On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 9:30 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Gar, > > I thought your reply raised some notable points. >
> * An important issue raised by your note concerns planning. We seem > to have a somewhat different ideas about what planning is. I think that the > type planning that we need must include the direct regulation of production. > True, all sorts of things can be called planning, and really are planning *in > some sense or other*. No doubt various environmentalists talk of "planning", > and yet mean some very neo-liberal types of things. Relying mainly on > subsidies to industry, setting up a cap and trade market, setting the price > for a carbon tax, are all planning of a sort. But they are alternatives to Nowhere did I imply this, I'm talking about things like regulating emission per square foot and per person, regulating emissions per passenger and ton mile, regulating emissions per kWh. And direct public investment like upgrading rail systems, building electric power lines, creating efficiency utilities that provide residential efficiency upgrade paid for out of utility bills (and subsidized besides). Also a combination direct public ownership of wind and solar farms with neoliberal subsidies for private wind and solar farms. > Moreover, not only does the the type planning we need include the > direct regulation of production, it is not just any direct regulation of > production that we need. The bourgeoisie can use "regulated capitalism" in > its own interest, just as it can use free markets. I stress in my articles > that workers and activists should not regard regulated capitailsm as > socialism, but should maintain a skeptical and critical attitude to > regulations, and seek to influence them. We must not only be free of neo- > liberalism, but free of the idea that state regulation is socialism. > Nevertheless, only some type of regulation of production can provide > environmental solutions. > > * You ask "How do we reduce industrial emissions without a carbon > price? I suspect any answer will either ge a back door carbon price or will > have huge inefficiencies." > > Well, take the generation of electrical power. I Umm no. In energy jargon generation of electrical power is usually considered separately from manufacturing. I agree that electrical generation is area where regulation and public investment will work. (And note I've never claimed any of this is socialism. ) Here is what I mean about how industry (and really I mean manufacturing) is different. In most sectors of the economy you can have the type of regulation and public investment that is as close to socialist planning as a capitalist economy is capable of without needing to give direct building by building, power plant by power plant or car by car. You can have general rules for emissions per square foot or person, emissions per passenger mile or freight ton, emissions per kWh. Manufacturing is different. About 10,000 facilities were in the ETS trading system as of the end of 2007, and many of those were power plants. Say 5,000 other than power plants. But ETS excludes a lot industries and also excludes producers with emissions below a certain level. So I'd say at minimuj back up to 10,000 non-power plant manufacturing facilities, maybe a lot more. Are regulators going to come up with a plan for each facility, telling them on a case by case basis how much to cut? Or are we going to have a general rule -every one cuts 90%, doesn't matter if some facilities are already super-efficient and some could cut 99%? You see other sectors have a built proxy where we don't have to just set an emission reduction. We can set emissions per what (kWh, resident/full time employee equivalent, passenger mile, ton mile). With industry we don't have the "what" other than dollars. Even in a socialist society you would have this distinction. Other sectors you can just set general rules. The target can be calculated by a simple formula. And then it is up to auto manufacturers or the train or bus facility or the resident to meet that target - obviously with help in many cases.) But in industry the problem is not just the means. Given an overall sector target, the target for an individual facility is not obvious. Never mind the means. What is the appropriate end? Just as thought experiment imagine this under socialism. Well, even under socialism I would think the best to set targets is to set a shadow price for emission permits and issue at total number of permits. Then let the individual facilities bid for those permits out of their shadow budgets and weigh for themselves the value of emission reductions against what other facilities are willing to bid. Or (in a socialist society) you can have the equivalent of an emissions tax by setting a price per emission, using sophisticated analysis to determine what price would produce what reduction. In a market socialist society you could remove the prefix "shadow" from the phrase "shadow price". And I would say the argument for a carbon tax or auctioned permit price is even stronger under capitalism - specifically for manufacturing. Now if you read some of the stuff I've written on Grist you will see I've gone into this in more detail. That is in most sectors planning makes more sense than price driven means of reducing emissions. But manufacturing is the exception. It is not that price does not have many of the same flaws in manufacturing as it has in other sectors. It is just that, unlike other sector, in manufacturing the other choices are worse. > * You say that the biofuel fiasco is a result, not of the market > measures, but of poor planning. I don't agree. It is actually a prime example > of the lack of a system of overall environmental planning. But did not say it was poor environmental planning. It was poor planning. More specifically it was not a case of a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade or of anything resembling it. Of course it was an interaction between planning and markets, in short a result of the way real markets work as opposed to neo-liberal wet dreams of the way they are supposed to function. But it specifically is not a case of carbon taxes or of carbon-tax like things failing. Incidentally I don't agree that biofuels could have been a force for good except on a very small scale. Past a certain point we can't grow biofuels without either displacing food production, fiber production or wildlife habitat. We can produce some, but not a huge amount, I would save a maximum of 11 percent of current world energy production could be produce sustainably via biofuels, more realistically 7 percent and perhaps as little as 3 percent. And if you notice that this range has almost a 4 to 1 ratio between minimum and maximum, that is because I think our ignorance of what constitutes sustainability in biofuels is that great. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
