Cap and Fade (critique of cap and trade, by James Hansen)

[FarCenter]

By JAMES HANSEN
Published: December 6, 2009
AT the international climate talks in Copenhagen, President Obama is expected to announce that the United States wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to about 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. But at the heart of his plan is cap and trade, a market-based approach that has been widely praised but does little to slow global warming or reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It merely allows polluters and Wall Street traders to fleece the public out of billions of dollars.

Supporters of cap and trade point to the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments that capped sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-burning power plants — the main pollutants in acid rain — at levels below what they were in 1980. This legislation allowed power plants that reduced emissions to levels below the cap to sell the credit for these excess reductions to other utilities whose emissions were too high, thus giving plant owners a financial incentive to cut back their pollution. Sulfur emissions have been reduced by 43 percent in the two decades since. Great success? Hardly.

Because cap and trade is enforced through the selling and trading of permits, it actually perpetuates the pollution it is supposed to eliminate. If every polluter’s emissions fell below the incrementally lowered cap, then the price of pollution credits would collapse and the economic rationale to keep reducing pollution would disappear.

Worse yet, polluters’ lobbyists ensured that the clean air amendments allowed existing power plants to be “grandfathered,” avoiding many pollution regulations. These old plants would soon be retired anyway, the utilities claimed. That’s hardly been the case: Two-thirds of today’s coal-fired power plants were constructed before 1975.

Cap and trade also did little to improve public health. Coal emissions are still significant contributing factors in four of the five leading causes of mortality in the United States — and mercury, arsenic and various coal pollutants also cause birth defects, asthma and other ailments.

Yet cap-and-trade schemes are still being pursued in Copenhagen and Washington. (Though I head the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, I’m speaking only for myself.)

<SNIP>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/opinion/07hansen.html?th&emc=th

[rrneck]

1. Same shell game, different pea. nt

[unabelladonna]

2. the gangsters on wall street

are the only ones to benefit from cap and trade.....the peasants will be rewarded with higher energy costs.

[FarCenter]

3. All those ex-Enron energy traders have to have something to do.

[karynnj]

4. Hansen is an exceptional scientist and a leader in his field

His field is not public policy, legislation or even economics. The fact is that a scientist likely could develop a solution that would work better than cap and trade, but that does not mean that it could pass our Congress. If it can't pass, it won't happen.

Here, he belittles the SO2 cap and trade, but notes that it did cut emissions by 43%. Now, the fact is that his comment on cap and trade loosing its economic rationale if all the companies fell below the limit, ignores that as technology improves, the threshold could be moved lower - pushing emissions down further - if needed. If not needed, wouldn't that be what you describe as success - all companies below the threshold set in the legislation?

Here comment on it not improving public health because it did not limit other chemicals had nothing to do with the goal that it had.

I have always liked that Kerry always refers to his role as a legislator who acts on the science that is presented to him. It would be silly if he - or Gore - presented themselves as the experts on this, though both have worked hard to be extremely knowledgeable. What they both do have is the ability to legislate, communicate, and to negotiate.

Jim Hansen has often been quoted by Gore and Kerry. He was one of the first scientist to speak to Gore's committee, which Kerry also sat on. He clearly is far more qualified to speak of the science, but they are far more qualified to speak of what can actually pass the Congress. Per Kerry, a carbon tax would have to be sufficiently high to change people's behavior and there is no chance of even passing a small carbon tax, much less a big enough one. Just as I trust Hansen and other scientists on the science, I trust Kerry, the top environmentalist in the Senate, on when he says that definitively that it would not pass.

Here, Hansen seems to be saying we need to ban coal. The fact is there are 14 Democratic Senators who wrote a letter complaining that cap and trade needed to give coal plants waivers for all their current usage. They Senators include may who are normally well liked here, including Brown and Franken. There are not 14 Republicans who would vote to ban coal, even if those 14 were the total of Democrats who would vote against it. Tell me how that passes.

Though not usually as closely related, there are eminent scientists and mathematicians who outside the field they do work in have completely been wrong.

[blindpig]

5. k&r

Worse than a sham, it is a waste of time that we don't have.