On 9/13/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> There is a continuum from subsidies to taxes and the final level can
> depend on more than one factor. I don't see a problem with governments
> saying that CO2 exactly offsets the benefits of coal (or nearly enough
> so, administration costs mean that 0 is the appropriate rate even when
> the offsetting yields a value slightly above or below 0).
The problem is not that 0 is excluded a priori. The problem is that 0
is bad policy once we consider the actual evidence.
>From the climate change and ocean chemistry points of view, a ton of
carbon is a ton of carbon; hence the environmental costs are
equivalent. On the short-run geopolitical calculus, you argue, I
think, that coal is preferable because it is plentiful (and hence
available in sufficient quantities from more stable and mature
countries). In the long run, though, coal is the far greater threat
for exactly the same reason, its abundance. If we tax other fossil
fuels relative to coal we encourage building infrastructure that
depends upon coal, making it even harder to move away from it.
But it's coal that provides the bulk of our carbon fuel inventory. A
world in which all the petroleum and methane have been burned over the
next few centuries will be a dramatically changed one, but it may not
be catastrophic. On the other hand, a world in which all the coal has
been consumed on that time scale will likely be disastrous on a scale
that surpasses even a massive exchange of nuclear weapons. We simply
must not dig up all the coal.
In addition, coal provides substantially less energy per ton of CO2.
Perhaps this is redundant: it's why a carbon tax shifts us away from
coal after all. However, in the planetary view, a preference for coal
to petroleum is sheer lunacy, as it yields fewer benefits and more
costs.
You argue for the cost/benefit calculations of individual countries.
This is very like the libertarian fallacy which assumes that the best
policy for the nation is simply the aggregate of the best policy for
individuals. It is very easy to identify important examples where this
is not the case. Similarly, the best policy for the world is not the
aggregate of the best policy of its individual nations. That is
precisely the nut of the problem.
By reasserting parochial interests over the interests of the globe,
you are of necessity misallocating costs and benefits on a global
scale. It's always in my personal benefit to have cheap fuel: my
personal incremental impact on the climate system will always be
trivial. In a similar way, it may always be in the selfish interests
of any country to burn coal. The consequences of failing to reframe
the question in global terms are at the root of the trainwreck we see
coming.
There is time to hit the brakes, but I share Coby's pessimism that we
will have the maturity to manage. The train is on autopilot, and I see
your argument as encouraging the human engineers to remain asleep.
mt
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