Articles by David Roberts

The projected revenue from cap-and-trade auctions is strikingly low

Hey, look, the New York Times and the Washington Post have decided it's significant that Obama's budget includes carbon auction revenue! I guess people are allowed to talk about it now. A good start might be reading my post on the subject from three $%@^! days ago. (Yes, I'm aware bitterness is unattractive.)

There are a few notable features of the treatment of cap-and-trade in the just-released budget proposal. I'll break it up into a few posts.

First, the projected revenue seems strikingly low. Partly this is a function of the fact that the targets themselves, particularly in the short term, are fairly weak -- 14 percent under 2005 levels by 2020, 83 percent by 2050. (Sane climate policy would reduce emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, at least.)

Still, the proposal explicitly says that the administration expects 100 percent of the permits to be auctioned off. As Kate noted, the CBO estimated (PDF) that "the value of those allowances could total between $50 billion and $300 billion annually (in 2006 dollars) by 2020." The administration's estimate -- $83 billion a year by 2020 -- is well at the bottom end of those projections.

My guess -- apparently confirmed by "senior White House officials" who don't invite me to their conference calls -- is that this is simple conservatism. The inclusion of any carbon revenue at all is sure to spark controversy, so they're simply being cautious not to lay too ambitious a marker. It's possible both the targets and the revenue could be boosted in the course of Congressional sausage-making, though color me somewhat pessimistic about that.

In the red

Before the 2007 IPCC report was released, this infographic was taken out (click for larger version):

Seems the scientists were uncomfortable with it, deeming it too subjective, or too scary, or something. Basically the red shows the growth of various risks between 2001 and 2007. Surprise: risks have grown!

Andy Revkin has more.

Dear public advocates for addressing climate change,

You're doing it wrong.

Some thoughts on economists and climate and so forth

The other day in a somewhat tossed-off post I expressed unease at the influence mainstream economists have on climate policy, particularly within the Obama administration. Elsewhere on the green beat you've got people like Chu, who comes out of the science and technology worlds, or Browner, who's been deeply involved in the mechanics of environmental policy implementation for decades -- they are unusual both for their expertise and their ambition around climate and energy. Contrast that to the economic team, which is populated with conventional Rubinites, veterans of the Clinton administration. Their avatar is Larry Summers, who spent Clinton's term pushing back against Browner on climate policy and who has popped up on green radars thus far mainly as the guy who had a hand in cutting back transit funding in the stimulus package. Geithner is basically cut from the same cloth.

It was with all that in mind that I found the notion of a Treasury Dept.-based climate policy team a less-than-thrilling prospect -- my presumption, absent other evidence (and I made it very clear I was just noodling), is that it will be a Summers-esque force for go-slow incrementalism. I probably shouldn't have used the term "mainstream economists," since that's rather imprecise, but anyone who's watched the Obama team take shape knows what I mean.

Anyway, this prompted some substance-free snark over on Common Tragedies, followed by more substance-free snark on Environmental Economics, followed by some substance-free mutual high-fiving in the comments. (This kind of cliquishness will surely help spread the proper respect for the social sciences.)

Still, Adam Stein -- a guy who knows how to mix substance and snark in proper proportion -- is concerned about what he sees as sporadic and inconsistent attacks on economists from environmental quarters. So this is as good an occasion as any to write a post on that subject I've been meaning to write forever. I want to try to get at a few things that bug me about economists the way (some!) economists and economics (often!) tend to manifest themselves in public debates over climate change.