Comments on: The greening of Van Hollen

By: Thomas Nephew

Thomas Nephew — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:51:43 +0000

“In fact, the “as long as” wing is about 90% of the Anti-Global-Warming Party, belying their professed alarm about climate change.”

I don’t agree; objecting to a “baby step” solution-in-part to global warming doesn’t necessarily belie the alarm if either:
1) the baby step involved (e.g., unilateral border adjustments) makes the necessary global agreement less likely or impossible, or
2) the baby step involved (e.g., more nuclear power) solves one dangerous problem by creating another.

I happen to agree with you (I think) in feeling we should go ahead with our own “cap & X” regardless, and that nuclear energy (with safeguards against proliferation and with a waste solution) is not off the table. But others don’t, and I don’t think that’s necessarily bad faith on their part; there’s legitimate disagreement about the costs and benefits of different approaches.

By: Thomas Nephew

Thomas Nephew — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:42:56 +0000

I’m a little confused following where you come down on this, in that you identify undeniable problems with a national cap & X policy unless the global picture is addressed as well, and (I think) you ultimately support tariffs/”border adjustments” on non-cap&X countries. True? My confusion is that you then count yourself as opposite to the NYT, yet their editorial seems to echo a lot of what you say; it seems to me it mainly raises the issue of unilateral, uncoordinated tariffs at the end as a way of illustrating a danger to gung-ho free-traders in the language they prefer and understand.

I think what you call a second level issue is a fundamental one: it’s almost certainly the long-standing members of the Industrial Revolution/Carbon-Burning Club (to wit, Western Europe, US, Canada, perhaps Russia) who’ve put the bulk of the excess, ice-cap-melting CO2 in the atmosphere. (I’ll see if I can find consensus or respectable estimates on that.)

If so, to come along and whistle “global carbon burning game over” now is unfair to the needs of poor people in the rest of the world. I think the eventual agreement should acknowledge that somehow; for instance, I could imagine a global cap and dividend paying higher dividends to citizens of developing countries than to those of developed ones, inversely proportionate to their countries’ contributions to historical CO2 emissions. (Or some variant of that for “cap and trade”.) One could dicker over the formula, but some such formula seems required; if you or I were Malaysians or Brazilians or what have you, we’d probably insist on it ourselves. Failing a global Copenhagen agreement on CO2 emissions, I guess the next best thing would be to separately, via the WTO, the G-8, or some outfit like that, agree on how impose CO2 emissions based tariffs that reflect the thinking above. That way, at minimum, it’s not just the US making up the new rules as we go along.

Re nuclear, I’d certainly support shoveling plutonium out of warheads and into reactors, at any rate. Obviously, the waste products are a “global (poisoning)” issue of their own, though there may be feasible solutions like vitrification.

By: RobertNAtl

RobertNAtl — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 12:04:39 +0000

And, of course, the NYT disagrees with me (proving that I am right):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/opinion/19sun1.html?_r=1

The NYT is a member of the “as long as” wing of the Anti-Global-Warming Party, meaning that they are anti-global-warming, as long as any solutions don’t lead to “protectionism” (and, on a separate issue, “as long as” nuclear power is not a significant part of the solution). In fact, the “as long as” wing is about 90% of the Anti-Global-Warming Party, belying their professed alarm about climate change.

By: RobertNAtl

RobertNAtl — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:57:14 +0000

I sort of shorthanded my thought there — to clarify, we can’t offshore power production, but we will be offshoring manufacturing itself, if US manufacturers are subject to cap + ______ and Chinese manufacturers are not. The cost advantage to businesses operating in non-cap + _____ will result in more manufacturing in those countries and less in ours. And that essentially means power production will be shifted from the US (which will have cap + ____) to China and other non-cap + ____ countries (which will not).

A second-level issue, which China has already raised, is whether allowances should be made in any global cap + ____ system for previous CO2 emissions by countries which have been industrialized for a long time (US, Britain, etc.) That raises a whole separate set of issues

By: Thomas Nephew

Thomas Nephew — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:33:06 +0000

Not sure you could offshore a whole lot of power production. But you’re right, the point of the ‘border adjustments‘ in the cap and dividend bill is to level the playing field between economies paying a price for CO2 emissions and those not doing so. (I believe there are similar provisions in the Waxman-Markey bill, ACES.) If the Copenhagen negotiations are successful, there’d be less cries of ‘protectionism’ about that.

By: RobertNAtl

RobertNAtl — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:59:46 +0000

I think the key point in any kind of a “cap and _____” system is the one you mentioned parenthetically: “tariffs on imports from non cap and trade or cap and dividend countries.” Without such a provision, any “cap and ______” system just becomes a way to offshore carbon emissions as well as manufacturing jobs. But look for our trading “partners” (such as China) and the “free trade” crowd here in the U.S. to wail “protectionism” (followed within less than two sentences by “depression”), in order to try to stop any carbon tariff provision.