Han Ehrbar wrote: > I am especially intrigued by those carbon rationing schemes > which make the price signal two-dimensional: someone buying > gasoline has to pay a certain amount of money plus has to > surrender some of his or her carbon rations.
On one hand, you wrote ardently in a previous message that cap and trade is "a bogus solution which has to be fought tooth and nail" and that it is "evil". On the other hand, you are enthused with carbon rationing. But they are both examples of carbon trading. What you fight with your left hand, you support with your right hand. It's not just my opinion that cap and trade and carbon rationing are closely related. According to the references you gave to carbon rationing, it is also known as "personal carbon trading" (i.e. personal cap and trade). Cap and trade is "upstream" carbon trading, while carbon rationing is "downstream" carbon trading. The idea that one is evil and the other has all the good features you see in it is ludicrous. It's policy wonkery. The fact is that the various forms of carbon trading share many of the same basic problems. > ... and the beauty is that everybody gets the same > ration. This sends a powerful message that the atmosphere > belongs to everybody. Any scheme that gives everyone the same carbon ration is in trouble. There are different needs for those who live in year-round moderate climates, and those who live in places with severe winters. There are different needs for those who live close to their place of work, and those who live far away. There are different needs for those whose basic needs require products with large carbon input, and those who can get by with products with a smaller carbon footprint. And so on. If your system really had equal carbon consumption, it would collapse at the start. But then you go on to describe that people actually can have different carbon footprints - by trading for other people's rations or simply by paying a premium price. So, in what you advocate, there is no equality after all. There is only a pretence of equality (everyone originally gets an equal ration), while the actual carbon consumption differs, and the rich, the 1%, can consume however much they like. And that brings us to the unpopularity of most rationing. One of the references you gave on carbon rationing worried about this a bit, and it also worried about the black markets that would develop. But you ignore this and other issues raised by the very references you gave. It seems like it doesn't matter to you what these references say - all that matters is that they supported carbon rationing, not the problems which they admitted about carbon trading. That seems to me like an awfully superficial way of using references. Of course, if the rationing scheme was clearly necessary and useful, it would be different. Environmental protection definitely requires certain changes in how basic needs are satisfied. But it's one thing to restructure the economy in a green way, and another to hope that carbon emissions will be slashed by "green austerity". And it turns out that "green austerity" would be a fraud. Gar Lipow has demonstrated in "Cooling It! No Hair Shirt Solutions to Global Warming" that carbon emissions could be slashed as radically as needed to fight global warming without cutting the consumption of the masses. This requires restructuring much of the economy and going against certain powerful and ingrained capitalist interests, but it is technically possible. Based on what Gar Lipow has demonstrated, we know that if this isn't being carried out, it's not the fault of the masses, but of the bourgeoisie which runs the capitalist economies. By way of contrast, in an article you recommended, "Rationing returns: a solution to global warming?", it's noticeable that there is no discussion of changing the structure of industry, of massive programs for energy efficiency, etc. Instead, the concern is for rationing as a means to cut consumption. In its conclusions, which go into the special needs for the program to work, there is no reference to changing the structure of industry, providing alternative green goods. etc. So this leaves two paths for the environmental movement. One could either defend both the environment and the masses, and advocate a program of economic restructuring that is both green and provides more security for the masses. This path has the prospect of gaining an ever-increasing support for environmentalism and eventually generating enough mass pressure to have a real effect. Or one can advocate a program of restricting mass consumption because this is the type environmentalism that the neo-liberal bourgeoisie will support. -- Joseph Green _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
