Grist | Topics | 17 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 17 of 17
Headline	Author	Published	Section
RGGI: Not dead yet Pulitzers await the enterprising journalist who digs into the RGGI efficiency story	Adam Stein	26 Sep 2008	Gristmill
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the first legally binding cap-and-trade system in the hemisphere, kicked off yesterday with the world's largest carbon credit auction. The program immediately failed. I don't know anything about the results of the auction, which won't be made public until Monday, but I do know that whatever happened, RGGI is a great big failure. I know this because journalists prepared its obituary weeks ago. The New York Times recently explaine ...
Topics: carbon trading, climate, economy, energy, energy efficiency, greenhouse-gas emissions (all these topics)

Thank carbon trading for latest defeat to clean air Clean Air Interstate rule struck down because it devalues sulfur trading permits	Gar Lipow	14 Jul 2008	Gristmill
The court decision striking down the Clean Air Interstate Rule, a major loss for clean environmentalists, can be traced directly to the sulfur trading program often (mistakenly) considered an example of the success of trading over other forms of regulation. Because the new permitting process would have overwritten existing permits, the electric utility industry was able to successfully argue that these regulations would have resulted in economic damage. You won't fin ...
Topics: air pollution, carbon trading, climate, economy (all these topics)

Unpacking the Panglossian economy Is a consumer choice necessarily the best choice?	Ryan Avent	06 Jul 2008	Gristmill
Jim Manzi, climate change voice of non-denialist conservatives, writes: But consider this at a common-sense level: you are forcing people, through rationing, to use something like 80% less of a substance that they choose to use because they believe that it creates net economic utility (prior to externalities) as compared to any available alternative. There is a respectable (though as I've argued in many articles, incorrect) argument that the negative externalities ...
Topics: carbon trading, climate, economy (all these topics)

Humanity's meltdown Living on the ice shelf	Guest author	26 Jun 2008	Gristmill
This is a guest essay from Mike Davis, author of In Praise of Barbarians: Essays against Empire and Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb. It was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission. ----- Farewell to the Holocene Our world, our old world that we have inhabited for the last 12,000 years, has ended, even if no newspaper in North America or Europe has yet printed its scientific obituary. This Feb ...
Topics: carbon trading, climate, climate science, economy, energy, international politics (all these topics)

Moral obligation, patriotic duty State poll shows Oregonians ready and willing to do what it takes to halt climate change	Anna Fahey	17 Jun 2008	Gristmill
The National research firm Public Opinion Strategies recently conducted a survey of 500 likely Oregon voters to assess views on the issue of climate change and to gauge support for the basic principles of policy measures like the proposed cap-and-trade system in the Lieberman-Warner Act (a.k.a. the Climate Security Act -- legislation that was recently defeated last week in the U.S. Senate, but marked a step forward on national climate policy.) The survey, which presents ...
Topics: cap-and-dividend, carbon trading, climate, economy, energy, greenhouse-gas emissions, Nature Conservancy, Oregon, politics (all these topics)

GHG policy thoughts, economics edition The goal of climate policy is not high GHG prices	Sean Casten	15 Jun 2008	Gristmill
There's an implicit assumption in much of the climate policy debate that to meaningfully lower greenhouse-gas emissions, we need a high price on carbon. The assumption is wrong. Economics 101 In a market setting, price is a function of supply and demand. For a given commodity, prices will be high when demand outpaces supply and low when supply outpaces demand. Thus oil, for instance, is expensive. And autographed copies of my pen and ink cartoons are cheap ( ...
Topics: carbon trading, climate, economy, energy, greenhouse-gas emissions, renewable energy (all these topics)

Calling all economists Are the CGE models useful for predicting the effects of climate policy?	Clark Williams-Derry	05 Jun 2008	Gristmill
Photo: StuSeeger via Flickr. My pal Peter Dorman is looking for answers: Does the class of economic forecasting tools known as 'computable general equilibrium models' (aka CGE models) have any documented track record of success? This may seem like an arcane point, but it's quite relevant to climate policy. Government agencies throughout North America are using CGE models to forecast the economic impacts of various cap-and-trade proposals. But many academic ...
Topics: business, carbon trading, climate, economy (all these topics)

The Best Defense An interview with Fred Krupp, author of Earth: The Sequel and president of EDF	David Roberts	05 May 2008	Grist Feature
Fred Krupp. Fred Krupp has been piloting Environmental Defense Fund since he left private law practice in 1984. It hasn't gone badly: Under Krupp's leadership, the group has become an influential player in the deepest halls of power, with an annual budget that's ballooned from $3 million to $71.8 million. A substantial measure of EDF's success and credibility stems fro ...
Topics: books, business, carbon trading, climate, economy, Environmental Defense Fund, interview (all these topics)

