Image:
More In This Article
-
Photo Album
Slide Show: Obama's Cabinet
When it comes to perhaps the largest and most complex policy challenge facing the Obama administration—finally slowing the pace of global warming before dangerous changes become unstoppable—the new president stares down a Dickensian paradox. On the one hand, it’s the best of times for dealing with the issue. The Democratic-controlled Congress is itching for action, with environmentalist Californians Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative Henry Waxman at the head of key committees. And the problem has risen so much in visibility that many fossil-fuel companies have come to consider the capping of their greenhouse gas emissions a virtual inevitability. They have joined together in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership—a group featuring General Electric, DuPont, General Motors and many other major corporations—which has called for “cap and trade” legislation that would limit and then slowly ratchet down emissions.
This article was originally published with the title Winning the Carbon Game.
See what we're tweeting about
16 Comments
Add CommentYou will never achieve anything today if you put it off until tomorrow. The Bush administration put everything off until tomorrow and look what a horrible fix they go us into. The Obama administration will have to force the republican states to comply to the rules that will save our planet. The republicans are allowing their ego make them stupid and dangerous. Using the excuse that the economy can't handle a change to convert to clean energy is just plain stupid. So what if we go into debt 50 trillion in switching our world to clean energy. Clean energy will pay for itself in less time than you can imagine. Just switching a single light bulb in my house paid for itself in less than a week. If I can convert to energy saving light bulbs and make money, why can't the United States convert to clean energy and make money. And when did we start caring about our credit history? Just look at everyone's credit reports and you will see that we are not know to pay our debts. We need to be completely converted over to clean energy before the Obama administration ends or we will never be. If we get another republican president this country will convert back to the stone age and stay in war for the rest of time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisU.S. CO2 emissions dropped in 2006, despite the rapid economic growth we were experiencing back then. Nobody else has managed to do that, not the Europeans, not previously in America. How did we do that? What Policies did President Bush follow?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt was the higher price of energy. Prices work. Nothing else does. A simple carbon tax is what we should enact now, when energy prices are low. We missed the chance back in 1998. So lets get over all the talk and actaully do something that works.
Broadnax:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fall out of the high prices also led to economic destruction. Continued high energy prices will hobble any economic recovery. Like it or not our economy requires cheap energy to function.
I assume that you have managed to hang on to your job throughout this mess? It's easy to armchair quarterback when your job is not on the line.
Carbon taxes are naive in the extreme and deal with a political issue, not a real one. People not putting food on the table is a real issue. People not being able to afford to heat their homes is a real issue.
People are outraged when an alleged 500 ducks drowning in a tar sands tailing pond (may only have been 5, but the greenie story is that the other 495 sunk) , or when some birds fly into a windmill. But tens of millions of people who own cats (how many of which are greenies?) think nothing of their pets killing and bringing home hundreds of millions of birds over the course of a year.
The point is that there are real issues to deal with, not imaginary ones like "demon carbon". The sooner people realize that AGW is a political creation and has nothing to do with the real world, we'll all be better off.
It is not only demon carbon. Most of the world's exportable oil come from unstable places and/or is controlled by nasty despots who dislike us. You notice that when oil prices are high, guys like Hugo, the Russians and Iranians puff up and make trouble. Low prices keep them quiet. A carbon tax will keep their prices lower, by limiting demand and encouraging alternatives. I believe we will pay higher prices no matter what. I prefer that the oily nasties get a smaller cut.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBroadnax:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo your solution to keeping the "nasties" who don't like us under control is to kill our own economy? That makes about as much sense as going to a drive in theater (remember those?), not liking the movie and slashing the seats to show your displeasure. Like I said, naive in the extreme.
I really don't see much alternative. Remember that as of today MOST of the world's oil is controlled by governments and the ones with the big influence on exports are usually the nasty ones mentioned above.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe had a big opportunity in the middle 1990s. Gas was down to about $1 a gallon. You can put the tax in gradually, on price drops.
We hear a lot of talk about encouraging alternatives. The price is all the encouragment viable alternatives need. But when prices drop, investments in alternatives are lost.
The only conspiracy theory I believe is plausible is this one. The oil despots push the price up as high as they can. This provokes alternatives and conservation. Then they fear that their oil might be replaced, so they pump until the price drops far enough to kill the alternatives. Then the cycle repeats.
It does not have to be a conspiracy for this to happen, but it maintains the power of these guys. I would just love to tell Hugo, Vlad and Mohmoud to go to hell and see if they can drink that oil. But we have to pay an upfront price to break the hold "cheap" oil has on us.
Alternatives such as solar and wind are as cheap as the average price of oil over the last ten years. What they cannot compete with is the swings.
We also need a lot more nuclear power. As long as cheap oil SEEMS possible, we can avoid making that choice too.
Broadnax:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI respectfully state that you have a superficial understanding of the oil industry. I say that not as an attack, but as an observation. "Hugo, Vlad and Mahmoud" have no control over the price of oil either. They are all merely price takers, similar to the Midwest farmer and the price he or she receives on corn or wheat.
I'll also remind you that when oil was $140/ bbl everyone was screaming for Saudi Arabia to open the taps, but they couldn't; they were already wide open. Face it, we are energy junkies. We all want cheap energy and we want it now.
As to nuclear power, I'm in full agreement. Gen IV reactors need to be built. They have the advantage of being extremely efficient, clean, can use existing nuclear waste as their fuel and the waste that they produce is very short lived compared to conventional reactors. How about some stimulus money going over there? Oh wait, can't do that it's .... nuclear..... and that's bad.... according to the Sierra Club, Greenpeace etc., etc.,
All I can say is that the Stone Age did not end because of a lack of stone and neither will the Oil Age end because of a lack of oil.
