The EPA: what am I missing here?

Great Debates
21

Me thinks you are reduced to nitpicking here in being in the unenviable position of trying to defend the Administration on these issues! I mean, okay, while it is headed by two Texas oilmen, the Administration may not be literally “full of them”. However, can you name one person in the Administration other than Whitman who doesn’t seem to have a fairly laissez-faire attitude toward polution and sprawl? [You might get half a point for Treasury Secretary O’Neill who had, before he entered the Administration, expressed concerns about global warming…But, I think he has kept himself confined more to economics where his views seem to be in perfect harmony with the WSJ editorial page editors.]

One of my two examples was indeed from early on… But the other, Bush’s quote about “the bureaucracy” was made in the last few weeks!

I agree, although I think this is a bit of an understatement being that she is serving in an Administration who, as far as I can tell, will almost never ever act against business interests. I mean, yes, the Clinton/Babbitt years were quite a disappointment for us environmentalists, but it was nothing like this. (I guess Babbitt was in Interior…but I assume you will agree your statement could apply there too.)

Anyway, enough on that.

flowbark, actually your point about the trading system raises a question about how it will work. I was sort of assuming (admittedly on the basis of ignorance) that it was a national trading system; then it would not suffer from the problems that you noted but would suffer from the big problem that it could leave the air quality in some regions quite bad. What info do you have about how the trading is divided into regions?

22

No federal regulations. There are some state regulations however. OR, NH and MA all have some form of legislation limiting CO2 emissions from power plants.

23

—I posted this in more detail in another thread, but the reason that so many plants were exempted from the CAA Amendments was because of the enormous cost impact that would be incurred. And remember - in a regulated environment, 100% of that cost gets passed onto the consumer - right onto your utility bill.—

But with pollution, 100% of the degraded air quality goes right into my lungs: a cost is a cost no matter who pays it.

Now, I’m not sure which is worse (and which is worse, at least on a C/B criterion, is an empirical matter). Just like price fixed water markets prove to be stupid policy in a drought (no one has any incentive to conserve, to pay the actual market cost of their usage), when the full costs of pollution aren’t reflected in production or consumption, the outcome is probably going to be suboptimal no matter which choice was better.

Essentially, I see pollution as the use of a public resource (clean air, clean water) without any matching compensation paid to the public that nominally is supposed to control its usage. In a certain sense, free pollution rights are more like a subsidy (we give the polluters the resource of clean air, instead of selling it to them) than it is a free market situation.

Charging polluters for their usage would indeed drive up energy prices: but in a certain sense, that’s the whole point: the actual costs of energy production would be part of the sale price, instead of being an externality. In a certain sense, the cheapness of energy is really only acheived because we are paying for it in a subtler way (by “selling” off public assets for free).

24

Apos Hear, hear!

jshore: I don’t know. I pulled the 700K .pdf file from my computer and found the following footnote: “The NOx cap is divided between two zones with separate trading programs under each zone. Zone 2 includes states participating in the WRAP process as well as Nebraska and some of Western Texas. Zone 1 includes the remaining 33 states in the continental U.S. and the remaining portion of Texas.”

So it appears that W wants to trade emissions over a rather broad area. Whether “Clear Skies” is intended to supplement existing law, so that nonattainment areas will remain nonattainment areas subject to direct regulation, or whether it replaces current laws is unclear.

At the same time, come on. Politically, there is no way W’s successor would allow smog in LA and Houston to skyrocket. So the current plan can’t be intended as a replacement (can it?).

From an efficiency POV, the proposal sets a single implicit price on emissions emitted in a smog zone or in a rural area, notwithstanding the different levels of damage our 2 hypothetical plants would place on society.

25

Maybe a scheme could be set up, whereby plants trade “damage permits” rather than emission permits.

Let me define the currency: let’s call a unit of damages a “cough”.

One cough might buy you 5 tons of NOx emissions in Fresno, CA but only 1 ton of emissions in Los Angelos.

Coughs could thereby be bought and sold across air sheds.

26

Oh, and the cough/emission ratio would be a function of the estimated ambient levels of pollution for each region surrounding an emitter’s location.

27

I think you missed my point. I never said they should not pay, on the contrary, I have continually posted on this Board that I believe in increasing restricting and widening the applicability of emissions limits, and posted at length about reductions in carbon emissions. What I was saying was - the reason that all plants weren’t immediately included was the potential impact on the economy of such a huge order coming all at once.

Your lungs are your lungs, as you put it, but what if your electric bill suddenly went up to $1000 a month? Or even $300 a month? Yeah, I can pay that, but how many people in the general populace can?

Having a mad rush to get 800 units in-line with the CAA Amendment regulations would not have been good. Something often swept under the rug by one side of the debate is that the technology in 1989, when the CAA 1990 Amendments were being debated, was not fully tested and not employed at enough units to really let people know what the actual capital and O&M costs were going to be. Nor the actual reliable in-situ effectiveness.

