Climate Climate & Energy

An acknowledge-and-do-nothing strategy is little better than denialism

Reihan Salam writes an incredibly disappointing, and boggling, blog post here, on his preferred strategies for dealing with climate change. Disappointing, because if Reihan, one of the best conservative writers out there, doesn’t get the logic of carbon pricing, then there’s little hope for some sort of conservative renaissance on climate change policy. Boggling, because […]

Now that L-W is dead, Barnes’ sky trust is looking good

Revkin speculates that Barnes' proposal is a way to break the deadlock stopping climate change legislation.

I think he may be right. Tax emissions. (Or cap them and auction permits.) Refund the revenue to everybody. It has the following political advantages:

• It is simple and easy to understand.
• It puts a price on emissions without really penalizing anybody. It is a no-hair-shirt solution.

This last point is worth emphasizing. It does not punish consumers, because the increased prices they pay are made up for by the dividend check. It does not really punish fossil fuel companies, because the tax they pay gets passed along to customers who have new money to pay those increased prices. Of course, fossil fuel companies do lose, as people use less of their product, but that is not punishment; it is an inevitable result of their selling a product whose side effects can no longer be tolerated. Since it will take time to phase out fossil fuels, oil and coal companies are free to use the time tax-and-dividend gives them to make the transition to other businesses, perhaps by expanding the investments they have already made in wind and solar.

I'm going to post soon on why I think the people who think tax-and-dividend (or any mechanism depending on price) can be the sole, or even main, solution are wrong. Price is insufficient by itself; public investment and rule-based regulation have to remain the primary solutions. But price is not avoidable as part of the solution.

Country songs dedicated to your favorite climate personalities

Dedicated to the coal and nuclear industries: Lorrie Morgan's What Part of No Don't You Understand?

Dedicated to Scott McClellan: Randy Travis' Pray for the Fish:

Peter Barnes on cap-and-dividend in U.S. News & World Report

Peter Barnes' proposal is popping up everywhere these days, most recently in U.S. News and World Report. The idea is simple: Put a cap on emissions, and divide that cap into permits. Sell those permits upstream -- mostly to just a few hundred fossil fuel producers and importers. They in turn will pass the cost of those permits on to consumers. Divide the revenue from the auctions among consumers, which makes up for the higher prices.

Read the article for details.

Update: "Rebate" changed to "Refund" as GreyFlcn suggested.

He rules their world

On the Drudge Report homepage right now: Gotta love those scare quotes.

BBC program on Kyoto offsets

The idea behind offsets is that you pay someone else to reduce emissions on your behalf when they can make the reductions more cheaply than you can. The leading offset method use to fight climate chaos is the Clean Development Mechanism. This is an extremely controversial topic, with many (including me) contending it does not work. The BBC has an excellent radio broadcast covering both sides of the controversy. The broadcaster concludes that offsets don't make sense. But he gives leading intelligent pro-CDM experts plenty of time to make their case. It is an example of a program that is, while not the least bit objective, still being fair.

Mere $45 trillion needed to tackle climate change, says IEA

A G8-backed goal to halve greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 would take a global clean-technology investment of merely $45 trillion, the International Energy Agency said in a report Friday. That’s about 1.1 percent of the world’s average annual gross domestic product through 2050; more overwhelmingly, it’s also about three times the size of the current U.S. […]

Climber scales New York Times building with climate message

For World Environment Day on Thursday, a French climber scaled the New York Times building in Manhattan to protest climate change. Wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “The Solution Is Simple.Org” — the web address of a one-page site calling for meaningful climate action — Alain Robert climbed to the top of the 52-story building […]

Still more reasons to eat local and lay off the beef

Increasingly, consumers are trying to reduce the environmental impacts of the foods they eat. But it's not so easy to know what to do, in part because of the bewildering array of food choices the market offers, but also because it's hard to know what food choices carry the biggest impact.

This nifty study tries to clear away some of the murk by tackling a fairly straightforward question: If you care about the climate, which is more important, what kind of food you eat, or where that food is grown?

To summarize the findings: All else being equal, locally grown food is friendlier to the climate than food grown half a continent away. But if you're looking for a single food choice that will help curb your climate impact, your best bet is to stay away from cows!

A final entry on the cap-and-trade debate

The ongoing economic discussion concerning the differences between cap-and-trade and carbon taxes has attracted a number of eminent participants. Not only Mark Thoma, but Brad DeLong now (with an assist from Megan McArdle), offers some excellent commentary on the issues involved.