On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 5:45 AM, <[email protected]>wrote:
> <snip> > > If you look at markets, you always have to ask what options > the market participants have when reacting to market > outcomes. Feed-in tariffs are so effective because they > take the initiative away from the incumbent energy firms. > They leave it up to millions of individual "prosumers" to > decide how much investment goes into renewable energy. They > don't allow the electric utilities to slow down renewable > energy under the pretext of cost or grid stability or > transmission availability or how it fits together with their > sunk investments. The importance to take this veto power > away from the incumbent energy firms is stressed by Hermann > Scheer in > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z7cdDYP_zg&NR=1 > > look especially minutes 51-60 > > I assume the same principle is valid with carbon markets. > If individual end consumers trade carbon rations with each > other, they will reduce aggregate demand for fossil fuel > products and shift demand elsewhere in a much swifter and > more radical way than if you give the carbon credits to the > incumbent energy firms to play with. > > I don't have object to seeking reforms within capitalism both for the hope of occcasionally winning them and as part of movement building. But I strong disagree with this form of carbon trading as I do with all forms of carbon trading mainly because I don't think they are path to emissions reductions. I'm glad to finally be able to answer you on this. I have been following this thread with increasing frustration as various muscular skeletal problems have prevented me from replying even thiough I have been able to read along. Catching up after the discussion has been so extensive means I may have to be lose some nuance in my reply. So here are my objections with a certain amount of lossy commpression: 1) All forms of carbon trading ultimately work by putting a price on carbon, evern if (as you say) it is a second dimension of pricinsg. And this can't tackle the fundamental problems which physically are infrastructure. Carbon pricing can motivate someone to dirver less and take the train instead. It can't get a new train line built or a an existing train line upgraded. Because trains utlimately are a matter of public investment. Joseph was kind enough to recommend my 2004 book "No Hairshirt Solutions to Global Warming". On the economics, including the need for large scale infrastructure investment, let me suggest by 2012 book "Solving the Climate Crisis" published by Praeger Press I know one answer is that with a carbon price people may demand more trains. But when a very visible public policy makes life more hellish for people in the name of virtue the likely reaction is to demand a change in that policy rather than further changes to adapt to it. Leading with carbon pricing is bad policy and bad politics. 2) Also there is another fatal flaw in all forms of carbon trading. They require division of greenhouse gas pollution into nice precise instruments. And we don't and currently cannot measure greenhouse gas pollution that precisely at the local level. Globally we know very precisely and accurately the level of greenhouse gas emissions, because we can measure gas concentrations, and changes in atmospheric composition spread very quickly so measuring in atmospheric composition one place reflects pretty closely composition everywhere. But when you get down to the continental level you already lose some precision and accurcy. When you get down to the provincial level or to nations that don't cover a large portion of the continent they are on you lose even more. And when you get down to individual homes and automoabiles and factories and farms and so on measurement is very imprecise indeed. Even at the national level, under the Europeans Trading System (ETS) discrepencies of as much as double have been measured between different measures. I will add that the ETS for some reason I don't understand relies entirely on fuel consumption for measuring GHG emissions and does not take advantage of smokestack meters where they exist. In the U.S., most large power plants and some large factories DO have smokestack meters. They are there to measure other forms of pollution, but some do directly measure CO2 as a way to estimate other pollutants, and others measure those pollutants directly from which CO2 can be estimated. The EPA also divides power point fuel into more than 50 classifications associated with various pollution levels, and plant emissions are estimate from this. So power plants (and some factories) in the U.S. have the most precise and accurate measure of pollution current technology can provide by two different methods both of which should have approximately equal accuracy and precision. And in turns out that on average the discrepancy between the two types of measurement is 17% . Further it is not uncommon for such discrepancies to reach 25% and in more than 90% of such large point sources, the discrepancy is 13% or more! To understand how significant that discrepancy is, the most ambitious proposal ever made for reductions was the Bolivian proposal of 10% a year! More typically proposals range from 3% to 5% annual reductions. So a 17% discrepncy is a realy problem for carbon trading. Even a 13% discrerpancy is a disaster. And this is with large point source incorporating real precise fuel classification and smokestack measures! Homes and commercial businesses and most factories and farms don't divide their fuel use into 50 different classifications and certainly don't have smokestack meters. And when we talk about degradation of forests and loss of forest and farm soil and so on there is a whole other level of measurement difficulty. In short Greenhouse Gas pollution is not something suitable to be divided into precise financial instruments. It makes much more sense to specifiy means as much as possible with public investment and old fashioned "command & control" (I hate that term) regulation. A price on greenhouse gas pollution is only useful as a rough and ready reinforcement, and even for that only makes sense in the form of a carbon fee (sometime called a carbon tax). With carbon trading, the imprecision can result in sometimes getting the sign wrong. With a carbon fee, though the scale will inevitabley be off, at least the sign will also be right; so you can't end up in extreme cases being paid for increasing pollution or penalized for reducing it. There are other problems with carbon trading. These are not even neccesarily th e most important ones, just ones that can be expressed fairly succinctly. If Patrick Bond and Larry Lohmann choose they can probably point you towards some of the ones the require longer discussion. But the ones I mentioned I think get neglected sometime more than they should. ttps://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l<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
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