The idea is also to have developing nations implement lots of new energy, but do it without adding to CO2 emissions. A trading scheme is much more likely to produce that than a national tax. The world energy consumption is likely going to double before too long, and we need to make sure most of the world pool of energy is clean.
Cap & Trade not a solution for GW
- Thread starter Puppycow
- Start date
macdoc
Philosopher
why would you ever make that assumption that an energy tax would go to consumers of fossil fuels....
Sweden and Norway have had a $50 a tax on carbon and the funds go to the new energy and energy efficiency industries as it should.....and Sweden in particular has lead the world in transitioning to carbon neutral..
Sometimes I wonder about you guys.....lack of common sense and bit of an overdose of ideology.
Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
No, I guess I want what the Economist editorial suggests, a carbon tax.
Enforcement will be an issue whatever scheme is adopted, but a carbon tax seems simplest and most effective.
But I'm pessimistic that enough countries will cooperate without cheating.
why would you ever make that assumption that an energy tax would go to consumers of fossil fuels....
Sweden and Norway have had a $50 a tax on carbon and the funds go to the new energy and energy efficiency industries as it should.....and Sweden in particular has lead the world in transitioning to carbon neutral..
Sometimes I wonder about you guys.....lack of common sense and bit of an overdose of ideology.
Maybe you'd get away with that in Sweden or Norway. Try proposing that in Australia and the great unwashed will vote you out before you can blink.
No, emissions trading for all its faults is still the best idea IMHO.
macdoc
Philosopher
Well you seem out of synch with your fellow Aussies
http://solveclimate.com/blog/200905...ade-system-postponed-until-2011-maybe-forever
I fail to see where your "get away with" approach comes in.
Mining companies, shipping companies, food companies, chemical companies are all subject to clean and safe operation regulation and forced to include those costs in their operating budget.
Even you are not allowed to pollute our groundwater.
Hell the lowliest home owner understands he needs to pay for clean water and a sewer system.
Why is polluting the atmosphere okay without having to pay for reducing or eliminating that? - they have to with other emissions
S02 is controlled despite the howls when that legislation was introduced.
CFC is controlled.
Toxic waste is controlled ....even ballast dumping from ships is controlled in local waters.
Lead in gasoline was not recognized as a risk early on....it was touted a positive additive.
Then science determined the risk to health - especially kids and it was banned and the companies had to find other more expensive solutions and yeah everyone paid more.....life goes on.
SO2 was understood to be a risk to forests and fresh water bodies and a major international set of regs grew up - against the wailing of industry used to using the skies as a free sewer.
Why should they be allowed to?
Any oil spill anywhere in the world in the ocean and the polluter has to pay damages and cost of cleanup.
Why is the atmosphere okay to use as a free dumping ground when the ocean and ground water and even the local parkland is not.
Now, loading up the atmosphere with C02 from fossil fuel use has been determined to carry risks to both ocean and climate.
Those using the atmosphere as a free dump - including consumers are being required to pay for mitigation and that use.
The resulting funding being used to move away from fossil use to eliminate or reduce that risk....just as was done with CFC and SO2.
Tax on fossil use to deal with the consequences puts non-carbon emitting industries and most notably energy supply companies on an even footing instead of handing a "free sewer" advantage to the fossil users.
If I have to pay say 20% more for my fossil fuel ( as Europe has done for decades ) then more efficient vehicles and now even EVs are far more attractive.
When oil hits $150 a barrel then low emission, zero emission vehicles just about pay for themsleves.
Instead of waiting for this to happen due to shortages...progressive governments have the tax in place so the transition can occur sooner and in a controlled manner instead of one subject to speculation.
The tax funds the more expensive vehicles again flattening the playing field and putting the onus on the polluter for a change of course.
I drove in Europe and went the same distance for the same cost as in Canada - why?? Because even tho fuel costs were twice as high - fuel efficiency on the Mercedes diesel was also twice as high.
Yes a smaller vehicle but no less comfortable and cruising at 160 kph all day was something not available at home.
Government sets rules for risk management - we all pay for a high regulated airline industry world wide and the result is an extremely safe one.
New information has determined the risk of pouring all the fossil carbon into the atmosphere is dangerous especially in the longer term and requires regulation.
A carbon tax to be used to guide the transition, pay for the damage and provide incentive for low carbon solutions is evenly applied.
A food company reduces packaging ( Proctor and Gamble for instance has reduced packaging enormously even without that incentive ) to reduce transport costs and use of now expensive fossil fuels.
Towers turn their lights off at night, invest in in energy saving retrofits that pay for themselves in a few years.
Sweden has moved along this path brilliantly and Europe provides a model that says yes you can have a vibrant AND lower carbon economy.
Even the World Bank achnowledges the economc benefits of moving toward carbon neutral and reports like Stern's show the money to made and VCs like John Doerr are champing at the bit to slice away chunks of Saudi's business.
Most sensible people understand that fossil fuel companies have had a free ride - is there not good reason they are some of the most profitable on earth???
The ticketmaster has just cancelled the free passes.
Time to cough up. Cap and trade is not the way to do it..
