Cap and trade.......good idea or bad?

[kevbone]

What is Cap-and-Trade?

 

Cap-and-trade systems, also known as allowance trading, can be best summed up as "pollution credits."

 

What happens is that overall air quality goals are set for an area (such as the entire nation) and specific sources of air pollution (such as power plants, waste incineration facilities, etc.) are given a certain number of allowances, which represent the amount of various pollutants that the organization or facility is allowed to emit.

 

Facilities that come in under that allowable limit because of air pollution control systems can then sell their leftover allowances to other facilities and organizations on the open market.

 

This allows the facilities that buy up such allowances (pollution credits) to pollute more, because other facilities are polluting less.

 

In theory, the system does have some potentially good points, by rewarding facilities that control air pollution and providing a means for those who cannot afford the latest air pollution technologies (or who have not completed upgrades) to buy some maneuvering room.

 

A big problem with cap-and-trade systems is that they allow for certain parts of the country to become much more polluted than they should be. Overall air standards in the nation might be met, but people in some parts of the country get horrible air quality as a result, and this isn't fair...or healthy. Again, this is a problem caused when cap-and-trade systems are left too open-ended, which is generally the case.

 

Cap-and-trade regulatory models have been effective in decreasing emissions of certain pollutants, due to their typical dispersal patterns or lower toxicity. But for mercury, it's a different story. Because mercury emissions tend to concentrate nearer their source than do some other air pollutants, a cap-and-trade program may result in harm to children in certain communities where high mercury emissions would be allowed to continue or to expand. And with mercury, the risk isn't just the air pollution; it's the fact that the highly toxic metal settles from the air into the waterways, and ends up in the tissues of fish that we consume.

 

The cap-and-trade programs that have been proposed by the EPA may not address existing "hot spots" of mercury pollution and contamination, and may create new local hot spots for mercury, disproportionately impacting local communities, especially those depending on subsistence fishing.

 

A decade-long study sponsored by the EPA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the State of Florida in 2003 revealed that strong regulations of airborne mercury emissions produce swift, dramatic improvements in mercury contamination in local fish tissues. After south Florida waste incinerators were required to reduce their mercury emissions by 90% (they actually achieved 99% reduction), mercury levels in Everglades fish and wildlife declined by 60% in just 10 years. This study illustrates the feasibility of these measures to protect public health and how strong pollution controls are an effective approach to cleaning up the local environment and protecting public health. [source: Florida Department of Environmental Protection. "Integrating Atmospheric Mercury Deposition and Aquatic Cycling in the Florida Everglades: An approach for conducting a Total Maximum Daily Load analysis for an atmospherically derived pollutant," Integrated Summary, Final Report. October 2003. www.floridadep.org/labs/mercury/index.htm]

 

 

 

 

good or bad. I like the cap part but not the trade part.

Edited December 10, 2009 by kevbone

[olyclimber]

what is cap and trade?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

what is cap and trade?

 

it's all spray

[kevbone]

what is cap and trade?

 

 

See above for one persons definition.....

[olyclimber]

what is a definition?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

what is a definition?

 

Diamond Dave or the Red Rocker? Who's the greatest?

[j_b]

the first week of this summit is being dominated by the representatives of the rich countries trying to lace the deal with Enron-style accounting tricks that will give the impression of cuts, without the reality. It's essential to understand these shenanigans this week, so we can understand the reality of the deal that will be announced with great razzamataz next week.

 

Most of the tricks centre around a quirk in the system: a rich country can 'cut' its emissions without actually releasing fewer greenhouse gases. How? It can simply pay a poor country to emit less than it otherwise would have. In theory it sounds okay: we all have the same atmosphere, so who cares where the cuts come from?

 

But a system where emissions cuts can be sold among countries introduces extreme complexity into the system. It quickly (and deliberately) becomes so technical that nobody can follow it - no concerned citizen, no journalist, and barely even full-time environmental groups. You can see if your government is building more coal power stations, or airports, or motorways. You can't see if the cuts they have "bought" halfway round the world are happening - especially when they are based on projections of increases that would have happened, in theory, if your government hadn't stumped up the cash.

