EPA Poised to Declare CO2 a Public Danger

[RTFirefly]

@buttonjockey308

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.

This is why the policy wonks advocate, in essence, a carbon tariff in tandem with cap and trade. The idea is that imports from nations with weaker mechanisms for costing carbon than ours, or none at all, would have to be charged the cost differential on their imports.

The problem this is running into is that there are an awful lot of doctrinaire free traders around, these days, who are yelling “protectionism!” about this idea, and for now at least, they seem to have won the day. But if the portion of the world that’s implementing cap-and-trade regimes doesn’t place a carbon tariff on imports from the portion of the world that doesn’t, any carbon-intensive production will tend to gravitate to those countries outside the carbon-costing zone, which would, to that extent, defeat the purpose of cap-and-trade.

[Rhythmdvl]

Definitely – but again I can’t say I was accurately interpreting kmgraves’ intent.

In terms of shaping behaviour and providing incentives (and disincentives), taxation has several benefits. In the long run, some combination of trading and taxation will be necessary (if we are to achieve reductions – whether we ever do or not is a different thread).

But foregoing gains to trade in favour of ease of application and uniformity will make achieving reductions much more costly than necessary. It’s fundamental economics, absolutely basic stuff. Even if the price of a traded unit is higher due to bureaucratic overhead, if it sells for less than another can reduce for, it has value and saves the economy money.

[buttonjockey308]

@RTFirefly

This is why the policy wonks advocate, in essence, a carbon tariff in tandem with cap and trade. The idea is that imports from nations with weaker mechanisms for costing carbon than ours, or none at all, would have to be charged the cost differential on their imports.

The problem this is running into is that there are an awful lot of doctrinaire free traders around, these days, who are yelling “protectionism!” about this idea, and for now at least, they seem to have won the day. But if the portion of the world that’s implementing cap-and-trade regimes doesn’t place a carbon tariff on imports from the portion of the world that doesn’t, any carbon-intensive production will tend to gravitate to those countries outside the carbon-costing zone, which would, to that extent, defeat the purpose of cap-and-trade.

The whole cap-and-trade thing seems to be akin to the old Catholic Indulgences, pay now, sin later, heaven awaits.

I may be missing something, but if you trade money for polluted air, at the end of the transaction someone has money and someone has polluted air, guess who’s ahead?

[RTFirefly]

@buttonjockey308

I may be missing something, but if you trade money for polluted air, at the end of the transaction someone has money and someone has polluted air, guess who’s ahead?

1. Right now, people get to put CO2 in the air for free.

2. Therefore, making them pay to do it, by whatever mechanism (C&T or carbon tax) is an improvement in terms of reducing CO2 emissions. People generally try to use less of something if they have to pay for it. So we’re ahead of where we would be without C&T.

The whole cap-and-trade thing seems to be akin to the old Catholic Indulgences, pay now, sin later, heaven awaits.

I don’t see how.

[buttonjockey308]

@RTFirefly

1. Right now, people get to put CO2 in the air for free.

2. Therefore, making them pay to do it, by whatever mechanism (C&T or carbon tax) is an improvement in terms of reducing CO2 emissions. People generally try to use less of something if they have to pay for it. So we’re ahead of where we would be without C&T.

I don’t see how.

1. On the contrary, it costs money to pollute. Gasoline isn’t free, nor are it’s raw materials. Neither is coal free nor is electricity. There’s nothing free about how we do business, it’s just now that the governments aren’t making ENOUGH money on it. Nor are the “traders”

2. Having shot a hole in point one, point two seems, well, pointless, but I’ll entertain. People with enough money (i.e. the US) will pay what it costs to do business and pass the costs on to the consumer who will be stuck paying for the emissions of the polluter by proxy.

Really? If I pay Dundalk Carbon Trading Company (or the EU ETS) $100,000 for 10,000 ‘credits’ which means I get to put 1000 tons of CO2 in the air, that 1000 tons still goes in the air, but where does the money go? More importantly, where does the money come from?

