Oh, I’ve had a couple of decades of daily professional exposure to it…but you must acknowledge of course there is a difference between SO2 and NOx allowances and CO2, for two reasons:
It’s not practical to tax coal sulfur on an input basis, since from 5% to more than 15% of the sulfur is captured in the pyrites system, fly ash, and bottom ash, and this varies a bit depending upon the type of coal and the combustion technology. Meaning that a brute-force sulfur tax on the input side has a significant error built in.
It’s not practical to tax NOx on an input basis, since the fuel-bound nitrogen of the coal, while strongly influencing the ultimate NOx, does not decide it - combustion technology and operations can swing NOx by +/- 50% with the same coal.
However, CO2 is much more closely a case where what goes in, comes out (barring LOI/UBC/CO losses, which are quite small and under 1%).
I don’t object to cap-and-trade, and in the case of SO2 and NOx (as well as mercury, should a cap-and-trade system be finalized for that) I think it’s a great plan, but I think that a carbon tax would have a more direct effect on changing the self-destructive consumer habits which ultimately drive the entire pollution equation.
It did, but as I explain above, it’s not apples to apples. And yes the EU market is (sort of) working right now, but it has a long way to go.
I guess what I don’t understand is why the free market can deal with taxation and restriction on the front end (allowance markets) but not on the back end (carbon taxes). How for instance do you envision cap and trade reducing gasoline and/or diesel fuel consumption? Are you applying a carbon tax per gallon of gasoline which leaves the refinery (the EU doesn’t…)? Or are you only concerned with the carbon emissions of the refinery itself? While the refinery might be able to change its emissions profile somewhat, that pales in comparison to the billions of gallons of gasoline and diesel which leave the refinery. In short, asking honestly and not snarking, how do you envision cap and trade helping immediately and substantively to kill off the crazed “drive everywhere in my giant guzzling SUV” culture which we live with? Or even better, the “let’s fly across the country for a 1-hour business meeting and then fly right back, wasting untold amounts of fuel in the process because it’s cheap?”
Most likely, there is not one solution but thousands, each relatively small and incremental. In all probability, we cannot change the situation without changing ourselves, we are the problem, we are the solution. Consumer capitalism is, by its very nature, a ravenous glutton for resources, so long as we remain addicted to its excesses, we will make no progress worth the name. We don’t really need seventeen varieties of cat food and a wide array of choices in loud, shiny crap.
The only other solution is the deus ex machina, the wondrous genius who discovers the secret of green, clean, cheap energy. From our lips to the Ears.
For me, this is the reason I support a straight-out tax over cap-and-trade. Normally I’m a big free-market booster but tail-pipe emissions is one of the few areas where the market needs some help. I’d like a big boost in fuel taxes coupled with a lowering of income taxes.
This is likely to come to a bad end after costing millions of man hours in endlessly insane form-filing which will likely accomplish nothing (except, ironically, to cut down more trees for paper…). A tax would probably have been much better, (and also better than cap’n’trade, which would have been better than this) although I don’t believe the government would use the money wisely. And it’s not like there aren’t solutions, but most of them have been blocked by the government. Heh.
Look also for a significant challenge in the courts, which may well take a dim view of the EPA legally regulating a chemical which is not only naturally occuring everywhere on the earth but in which every human is complicit in creating 24/7/365. Abuse and fraud is not only probable but likely neccessary, given that it may well not be possible to accurately determine total “carbon” use and that the EPA may have a hard time determining atmospheric vs. ground carbon and so forth.
Of course, this all assumes the EPA is actually going to use the finding to any specific aciton. I suspect they will wind up using it as a vague threat against people they do0n’t like. This is likely to be less damaging but highly politicized, and open to massive abuse. I don’t think the EPA practically can monitor the carbon use by all industries, and those industries can’t determine their own. Ironically, of course, the problem is actually decreasing over time and could be vastly further improved if the EPA would butt out in some areas. C’est la vie.
Yeah, worked for smoking. Or not. What so-called carbon taxes also do is create an unfair global advantage for companies whose countries either aren’t a part of an agreement, or don’t enforce the one they’re a part of. Not saying there shouldn’t be a way to do something, but under the current concept, a ‘tax’ on activity A and doesn’t mandate a way to reduce the activity, it simply emboldens those who are willing to pay the fee. Further, if you start a new revenue stream into the government, you can bet that stream will eventually flow into the general fund instead of dealing directly with the issue you’re trying to address
Woof. Keep talking out of both sides of your mouth like that and your lunch will end up on your shirt.
