Carbon Emission Protocols: A volte-face from SentientMeat

The BBQ Pit
21

From this morning’s (London) Times:

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesman, wants farmers to change the diet of their livestock in order to reduce methane emissions through flatulence.

I’m not sure whether a comparative study has been performed vis-a-vis methane emissions from 60 million humans versus those from 10 million cows. If anyone knows of such an analysis then please let me know. In the meantime I intend not only to light my own farts but those of 16 cows currently chewing the cud in the field opposite my home.

Naturally I will use a windproof lighter for this purpose.

22

I’d just like to provide another “Bravo!” for the OP, and another vote of thanks to jshore for his tireless contributions on this topic.

23

Jim, have any approaches been tried other than central planning? I know that Hayek, von Mises, and the Austrians aren’t that well respected around here, but they do make a good case for the failures and pitfalls of central plans. Especially on something so localized as this issue (the needs in South Central Los Angeles are vastly different from the needs in rural Idaho), an alternative to central planning might have merit.

24

Great, central planning, that’s exactly what we need.

How about this for central planning:

Slap a $3.00/gallon tax on gasoline and increase the EIC to make the tax revenue neutral.

Done. There’s your working poor not getting screwed, and there’s godforsaken central planners making everything worse.

25

I’d rather slap a very gradual $3 tax on gas, and apply a very gradual $5 per ton CO2 tax to power plants, and use that money to fund nuclear fusion research, nuclear fission research, renewables research, and energy efficiency and home insulation programs.

And not give back any credits to anyone, personal nor corporate.

26

Another factor apartment dwellers cannot control at all is the shitty insulation, drafty windows, and poor-quality low-efficiency HVAC and water heaters installed in their residences.

27

How gradual?

Why do you hate the working poor? :slight_smile:

Actually, I’m only half joking. It really doesn’t reflect the kind of society that we are if we plan to fix this problem and just “fuck you” to people at the bottom of the economic ladder. We’ll end up having to subsidize them thru welfare as non-working poor if we don’t. We really don’t have the option of just forgetting them in our society.

28

That’s the Big Question, and not one which I can answer. Gut feeling is I would say no longer than 15 years, and no shorter than 5.

For the same reason I “hate” everyone in China and India when I think that they should be held to the same emissions standards as people want to hold the US to. CO2 knows no boundaries, and although people like to pooh-pooh it, carbon intensity per GDP$ has a lot of merit IMO.

But you know what the problem is? We, meaning Americans in general, have made the choice over decades to have suburban sprawl, to choose to live far from work, to have the 1-hour commutes. We’ve chosen to buy the SUVs. We’ve chosen to buy huge, poorly-insulated houses. We choose to leave 10 lights on in a house with 2 people in it. Changing those bad habits is going to be painful, no matter what, and at some point someone has to come back and say “look, even though affordable housing was nearby, you chose to live 30 miles away from work. Is that my fault? Chuck you, Farley!” Each year my co-workers move further and further away from work, having to burn hundreds of extra gallons of petrol each year so they can live in their Olde South Africa self-imposed apartheid subdivisions far out in the country - while hundreds of good, affordable homes sit for months or years on the market just 5 minutes from our office.

Note the word “affordable” in there - if no affordable housing exists, well, then there is a problem. So let’s add that the additional tax will also be used to fund a Marshall Plan for Affordable Mass Transit, wherever possible and feasible, focused on rail. With discounted travel passes given to certain low income levels. And in my insulation and efficiency plan, I’m talking about focusing on those working poor, getting rid of old HVAC and water systems, super-insulating houses, etc.

Neither being a panacea, but evidence, maybe proof, that I don’t want to render down all the working poor into Hormel food products and biomass.

29

I tend to agree with that thinking.

Still, that doesn’t solve a real problem that will be created by doubling the cost of gasoline in a realtively short period of time. And let’s not forget that the market price for gas could go up quite a bit, too. Not to mention that it’s not just the added expense of driving to work, but the added price many goods will have due to increased transportation or manufactruing costs.

We can either help them thru the EITC or something like that or bail them out as non-working welfare cases, but we’re not going to allow people to starve in this country. Sure, some can move or reduce their transportation costs, but we’re talking about a **major **change in economic poilcy in the US, and it’s not unreasonable to expect there to be some unexpected disloactions among the poor. Better to plan for it, and to tell us all how much it’s going to cost us up front than to dive in and say “oops” later.

30

Therein lies a major problem.

Emerging economies, for want of a better expression, will certainly be reluctant to cap emissions. They will surely argue that they are entitled to aspire to similar standards of living as those enjoyed by first world nations, which inevitably means industrial expansion. The two concepts would appear to be incompatible.

Emission controls in the UK, for example, are meaningless unless China and India can be brought onside. Somehow I don’t think this will happen in the foreseeable future.