[Squink]

@buttonjockey308

2. Having shot a hole in point one

I saw what you did there.

[Deeg]

@buttonjockey308

Really? If I pay Dundalk Carbon Trading Company (or the EU ETS) $100,000 for 10,000 ‘credits’ which means I get to put 1000 tons of CO2 in the air, that 1000 tons still goes in the air, but where does the money go? More importantly, where does the money come from?

If you believe that the market technology will stay static then your example holds water. However, if we make dumping CO2 into the air more expensive, the market will find ways to make the same product without dumping the CO2. In the long run we win by not having as much CO2 in the air.

[begbert2]

@buttonjockey308

1. On the contrary, it costs money to pollute. Gasoline isn’t free, nor are it’s raw materials. Neither is coal free nor is electricity. There’s nothing free about how we do business, it’s just now that the governments aren’t making ENOUGH money on it. Nor are the “traders”

It’s a good thing that the pollution is the goal, and not just a byproduct of processess that otherwise pay for themselves, or this would be really, really stupid.

[Voyager]

@buttonjockey308

1. On the contrary, it costs money to pollute. Gasoline isn’t free, nor are it’s raw materials. Neither is coal free nor is electricity. There’s nothing free about how we do business, it’s just now that the governments aren’t making ENOUGH money on it. Nor are the “traders”

It costs money to burn gasoline for energy. The pollution is a side effect. If you had two types of gasoline, one which polluted and one which didn’t, is there any economic benefit to you the user for getting the non-polluting one? How about if the non-polluting one were a nickel cheaper? A penny? A dollar? How about if you were a manager charged with maximizing stockholder profit?

Now that I shot a hole in your response to point 1 …

[buttonjockey308]

@Deeg

If you believe that the market technology will stay static then your example holds water. However, if we make dumping CO2 into the air more expensive, the market will find ways to make the same product without dumping the CO2. In the long run we win by not having as much CO2 in the air.

It’s not technology that will stay static, but the desire to produce it, until, of course, it becomes fiscally necessary. I understand wanting to tip the scale using heavier and heavier costs, and likely, at some point it will happen, but in the meantime (or as it happens) no one who is touting such a plan is including also the way that everyone else is supposed to deal with the rising costs of virtually everything else.

If it costs more for a truck to drive from the manufacturer to the warehouse, then from the warehouse to the store and then more for you to drive from your home to the store, more to heat/cool/light the store, then driving up prices, which then means you can’t afford the things you need/want and therefore don’t buy.

Multiply this by the number of shoppers at the store, which equals the store going out of business which means lost jobs all the way down the chain which in turn means nobody involved can afford the more costly green technology and will end up expelling just as much CO2 driving the 15 year old car they can afford and using the incandescent bulbs they can afford and so on.

Let me be clear, I’m not FOR pollution. I want cleaner air, but the fight for clean air cannot come at the expense of the people who breathe it. We are not about to go off of an environmental cliff, this has to be progressive, slow and methodical like every other kind of change. Radical movements on a large scale (i.e. the anti-nuke crowd in the 60’s-70’s) can have unintended consequences that cause more harm than good.

[buttonjockey308]

@Voyager

It costs money to burn gasoline for energy. The pollution is a side effect. If you had two types of gasoline, one which polluted and one which didn’t, is there any economic benefit to you the user for getting the non-polluting one? How about if the non-polluting one were a nickel cheaper? A penny? A dollar? How about if you were a manager charged with maximizing stockholder profit?

Now that I shot a hole in your response to point 1 …

Using that scenario, obviously it would make more sense to use the non-polluting gasoline, if the absolute cost were a nickel, penny or dollar cheaper per gallon. Unless of course it burned less efficiently and I had to buy MORE of the non-polluting gas to get the same energy I get from the polluting kind.

[elucidator]

I fear that Kurt Vonnegut has already written our epitaph. Its a picture of Mom Earth with the legend “We could have saved it, but we were too stupid and lazy.”

