Carbon Pricing as the Public Option Redux?

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/carbon-pricing-as-the-public-option-redux/58257/

Should progressives be skeptical about the White House's strategy to pass comprehensive climate change legislation? That strategy, as sketched out by senior administration officials, is to delay the debate about putting a price on carbon production until both the House and Senate have passed legislation. Timewise, if the Senate passes a bill, it would take until the late fall, after the elections, for House and Senate conferees to be appointed.

If the strategy sounds familiar, that's because it seems to similar to the White House's approach to the more contentious aspects of health care reform, including the public option, which came to be seen by many on the left as the sine qua non of progress, and which President Obama never fully supported.


If the goal now is to get a bill that begins to wean the nation off of its addiction to oil, a carbon pricing scheme isn't needed. If the goal is to try to fix the problem of global warming, it is essential. Of course, a bill that includes carbon pricing, either in the form of a direct Pigouvian tax or an emissions credit trading system (cap-and-trade), would include the positive elements you'd find in a weaker bill.

What would those elements be?

As Grist's David Roberts points out, they are exactly what Obama called for in his speech last night -- more investment in renewable energy, higher CAFE standards, higher renewable standards, large-scale weatherization projects, more government investment in green tech, and more incentives to spur legacy energy companies' investment in green energy.

The Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House last year includes these provisions, and the Kerry-Lieberman bill that will ultimately get to the floor of the Senate will have them as well. (Update: a source points out that K-L bill right now does NOT have nearly as strong provisions as W-M, and one implicit argument in Obama's speech was aimed at the Senate: at LEAST make your non carbon pricing stuff as strong the House's stuff.)


More at the link ---

[DJ13]

1. Cap & Trade is just another market for Wall Street to make money on

Sure it sounds good in theory, but as we saw with the speculation in the commodities markets that drove oil to near $150, when Wall Street gets involved they have a way of screwing us all over in their lust for easy profits.