Monday, January 22, 2007

Regulate Us! Regulate Us!

Has the tide turned? From The Star:

WASHINGTON – The chief executives of 10 major corporations, on the eve of the State of the Union address, urged President George W. Bush today to support mandatory reductions in climate-changing pollution and establish reductions targets.

"We can and must take prompt action to establish a co-ordinated, economy-wide market-driven approach to climate protection," the executives from a broad range of industries said in a letter to the president.

Representatives from Alcoa Inc., BP America Inc., DuPont Co., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co., Duke Energy Corp and others have sent a letter to Bush and will be holding a press conference later today. It looks like they will call for a mandatory cap-and-trade policy, in other words a market for carbon emissions.

Obviously, these people are not acting out of the goodness of their hearts. They see regulation coming down the pipe and would prefer to "face [a] market-driven approach to climate protection" rather than taxes up the wazoo.

Note that emissions markets are hardly a perfect solution. I've written a little about their shortcomings here, and an even better post appeared at P.O.G.G.E on Jan. 17.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They have just figured a way to make a pile of cash of the great UN Money for Hot Air scam.

They missed out on the last UN fiasco, the multi billion dollar Money for Palaces, but Kyoto should make that ponzi scheme look like amateur hour.

Yup, the tide has turned all right, the capitalist are now hip to the scheme.