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92 comments on My Ideal Presidential Candidate on the Environment

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JN2 on May 2, 2007 - 12:16pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Check out Cap and Share, a variant of cap and trade where:

  • The Cap: safe, binding year-on-year reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
  • The Share: every person's share of the annual emission entitlements

Fossil fuel prices go up (companies have to buy CO2 permits) but this is offset for the individual by selling your annual entitlement.

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Squalish on May 2, 2007 - 3:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Cap and share (Cap and trade with credits delivered per capita) is certainly a potential solution (and holy shit is it better than a prior appropriation system that gives permits to existing polluters), but do you have any idea how much frustration and misunderstanding (and initial rejection) there's going to be at requiring the entire population to take part in one marketplace to redeem their points?

A simple escalating tax on carbon at the most conveniant industrial level, rebated annually on a per-capita level (1 line in a 1040: "Now subtract $5000 from what you owe") seems to be a lot easier.

Must we really dodge the english language so much? Taxes, pseudo-taxes, credits, caps... It has precisely one advantage over a per capita rebated tax, and that's semi-semantic: the government taxes nothing directly, so noone can say the government is raising prices without thinking beyond the limbic level: a good 25% of voters aren't capable of such. Green future, here we come.

So if it helps... I guess I support it. We give out a hundred million '5 tons of carbon' giftcards with tax returns, and retail establishments compete to purchase them at the right price. It's impossible to take away the program in future administrations because people feel entitled to get a few thousand dollars worth of credits at tax day.

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Squalish on May 2, 2007 - 4:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

One problem though...

Better start it off very conservatively, or you'll face carbon-credits-as-guaranteed-investment syndrome - people convinced that holding onto credits will put their 2 year old through college someday. Big positive feedback there, on a short timescale.

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JN2 on May 2, 2007 - 5:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Squalish, credits are only good for a year, so no point in hoarding them. Tearing them up reduces the available CO2 though :) Also, unlike a tax, the cap is guaranteed.

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thomas deplume on May 3, 2007 - 4:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I agree with Professor MacKay of Cambridge. He described using cap-and-trade to eliminate pollution is like selling permits to commit murder as a way to end murder. He suggests a tax on fossil carbon that is high enough to make goods and services which don't use fossil fuels less expensive than those that do.

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Aniya on May 4, 2007 - 7:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi Thomas

Thanks. I like talking about ideas for action.

Some qs:

1) Who specifically (what entity) do you tax? Do you, for example, tax all oil imports? Coal at the extraction source? Who is taxed?

2) Who collects it and how is it collected?

3) Who spends it?

4) And what do they spend it on?

5) So, is it like a sales tax? So, it's adding on to the sales tax?

6) What about multinational corporations? How do you deal with them?

7) Does this tax apply nationally? So, for eg., oil imports to the US would be taxed higher than imports, say, to Mexico? (i.e., do all gov'ts have to do this for it to work?)

So, does an industry (plastics?) go to Mexico to buy oil, then?

Below are some things that seem necessary/beneficial to me. I don't know if these translate into policy, but I'd welcome your feedback and comments.

A public statement of international intentions to work together in the face of "peak" and GCC. This includes some agreements on technology-sharing. ODP (can we discuss this?)

"True" renewable (wind/solar) installation ASAP, in a distributed-energy system, (combination of grid and local production) specifically with priorities, starting with water purification and transport.

Immediate conservation measures, including enforcing the 65 mph speed limit.

Immediate halt to all highway expansion and farmland loss.

Immediate policies to convert farmland to sustainable/organic farming, along with program funding education of young farmers WRT same.

Population and birth rate - support for full legal rights of women and children, and a cultural move on the part of men to support same. (i.e., visible efforts to stop rape, child abuse, etc.) Not sufficient, but necessary. Nothing else can work if these measures are not in place. BC technology is meaningless if women's rights are restricted.

etc. (urban rail, fix Amtrak, etc.)

Just some thoughts.

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Backstop on May 2, 2007 - 3:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

JN2 - This approach has relatively major support here in the UK,
with even the Sec. of State for Environment proposing it in public.

The main difference is that here it is generally titled
Tradable Carbon Quotas, or Cap, Allocate & Trade, etc.

I think it's unequalled by any other system I've seen
as a means of engaging every person of voting age
in a national effort to suppress fossil fuel usage,
and of doing so within the national emissions allocation
agreed under the requisite future global Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons.

Regards,

Billhook

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JN2 on May 2, 2007 - 5:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thanks for your reply, Backstop. IIRC, the UK's proposed system is for carbon debit cards where every carbon purchase (buying gas/petrol, paying the utility bill) takes carbon off your card. Very complicated and expensive to administer compared to a once a year tradable certificate, valid for a year.

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92 comments on My Ideal Presidential Candidate on the Environment

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