I will add to Patricks point. The main critique Shane makes of regulation is that it can be implemented badly. But a carbon tax can be implemented badly too. A carbon tax can exempt biomass. As Australia has proven a carbon tax can even allow offsets. So while I think a carbon tax might ultimately be a good reinforcement for a regulatory and public investmet policy, I don't think it can be the major tool.
One thing to remember about carbon taxes. While we can measure global emissions very precisely we can't measure fossil fuel emissions at the local level all that well especially if we get down to the individual car or household or factor level. That applies even if the tax is on extraction or import of the fossil fuel. Two reason for this 1) - The simplest to understand, but not the most important is that every barrel of oil (even if we are comparing within single grade) does not have the same carbon content as every other barrel of oil. The same thing applies to natural gas and coal. So even before the stuff is burned significant error creeps into what a carbon tax is supposed to be measuring 2) But when the stuff is burned, the differences become much more serious. For example, coal and diesel produce black carbon (soot) which has many times as much global warming potential as CO2. How much black carbon depends on how efficiently they are burned. So even given identical lumps of coal, or identical barrels of oil, we have really large differences in CO2 emission when they are burned. In addition, when it comes coal, inefficient burning can lead to methane emissions, as can leakage when it comes to natural gas. Like black carbon, methane has many times the global warming potential of CO2. When we burn any fossil fuel (or biofuel) N2O is produced, again a gas with many times the global warming potential of CO2, though not as much N2O is produced as methane and black carbon. Again, how much N2O is produced depends on how the fossil fuel is burned. So simply taxing various grades of fuel does not end up taxing fuel proportionally to global warming emissions. Currently in the ETS is has been shown measured local emissions can be off by up double - that is emissions could be half or twice what is reported. Again, not for the ETS as a whole but for sub-units , not only factories, but whole nations. Can this be remedied? To some extent. We can (and often do) put meters on large point sources. But metering small point sources let alone automobiles is pretty expensive. We can also use satellite detection to refine our measurement. And it has been estimated that all this could produce measurement whose precision and accuracy at the local level is around 10%. But most emissions reductions plans are a great deal less than 10% annually. After all a 10% annual reduction (measured from a baseline, not the previous year) would zero out emissions in ten years. So that means that local measurement of carbon emissions has a margin of imprecision and inaccuracy greater than total annual reductions. That makes a carbon tax highly unsuitable as anything but reinforcement. When you can measure the means better than the end, that is evidence of a problem that is better solved through so-called command and control means than through market means. On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Patrick Bond <[email protected]> wrote: > Let me take you up on a couple of points, Shane. > > On 2/10/2013 4:47 PM, Shane Mage wrote: > > ...Regulation means regulators chosen by the bankster-owned state, but it > "sounds" progressive. > > > Yes, going back to the Progressive Era (and before), that's been the case. > My first job was in the Philadelphia Fed regulating against redlining (I was > the first person ever hired to do that full-time in the Fed, and it was in > 1983, six years after the Community Reinvestment Act was passed); a classic > captive-regulatory situation characterized by revolving-door officials way > too cozy with the banks. And yes, the difficulties of regulating climate > were made evident by Lisa Jackson's frustration and recent walk-out at EPA. > Nevertheless, it's the only hope, as I try to argue below. > > > People don't understand Cap'n Trade, and they rightly would be even more > opposed if they did. > > > A short film I helped with - http://storyofcapandtrade.org/ (the second of > Annie Leonard's wonderful Story of Stuff series) - has had more than a > million views, but I don't know of any other mass public education on the > topic. It was great to see the diverse opposition to cap&trade in California > and although so far unsuccessful the struggle seemed to unite activists > ranging from enviro-justice critics in communities of color (because > cap&trade will keep the big polluters there open for much longer) with those > in trendy SF NGOs allied to Chiapas, Mexico victims of REDD forestry > scamming, and