" than another.   I'm just asking for details over generalities.  

By either making their own on-site carbon free energy or buying it from a utility.  If they are smarter than their competitor then they will win by doing it in the most cost effective way.  If they are less clever, then they will lose.  This means job loss at that plant, but the tomato soup company who is winning will hire them because they are growing and need more workers.

Additionally, the NEW company that makes the (solar/wind/nuclear/wave) power that the tomato soup company will buy, will also need more new workers.  These are called "green-collar" jobs.

That's as specific as I can be.  

By the way, when FDR, and Ford, and GM, and the shipyards, and the millions and millions of citizens turned this whole frickin' country around in a matter of months to join together to defeat fascism, would you have been such a resistant force?

Would you have called foul on the overturning of the "familiar" in the face of endangerment?

And you can talk to Amory Lovins about more specifics than I can provide.  I'm just a dude with a day job who comes by this forum from time to time.

Pssst.  By the way, you know that BOTH McCain AND Obama have said they are going to regulate carbon.  So why are we even talking about it at this level?  This train has already left the station.

By either making their own on-site carbon free energy or buying it from a utility.  If they are smarter than their competitor then they will win by doing it in the most cost effective way.

What if Company A reduces Co2 but increases costs (by having to amortize new technology).   They are then less competitive with a company that decides to eat the CO2 costs.  

And also, aren't "carbon free" energy sources already subsidized...wouldn't companies already be making the conversion without the extra overhead of an unworkable cap and trade system?

Also, are transportation, storage other CO2 emitting processes included?  For example, suppose one soup company in Italy uses solar cells -- but they ship their product on commercial freighters.   A local company uses electricity from a "clean coal" plant.   The costs of the Italian company are subsidized, but their CO2 because of transportation overall is higher.   How far does metering/estimation of CO2 usage go?   And why a tax?  Can't one simply put a label on every product: n Kg of CO2 was produced to bring you this can of soup...and let the consumer decide.

millions of citizens turned this whole frickin' country around in a matter of months to join together to defeat fascism

That gives me hope that the Gorecarthites and Hansens can be routed from government and that sanity will return to science.

By the way, you know that BOTH McCain AND Obama have said they are going to regulate carbon.  So why are we even talking about it at this level?  This train has already left the station.

Why are the ecofascists always trying to squelch debate?  "The science is settled", "the train is leaving the station".   You people talk out of both sides of your mouth -- on the one hand you're always talking about "the People", but when a Person questions the logic of AGW you start a diatribe about how no one should question the sacred logic of the IPCC.

Sorry, but I just watched "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and I think the citizens of this country are about to be railroaded into an unnecessary tax by a lot of phoney-balonies who wouldn't know science if it bit them on their ass!

 Not squelching.  The debate on whether to regulate carbon has been going on for YEARS and YEARS and YEARS.   And its over.  Finished.  You are free to spin your wheels as much as you want -- its a free country (U.S.).

But the debate on the METHOD of regulation is hot and happening now.  Why not jump in on that instead?

Tell me, why do you put up with the extra costs of a catalytic converter in your car and unleaded gasoline at the station?  Why not debate that?  Did Nixon take your rights away as an individual?  Lets go on and on about how Nixon ruined your liberty in the name of the environment.

Carbon regulation in general is inevitably becoming as real as the Clean Air Act and it's a waste of my time to discuss it at that level anymore.

Yeah, they shouldn't have done that.  Its a shame.

I am sure there is bad science in any field.  That's why there is peer review, conferences, and public journals.

That's why there is peer review

What good is peer review if the peers are all on the same payroll?

Tell me, why do you put up with the extra costs of a catalytic converter in your car and unleaded gasoline at the station?  Why not debate that?  Did Nixon take your rights away as an individual?  Lets go on and on about how Nixon ruined your liberty in the name of the environment.

Amazing isn't it...that during the era of the greatest increase in ecological mandates, that nobody gave a lick about CO2...

It seems to me that the most difficult thing about reducing CO2 emissions is how to discourage cheating.

Whether you tax CO2 or cap-and-trade it, there's always an urge to cheat, and there's not a lot of money to spend on referees to insure that cheating doesn't happen.  It's true that peer pressure does discourage cheating, but only if most people are honest.  When cheating becomes something that "everybody does," then it's hard to stop.

Perhaps the comparative cost of referees will help us to decide whether to choose CO2 taxes or CO2 capping-and-trading.

And if you think referees are expensive, just imagine how much "Jabailo's" system of "rewards" would cost.  You will recall that he asked:

"Why not reward personal behavior?"

Sure, why not pay thieves not to steal?  Nope, sorry, I prefer a solution that's less expensive to implement.

Another thing that may help to determine whether we choose CO2 taxes or capping-and-trading is how we encourage investing in technologies that make CO2 reductions possible.

If all we do is cap-and-trade, then big CO2 producers have to pay small CO2 producers, and the result is that those who need to invest in more efficiency have to pay those who are already efficient.  I like meritocracy, but doesn't this kind of trade make improving efficiency more difficult for those who most need to do it (since they get punished financially) and less attractive for those who are already efficient (since they get rewarded just for doing what they're already doing)?

Of course, every proposal includes tax breaks for technological improvements.  But it seems to me that a CO2 tax could immediately produce revenue to fund these improvements.  This might speed things up.

Everybody talks about the US-American aversion to taxes as if this thing is the one unchangeable fact about the universe.  I agree that the anti-tax movement has done an amazing job befuddling US-Americans with their simple vision of big corporations as golden geese, from which all wealth comes (not from labor, apparently) and of government as a terrible black hole into which our money disappears, never to be seen again.

Actually, I know the secret of what government really does with our hard-earned money.  It SPENDS it.  That's right, and through our votes, we can influence the way the government spends our money - much more than we can influence the way corporations spend the money that we pay them.

So I say, if our calculations should show that CO2 taxes would be either more efficient or fairer (or both) than CO2 capping-and-trading (and I confess I haven't yet done all the math here), then we should SAY SO and not be concerned with "taxophobia."  This and other similarly irrational fears would seem less inevitable if we more often had the courage to criticize them rather than pander to them.

The only thing that causes CO2 is burning fuel.

Therefore the only things that matter are how much fuel you burn, and how efficiently you burn it.

Fuel reduction is its own reward...hence Co2 reduction is its own reward.

So, no need for an unnecessary bureaucracy to police CO2...it's already "capped" by business costs.

Jabailo said, "Fuel reduction is its own reward".

Yeah, IF ITS EXPENSIVE ENOUGH!!!

Thank you for supporting a carbon tax.  Welcome to the team!

-Christopher S. Johnson