Carbon policy details: Part 5 The solution: Output-based standards	Sean Casten	03 Apr 2008	Gristmill
This is the fifth and final post in a series on the details required to get carbon policy right. See also parts one, two, three, and four. So far, I've done a lot of complaining -- which, in and of itself, is just, well ... whiny. Here, then, is a solution. First, a very brief review: A test of good carbon policy is whether it encourages the private sector to invest capital in projects that will reduce GHG emissions. 'Additionality' confuses carbon policy, by ...
Topics: carbon trading, climate, economy, greenhouse-gas emissions (all these topics)

Joe Barton: Pork lover	Sean Casten	02 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Joe Barton (R-Texas) spoke to the U.S. Energy Association yesterday and made it clear ($ub req'd) that he's going to do everything he can to block cap-and-trade legislation from coming out of Congress:As the Democrats move to pass climate change legislation this year, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, will be there to fight them, he told the U.S. Energy Assn's annual membership meeting yesterday. As a senior member of the House Energy Committee, that's not a threat to be taken l ...
Topics: carbon trading, climate, Congress, dumbassery, economy, greenhouse-gas emissions, legislation, politics (all these topics)

Windfalls Why consumer protection means selling carbon permits	Eric de Place	27 Mar 2008	Gristmill
One of the thorniest problems in cap-and-trade programs is deciding how to distribute the carbon permits. Should the public sell pollution privileges or give them away for free? Some folks worry that if we make polluters pay for carbon permits, they'll just raise prices for consumers. That's a perfectly legitimate concern. Unfortunately it turns out to be true, whether we sell the permits or give them away for free. Prices rise by the same amount in either scenario ...
Topics: business, carbon tax, carbon trading, climate, economy (all these topics)

Carbon policy details: Part 2 Does additionality matter?	Sean Casten	27 Mar 2008	Gristmill
The first follow-up to my recent post on carbon policy details. First, a note to non-carbon-wonks: 'Additionality' is a term of art in the world of carbon policy. It describes the degree to which a given activity causes additional carbon reductions -- the idea being that we shouldn't pay for carbon reductions that were going to occur anyway. As a fantastic oversimplification, suppose your car broke down and you had to ride your bike to work. The principle of additio ...
Topics: carbon trading, climate, economy, greenhouse-gas emissions (all these topics)

Carbon policy details: Part 1 Carbon policy is close to getting the macro right, but plenty of smaller decisions remain	Sean Casten	26 Mar 2008	Gristmill
My recent exchange with Gar has made it clear that there is a wide gulf between those details of carbon policy that are theoretically optimal and those which actually impact carbon reductions. Or, to be blunt, those that come up in our weekly staff meetings as actually affecting our decision to consider potential carbon reduction projects and those which simply elicit groans around the conference room of the 'great intent, why did they screw up the execution?' variety.* ...
Topics: carbon trading, climate, economy, greenhouse-gas emissions (all these topics)

Pros and Econs EPA's economic analysis of climate bill relatively favorable		17 Mar 2008	News
Posted at 6:39 AM on 17 Mar 2008 The U.S. EPA has released its economic analysis of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008, concluding that implementing the bill, which includes a carbon cap-and-trade system, would not significantly harm the U.S. economy over the next 20 years. The agency estimated the bill would likely cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions 11 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and about 56 percen ...
Topics: business, carbon trading, climate, economy, news, US EPA (all these topics)

Notable quotable What is a conservative?	Sean Casten	24 Jan 2008	Gristmill
From Restructuring Today ($ub req'd), reporting on Markey's hearings on allocation vs. auction as a cap & trade methodology: Even conservative Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw believes a free allocation amounts to corporate welfare. Even conservative?
Topics: quotables, politics, economy, climate, climate change mitigation, carbon trading (all these topics)

WCI and transportation fuels Why the West should worry about transportation emissions	Eric de Place	08 Jan 2008	Gristmill
Well, Clark and I are traveling to Portland for a batch of meetings related to the Western Climate Initiative. On the off chance that you'll miss us, I thought I'd share some of what we're working on with WCI. Our biggest obsession right now is transportation fuels. Namely, we believe it's critically important that transportation fuels be covered by an 'upstream' cap in the first phase of the program. Here's more: Why should the WCI cover transportation fuel ...
Topics: carbon trading, climate, economy, energy, politics, public transportation (all these topics)

Moving money in the economy More on climate policy in the Dem debate	David Roberts	06 Jan 2008	Gristmill
Responding to some of the comments on Dot Earth: Obama is right that a cap-and-trade program with 100 percent auctioned permits would be the functional equivalent of a carbon tax. Yes that does, in Richardson's rather daft phrase, "take money out of the economy," in the sense that any tax does. Happily, the other half of Obama's plan is to plow the money right back into the economy, reducing the financial hit on the working class, supporting renewable energ ...
Topics: politics, elections, presidential race 08, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, climate, climate change mitigation, carbon trading, economy (all these topics)

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