Doug wrote: > That piece is rather friendly towards carbon trading, while > acknowledging some devils in the details. Are you going soft on > markets, Michael?
I am glad you bring this up, Doug. Some practicioners in the industry say that the European cap'n trade scheme is a mess, and even the American Enterprise Institute is critical of cap'n trade, see http://www.aei.org/docLib/20070601_EPOg.pdf But if you look at the academic literature, the most critical you get from people other than Gar Lipov is that cap n trade is good in principle but one has to be careful about implementation. I'd like to repeat my earlier reference to Larry Lohman's *Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power* downloadable from http://www.dhf.uu.se/pdffiler/DD2006_48_carbon_trading/carbon_trading_web.pdf It is really excellent, it quotes all the classics of economics, and I think it buries cap n trade. Hermann Scheer's *Energy Autonomy* also has a good chapter about it, fittingly called "The Kyoto Syndrome and the misery of modern energy and environmental econmics." (p. 175). This is a great book, and at less than $20 hardbound at Amazon it is a bargain. This is a serious issue. Al Gore pushes cap and trade, Monbiot has some form of cap and trade together with contract and converge, almost the entire economics profession pushes cap and trade, the most promising initiatives in the US have it as an important element, but there are indications that it is a terrible program which is becoming a serious obstacle to reducing carbon emissions. What do you all think about this? I am willing to learn. Hans.