As it happens, the capital and O&M costs turned out to be less than feared - especially the O&M costs. And the effectiveness turned out to be higher than thought. The industry, so demonized by so many, did respond and did meet the goals.

And that’s good - good for them, and good for all of us.

And now that those goals have been met, the limits, the limits should be extended to cover many more plants. I can easily see a 2020 with all coal plants having SCRs, dry or wet FGD systems, a carbon mercury scrubber, and a baghouse to essentially turn them into plants that emit little more than CO2 and water.

And, of course, we need to reduce that CO2…and I’ve posted again that while I do not think global warming is proven at all, I do think that there is a huge amount of evidence pointing towards it. And as a result, I do think that a reasonable and prudent thing to do, when there is this much evidence, is to slow down production of CO2, and to try to remediate CO2, while continuing research into determining whether or not it is an issue.

While I do not support the Kyoto agreement at all, I do support reducing the US CO2 emissions to pre-1990 levels - unilaterally if necessary. But over time…start with freezing them at 2001 levels, and slowly, gradually, work down.

28

Anthracite,

Well…Your position sounds reasonable. The question is whether there is any chance of you convincing the Bush Administration to go along with your ideas. I believe as of 2000 or 2001, our CO2 emissions were 14% above 1990 levels and the Bush “ambitious goal” would allow them to increase about another ~14% above current levels in the next 10 years, assuming that our economy continues to grow at the same rate as it did over the last 10.

29

Well, what can I say - I don’t support their “ambitious goal”. I think we in the US can reduce emissions to the Kyoto levels, if not even further than that, but I think we need a longer schedule and much, much more accountability from the developing nations before I would support the Kyoto “accords” per se. I feel that we need to start small, and go steadily towards maximum efficiency and simple elimination of wasteful and reduction of non-wasteful consumption.

(random thought)

You know, I pulled up outside a store today to go shopping, and as I left my car, I noticed that the car next to mine (an old Oldsmobuick) was sitting there with the engine idling, a teenager in the front seat. He may have been running the A/C, but the windows were all down…and there he sat.

About 30-35 minutes later I returned with my groceries. Guess what I saw - yup, still sitting there, engine still idling, light blue smoke still filling the parking lot behind him…

He didn’t give a rat’s ass about either the pollution he was causing (which was substabtial, it wasn’t tuned very well) nor the gas he was using. But I did notice that he had a “Gore 2000” and a “Sierra Club” sticker on his window (along with “Phish” and one of the smiley-faced guy holding an AK-47…I’m still trying to work out the combined effect of the symbolism here…) He didn’t care because gas is $1.30 a gallon, and pollution is always Someone Else’s Problem. But by golly, he had those stickers on his car that said he supported environmental-labeled candidates and environmental-labeled groups, so he was doing his part…

And I thought “…damn. No wonder we’re fucked up.”

We can talk all we want, but it won’t affect anything, jshore. I get the feeling that you and I likely agree about 90% or greater on energy and environment issues, even though we are looking at it from different sides of the fence. But all our discussion and debate is hopeless - it’s not Clinton’s fault, nor Gore’s, nor Bush’s, nor Nader’s - it’s the vast herd of the American populace that feels, like idling Oldsmobuick Man, that hey, gas is cheap, electricity is cheap, I got a right to chicken done right, and fuck everyone else!

Government can set the lead, and mandate some actions, but the real change won’t happen until the people wake up and realize that they are mortgaging their futures.

30

Government can set the lead, and mandate some actions, but the real change won’t happen until the people wake up and realize that they are mortgaging their futures.

Oh, I don’t know. We’ve made substantial progress on the SOx and particulate front while the masses have maintained their blissful somnambulance. Mostly through governmental mandates on industry.

There are a number of policies that might be implemented while we wait for a collective epiphany. We could tweak the CAFE standards and the standards on refridgerators and air conditioners. We could implement a set of emissions taxes, matched by small broadly-based tax cut (eg, an increase in the standard deduction, perhaps).

And let me defend Joe Public. Joe spends a lot of time bundling newspapers and collecting cans for recycling, and thinks that it helps the Earth. Well, it is the right thing to do, but those acts are dwarfed by the shiny SUV parked outside. An SUV which possibly wouldn’t be purchased if its costs of ownership were several thousand dollars higher. Heck, if Joe switched to a bouncy Honda Civic he could idle it a couple of hours a week and the Earth would still come out ahead.

31

I think it is very much the responsibility of developed nations to transfer technology and funding to help developing nations reduce emissions. After all, the industrialized nations went through a big polluting phase to get where they are, and have “exported” their dirty industries to developing nations but still get the benefits of the goods.

Also, fun fact, the US on a per capita basis pumps out more than twice the amount of carbon emissions as the next largest polluter at 5.43 metric tons per person in 1998. On an abosolute basis, the US is responsible for 23% of total global emissions. China which is a big polluter only pumps out 0.68 metric tons per capita, and 13% of the global total. You can look at this cite on carbon emissions to see for yourself.