The thing about the economy and a carbon tax is that the poor will be hit the hardest because they will find it more expensive to heat/cool/power their homes as well as fuel their vehicles and since they don't have much to begin with, it will hurt. However, the wealthy use a disproportionately larger amount of energy and would pay quite a bit more than the poor. Because they have more money left over at the end of the day, however, it doesn't have as much of an effect on them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would suggest that you simply take half of the tax money from a carbon tax and distribute it evenly to everyone. To the rich, it will be a drop in the bucket, to the poor it will be a godsend. The other half goes to rebates for alternative energy solutions to make even expensive systems available to everyone.
If you start the tax off at 5% it would only raise the price of gas 10-20 cents per gallon. You simply increase that amount every year and eventually we will move away from cheap and destructive energy sources and towards a more sustainable future. It's insane how dependent this country is on cheap oil from unstable countries.
The alternative energy sources such as wind and solar really just need to be able to get a foot hold. Once they gain traction, they can gain momentum and that's not very easy right now.
Some people have proposed using money from the carbon tax to offset payroll taxes. This helps the poor more AND encourages work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBUt we need to be careful with the rich/poor thing. Carbon doesn't recognize income. A poor person driving an old clunker is harder on the environment than a rich guy with a hybrid. Our goal is to limit oil dependency and CO2. The equality debate is a worthy discussion but diferent one and one that cannot be addressed at the expense of the environment.
Shoshin : Do your homework please. If nuclear were as good as you say, everybody would have adopted it years ago. If everyone does adopt it, we will run out of nuclear fuel in 10 years, We will only produce 7% of world energy, and we will have used up almost all energy investment money available to do it! And Climate change would still be with us. Surgenerators have been experimented, but have too many dangerous technical problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiseco-steve:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate change will always be with us. Always has been with us. Has been here before us. Will be here after us. Having said all that, Anthropogenic Global Climate Change is a purely political construct and is as imaginary as a unicorn.
Do your own homework please. The Gen IV reactors have the capability of supplying our energy needs for 50,000 years. Has the technology been fully commercialized yet? No. But does it look like a good bet? Yes. Far better than wind, solar, fusion or anything else that may be on the horizon.
Take some of that $ 2 trillion stimulus and spend it on something useful.
"Do your own homework please. The Gen IV reactors have the capability of supplying our energy needs for 50,000 years. Has the technology been fully commercialized yet? No. But does it look like a good bet? Yes. Far better than wind, solar, fusion or anything else that may be on the horizon."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, the homework you requested:
"Generation IV reactors (Gen IV) are a set of theoretical nuclear reactor designs currently being researched. Most of these designs are generally not expected to be available for commercial construction before 2030".
So, you suggest that we should wait for several decades for a theoretical design that may, or may not, ever be practical.
As to your other points - fusion is being researched, as it should be, but won't be an option for many, many years (if ever). Hydro, wind, and solar are being deployed NOW; they will continue to be improved, but they are current options.
The errors in your second paragraph call into question your claims in the first.
All Acted on this forum are an idiots.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou do not understand, that at the officials and at you the different purposes.
The officials have thought up a problem, that under the decision of a problem it was possible to steal many money.
Nobody knows, the decision of a task how much can cost, that is why, how much would not spend means, always it is possible to prove, that is spent a little and it is necessary further to spend and to spend...
Is sure in what I speak about because your president has rejected an opportunity of introduction of power of an environment.
I informed him, that the breadboard model is made which proves, that at equal cost with solar photovoltaics, taking away heat at an environment it is possible to receive in 300 times more electrical energy.
It is the old command control attitude of rulers which is reflected in this approach. Instead of encouraging innovation which can compete in the market and make costs drop and improve efficiency, while being totally eco-friendly, persons of old generation like Rajendra Pachauri only support more expensive and inefficient alternate energy sources cross subsidizing them with carbon tax.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe costs for society are high ultimately.
Why more economic ready to implement alternate energy model based on free gravity, cheaper and financially viable to save more than 40% fossil fuel consumption on the planet is not encouraged by the Pachauri group is a mystery. (www.atrilab.com).
This does not require grants from carbon tax nor hiking up current energy costs through mechanism of carbon tax.
USA can have 60mph transportation using the gravit power towers , which reduces the energy consumption from fossil fuel to less than 30% of current level. We can stop importing 8m barrels of oil per day and prevent 3.5 b tonnes of carbon per year. All this without carbon tax and we also get financially viable system making transportation actually superior and cheaper too.
Hence I find it difficult to agree to these draconian thinking to make existing things costlier for the society by law to help a more expensive product to be sold to us, threatening global warming.
If they are really serious about it then let us do it the proper way; improving quality of life at reducing costs.
Dear Sir,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate change and global warming needs every one to come
into play in our daily lives. Policy makers must set good examples in cutting down carbon fuel consumptions.Fuel
and energy efficiency are the greatest scope to cut down
emissions. As combustion is inefficient as defined by principle
of combustion science.Infernofuel is a nano technology that
enhances all liquid carbon fuel to combustion efficiency to give more miles per same gallon, and reduces ghg emissions.
The World should visit www.infernofuel.com
and explore how all policy makers can encourage the applications of Infernofuel as a fuel mix for all pump stations.Those interested in our paper on GlobalPump
may email prcglobal@gmail.com for a copy.
Shoshin ; Do you feel like you are surrounded by Idiots?.............
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this