31

**It is silly for the country with the most power generation and the most cars to sit back and go, there is no sense in addressing the problem unless everyone does. **

Try this direction instead. If the G8 all seriously address the CO[sub]2[/sub] problem, the technologies developed will filter to the rest of the world and we can try to curb this problem.

The problem needs to be attacked from many directions at once and we need to use many solutions. We will probably have to look into every form of low emission power generation and transport.

This means Nuclear, Hybrids, E-85 Plug-in Hybrids, Low Emission Bio-diesel, Hydrogen powered cars, Much more Solar and Wind farms, I am sad to say, more hydro power where feasible, major steps forward in efficiency standards, etc.

A good start would be in appliances, cars and trucks.

Slap a tax on incandescent bulbs, making then more expensive than fluorescent and LED lighting would be a great start.

Push for more LED lighting solutions.

Start a sliding tax on appliances tied to their efficiency based on the existing or an improved Energy star scale. Make it a large enough tax that very wasteful appliances cost more than efficient appliances.

Just outlaw high emission vehicles. Create a gas tax where vehicles under 20 mpg pay an extra high tax and cars over 40 mpg can a tax break at the pump. Make exceptions for commercial vehicles.

Ensure that all electric water heaters get shipped with extra insulation, I would say at least R-13.

Ensure new houses are made better, better windows, better use of southern exposure, better insulation, etc.

These and too many items should be done soon.

Take all the extra taxes and put the money into helping offset the cost to the poor and lower middle-class and put the rest into energy research.

Jim

32

It’s unfortunate how quickly so many people strongly in favor of the US meeting Kyoto for GHG emissions (which I do believe we should do, FTR, whether we sign or not) will suddenly say “oh no, not China and India, they have a right to enjoy nearly unbridled development as we did.” Then I say “you’re right, they should also be able to employ slaves, since we in the West did to build much of our economy in the 1800’s. Or to scrap worker health and safety laws, since those cost money. Or to provide a living wage, since paying workers a decent amount will naturally put the reigns on industry. Social Security - a waste of money that slows down the economy. And let’s not forget child labour either - kids are cheap and you can always get more.”

Allowing people to repeat the mistakes or crimes of the past on this issue appears to me to be a cack-handed attempt at mixing environmental benefit with a dream of “soak-the-rich” wealth transfer. The sooner that the wealth transfer folks are evicted from the environmental movement, the sooner some sort of compromise between those in opposition to Kyoto and those in favour of it will come. And yes, there will likely have to be a compromise, perhaps in many steps, at first. But it’s a damn sight better than just doing nothing. Forward progress.

If a country finds it absolutely impossible to meet regulations then at least FFS give them a timetable in stepping-stones, with clear and actually enforceable penalties if they purposefully drag their feet.

33

OK, I hate all these ideas. Too fussy. Too many finickey regulations. To much bureacracy, too much time wasted on paperwork.

If we’re using too much gasoline, put a steep tax on gasoline, and by magic, gasoline consumption is reduced. Why should we have exceptions for commercial vehicles? There should be no such exception, it is much easier for companies with commerical fleets to use alternative fuels, or use freaking TRAINS rather than trucks. Yeah, that’s right, slap a $3/gal tax on gasoline and maybe we’ll go back to using trains a little bit once in a while. Why should we have a progressive tax on gasoline (that is, higher taxes/prohibitions on gas guzzlers)? The steep tax takes care of everything. You want to reduce the number of vehicles, just slap a federal excise tax of 50% on vehicle sales. Now how do all those single vehcicle commutes look?

What I object to is the notion of the government picking technological winners and subsidizing those technologies while banning others. Because this is very unlikely to work efficiently. This is how we end up paying Sam Donaldson for his mohair sheep. Do we really want a hard-coded requirement to install a certain amount of LED lighting, at least so much percentage of this, at least so much that?

That’s crazy bureacratic micromanagement of the economy, and it will do much more harm than good. What we should do is figure out what economic/environmental outputs we want to reduce, and tax those simple outputs heavily. If we want to reduce carbon emmissions, a tax on carbon emmissions is the solution, not layer after layer of regulations on lighting technology requirements. If incandescent bulbs really are a large source of carbon emissions, then people looking to reduce their tax bill will stop using them.

34

I definitely agree with you on the principle that everyone is going to have to contribute and there is no way in hell that it will be possible for China to ever go about industrialization in the way that we did. However, I think it is a bit unfair to characterize any agreements that don’t look the way you might want them to as “wealth transfer”. The fact is that there is no one way to decide which is the fair system that does not have any “wealth transfer” in it. As Elizabeth Kolbert has pointed out, if you think of the atmosphere as a shared commons and define some dangerous level of CO2, say, 450ppm or 500ppm, that we try to stay below, then the industrialized countries have contributed the lion’s share so far toward the total rise from the pre-industrial 280 ppm to today’s 380ppm. Is it fair to assign each country the same per capita amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere? This, of course, would really screw the industrialized countries and I don’t think it is fair. However, at the same time, I can understand why China doesn’t think it is fair that it has to cut its emissions exactly as quickly and by the same amount as we do when they are starting from a much, much lower level per capita. That is why compromise is involved and why inflexibility on the side of either the industrialized countries or the developing ones will doom negotiations to failure. Let’s all play nice and be reasonable!