Therefore, I would argue that developing nations are far from the worst polluters, have less wealth than can be devoted to clean ups, and that the developed nations especially the worst polluter should take the lead.

32

I agree with flowbark that there is still a lot that can be done via the government. CAFE standards could have helped quite a bit. Taxing gasoline so that it doesn’t cost only $1.30 per gallon could help too (although unfortunately the political will to tell the American people that gas prices of $1.30 a gallon are not their right seems to be missing from the Democratic side of the aisle as well).

But, yes, it can be frustrating to see people being so wasteful and not understanding what is important and what is not. I went camping with a guy who is militant about not using styrofoam plates etc. on a camping trip but thought nothing of getting into the car when it was raining and cool and idling it for the better part of an hour! When we got back, I sent him a link to Amazon.com’s page for “Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices” (a great book, by the way!) to try to hopefully help him get his actions in better alignment with his values.

One of the points that that book makes is that people have lots of misconceptions and need to be educated. For example, many think styrofoam is evil as a holdover from the early 90’s when we were aware of the ozone depletion problem but they hadn’t yet phased out using CFCs to manufacture styrofoam. (Actually, this guy was more concerned about its lack of biodegradability…not realizing that landfill space is really not one of the larger environmental problems and that, at any rate, even supposedly biodegradable things don’t tend to degrade in the anaerobic landfill environment.)

33

As for China Guy’s point…I definitely agree with you. However, I wouldn’t be so exercised about the whole Kyoto thing if the U.S. really pursued a reasonable alternative approach like what Anthracite is talking about. Alas, we aren’t.

34

And does it count for nothing at all, China Guy, that China’s per-capita GDP was only $3,600, versus $36,200 for the US? That has to be taken into consideration, surely? :confused: (2000 CIA World Factbook figures)

On your other issue - I think technology transfer and assistance in implementation is vital; I’m not certain that direct funding is a good idea.

35

So, does that mean that 1.4 billion Chinese and a billion Indians and everyone else in developing markets get to pollute as much as Americans when their per capita income rises? Also, given the size of the export market for goods (as opposed to services), how much of the emerging market pollution is effectively that of the end consumers in developed nations.

anthracite, you’ve got to remember that at lower economic levels, one tends to pollute more for necessities. For example, China burns a hideous amount of low grade coal (although this has been reduced significantly over the past 5 years). There are economic tradeoffs to development, and developing countries tend to go the low cost/higher polluting route. For example, cooking meals with coal instead of natural gas.

Impractical of course, but I personally think that each person in the world should have a quota. You want to drive that SUV, fine, you get to pay for a classroom full of elementary kids in India. But I think it’s a bunk arguement to say that because I can afford a SUV I get one, but someone in the third world better damn well use more expensive CFC free refridgerators.

I would also point out that the developed countries themselves have already gone through and beyond the really dirty phases or have exported those dirty industries to other countries. So, it is okay for an industrialized nation to have come up this curve but not for emerging markets?

36

[diversion]

EPA says toxic sludge is good for fish!

[/diversion]

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020619-13558.htm

Pit rant posted. Nothing more to see here, move along you looky-loos.

37

Are we studying from the december School of Anecdotal “Evidence” here? Do we even know if the car was his to begin with (as opposed to his wife/daughter/friend)?

38

Yeah! He might have stolen it from a hypocritical asshole! Shouldn’t be so quick to judge!

39

It’s irrelevant. He was in the drivers seat, and was the operator of it. I don’t suddenly lose all responsibility for a car I’m operating just because I’ve borrowed it.

40

Yes. Which, IMO, is why it is imperative that the US reduce its CO2 emissions.

I actually know an awful lot about China’s energy and environmental situation. China’s recent efforts in biomass and plans with biomass generation of gas show that they are making some honest effort, but I don’t know how well that works when multiplied by 1+ billion people…but one thing that China ought to consider is stopping its practice of dumping its coal on the World market to try and undercut Australia and South Africa, and thus encouraging people to burn this poor-quality coal because of its price…like Spain.

OK, let me throw this back at you then - given the whinging and complaining that we hear non-stop about how the Evil Developed Countries squandered resources and filled the World with pollution, we should let the developing nations do the same, because, hey, that’s fair?

No. We learn from our mistakes, or there is no point in making them. China, India, and the other major developing countries are just going to have to be better than the developing nations were, and not repeat our mistakes of wasting resources, polluting with impunity, and ignoring global effects.

I cannot for the life of me understand how it can be justified by any who consider themselves in the “environmental movement” (and not saying anyone here is) to approve of developing nations polluting more as some sort of “equalizer”. I thought these things had global effects after all… :confused:

China, India, and Belize need to be treated the same way as the US - if the US puts out 1 ton/CO2 per year per capita, then so should China. Let’s have the countries compete to see who can do the best job with their 1-ton per year.

But as I said before, pollution control and energy efficiency technology should be transferred freely, so countries don’t have to continue to suffer and pollute more, or have to resort to illegal means to acquire technology.