Australia’s Flawed Cap and Trade System Postponed Until 2011, Maybe Forever
by Stacy Feldman - May 4th, 2009
Australia's messy battle over its unpopular climate law, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), has finally come to an end – well, for now.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today pushed back the scheme's start date one year, to July 2011, due to hyper-partisan bickering. The delay guarantees there will be no climate action in Australia until July 2012, at the earliest. Truth is, it remains unclear whether the law will ever pass – and whether it even should.
Rudd and his center-left Labor party have stuffed it full of concessions to big polluters – though of course the prime minister is spinning it differently. He called the new scheme a "slower start" but with better "green outcomes." That's a stretch, to say the least.
Originally, the CPRS pledged to cut carbon emissions by a feeble 5 percent from 2000 levels by 2020, with a stipulation that the target would rise to 15 percent if the world comes to an ambitious agreement at Copenhagen in December.
The new scheme keeps that anemic bottom goal. The upper limit would increase to 25 percent below 2000 levels in the event of a global deal.
Science dictates far more – a reduction of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, according to the IPCC's conservative estimates. Needless to say, the Greens, who want an unconditional 25 percent cut by 2020, weren't impressed with Rudd's "pay off:"
The decision to lift the upper limit was an "almost irrelevant green distraction," Greens senator Christine Milne said. "If you add a little bit of green to brown, you still get brown."The prime minister has publicly blamed the financial crisis for the delay. But the reality is, the scheme never had a prayer of passing the Parliament. It had no friends, none at all.
http://solveclimate.com/blog/200905...ade-system-postponed-until-2011-maybe-forever
I fail to see where your "get away with" approach comes in.
Mining companies, shipping companies, food companies, chemical companies are all subject to clean and safe operation regulation and forced to include those costs in their operating budget.
Even you are not allowed to pollute our groundwater.
Hell the lowliest home owner understands he needs to pay for clean water and a sewer system.
Why is polluting the atmosphere okay without having to pay for reducing or eliminating that? - they have to with other emissions
S02 is controlled despite the howls when that legislation was introduced.
CFC is controlled.
Toxic waste is controlled ....even ballast dumping from ships is controlled in local waters.
Lead in gasoline was not recognized as a risk early on....it was touted a positive additive.
Then science determined the risk to health - especially kids and it was banned and the companies had to find other more expensive solutions and yeah everyone paid more.....life goes on.
SO2 was understood to be a risk to forests and fresh water bodies and a major international set of regs grew up - against the wailing of industry used to using the skies as a free sewer.
Why should they be allowed to?
Any oil spill anywhere in the world in the ocean and the polluter has to pay damages and cost of cleanup.
Why is the atmosphere okay to use as a free dumping ground when the ocean and ground water and even the local parkland is not.
Now, loading up the atmosphere with C02 from fossil fuel use has been determined to carry risks to both ocean and climate.
Those using the atmosphere as a free dump - including consumers are being required to pay for mitigation and that use.
The resulting funding being used to move away from fossil use to eliminate or reduce that risk....just as was done with CFC and SO2.
Tax on fossil use to deal with the consequences puts non-carbon emitting industries and most notably energy supply companies on an even footing instead of handing a "free sewer" advantage to the fossil users.
If I have to pay say 20% more for my fossil fuel ( as Europe has done for decades ) then more efficient vehicles and now even EVs are far more attractive.
When oil hits $150 a barrel then low emission, zero emission vehicles just about pay for themsleves.
Instead of waiting for this to happen due to shortages...progressive governments have the tax in place so the transition can occur sooner and in a controlled manner instead of one subject to speculation.
The tax funds the more expensive vehicles again flattening the playing field and putting the onus on the polluter for a change of course.
I drove in Europe and went the same distance for the same cost as in Canada - why?? Because even tho fuel costs were twice as high - fuel efficiency on the Mercedes diesel was also twice as high.
Yes a smaller vehicle but no less comfortable and cruising at 160 kph all day was something not available at home.
Government sets rules for risk management - we all pay for a high regulated airline industry world wide and the result is an extremely safe one.
New information has determined the risk of pouring all the fossil carbon into the atmosphere is dangerous especially in the longer term and requires regulation.
A carbon tax to be used to guide the transition, pay for the damage and provide incentive for low carbon solutions is evenly applied.
A food company reduces packaging ( Proctor and Gamble for instance has reduced packaging enormously even without that incentive ) to reduce transport costs and use of now expensive fossil fuels.
Towers turn their lights off at night, invest in in energy saving retrofits that pay for themselves in a few years.
Sweden has moved along this path brilliantly and Europe provides a model that says yes you can have a vibrant AND lower carbon economy.
Even the World Bank achnowledges the economc benefits of moving toward carbon neutral and reports like Stern's show the money to made and VCs like John Doerr are champing at the bit to slice away chunks of Saudi's business.
Most sensible people understand that fossil fuel companies have had a free ride - is there not good reason they are some of the most profitable on earth???
The ticketmaster has just cancelled the free passes.
Time to cough up. Cap and trade is not the way to do it..
I told you bunch of nancy boys this two years ago and I was mostly shouted down.