35

I understand your viewpoint, but we need to enact legislation that will not cripple the economy, will not knock the working poor out and one that starts doing the job soon.

It is easy to say, double the price on gas and people will use trains, but would you care to guess how large a percentage of the US population does not yet have even decent mass transportation available?

I did not suggest a single technology winner. In fact, I went out of my way to suggest multiple solutions be used. LED lighting is about the only technology I did single out. It is so much more efficient than incandescent that lighting that it would be criminal not to start moving to mostly LED and fluorescent lighting.

In many cases, we need to introduce the new rules a little slowly and ramp them up heavily over the next 20 years. The initial rules have to palatable to the masses or whatever administration and congress enacts them will get bounces out and we will probably get new elected officials that will work to undo any progress we make.

Jim

36

That is an incorrect characterization of both my post and my point.

Where have I generalized “any agreements” that “don’t look the way I might want them too” as that? I mentioned one, specific thing regarding different standards for so-called developing countries (and I say “so-called” because it’s really hard to call China a developing country, isn’t it?). It should be obvious from my talk of compromise and my own “plan” which involved subsidies of lower-income folks that I don’t oppose wealth transfer when it’s for a positive enough reason. I further said this:

I think carbon emissions and mercury/heavy metal emissions are too freaking important for people to drag their feet or get blanket exemptions. The US needs to take the lead, and everyone else needs to follow right along. The US is not taking the lead, and that sucks. But China isn’t doing enough either, and that sucks too.

And aside from points on implementation and scope and applicability to poorer countries, I’m on the same side with respect to the science, the belief in climate change, and the need for action. Let’s avoid mischaracterizations of posts in the future.

37

What Exit, while your goal of energy efficiency is a good one, I was hoping there might be an alternative to regulation and taxes. Setting aside my political slant, even if I were a normal person like the rest of you, I’d have some suspicions of a government that:

(1) has such a lousy track record in wars of this kind — on polio, on poverty, on drugs, on terrorism. Big iron lungs, pillaged retirement funds, an underground drug economy the size of which rivals the economies of some nations, and spawns of Al Qaeda wannabes sprouting up the world over.

(2) tacks on five hundred pages of pork disbursements to complex legislation exactly like this for building dams in dry river beds and bridges to nowhere.

(3) tied up cell phone technology for ten years while Japan and Africa beat us to the punch. (I won’t even mention HDTV.)

(4) has to make a plan suitable to both dense urban areas and rural farms (is it even possible to do that?)

(5) might eventually redirect the funds to something other than their original intent (toxic waste clean-up funds … where are they?)

And those are just off the top of my head. Isn’t it conceivable that heavy government involvement might actually delay both the conception and implementation of your ideas for saving the environment?

38

Well, the U.S. government has played a hands-off role so far. So how are we doin’?

39

Yeah, it really is that simple. Well, maybe it’s a bit more complicated because we don’t know exactly how much the tax needs to be to get the desired reduction in carbon emissions, but we can figure that out iteratively. What would be ideal is if it cost “X” amount of dollars to remove “Y” amount of carbon from the atmosphere, we could use the tax dollars to offset the pollution. Unfortantely, I don’t think we’re quite there yet.

The higher price of fuel would spur private industry to invest in alternative fuels, so I don’t see the need to get the government involved on that end either. Of course, it would help if we got the sugar lobby off the dole, too, so we could import cheap biofuels from places like Brazil. Biofuel made from corn (which we make in the US) is pretty much a wash in terms of reducing carbon emissions (see the Jan '07 issue of Scientific American for a good article on that subject), whereas biofuel made from sugarcane is much more effective at reducing carbon emissions for a given gallon of fuel produced.

40

I wish I could disagree with what you said, but I cannot. However, there is little alternative. If we continue on this current pace of very slow change, the results will be very bad. We need the EU, US, Canada, Japan and other well of nations to lead to the world in making the changes required. We need the UN to step up in encouraging Green House Gas reduction.

We need a plan that can get through congress and at the same time ramps up quickly. What I outlined above is one loosely collected set of ideas. I am sure there are better plans. These plans need to be worked out and introduced soon. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to make the changes.

Gas use is a simple one with huge benefits. We find ways to reduce gas, Greens are happy for the environment and Hawks are happy as it reduces foreign dependence.

Switching our light bulbs seems to be slow going. Our country does not even have PSAs on it. Such a simple thing, and we cannot even do this one.

We have had no energy regulations to speak of for new housing and we just went through one of the largest new housing booms in our history. This was a badly blown opportunity. etc.

Jim