Spring Break
Use Some Conservative Rhetoric To Get a Carbon Price
James Coan
Issue date: 10/16/07 Section: Opinion
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This summer, I traveled around Maryland and Washington, D.C. with a six-foot-tall book containing a pledge about global warming signed by eight members of Congress and hundreds of others. My book is currently on campus, and I am looking for more students and professors to sign it. (To find out more, check out http://turningthepageonglobalwarming.googlepages.com)
While gathering signatures, I had the chance to explain the focus of my pledge: establishing a price on the emission of greenhouse gases. At least 100 times, I then went on to explain why having a price is the most important policy step to combat climate change. Using coal with few carbon emissions controls is the most carbon-intensive method of generating electricity used in the United States today. Unfortunately, it's also one of the cheapest. This underlying fundamental in the market makes it difficult for alternatives to compete and to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future. Electricity generation accounted for 41% of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion in 2005, and over half of that electricity came from coal.
The centerpiece of the Kyoto Protocol is a cap-and-trade program that caps emissions economy-wide at a certain level. Polluters are then allowed to "trade," which means that those that can cut back carbon emissions by more than their allotted amount can sell credits and get an economic benefit, but those that cannot reach the target must buy them and are thereby penalized. It is more economically efficient than a blanket regulation because the polluters who reduce their emissions are those who can do so at the lowest cost. Besides Kyoto, a cap-and-trade system has been used in the U.S. since the mid-1990s to reduce sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain. In 2009, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) will create a cap-and-trade system in ten northeastern states.
The other main way to reduce carbon emissions is to put a flat price on greenhouse gas emissions by establishing an emissions tax. Unfortunately, it is so politically unpopular to advocate for a carbon price that I literally had to hide the idea in my pledge.
While gathering signatures, I had the chance to explain the focus of my pledge: establishing a price on the emission of greenhouse gases. At least 100 times, I then went on to explain why having a price is the most important policy step to combat climate change. Using coal with few carbon emissions controls is the most carbon-intensive method of generating electricity used in the United States today. Unfortunately, it's also one of the cheapest. This underlying fundamental in the market makes it difficult for alternatives to compete and to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future. Electricity generation accounted for 41% of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion in 2005, and over half of that electricity came from coal.
The centerpiece of the Kyoto Protocol is a cap-and-trade program that caps emissions economy-wide at a certain level. Polluters are then allowed to "trade," which means that those that can cut back carbon emissions by more than their allotted amount can sell credits and get an economic benefit, but those that cannot reach the target must buy them and are thereby penalized. It is more economically efficient than a blanket regulation because the polluters who reduce their emissions are those who can do so at the lowest cost. Besides Kyoto, a cap-and-trade system has been used in the U.S. since the mid-1990s to reduce sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain. In 2009, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) will create a cap-and-trade system in ten northeastern states.
The other main way to reduce carbon emissions is to put a flat price on greenhouse gas emissions by establishing an emissions tax. Unfortunately, it is so politically unpopular to advocate for a carbon price that I literally had to hide the idea in my pledge.
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