But They've Got One Too--Why Iggy's Cap And Trade Plan Shouldn't Get Him In Too Much Trouble

Ed Stelmach is whining again: the Liberal's enviro proposals are a scheme "to plunder Alberta", and so forth.  But I don't think we'll see a repeat of the 2008 "green shift" debacle for the federal Liberals, largely because, as the LPoC party platform notes, Harper and Co. themselves promised to set a price on carbon before the 2008 election.  Their plan was and is called "Turning the Corner" and you can read all about it on the Environment Canada website

However, the Lib platform is not being entirely accurate when they say the Tories have done nothing to implement Turning the Corner.  An inventory of Canadian emissions, which you need before implementing any carbon pricing mechanism, is still ongoing.  Just last month, as a matter of fact, the following RFP appeared on the MERX site:

2010 Inventory of Emissions from Commercial Marine Vessels in Canada

[...]

The Government of Canada continues to take action to understand and reduce emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases. Commercial marine vessels are a significant source of these emissions, to different degrees for different substances. To support ongoing assessment of program effectiveness, Environment Canada requires an updated inventory of emissions from Canadian and foreign commercial marine vessels in Canada during 2010, and associated hindcasts and forecasts. Where appropriate the work will make use of the Government of Canada’s “Marine Emissions Inventory Tool” (MEIT)

And when I contacted Neil Charbonneau, Environment Canada's procurement officer, I learned that this is the first time such an inventory has been compiled for both coasts under one project banner--the first national inventory of marine emissions, as it were, and under the Harper regime!

So, sorry Ed, if Iggy has plans to rip-off Alberta, so too does Stephen Harper.  The main difference is in the speed of execution

Because The Answers Are Always The Same

A report from the Conservative majority Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, chaired by Mulroney appointee and CPoC supporter David Angus .

The committee found near unanimity among witnesses – from the petroleum industry to environmental organizations – that supported pricing carbon as the most efficient way to reduce emissions. Given the choice, most witnesses favoured carbon taxes over cap-and-trade but both are market-based approaches for pricing carbon and both can be levied at different stages along the fossil fuel supply chain.

Generally, witnesses stated that a carbon tax would be more economically efficient and less complex to administer than a cap-and-trade system. For either method, it was stressed that carbon pricing should be applied broadly and uniformly throughout the economy and across Canada.

What should strike you is the bleeding obviousness of it all. Full report is here.

U.S. Climate Change Bill Set To Pass House

As legislation, Waxman-Markey is a terrible mess. Hansen hates its, for example. Credits will be given away rather than auctioned; lots of special deals have been cut for the farm states. By itself it won't accomplish a lot. Nor is its passage assured in the Senate, where folks like Inhofe are looking to delay the thing to death. Nevertheless, getting a bill out of The House is an enormously important symbol; its as far as a piece of major climate change legislation has ever gone in the U.S. And if the U.S. negotiating team walks into Copenhagen with nothing, then the odds of the rest of the planet committing to significant action dwindle. So here's hoping this crappy bill passes.

On Cap & Trade ( Waxman Markey) And Real World Compromises

Michael Tobis lamenting:

This is what is ironically called a "real world" compromise, in which we understand perfectly what techniques would be needed to make a world of vastly greater human dignity, beauty, mutual support and happiness (though, perhaps, a wee bit less ludicrously funny), but the "real world" of politics interferes to make a thorough bureaucratic muddle of it all.

Then quoting the N.Y. Times:

Cap and trade, ... is almost perfectly designed for the buying and selling of political support through the granting of valuable emissions permits to favor specific industries and even specific Congressional districts. That is precisely what is taking place now in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has used such concessions to patch together a Democratic majority to pass a far-reaching bill to regulate carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade plan.

And concluding:

The upshot is a lot of short term gain spread around to specific people, and a balancing amount of unnecessary extra long term pain spread around to nobody in particular. This is the activation energy of politics.

But then seeing the "why" of it all:

The dominant factor in the present circumstances is the upcoming Copenhagen negotiation. It makes a great deal of difference to all the other countries whether the US shows up having made real substantive cuts, by which the participants will mean, exactly, large symbolic actions that might eventually lead to real substantive cuts.

How much better off will this leave grand gesture us than did the grand gestures of the past, most notably Kyoto?

Oddly, much better, since Damocles' sword has slipped much lower, and since America would not find itself explicitly rejecting international cooperation. Maybe some of these theoretical cuts will eventually exit the "real world" of politics and enter the other (unreal?) world where the actual radiative properties of the atmosphere are changing at an unusually high and climbing rate.

Well, but that isn't the only reason for C&T over a Carbon Tax. For example, as Krugman notes, the former has already been tried once (at least) and been successful: in the case of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which contributes to acid rain. The 2nd reason is more philosophical (although, I suppose, broadly political as well). It is that C&T systems are (and have been sold politically as) more capitalistic than a carbon tax. We live and die by markets: C&T creates a market, and fuses that market to the existing ones. Thus all the virtues of capitalism are unleashed upon our particular social problem (AGW). So, although the effects of C&T vs. a tax are identical, the path to those effects are by a route more congenial to The West's reigning ideology.