Hi Gar,
Before I get to carbon taxes in this note, I would just like to say
that I
really liked some of your material on carbon trading. For example, there was
the article that I never recall without a smile and that began:
"Mommy, where do carbon offsets come from?"
"Well, you see sweetheart, when a major polluter and a consultant love
money very, very much, they express that love in a special way. Nine months
later, the consultant produces an extremely large paper packet."
We may not agree on various points, but you are one of the people
whose views I look at when I am writing an article on an environmental issue.
It seems, though, that carbon taxes are one of our disagreements, at
least to some extent. I think that the main point about both carbon trading
and carbon taxes is that the neo-liberals are using them to avoid overall
environmental planning and the direct regulation of production. (I am *not*
saying that *you* want to avoid regulation but that the main backing for
carbon taxes comes from this source.) , Such regulation of production would
lead to measures including the ones you point to: public investment and
efficiency standards. Those are indeed major and important measures. But
there also has to be recognition of overall planning and regulation.
The Green Party and certain other environmentalists make a major
distinction between carbon trading and carbon taxes. For example, they point
to the corruption and loopholes and absurdities in the Kyoto system of carbon
trading (which is an important thing to do, and I support doing this, and
take part in doing this), but they think that carbon taxes wouldn't have
similar problems. But the main difference between the two in terms of
corruption and loopholes is simply that carbon trading has been used more
extensively so far. If carbon taxes were implemented on the same scale, they
would develop their own extensive list of problems.
In my article on the carbon tax, I give a number of reasons to believe
that the carbon tax won't work any better than carbon trading. I will only go
briefly into two things here.
First, a carbon tax often seems attractive at first glance because of
the idea of making polluters pay. This makes one think that the expense is
going to be borne by major polluters and CEOs and companies that are
responsible for holding back environmental progress. If only that were true!
But it's not. There is every reason to believe that many powerful
corporations will avoid any problem with the tax (such as by passing it on);
that it won't affect in the slightest CEO pay; and that it will bear with
exceptional weight on workers, small businesses, and certain particular
industries that have special problems and don't have enough clout to get the
government to bail them out. It will usually bear hardest on those who have
the least power in the economy and the least ability to find alternative
energy, and weigh lightest on those with the most reponsibility. I give my
reasoning for believing that this will be the outcome of the carbon tax in my
article. Here I would just note that even this alone would make a strong
carbon tax, a tax heavy enough to at least have a hope of making a major
difference, a major political disaster for the struggle against global
warming as well as casting major doubt on its actual effectiveness in
ensuring that carbon emissions are cut as fast as they should be. I think
that left-wing environmentalism should fight against the carbon tax plan
(although not necessarily against every single tax, independent of its size
and nature, that someone might call a carbon tax), and that this must be one
of the lines of demarcation with what one might call establishment or
corporate environmentalism.
But let me just raise one other issue in this note, which is
extending longer than I intendd.
Carbon trading and carbon taxes are intended -- *not* by you, but
by their main backers -- as an alternative to major planning or "big
government" or a "carbon dictatorship". Of course, any measure, even neo-
liberal measures, even market measures, require some planning, but they are
supposed to reduce planning and regulation to a minimum. As a result, they
not only slow down progress in eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, but they
can give rise to fiascos.
For example, consider the biofuel catastrophe. I examined this in an
article entitled "Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize
and the fiascos of corporate environmentalism"
(www.communistvoice.org/41cAlGore.html). It's not just that biofuels can't
provide a full alternative to fossil fuels -- indeed, can't come anywhere
near to that. It's that the vast expansion of biofuel production is actually
contributing to the danger of the collapse of the Amazon rainforest and of
Asian rainforests. (It's not the only source of the danger of course.) In
this and other ways, something that should have a small but positive effect,
biofuels, has been turned into a major danger.
Why is this? Well, American corn ethanol might actually involve more
carbon emissions than gasoline. But that's not the problem with Brazilian
sugar ethanol and some other biofuels. But the buying by companies of as
much biofuel as they can find due to the financial incentives from carbon
trading (and there would be the same incentive from a carbon tax) helps lead
to a spectacular expanion of biofuel production, which is an unplanned
expansion. That is to say, it's an expansion that's unplanned with respect to
its overall environmental consequences; various governments and capitalists
do plan to make a profit with it, or otherwise plan the expanded destruction
of the forests.
And the stricter a system of carbon trading, or the higher a carbon
tax, the greater the threat would be to the rainforests. Now, it could be
said that this danger to the rainforests could be prevented by limiting or
prohibiting the destruction of forests for the sake of producing biofuels.
Certain biofuels could be banned or restricted, despite their having lower
carbon emissions than fossil fuels. And the European Union may take a few
halting steps in that direction. But any such step goes against the market
logic of a carbon tax or of carbon trading. That logic is, each company
should seek the fuel with the lowest price. The invisible hand of Adam Smith
is supposed to do the rest. And if the invisible hand wields an ax and chops
down a forest, hey, it's not the fauIt of the company buying the biofuel.
It's not even the company's concern. Meanwhile the government's main role is
just supposed to be to set the amount of carbon permits or the level of the
carbon tax; the companies are supposed to be allowed to meet their carbon
goals in their own way.
One of the reasons (not the only one) that environmentalism is such a
problem for neo-liberalism is that purely financial planning doesn't work for
the environment. You can't represent the role of various fuels and materials
simply by assigning them a higher price, to say nothing of ensuring that the
proper entity pays that price. It's not a part-way measure to our goal, but
an obstacle.
Regards,
Joseph Green
Gar Lipow wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 11:58 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I would also note that while a general carbon tax is also taken as the
> > opposite to carbon trading, that isn't so. (Here I am referring to a carbon
> > tax taken as a major measure in itself, and not simply a minor supplement to
> > regulation.) They are both based on the idea that, so long as a proper price
> > can be found for carbon emissions, market mechanisms will provide a
> > solution.
> > That simply isn't so. I critique the carbon tax in
> > "THE CARBON TAX: Another futile attempt at a free-market solution to global
> > warming", available at
> > < www.communistvoice.org/42cCarbonTax.html >.
> >
> > - Joseph Green
>
>
> Actually many critics of Cap & Trade are aware that it. like a carbon
> tax, is a form of carbon price. But even if we agree that a carbon
> price is not the be all and end all of phasing out greenhouse gases,
> most of us think it one part of the solution.
>
> Look, if we want to phase out greenhouse gas emissions, public
> investment and efficiency standards have to be the leading means of
> accomplishing this. But unless you think that will work overnight then
> there will a period during the phaseout when greenhouse gases will
> continue to be emitted. Is it automatically sensible that the price
> for doing that should be zero? And if the price for doing that should
> not be zero, then should it not be charge in a way that actually
> reinforces regulation and public investment by encouraging (however
> poorly) whatever additional reductions it may motivate?
>
> One other point in most sectors, even though I think a carbon price
> would be a good thing, we can do without it if we have to. Because
> there are clear efficiency standards we can use for regulation. In
> building, emissions per person and per square foot. In transport
> emissions per passenger-mile and per ton-mile,. In power production
> emission per kWh. But in industry there is no real measure. Ultimately
> what industry produces is measured in dollar value, and that comes
> right back to a carbon price. You could put in standards per value
> added, but that would give a hell of a break to things like insurance.
> And really that is carbon price anyway, just highly distorted.
>
> Incidentally Larry Lohmann is by no means an a carbon price enthusiast.
> _______________________________________________
> pen-l mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
