Time for a
Grand Bargain on Climate Change
by
Roy Morrison
It’s time for Barack Obama to seize the day and give bi-partisanship a chance to
help solve the climate change dilemma.
The stakes are huge. Fail,
and we may have forfeited our last realistic change to act soon enough and effectively enough to avoid global climate catastrophe.
Succeed and the way becomes open for a global carbon tax that can get the job done.
Time’s running out. We can’t just dial back global temperature as if we had control of a thermostat
by reducing our carbon emissions when it gets too hot. Wait much longer and we risk unleashing a run-away greenhouse effect
that we will not be able to control by cutting human carbon dioxide emissions.
The choices are between an Obama administration complex cap and trade system and a carbon tax where
all the revenue will be rebated to every American, every month.
A
carbon tax was supported by Al Gore and by most economists, including Obama budget director Peter Orzag while he was head
of the Congressional Budget Office in 2007.
The
good news is that a carbon tax has now also been embraced by Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson and Republican supply-side guru Arthur
Laffer.
President Obama should invite the Republicans to craft a bi-partisan
carbon tax and rebate plan. If a deal emerges, we’ll all be winners. If the Republicans are unmasked as climate frauds,
Obama can exert his political muscle in 2010 behind cap and trade or carbon taxes.
A carbon tax with monthly rebate checks to every American pushes all the right political buttons. It’s a
zero new net revenue tax. It puts all the money back in people’s pockets every month to offset the tax. Since lower
income people use less energy, on average they will benefit, and are almost sure to spend all the money as economic stimulus.
And the rebate can be structured to meet the concerns of conservative Democrats and Republicans from coal using states of
the mid-west and south
Carbon cap and trade has mainly the belief that it
is politically viable to recommend it. It supposedly can be pushed through a Democratic Congress.
Carbon cap and trade will have large energy users purchasing and trading carbon pollution allowances.
They can also buy so-called carbon offsets, from activities like tree planting, from anywhere on the globe. Carbon cap and
trade is complex, open to manipulation by traders, and subject to wild market swings which discourages investment in the renewables
we need.
Most important, as the Kyoto protocol has shown, it just doesn’t
work to cut global net carbon emissions. It’s too easy to game the system, for speculators to make money by manipulating
offset markets, and to concoct unverifiable carbon offset schemes, or Madoff style scams, with the assistance of corruptible
officials in poor and desperate nations.
Under Kyoto, we witnessing,
for example, more and more methane, a greenhouse gas twenty-times more powerful than carbon dioxide, being released from melting
arctic permafrost, and ocean and land soaking up more and more heat as the ice and snow cover retreats.
Atmospheric carbon is now 385 parts per million (ppm) and rising yearly toward 600 to 700
ppm or more if we do nothing. Leading atmospheric scientists, like James Hansen of Columbia, caution that
we must reduce carbon to 350 ppm or risk losing control of planetary climate dynamics and face the consequences.
It’s time for Obama to exert his intelligence, courage and political legerdemain
and lead the way toward a workable carbon tax for all our sakes, for our kids and their kids.
___________________________________________________
Roy Morrison is Director of the Office for Sustainability at SNHU. His next book, A New Way Together: Sustainability
a 21st Century Guide is forthcoming in 2009.
Fact Check:
John
Carey Business Week 3/5/2009
Obama's Cap-and-Trade Plan: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is gearing up to
rally coal-state politicians to alter the President's plan to control carbon emissions
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_11/b4123022554346.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech
______________________
Barack Obama and Joe Biden: New
Energy For America
http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebarackobama%2Ecom%2Fpdf%2Ffactsheet%5Fenergy%5Fspeech%5F080308%2Epdf&images=no
________________________
Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel1 of www.carbonfees.org
– Discussion Paper 2/21/09
“Keeping Our Eyes on the Wrong Ball Why Acid Rain is the Wrong Template
and the 1990 CFC-Tax is Closer to the Mark -and Why Cap-and-Trade Won’t Solve the Climate Crisis But Carbon Fees with
100% Rebate Can”
http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecarbonfees%2Eorg%2Fhome%2FCap%2Dand%2DTradeVsCarbonFees%2Epdf&images=no
________________
Peter Orszag CBO
testimony Nov 1, 2007
Approaches to Reducing
Carbon Dioxide Emissions before the Committee on the Budget
U.S. House of Representative
http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecbo%2Egov%2Fftpdocs%2F87xx%2Fdoc8769%2F11%2D01%2DCO2Emissions%2Epdf&images=no
____________________________
Bob Inglis and Arthur Laffer: An
Emissions Plan Conservatives Could Warm To 12/27/2008 NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/opinion/28inglis.htmlS
_____________________
Russell
Gold and Ian Talley “Exxon CEO Advocates Emissions Tax “ 1/9/2009
Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146091530566335.html
nn
_____________________
James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker
Kharecha, David Beerling,
Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Mark
Pagani, Maureen Raymo, Dana L. Royer, James C. Zachos
:
Target Atmosphere CO-2: Where Should Humanity Aim?
Summary:
Paleoclimate data show that climate sensitivity is ~3°C for doubled CO2,
including only fastfeedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, is ~6°C for
doubled CO2 for the range of climate states between glacial conditions and ice free Antarctica. Decreasing
CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring
when CO2 fell to 425±75 ppm, a level that will be exceeded within decades, barring prompt policy changes.
If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted,
paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2
will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm
to at most 350 ppm. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings.
An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured
and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is
not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.
http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecolumbia%2Eedu%2F%7Ejeh1%2F2008%2FTargetCO2%5F20080407%2Epdf&images=no
___________________
U.S. Climate Action Program CAP& Trade Plan
http://www.us-cap.org/
______________________
Cap
& Trade New Stories
http://www.newser.com/tag/961/1/cap-and-trade.html
____________________________
Eco
Taxes. Roy Morrison. Markets, Democracy & Survival
http://ecocivilization.info/id7.html
Sustainability Articles Op-Eds