We get plenty of warning about being too radical, too extreme, mustn’t dismantle the entire global economy. Dark suggestions of fur-clad savages trading beads and shiny stones for food. Mustn’t let the Amish conspiracy reduce us to hand-cranked modems with upload speeds of 1kb/hr…

Please. You’re worried that a CampFire Girl in a wheelchair will kick the snot out of Chuck Norris and make him her bitch. We of the DFH community are assaulting Festung Money with the Nerf balls of reason, we ain’t got much chance. But if you had listened to us forty years ago, where might we be now? But money talks. Actually, we talk, money screams and shrieks.

We don’t know, for sure, what we have to do, so we don’t even know if we can do whatever it is we have to. But you know and I know that if it turns out its almost time to turn the world over to the cockroaches, you’re gonna see ads saying “Well, we’re boned! Darn shame about that, but might as well buy some loud, shiny crap while there’s still time!”

Cockroaches will last longer, anyway. We’re smart enough to fuck things up, but not smart enough to fix it.

[Rhythmdvl]

@buttonjockey308

Let me be clear, I’m not FOR pollution. I want cleaner air, but the fight for clean air cannot come at the expense of the people who breathe it. We are not about to go off of an environmental cliff, this has to be progressive, slow and methodical like every other kind of change. Radical movements on a large scale (i.e. the anti-nuke crowd in the 60’s-70’s) can have unintended consequences that cause more harm than good.

Could you address a couple issues?

First, the concept of an externalityis a pretty tested economic principle. In simplest terms, it refers to a by-product of a transaction/process that has a negative effect and the cost of that effect is not paid by the parties to the transaction. Carbon dioxide emissions fit this definition fairly well.
Why is it wrong to capture the cost of the externality?

Second, the populations of China and India dwarf ours. By 2025, the size of India’s middle class will be close to twice that of the United State’s current entire population. Do you think they should industrialize along similar paths to ours, that there should be no impediment to a citizen purchasing “the things you need/want,” along with the resulting, devastating, effects on the climate?

[Docta_G]

@Crafter_Man

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126003232518778287.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLTopStories

I contend that this has absolutely nothing to do with the environment. It is nothing more than a (very large) tax increase, and greatly increases government’s power. It is a necessary part of the War on Capitalism.

I contend that there are little pink elephants on the far side of the moon.

See how that works?

[Chronos]

Quoth xtisme:

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…

To be perfectly clear, here: With the system we have in place right now, the free market can’t come up with solutions to the carbon problem, because there’s no cost attached to carbon dioxide pollution, and therefore no incentive to solve the problem. A carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program would either one attach a cost to carbon dioxide pollution, and therefore either one would work to bring the free market to bear on the problem. I think that cap and trade would do so more efficiently, but I could certainly be convinced otherwise: That’s a debate worth having, and I think that other thread died prematurely. But both cap-and-trade and carbon taxes are opposed by those in our government who claim to be defenders of the free market.

If the Republicans were to say “Cap and trade is less efficient for reasons X, Y, and Z; let’s put in place a carbon tax plan instead”, that’d be fine: That’s still a mechanism for putting the free market to work. But when they say “All taxes are evil, and cap-and-trade is just another tax in disguise”, they’re rejecting the free market.

[Deeg]

@Rhythmdvl

First, the concept of an externalityis a pretty tested economic principle.

Thanks for that link. I’ve had that concept in mind for some time while discussing the environment but never knew the “official” term. Now I do.

[buttonjockey308]

@elucidator

Please…But if you had listened to us forty years ago, where might we be now?

We did. We listened to the idea that nuclear power was the worst possible thing ever, we abandonded the concept to the world, stopped building reactors and now, when that looks to be the next, best large scale option, we’re so far behind the curve that it will take billions if not trillions of dollars and metric truckloads of foreign technology and know-how to build and operate the same plants we should have built all along.

[QUOTE=Rhythmdvl]
Could you address a couple issues?

