Carbon credit (tax) madness AccMan

Jeff Nolan expresses concern that the carbon trade approach to managing carbon emissions will result in an effective tax:

Get ready for the new Congress and a dedicated push for cap-and-trade carbon emissions legislation. I’ll leave it to the comment section to debate the merits of the underlying problem that cap-and-trade attempts to address, but for me the big loser here are workers because for such a system to work the initial credits will be auctioned off by the government, so it’s essentially a tax and for those that can afford it they take their costs up front while those that can’t will take it in small doses through penalties and a market mechanism. In the end I fear this is nothing more than a job killer.

I left a comment at Jeff’s place but it is worth repeating here:

I remember my father saying when cigarettes were 90p a packet of 20 that even if they went to £5 a pack, people would still smoke. France doubled the price of cigarettes in 2 years yet the reduction in the number of people smoking was less than 15%.

There is only one way to deal with a drug addiction and that’s to stop taking it. The US obsession with carbon fuels no longer makes any rational sense when it is clear that it will only be supporting an otherwise uncompetitive automotive industry that has got fat, happy, lazy and now thinks it can go tincupping to a government that is at risk of acting in exactly the same way as the soviet bloc countries in sustaining uncompetitive industries in the name of national pride.

The irony of carbon trades is that they are born out of a capitalist system yet everyone sees them as a form of tax that might threaten livelihoods. I suppose an accelerated death is better than one that is prolonged and agonizing.

In the meantime, my ZDNet colleague Paul Murphy reckons he has a cure for the US car industry. I can’t make sesne of his economics and his approach does nothing to get the US off its gas guzzling habits.

What the heck does this have to do with professionals? Everything. If we’re to behave as responsible citizens then we should be leading the way in demonstrating our commitment to operating ecologically sound business methods. That’s where technology is going to play a huge part.

Tagged as: carbon-trading, Emissions trading, Greenhouse gas

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jeff nolan

@dennis, my issue with the climate change movement is not the underlying desire to have mankind live a renewable lifecycle instead of depleting finite resources, but I do take exception with the artificial sense of urgency that is being applied. The very real risk is that the crying wolf strategy is starting to boomerang back as average people don't see the doom-and-gloom scenarios developing, and that hurts the bigger goal of sustainability. This is happening in the UK as we speak, which despite a near universal public policy agenda promoting climate change as a real issue that must be addressed at all costs, the public is increasingly not believing it and this is of greater harm to the government than doing nothing at all. Governments function as a consequence of moral authority as much as actual authority and when they are viewed as antagonistic to the people they are serving the result is a reactive shift in the opposite direction that is usually just as disruptive as the status quo.
Dennis Howlett

@jeff - I was setting up a linked argument because it suits my 'agenda' as we all do but I'll throw this back: given all the mighty tech brains in the US - how come they've not come up with a viable alternative. Oil>finance>automotive: they're all linked. Check the flow of ownership out of the Fed (no conspiracy theory here - just fact)

@paul - thanks for coming back - we're not going to agree. That's fine because these debates REALLY matter. Resources are disputed but that is less of an issue than what we're doing with those resources. Check out Greenmonk.net.
Paul Murphy

You're making an assumption: that it's important "to get the U.S. off its gas guzzling habits." That, in turn, is driven by two other assumptions: that the world is running out of oil, and that burning oil is bad for the environment.

In reality the world is awash in oil - and there's zero evidence that CO2 emissions influence climate.

I know you're not just going to take my word for this - so I suggest you explore the literature a little on both subjects. You'll be shocked at what you find.

So, no WWII era jeeps don't address gas guzzling in the U.S because it's a non issue.; they do address road/usage conditions in the third world and economic/regulatory reality in the United States - an immediate real world jobs issue.
jeff nolan

Dennis,
I totally agree with you that cap-and-trade will not result in a change of behavior. It has not done so in Europe and the one clear success story for it was the program put in place to deal with sulfur dioxide emissions (acid rain) but in that case the program was an intermediary step to stringent legislation on emitters, so the cap-and-trade program was designed to soften the economic consequences of significant and costly change.

I do want to take exception with you on the linking of the automobile industry to this issue. If fuel efficiency were to blame for car makers woes then we would not be seeing the across the board declines in sales. The companies are not selling cars and trucks because they 1) can't finance them in this environment due to increases in FICA score requirements, and 2) fear about the future driving consumer purchasing behavior. Sorry but fuel efficiency is a bit player in this current environment.
Christian Burns

This is one of the things that bothers me about bailing out the car companies. Too big to fail means that they don't really have to innovate, just threaten to go under. People need to stop being addicted to paying so much for cars, and taking on so much debt.

Carbon credit (tax) madness

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