War on Capitalism, good grief. Turn off Fox.
The people waging a war on capitalism are the ones who oppose letting the free market have any say in carbon emissions. Obama’s trying to use the free market to solve this problem, but the very people who claim to support capitalism are hamstringing him.
Al Gore and his Church of GW acolytes should all commit suicide!
Cool aid is available!
Nixon ran as pro-war against the anti-war McGovern. You can spin it any way you want, but Nixon prolonged the war. Revisionism aside, conservatives of the time, both Democrat and Republican, supported the war and liberals opposed it.
Damn right, that’s why we are kicking the economic ass of those European socialists. We fooled them big time; the dollars they hold are worth less now than when they bought them.
Actually it was Ford.
Actually, it was Chevy Chase.
I admit I’m either not smart enough or studied enough to tell you an exact level. But it’s absolutely true that carbon taxes do and will push people towards:
- Using less of the GHG-emitting resource by avoidance and efficiency improvements.
- Substituting other activities or substances for the taxed item.
Obviously there is a minimum level of energy that most people do need, but a large part of it is simple waste. I’ve posted details before of studies I’ve personally been involved with which claim we could reduce our electrical use by 20% nationwide and see little change in our standard of living, and that a 40% reduction is possible with a “manageable” reduction in standard of living. I freely admit that one person’s “manageable” is another person’s “no fucking way”, so obviously the definitions are fluid.
And don’t even get me started on the incredibly wasteful mentality of “flee the scary black people to go to the suburbs, then drive 20 miles each day in a 15 mpg SUV because I have a Labrador and they need big cars.” Like, oh, all of my co-workers?
I think it’s safe to opine that if we had to we could reduce significantly in other areas as well. There is still a lot of low-hanging fruit out there. I posted a while back calculations which showed the energy use from cable converter boxes alone across the entire US took an entire coal power plant to run. I mean, holy crap.
I’m a conservative who believes in America. I believe America can rise to the challenge of tackling the GHG emissions problem, and kick its ass too, so long as we have a fair playing field and everyone else in the world is on our team. This may require an entire change in the “boo hoo, I’m a victim” and “let’s sue someone instead of working”-mentality SOP of thinking which has infected our Society since the 1960’s, but so be it. We can reduce our energy use, we can improve efficiency, we can reverse AG climate change, if only we will get our act in gear, make the hard and unpleasant decisions, and just do it.
I don’t understand.
Taxing is the least efficient (i.e., it’s more expensive) method of reducing carbon emissions. It’s a big government fix with all of the problems associated with government mandates. It’s not without benefits and advantages, but they are far outweighed by the overall cost savings and lower impact on day-to-day life than a cap-and-trade scheme.
As someone who “believes in America,” I would think you’d be just a bit more pro-market.
First off, don’t put “believes in America” in quotes, it makes it look like you think I’m being disingenuous. And that will lead me to stop reading your posts.
Second, can you explain to me in detail exactly why you feel a carbon tax is the least efficient method of reducing carbon emissions? For example, it’s fairly easy to put a 10 cent/gallon tax on gasoline, and it requires no complicated accounting or emissions trading market scheme. Taxing carbon in electricity is also easy - power plants and coal mines track every single ton of coal with fairly decent accuracy, so it would be easy to say “$5/ton of coal” as a carbon tax.
Third, I fail to see why a carbon tax is anti-market (for lack of a better term) or less pro-market. The market responds to the carbon tax by creating alternatives and improving efficiency, etc., etc.
This one is wise in the ways of the Forces of Darkness. We would be well advised to pay her heed.
It was Nixon who sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks from behind the scenes in 1968, to make sure the war would still be there as an issue for him to run against in November. (See Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein.) And, having run and won on a very strongly implied promise to end the war, he kept it going throughout his whole first term.
I remember at the time having a very low opinion of him. Over the years, I’ve mellowed, and now just think of him as a vile pustule on a leper’s scrotum.
. reedit
We had a discussion of the relative merits of a carbon tax versus cap-and-trade just last week, if you’d like to weigh in on that one.
“Efficient” in the economic sense. A simple tax may be easier, but it’s not cheaper.
If I’m not mistaken, you have some connection to the energy industry. Are you familiar with the sulphur dioxide emissions reduction scheme? It was one of (if not the) first emissions trading programmes put in practice, and is widely acknowledged to have achieved emissions reductions at a fraction of the cost of a direct mandate (though, like global warming, there are random papers out there that dispute tradings’ economic benefit. Social benefits are another question).
It’s basic economics 101: gains to trade. A central premise is that companies will face different costs to reduce. By allowing trading, you can get the same amount of desired reductions for the lowest (most efficient) cost. A secondary premise is that the bureaucratic overhead (from monitoring to brokering trades) is less than the aggregate amount of sales.
There are lots of secondary benefits. For example, a trading regime provides incentives for a company to reduce below what is mandated. While the sum emissions reductions during that period will remain the same, the increased flow to R&D will make overall reductions less expensive.
It worked for sulphur dioxide. There are billions of dollars of CO2 emissions trades taking place right now, supporting the contention that the cost savings are greater than the overhead.
Reliance on taxation largely forgoes these benefits. It forgoes the advantages of capitalism and free enterprise. While there can still be an amount of technology trading taking place, the end costs will be much higher.
This is not to say that taxation programmes are completely unnecessary. They can and should be implemented as complementary measures to a trading regime in order to fill gaps and missed opportunities and to close potential loopholes. However, it is economically nonsensical to spearhead reduction efforts via taxation and forgo trading.
You bet they are.
But do they deserve the primary culpability? Of course not - that would belong with the party that advocated such abuses, not the party that couldn’t decide whether to try to stop them or not.
And now that the Dems are in power, and most (but unfortunately not all) of them are trying to do something about climate change? The primary culpability lies with the party that’s unified in its opposition to such action, not the party that’s mostly trying to deal with the problem, but has just enough recalcitrant Congresscritters to get in the way.
Yeah, the Dems deserve their fair share of the blame. But in both instances, it’s clearly the much smaller share.
Alert Secret Service agents seized the fork and wrestled it to the ground.
First, you probably meant to say “Kool-aid” specifically with a “k”, not a “c”. Second, it was technically “Flavor-aid”.
The rest of your post is just as useless, so consider it taken under the advisement it deserves.