On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Doug Henwood <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Jun 10, 2010, at 1:07 PM, Gar Lipow wrote: > >> Don't have time right now to make a real post. But I've written a lot >> on elasticity in the past. And the empirical data shows that price >> increases are a weak tool in reducing use. > > Those price increases have often been temporary, or perceived as such, > haven't they?
The evidence seems to be that even long term effects are weak. > >> My fear of price increases is that focus on price >> distracts from the large scale public investment and command & control >> regulation that are more urgent that will be responsible for the >> overwhelming majority of emissions reductions should we ever have to >> political power and will to implement a real emissions reduction >> policy. > > Why is it an either/or thing? Why not a carbon tax whose proceeds are > used to fund alternative energy R&D? It is not an either/or thing, but political energy is finite. Even people like Bill Bill McKibben and James Hansen put their emphasis on putting a price on carbon and ignore or downplay the potential in things like financing trains, wind generators, greening buildings, etc. And efficiency regulations and so on. If pressed they will admit these are good things, and then go back to working on getting a price on carbon. In practice people doing politics have priorities. Right now a carbon price is getting more than its share of attention. And it is not even popular. There is a lot more public support for public investment and regulation than for a carbon prices. (Something I've also sent to the list if someone wants to search). Carbon pricing appeals to elites. One of the many reasons the Kerry-Lieberman and ACES proposals turned out so badly was the willingness of many environmentalists to trade almost anything away if they could get a price on carbon. Incidentally using a carbon price to fund R&D and other good stuff is not a great idea because if done right carbon pricing will be an increasing source of revenue for a decade then peak and decline. (I'm assuming the goal is to phase out 90% or more of emissions over the course of 20 years which is what we really need to do.) That is why I like tax-and-dividend or even cap-and-dividend (though I hate the corporate name). Because it prevents important long term programs from becoming dependent on a revenue source that should be ultimately phased out. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