 

A study by the University of Stanford found that most of the projects that are being funded as "cuts" either don't exist, don't work, or would have happened anyway. Yet this isn't a small side-dish to the deal: it's the main course. For example, under proposals from the US, the country with by far the highest per capita emissions in the world wouldn't need to cut its own gas by a single exhaust pipe until 2026, insisting it'll simply pay for these shadow-projects instead.

 

It gets worse still. A highly complex system operating in the dark is a gift to corporate lobbyists, who can pressure or bribe governments into rigging the system in their favour, rather than the atmosphere's. It's worth going through some of the scams that are bleeding the system of any meaning. They may sound dull or technical - but they are life or death to countries like Leah's.

 

Trick One: Hot Air. The nations of the world were allocated permits to release greenhouse gases back in 1990, when the Soviet Union was still a vast industrial power - so it was given a huge allocation. But the following year, it collapsed, and its industrial base went into freefall - along with its carbon emissions. It was never going to release those gases after all. But Russia and the Eastern European countries have held onto them in all negotiations as "theirs". Now, they are selling them to rich countries who want to purchase "cuts." Under the current system, the US can buy them from Romania and say they have cut emissions - even though they are nothing but a legal fiction.

 

We aren't talking about climatic small change. This hot air represents ten gigatonnes of CO2. By comparison, if the entire developed world cuts its emissions by 40 percent by 2020, that will only take six gigatonnes out of the atmosphere.

 

Trick Two: Double-counting. This is best understood through an example. If Britain pays China to abandon a coal power station and construct a hydro-electric dam instead, Britain pockets the reduction in carbon emissions as part of our overall national cuts. In return, we are allowed to keep a coal power station open at home. But at the same time, China also counts this change as part of its overall cuts. So one ton of carbon cuts is counted twice. This means the whole system is riddled with exaggeration - and the figure for overall global cuts is a con.

 

Trick Three: The Fake Forests - or what the process opaquely dubs 'LULUCF' . Forests soak up warming gases and store them away from the atmosphere - so, perfectly sensibly, countries get credit under the new system for preserving them. It is an essential measure to stop global warming. But the Canadian, Swedish and Finnish logging companies have successfully pressured their governments into inserting an absurd clause into the rules. The new rules say you can, in the name of "sustainable forest management", cut down almost all the trees - without losing credits. It's Kafkaesque: a felled forest doesn't increase your official emissions... even though it increases your actual emissions.

 

Trick Four: Picking a fake baseline. All the scientific recommendations take 1990 as the dangerously high baseline we need to cut from. So when we talk about a 40 percent cut, we mean 40 percent less than 1990. But the Americans have - in a stroke of advertising genius - shifted to taking 2005 as their baseline. Everybody else is talking about 1990 levels, except them. So when the US promises a 17 percent cut on 2005 levels, they are in fact offering a 4 percent cut on 1990 levels - far less than other rich countries.

 

There are dozens more examples like this, but you and I would lapse into a coma if I listed them. This is deliberate. This system has been made incomprehensible because if we understood, ordinary citizens would be outraged. If these were good faith negotiations, such loopholes would be dismissed in seconds. And the rich countries are flatly refusing to make even these enfeebled, leaky cuts legally binding. You can toss them in the bin the moment you leave the conference center, and nobody will have any comeback.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/our-leaders-are-staging-a_b_387942.html

[Fairweather]

razzamataz

 

Ok.

[ScottP]

what is a definition?

 

Diamond Dave or the Red Rocker? Who's the greatest?

[G-spotter]

Trick Three: The Fake Forests - or what the process opaquely dubs 'LULUCF' . Forests soak up warming gases and store them away from the atmosphere - so, perfectly sensibly, countries get credit under the new system for preserving them. It is an essential measure to stop global warming. But the Canadian, Swedish and Finnish logging companies have successfully pressured their governments into inserting an absurd clause into the rules. The new rules say you can, in the name of "sustainable forest management", cut down almost all the trees - without losing credits. It's Kafkaesque: a felled forest doesn't increase your official emissions... even though it increases your actual emissions.

