This time it’s a couple of Senators who think cap and trade will work.
Here’s what they suggest:
* 100% of the permits to bring fossil carbon into the U.S. economy will be auctioned from day one – there are no permit giveaways.
* 75% of the auction revenue is returned directly to the public as equal per person dividends.
* 25% of the auction revenue is devoted to investments in energy efficiency, clean energy, adaptation to climate change, and assistance for sectors hurt by the transition from the fossil-fueled economy.
* Zero offsets are allowed: polluters cannot avoid curbing use of fossil fuels by paying someone else to ostensibly clean up after them.
All of this is fine, but it is again based on the idea that moving from carbon fuels to something else is an entirely cost-free, sacrifice-free effort. It’s not.
Whether you do it via cap and trade, or a direct tax on carbon, you’ve got to get the price of carbon-based energy to be substantially higher than it is now. Otherwise, the alternative energies aren’t economically viable. And you’ve got to get consumers of energy, not just producers, to understand and accept that they must change their behavior for good.
Now, you can subsidize the added costs, even if they turn out to be minor relative to overall GDP, via cap and trade “dividends”, but can you convince Americans they’ll have to pay say triple the current price of gasoline at the pump? Drive a smaller car powered by electricity or hydrogen? Pay considerably more to heat and electrify their homes via coal, oil, or gas? Abandon the suburbs for smaller homes in central cities?
It could be done, and one day it probably will be done, but that day’s a long way off.
American politicians, who represent the people who elected them, no more and no less, are not going to vote for anything that raises costs today in the hope that one day, long after they’re out of power and/or dead, costs will come down.
Look at health care reform.
There are 50 million uninsured Americans, and 45,000 Americans/year dying because of lack of health insurance.
Yet a very modest health care reform bill that barely begins to address this tragedy cannot get passed.
America just doesn’t do national sacrifice any more.
A substantial group of Americans believe that those who need government help are not real Americans.
Two generations of Americans remain in denial about the fact that middle class incomes haven’t budged in real terms for nearly 40 years.
Older Americans, the only group enjoying universal health care, are the greatest opponents of health care reform.
Americans are fighting two wars, but it’s only a few hundred thousand families who are sacrificing anything to stay in the fight.
It’s a depressing reflection on how much we’ve lost touch with reality, how little we care to help others at home and abroad, and how quickly freedom has become a cudgel to maintain a very tiny number of Americans in wealth and power.
Gorilla suggests: “Hope and change are fine, but cash on the barrel still rules the roost in America!”
