Comments on: How cap-and-trade impacts your career and planet

By: Marie Frances

Marie Frances — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:46:04 +0000

Here is a great resource from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for young professionals who want to take action and let their congressmen and congresswoman know about flawed climate change bills that could harm the business community and our economy:

http://capwiz.com/chamber/issues/alert/?alertid=13915566

By: aguy

aguy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:01:46 +0000

Republicans in the Senate are the ones keeping Cap and Trade alive at this point (mostly, Lindsey Graham), and good for them. I know that in order for me to have a job and be a young professional... there must first be planet. As a young person, you already know that Social Security and Medicare will likely run out in 2037 and 2017 respectively, and therefore will not be available to you. SS won't run out. Someone with political courage will raise the retirement age or fix the indexing. Medicare pays too much for hospital services, something that the health reform tries to fix (by making prices visible, which will help private insurers as well). Besides that quibble, I'm looking forward to your assessment. Before you rock out on cap and trade though, it's important to note that economists favor the carbon tax approach (along with most liberals, which makes for strange bedfellows). Conservative economists know that taxing something means you do less of it while putting externalities back into the system -- all while not screwing up markets. Liberals just think cap and trade creates too many holes for big corporations to run around. GOPers think ... that the market will rush in to save the day w/ "private innovation" once CA has fallen into the ocean? I'm not sure what they think, but I'm looking forward to your assessment. Hopefully it won't say that C&T will crash the economy. This guy seems to be on the right track when it comes to the GOP vis-à-vis C&T. A little background though: cap and trade was a conservative policy idea from the 1980s (hence, all this markets stuff). It was a response to the really, really dumb liberal idea of just setting carbon limits / telling businesses "no." Since then, we've used cap and trade to reduce sulfur in the 90s. And it worked! Europe's already using it, and so are states in the NE. This stuff has worked (maybe not as well as other methods) but at least it's something.

By: peterdublin

peterdublin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:53:31 +0000

Thanks for that Katie,
In my view there are many reasons why Cap and Trade is wrong,
whether or not one believes that action is needed to specifically reduce CO2 emissions
http://www.ceolas.net/#cce5x
Emission Trading (Cap and Trade)
Basic Idea — Offsets — Tree Planting —
International Trade: Manufacture Shift — Fair Trade — Surreal Market — Allowances: Auctions + Hand-Outs — Allowance Trading —
Companies: Business Stability + Cost
— In Conclusion

As it happens,
if there is to be an emission policy,
Electricity and Transport sectors alone (80% of emissions) are sufficient to meet emission reduction targets,
with measures advantageous in themselves (including energy renewability, and that emissions contain much else, whatever about CO2),
long term funded for reduced consumer price impact,
without efficiency regulation, industrial carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes
http://www.ceolas.net/#cc1x
.