[lbo-talk] The Planet is Fine

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Dec 20 10:34:38 PST 2011


Gar, I've had differences with you, but I've never seen you as one of those I characterize with a paraphrase from a bad 19th-c poem:

"Let me sit on a throne on the side of the road And sneer at the fools passing by."

That is the attitude that draws my veno

Carrol

-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Gar Lipow Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 12:16 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] The Planet is Fine

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 20, 2011, at 11:51 AM, Steve Bruns wrote:
>
>> Here in British Columbia we have a carbon tax.  It is a surtax on fossil
fuels, most notably a 5.56 cents/ltr on gasoline, 6.39 cents/ltr on diesel fuel and $51.93/tonne on high heat value coal.  It is designed to be revenue neutral and the offsetting tax cuts are primarily to corporations and "small" business.
>>
>> I would argue that this is an exercise in greenwashing a tax shift since
 a true carbon tax  would need to be sufficient enough to actually alter consumption, which this clearly isn't.  Doesn't this at least align with neoliberal policy?
>
> It has to be high enough to matter and rise over time or it's just a
revenue measure.

Hi Doug. I'm for a carbon tax as a reinforcement measure as long as we have public investment and rule base aka "command & control" measures as well. But as a stand alone policy - not effective. No amount of carbon tax will build trains. Experience seems to show that efficient buildings happen due to regulations and public subsidies not the price of energy. The policies that have been in practice most effective in promoting renewables are feed-in tariffs and renewable portfolio standards. The former is a kind of price mechanism, but one that focuses on providing safe returns to renewable investment. I hear there's a book coming out on this subject in Spring of 2012.

If we can get public investment AND regulation AND price great. But in politics we seldom get everything we want. For that reason we prioritize. And when it comes to activists fighting the battle over climate change (and yeah Carrol I'm one so I can use the term 'we' here) it makes sense to put public investment in efficiency, conservation and renewables first, regulation second, and a carbon price last. If you look at what would reduce emissions over the next five years - a public investment policy with no carbon tax could bring emissions down drastically and quickly. A carbon tax with no other components would slow the rise but not bring it down - unless the economy continues to suck which it looks like it will, because a sufficient drop in world GDP will slow greenhouse gas emissions at the expense of human misery.

OK, back to semi-lurker status


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