lots of critical environmentalists in between. > > The dilemma is that the big Washington enviro NGOs (the only exception being > Friends of the Earth) will continue supporting cap&trade because it's seen > as what's feasible in Washington. One test is what's going to happen to > 350.org because it's the critical - and, as yet, undecided - site of > potential mass youth and community involvement (only somewhat penetrated - > not controlled - by yuppie greens dedicated to 'market solutions'). I am > optimistic, because Bill McKibben and his team are smart; he seems to be a > recovered-economist critical of bankster-solutions > (http://grist.org/climate-energy/beyond-baby-steps-analyzing-the-cap-and-trade-flop/) > and his decision not to endorse any of the Kerry and Waxman-Markey bills in > 2009-2010 was useful. (He supported a carbon tax - a 'fee÷nd' strategy > from his Maine neighbor Sue Collins.) > > But they also don't understand taxation except that they've been trained to > hate Taxes. In a market economy, such as we have now and for some time into > the future, taxes--positive and negative--are the only effective way to > channel resources away from ecologically destructive uses and to direct them > to ecologically constructive alternatives. > > > The main problem, as Joseph Green can chime in with, is that you only get > change at the margins with taxation. To deal with climate and so many other > eco-social problems, we need full-fledged systemic transformation (the kind > we last saw in the West in the World War II mobilization). A second is that > a carbon tax generates climate-apartheid politics which makes for > discriminatory (anti-poor) policies, and given that real estate markets > price poor and working people so far from their sites of employment in > sprawling exurbs, the need to build in countervailing subsidies makes fair > climate taxation really difficult. > > > That's what the price system (aka law of value) is about. It's also what > politics is really about. The coal can be kept in the hole and the oil in > the rock only by making it unprofitable to extract them. > > > I disagree. The worldwide banning of CFCs - to prevent ozone hole widening - > is the precedent we all seek, a task begun at the 1987 Montreal Protocol and > completed by 1996. (To be sure, global governance since then has been > miserable in form and content, failing to generate any solutions to global > crises of any sort in any of the multilateral agencies.) > > Greenhouse gases are much harder, but life on Earth in coming decades really > does depend upon it. Since regulatory strategies coming from a > fossil-fuel-addicted corporate-controlled US Congress are impossible to > envisage in the near future, the orientation of activism at US national > scale is to get that Clean Air Act enforced to halt coal fired plant > approvals or ban mountaintop removals. That strategy is slowly working, it > seems, way too slowly but at least it's an end-run around Congress. > > The more direct popular-regulatory approach, however, is to intervene at the > sites of emissions. Of the 150 coal-fired power plants proposed by Dick > Cheney, only one or two have been commissioned, as a result of grassroots > pressure, from local civic groups to Sierra Club (whose lawyers have done a > great job). And divestment against fossil fuel corps has begun at several > Northeast universities, with a couple hundred student chapters dedicated to > this tactic now in motion. The Keystone XL Pipeline struggle is also > crucial, and there's a big rally in Washington next Sunday > http://www.350.org/en/about/blogs/presidents-day-weekend-2013 > > And this is true across the world: all progress on climate change has come > at the point of production, extraction and generation. I could give you a > long list - a full account of strategy and tactics is in > http://www.ukznpress.co.za/?class=bb_ukzn_books&method=view_books&global[fields][_id]=395 > ... and if anyone's in Washington I'm speaking about this at the Institute > for Policy Studies on Feb 19 (and at UC-Santa Barbara on Feb 23&25 and I > think in between in NYC). > > But the main point behind my forwarding that article is that the standard US > public policy brainwash - that only market solutions can solve market > problems ('we have to privatize the air to save it') - doesn't seem to be > permanently brain-damaging. For those opposed to apartheid here in South > Africa, which is where I learned politics, it's akin to the question posed > by Rev Leon Sullivan in the early 1980s: 'can't we get corporations to help > end apartheid by encouraging them to act a bit less racist?' - to which we > all said, 'no, get them outta there: divest now!' And for those working on > any eco-social problem, that evolution in awareness is extremely good news. > > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
