Cap And Pollute
Here’s a revolutionary idea for building a mouse trap. The new trap would have the usual opening where the mouse can enter in search of food. But if its inconvenient for the mouse to stay, it can exit from a back door that’s provided for this option. Since the mouse now has two choices (stay or leave), this is a free market solution to mouse catching.
Sound like a good way to trap mice? If you think so, you’ll love the cap and trade solution now being adopted in many places to reduce global warming.
Such a system has been in place in the EU for awhile and failed badly. But so what. It’s nonetheless moving through Congress in this country, and in the interim ten Northeast states have their own cap and trade programs cranking up and California is fixing to join the throng.
By selling pollution credits to polluters who find it temporarily inconvenient to get under their emissions caps, these states hope to rake in billions. And let’s not forget Wall Street in this great environmental money-making gambit — as if that were possible. Some of The Street’s leading firms will collect their own huge sums from brokering these deals.
Of course, to check global warming and save the current natural order we could just cap carbon emissions and enforce this policy strictly. As strictly as governments do these days with, say, parking violations. But that would only actually reduce emissions and not harness the mighty power of the marketplace. Cap and trade, rather than cap and enforce, is so, so much more au courant.
Well, gotta go. I sell pencils and shine shoes, and do a brisk trade in front of the local Goldman Sachs building because that company is so dedicated to helping small businesses like me these days. Oh, did I mention? GS is also a big player in the cap and trade business. And if they’re involved, you know it’s gonna serve the public interest really, really well.
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12 Responses to “Cap And Pollute”
There are so many things inaccurate about this column. First, there isn't any difference when it comes to pollution levels between and cap and trade (CAT) system and a classic command and control (CAC) emissions cap. Both systems place an absolute cap on emissions, but the CAT system allows flexibility in achieving pollution goals by allowing low-cost abaters to the the emission reductions. Classic CAC programs don't even operate on a pure cap. Both the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act rely larger on technology requirements for point source polluters, which are inflexible and costly. CAT systems have been successful in certain cases, most notably the SO2 market that was established in the 90s.
The European Climate Exchange has had some significant flaws, but most of them have to do with how it was rolled out and not the system itself. Poor enforcement and monitoring, along with speculation in the market, led to bloated prices. The exchanges themselves can and should be regulated to preclude speculation, but that doesn't mean CAT is itself flawed. This would be akin to pointing at a junked car and saying that the internal combustion engine is a failure.
We're going to have some level of greenhouse gas emissions in this world. The key is finding the acceptable level, which balances society's need to pollute (and the economic benefits that go along with that pollution) versus the damage caused by that pollution. With GHG's this is an incredibly difficult balance to find. I'm not sure its really responsible to reject out of hand any attempt to find that level of control, when action thus far has been few and far between.
Oh Please. This trading system was concocted by big polluters and Wall Street derivative sharpies as a way to keep from cleaning up the former's act as rapidly as it should be cleaned. They wrapped this smelly fish in a “market-based solution to pollution” package and environmental groups sucked it up because it allowed them to sit at the big table and play at being real shakers and movers instead of activists no one wants to hear from any more. You want to stop killer pollution? Stop it with fiercely enforced regulations — like what has actually worked in the past. Don't play Monopoly with earth
I would like to think there is some middle ground here. But, having been screwed by Wall Street/Big Gov. so many times, I can see MS's viewpoint might have some merit.
I agree with Michael. This is pussyfooting of the highest order. People are too easily conned and too willing to let slide the work that desperately needs doing.
“Cap and trade” is largely a scam, as well as an excuse for (inexcuseable) meddling by government, a way for insiders (not limited to Al Gore, but likely involving friends and members of the Obama administration, if reality to date is any reliable guide), and a downright evil form of energy rationing.
There is no excuse for deliberate constraint or deprivation of US and Western society and its economies, whatsoever, but those who are so perverse and demented they wish for this, should at least be practical, intelligent, and honest about it: Levy suitable emissions- or (worse) use-directed energy taxes.
” activists no one wants to hear from any more”
Correct, deserved, earned treatment. So why refuse to learn, and perversely insist on rewarding them?
“The European Climate Exchange has had some significant flaws, but most of them have to do with how it was rolled out and not the system itself.”
Actually, all these schemes may seem problem-free in theory, but in practice all but openly invite (and at times, they may well openly invite) exploitation or “gaming.”
And, more important, is why we're concerned about the developed world, when China and India are poised to become the biggest polluters. A world-wide, consistent application is the only logical course of action; it's perverse as well as politically overt and revealing if only some developed nations do this.
More important still is why nations are seeking to submit themselves, or to submit to being led to, engage in what often is self-destructive, intentional retardation of development and intentional deprivation, which is illogical and perverse, especially when at its exposed core the basis for it is leftist poltiics, next to nothing else whatsoever.
RE: DLS
It may surprise you that China and India are the focal points for green investment these days and that China in particular has shown great interest in going green since it would mean that it wouldn't be dependant on other countries for fuel and would mean it's people would live longer healthier lives.
Of course the flip side of those “activists no one wants to hear from any more” are the folks who think that sticking ones head in the sand and chanting la la la la la is a great way to address serious issues.
“It may surprise you that China and India are the focal points for green investment these days “
India would surprise me, if it really is comparable to, or competitive with, China. Much of its promise seems to remain promise alone, as with other economic and related development issues. China, no surprise; they're like the Texas (as in, bigness) of the entire world as well as the workshop or factory of the world, going big with everything. (You probably are aware, for example, that China is known already for being a big dam nation — just ask the environmentalists — but perhaps not that it is also advanced at seeking ultra-high voltage (1000 kilovolts) as well as building record-setting bridges.) China is keeping up with everyone else at work on solar and wind power. To what extent it is to promote this for its own sake, or for energy independence, in addition to being politically heavier-weight, or merely to be ready to build and supply the rest of the world with products in this field, too, remains an open question, in my view.
Unlike the lefties who are hopelessly unrealistic as well as having other problems in this area (with both knowledge and honesty), the rest of us are aware of what is happening and what it really means and what it really promises. (Certainly nobody will accept with a straight face the emissions reduction goals China is “committing” to make, prior to next month's climate politics-based policy meeting in Copenhagen. Short of outsourcing most energy production and other activities, to no longer technically be “its” emissions (i.e., emissions no longer occurring actually within China's territory), how China could possibly meet such goals remains to be seriously explained. (Not that our federal government's politicians won't offer unrealistic, and likely silly, goals, themselves, too. That's the politics involved…)
“the flip side of those [lefty] 'activists no one wants to hear from any more' “
Highly asymmetric. The actual flip side, those corresponding types, is negligeable or trivial in all ways.
(Not that hype and hatred of that group is neglected…)
Sorry, but the promotion (or acceptance) of willful ignorance leaves room for only a very limited degree of “awareness”.
What is “really means' is that too many people are still too stupid, too greedy, or too chickensh*t to address environmental problems in any serious way. The anti-environmentalists, and that includes apologists and excuse-makers, are as clueless as they've always been, hence the head in sand analogy.