As soon as Gore started politicizing GW, the whole thing should have been seen as a scam.
Climate change is no doubt real and human being are pigs, but carbon credits are just a way to pick pockets.
The solution is technological not political.
As soon as Gore started politicizing GW, the whole thing should have been seen as a scam.
Climate change is no doubt real and human being are pigs, but carbon credits are just a way to pick pockets.
The solution is technological not political.
macdoc
Philosopher
The solution is also through taxation not carbon trading..you seemed to have missed a step.
If fossil fuel industries are a effectively subsidized by getting free sewer services then alternative technology cannot compete.
Got it now.
If fossil fuel industries are a effectively subsidized by getting free sewer services then alternative technology cannot compete.
Got it now.
BenBurch
Gatekeeper of The Left
Not taxation. Prohibition.
Set limits that will decrease every few years and fines for not meeting them.
Unlike CAFE standards, make this automatic so that legislative action will need to be taken to delay or relax the schedule.
Set limits that will decrease every few years and fines for not meeting them.
Unlike CAFE standards, make this automatic so that legislative action will need to be taken to delay or relax the schedule.
macdoc
Philosopher
Fines = court fights....see Exxon Valdez.
Tax hits everyone evenly who used fossil fuel.
Prohibition never ever works.
Control and regulation does.
Some hard caps on certain industry like coal fired utilities would be appropriate.
Tax hits everyone evenly who used fossil fuel.
Prohibition never ever works.
Control and regulation does.
Some hard caps on certain industry like coal fired utilities would be appropriate.
ponderingturtle
Orthogonal Vector
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2006
- Messages
- 54,545
Why? It treats carbon emmisions as a limited resource and turns them into a commodity, seems rather like how we deal with any scarce resource.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 61,585
Because the rules for how credits are established mean that it's NOT actually treated like a commodity. It's treated like an opportunity to scam money, which it is.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/12/03/for-their-own-good/
"It’s a wonderful arrangement in which Europeans and Americans pay the Chinese to send them a certificate of forgiveness for their carbon transgressions while supplying their competitors not only with the funds to undercut their domestic industries, but pollute the world into the bargain. Does it make sense? Does it have to? In a strange reversal of cultures the Chinese and the Indians seem able to see things for exactly what they are while the West engages in an elaborate game of self-deception."
But isn't this what carbon trading does? As the cost of credits increases it becomes increasingly expensive to produce CO2. Same effect.
Hallo Alfie
Banned
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2009
- Messages
- 10,691
Presumably you mean C02 prohibition? Or is it just fossil fuels?
So.
No open fires, no BBQs, no controlled burns for bushfire prevention etc.
What sort of prohibition exactly?
Where does it start and end?
Could someone else ask him please? I'm on ignore.
Don’t think this has anything to do with the actual legislation. Rudd had to get the scheme through hostile senate. Pandering to the greens (which is probably his natural position) wouldn’t work because they don’t have the numbers. His alternative was to pander to the moderate conservatives. This had two effects, the first was that it gave the bill most chance to pass. In the end this didn’t happen.
The second and the real intent of the bill was to drive a wedge between the moderate and extreme factions in the conservative party. This worked spectacularly. The moderate leader lost control of the party room and the ultra right wing wackaloons took over the party.
So, early next year Rudd will go to an early election in which the now totally unelectable rabble that the conservative party has become, will be smashed. The greens will almost certainly get the balance of power in the senate and the greens leader and Rudd will sit down, hash out a modified plan that’s more acceptable to the greens, and the bill will pass.
There ya go. Aussie politics 101.
Because I’ve been a political junkie for 20 years. Trust me I know of what I speak.
There’s nothing in that that I disagree with in principle. But tell ‘Joe Average’ that his beer fridge will cost twice as much to run as a result and he’ll let you know in no uncertain terms what he thinks of that idea.
The best way to do it in a country like Australia is to feed back compensation in the form of a big tax break. Everybody has more money in their pockets and can choose whether spend it on power or going a bit greener.
Later, of course, you use bracket creep to surreptitiously steal those tax breaks back while nobody is watching..
Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
You make the tax breaks part of a Program, not changes to tax-law itself. This makes it easy to retire them quietly later.
I too am a politics geek.
Earthborn
Terrestrial Intelligence
Pretty good video. It presents the issues well and even shows an understanding of the difference between Cap & Trade and offset markets. However I don't think that necessarily the Cap & Trade system itself it problematic. The issue to me seems to enforcement; whether it is capped or taxed, or capped and traded, there needs to be strict enforcement of whatever regulation you might imagine. And it has to be global enforcement, so the people fearing that it might lead to a global government are at least partly right. The tricky part is that we don't have an effective system of global governance and are not likely to get one soon...
We can't prevent it, as it is already happening. Stopping it or even slowing it down seems rather unrealistic as well. That does not mean we should not try to slow down its acceleration.
Earthborn
Terrestrial Intelligence
The quote doesn't appear in the link. And it seems to talk about emission offsets, not credits.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2003
- Messages
- 61,585
Sorry about that, I screwed up the link. This should be the correct one:
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/12/04/on-the-arm/