I moved downtown into a one bedroom high-rise condo (from a 3 bd 2 ba SFH), almost 20 miles away from my main job HQ and I drive an '05 Ford Explorer. My ‘carbon footprint’ is smaller now than it was a year ago despite my drive.
Considering that most energy efficient modern TV’s don’t require a ‘cable box’ to work, I think that there is a lot of room in that argument, but lets just say that with 58% of American homes subscribing to cable, that having one coal-fired power plant operate some 65 million ‘cable boxes’ ain’t that bad a statistic.
While I agree with this part, I can’t believe cap and trade or carbon taxes will be the way. We’ll never get a level playing field if we charge ourselves more to do business in our own country. This, I submit, is the over-riding problem. We are incapable of thinking with one singular purpose. The one bad thing about the so-called free market is that it’s every man for himself which tends to leave the country stranded and is the reason precisely that China is able to kick our collective asses.
Peter meet Paul. Paul meet Peter. Now reach for the sky.
Big boosts in fuel taxes means higher costs for absolutely everything else. You won’t see enough of a break in taxes, especially for those in the lower brackets, to offset the impact of the higher fuel costs on retail goods.
For someone that partisan and vocal (and vocally partisan) on the subject, you seem awfully ignorant about energy issues and potential solutions, despite them having been discussed frequently on this very board.
If they charged a *cent carbon tax on gasoline, how would that be fair to someone who bought a new automobile with a state-of-the-art emissions system as compared to someone else with a '78 V8 Ford with straight pipes?
Yes…but I found Blake’s arguments MUCH more compelling. I point this out because I find it ironic that you posted the first statement (as if it’s fact) then linked to a thread where, IMHO anyway, you and the others on your side got your asses handed to you. Just sayin…
(I realize after Blake left the echo chamber started up, and I concede that you and the others probable figured you could just declare victory there)
Not much to say as far as the OP goes. I’m sort of on the fence as to this stuff. To me, the whole cap and trade thing seems like it has the potential for massive gaming of the system, but I think this train has left the station, so I guess we’ll just have to see what happens.
I will say that IF this costs us the money I THINK it will, and IF there is the level of gaming of the system (if not out and out abuse), then there had better be a BIG pay off to all this…or the Dems will be envying what the Pubs are currently going through over Iraq and the other Pub fuckups over the last 8+ years. Again, just sayin…
You missed the point Una or maybe I didn’t make my statement clear. One of these automobiles will put out much more carbon per gallon than the other yet the tax would be the same for both.
A gallon of gas contains a set number of atoms of carbon. Based on 2,2,4-Trimethylpentane (C8H18), a gallon of gas will mass 2.60 kg, and contain 2.19 kg of carbon.
Any car burning a gallon of gas will put out 2.19 kg of carbon. One car might put out a little more CO than CO[sub]2[/sub], or ethanol and other partial combustion products, but in the end burning a gallon of gas always produces 2.19 kg of total carbon.
I don’t think this is the point kmgraves is going for (if it is, I’m sorry to step on your toes), but the imbalance in vehicular efficiency suggests the inequities inherent in a tax scheme.
This isn’t to say that taxes are inherently inequitable – a balanced approach/mix of market and tax measures is needed – but a quick decision to go all on one or the other side results in many unwanted outcomes.
In this instance, the person who can’t afford a more economical car (e.g., for wont of capital outlay) ends up paying more tax than the more affluent person. This has the secondary outcome of the group least able to pay for the tax carrying a (albeit slightly in this particular example) larger burden.
These are old problems with finding the right mix of tax policies, whether on carbon, sin, or just for raising revenue. It clearly doesn’t invalidate using taxes to address consumption and behavioral patterns, but it does highlight one of the challenges.
If that’s the case, he needs to talk about miles per gallon rather than carbon per gallon.
Carbon per gallon is a constant. Contrary to kmgraves claim, that means that taxing gas directly tracks carbon emissions pretty darn well, no matter what sort of vehicle you’re driving.