First, the concept of an externality is a pretty tested economic principle. In simplest terms, it refers to a by-product of a transaction/process that has a negative effect and the cost of that effect is not paid by the parties to the transaction. Carbon dioxide emissions fit this definition fairly well.
Why is it wrong to capture the cost of the externality?

Second, the populations of China and India dwarf ours. By 2025, the size of India’s middle class will be close to twice that of the United State’s current entire population. Do you think they should industrialize along similar paths to ours, that there should be no impediment to a citizen purchasing “the things you need/want,” along with the resulting, devastating, effects on the climate?
[/QUOTE]

First, CO2 release is absolutely an example of an externality and in theory, there’s not a thing wrong with forcing polluters to minimize the amount of pollution by charging them for the process. However, doing so in a rapid, radical way causes a negative shift in wealth from the poor to the rich that, in the form of a ripple, could devastate entire economies. This is true in chief because the largest releases of CO2 happen during and after the production of energy, (energy for this discussion meaning everything from home heating to vehicle fueling) these things are absolutely critical to the sustainability of a major civilization like the US, China or India.

If the cost to heat my home is $50 today, and this time next year because of cap and trade it costs everyone down the line just a little more to make the energy required to heat my home causing the cost to rise to $75 or even $100. That’s an impact I cannot bear. As I already live in a highly efficient, very well insulated nearly ‘green’ home, I am forced to move somewhere cheaper and find alternative fuel sources to heat my home or work another job, or longer hours which has a greater impact on the environment from the standpoint of only me) than it normally would had my burden been less and the energy costs lower.

Second, I believe that India and China should be leading this charge, not following it. They both are in the unique position as relatively new economic and geopolitical powerhouses to force the hands of the rest of the world into green technology. The problem is, they want what we had and are not shy about going after it. They will build, they will manufacture and they will sell their goods and services to anyone who will buy them, because after generations of dirt-poor poverty, they are making money and lots of it, and although it’s a trite statement, having money isn’t everything, not having it is.

[toofs]

Great. The EPA declares CO2 a public health danger and that will eventually create a reason to tax CO2 in things like what, soda? The cost to fill the CO2 cylinder I use for my planted aquarium will now include a new tax in addition to the state sales tax (which went up a percent)?

How will this fix our environment? It won’t, any taxes added to CO2 containing or producing products will end up in the general fund.

This will be an abuse of the power of taxation. The planet will continue to warm up whether or not we pay a carbon tax. It will be a distraction from the real issues and difficult solutions.

[Blake]

@Chronos

If the Republicans were to say “Cap and trade is less efficient for reasons X, Y, and Z; let’s put in place a carbon tax plan instead”, that’d be fine: That’s still a mechanism for putting the free market to work. But when they say “All taxes are evil, and cap-and-trade is just another tax in disguise”, they’re rejecting the free market.

The problem, IMO, is that this is an issue, like healthcare, where the free market simply cannot operate. The consequences are too great, the costs are too nebulous, the beneficiaries too ill defined, the sources too easily hidden, the solutions too difficult to ascertain.

Yet it amazes me that the liberals who cry that the free market is unable to produce effective health care or prisons or schools, for exactly the reasons I just listed, are the exact same liberals who scream that the free market is the only solution to this social ill.

It’s whacky. Why are the Democrats suddenly clinging to the free market on this issue as if it’s their new Holy Grail? They’ve produced this bizarre dichotomy where their leader is trying to tell us that the free market can never produce a workable solution on diffuse public-good issues because of the costs attached, and simultaneously trying to tell us that it’s the duck’s nuts when it comes to solving the issue of the public cost associated with production of a ubiquitous, undetectable, harmless gas… just so long as we can attach a cost to it.

The whole platform seems schizophrenic to me.

[Richard_Parker]

New tax = slavish devotion to free market.

Creation of health care exchange in which private insurers compete with each other and maybe with a privately financed public option = rejection of market.

Uh huh.