 

^^^ Logging and reforesting is net carbon neutral. New trees take up carbon released from decay of from old trees cut down. Only deforesting (clearing forest land and planting crops or building houses, eg) results in net emissions.

[j_b]

Good catch. Is it truly neutral considering it takes decades/centuries to grow a mature forest? What about soil carbon budget?

[mkporwit]

what is cap and trade?

Cap and trade is where we first cap kevbone and then we trade his organs for cheaply made chinese trinkets

[JosephH]

When you strip it all down to basics, it's really all about coal.

[kevbone]

When you strip it all down to basics, it's really all about coal.

[tvashtarkatena]

When you strip it all down to basics, it's really all about coal.

 

Nail on the head.

 

Klean Koal, here we come.

[Fairweather]

When you strip it all down to basics, it's really all about coal.

 

...and you're not gonna replace it with wind farms and dreams:

 

[kevbone]

When you strip it all down to basics, it's really all about coal.

 

Please explain.

[JosephH]

Hard to imagine it will really be addressed given we already turn a blind eye to the extensive impacts and costs of Mountain-top removal and fly ash accumulation which underpin our current use.

[Fairweather]

Not saying it's a palatable, or even sustainable practice. But if the government (and Wall Street) becomes addicted to the revenues cap and trade produce then any solution will ultimately find itself likewise taxed. I'm thinking that nuclear and natural gas are going to have to pick up the slack as coal is phased out--and our hydro projects silt themselves into oblivion.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

When you strip it all down to basics, it's really all about coal.

 

go nuclear!

[tvashtarkatena]

When you strip it all down to basics, it's really all about coal.

 

...and you're not gonna replace it with wind farms and dreams:

 

 

Your like a piece of used concrete. Not very dynamic in thinking, analysis, or imagination. Wonder what that pie would have looked like around, say, 1880? Probably a great big 'wood' wedge, huh? Where is that wood wedge today?

 

It's not only possible, but cost effective to invest in an infrastructure that will produce a MAJORITY of our energy needs from wind and solar within 3 decades, using today's technology. There are many side benefits in addition to the obvious national security and ecological ones: a substantial reduction in per capita energy usage due to the vastly greater efficiency of electric systems, particularly cars, over fossil fuel systems. Land allocation would be about the same for a wind/solar versus fossil fuel future; you can use 90% of a windfarm for other purposes, most notably interleaving solar generation where appropriate.

 

Wind energy, at about 7 cents/kwHr is already on par with fossil fuels, but when the comprehensive costs are considered: environmental damage and the trillions blown on resource driven wars, wind and solar are vastly cheaper alternatives.

 

Having said all this, I have absolutely zero confidence that we will do anything but continue to suck limp corporate cock, cheered on by FW and a sunstantial population of like minded establishment tools, and burn shitloads of cheap, dirty coal and fuck this planet up beyond any hope of repair (at least, from a human standpoint).

 

 

Edited December 11, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[JosephH]

...and fuck this planet up beyond any hope of repair (at least, from a human standpoint).

Yep, you have to remember these are all 'lifestyle' choices - the planet will be fine.

[tvashtarkatena]

'establishment tools'.

 

I totally plagiarized that.

[j_b]

Coal costs us hundreds of billions per year in health care, in destroyed resource/environment, and climate change.

 

We have unlimited solar potential and significant wind potential, and existing proven technology that is cheap, mostly clean and forever, yet the so-called "small government" types want the big-government dirty solution (as in nuclear). The private sector refuses to invest in nuclear unless they can ride the taxpayers' gravy train, but have confidence in the ideologically corrupt to sing its praise. Laughable, really.

[tvashtarkatena]

...and fuck this planet up beyond any hope of repair (at least, from a human standpoint).

Yep, you have to remember these are all 'lifestyle' choices - the planet will be fine.

 

Well, the ecosystem, right on down to plankton, won't be; we're taking a lot of species down with us, but the rock'll still be here. I just kind of prefer the place more like the way we found it.