In a speech in Washington, D.C., Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson argued that a carbon tax is preferable to a cap-and-trade system for controlling greenhouse gas emissions. As reported in the WSJ, Tillerson noted that a carbon tax would be a "more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach" than cap-and-trade. "Mr. Tillerson said a cap-and-trade system would be costly, bureaucratic and create a 'Wall Street of emissions brokers.'"
The Center for American Progress' Daniel Weiss responded that Tillerson's apparent endorsement of a carbon tax "could be a ploy because few observers believe such a tax is politically feasible in our Congress." Yet none other than NASA's James Hansen, who believes dramatic emission reductions that will actually reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, are necessary "to preserve nature and humanity," argues that cap-and-trade will stimulate special-interest rent-seeking and create bureaucratic morass without having an appreciable impact on emissions and "will practically guarantee disastrous climate change."
A carbon tax is difficult politically because no politician wants to be seen as calling for higher taxes. Yet a cap-and-trade system will only be effective to the extent that it replicates the effect of a tax on carbon-based energy sources, and a cap-and-trade system is (in the real world, as opposed to theoretical models) is likely to be far more costly and difficult to implement and far more prone to special-interest manipulation (as I argued here). Now that the likes of Tillerson and Hansen (and others) can agree that a tax is preferable -- particularly if revenue neutral -- perhaps it can become politically possible.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Exxon CEO and Climate Alarmist Agree:
- A Climate Deal for Conservatives:
Er...because you think the CEO of Exxon has influence among the people driving the agenda here? That's a bit of an odd perspective.
I suspect the very fact that the CEO of Exxon supports a carbon tax makes the passage of one in a pseudo-populist Congress less likely. Gee, if the man from Big Oil likes it, it must be bad for the trees 'n' children 'n' other living things. Forget it!
I’m agnostic on the issue of AGW but I would say this – if you actually believe that human behavior is causing or is a substantial factor in causing the Earth’s temperature to change in a way that would on net be harmful to human beings and you believe the government should force people to change their behavior to prevent or mitigate that harm, then I think the prudent course would be to go for the direct tax over hoping to conceal it indirectly. The only way I see of getting the public to accept the changes that you believe they should make is to do it as transparently as possible and be up front about the costs you’re expecting them to bear. Trying to conceal those costs or pretend that they don’t exist with fanciful promises of new “green technologies” while pushing for changes that coincidentally enable your supporters to find a new way of looting the public isn’t going to work unless the looting is the actual end of itself.
Which is why a straight carbon tax is superior. Complicated taxes have loopholes, require extensive policing, and are potentially rife with inefficiency. Simple taxes are superior in all of these respects.
What should the cap be set at? Where in the production/consumption cycle should it be applied? How often should it be adjusted? Those questions are easier to answer for a straight tax than for an ungainly trading apparatus.
If the goal is to reduce the use of carbon based fuels, they should have the honesty to directly tax it at the source or at usage. Also, when it becomes apparent that there is no evidence of 20 ft ocean level increases this tax could be sunset.
Are you actually paid by ExxonMobil, or are you just a sucker that does its work for free?
None of the models I have seen include equilibrium with the C in the oceans, a process that occurs very rapidly. If one takes CO2 free water from a source and walks across a 20 ft room, CO2 from the air will dissolve in the water at levels sufficient to easily measure in a lab by titration.
The oceans contain 42000 billion metric tonnes of C at any instant. The partitioning factor between the air and the oceans greatly favors the oceans. Some ignorant PhD at Yale stated the oceans were "saturated" with CO2 but the PhD should have kept her mouth closed. Le Chatelier's Principle comes into play and any change to the CO2 on the left side of the equation (air) will force a shift in equilibrium to the right (water).
Do humans cause problems? Or course. To what extent is the question and what expense should be applied to manage human contributions.
NA and Europe will benefit from warming. Longer growing seasons will occur and crops varieties will be able to be grown in the more northern regions that could not be grown there in recent times.
Just like the Freon-12 lies about the ozone hole, the CO2 lies will cost the people. Interestingly, one can go to many foreign countries and obtain Freon-12 at low cost. It is primarily in the first world countries where the people are forced to pay exorbitant prices for alternatives. I can list a number of lies by omission in the science texts and reference books about Freon-12, such as the fact that Freon-12 is water soluble (dissolves in the oceans), condenses out of the air at the tropopause because of its boiling point, etc.
Science has been politicized for more than 30 years. As always follow the money. If one wants funding, one will design experiments that result in reports that the funding agency desires.
Which models specifically didn't account for oceanic uptake? That is a serious flaw in a carbon model. I took a quick look at a few recently published modelling papers, and all had uptake by the oceans (for example Shurgers et al. 2008).
It is true that as atmospheric concentrations increase, more CO2 will be absorbed into the oceans. As CO2 levels in the ocean increase, the pH of the ocean will decrease:
CO2 + H2O = H2CO3 = HCO3− + H+
(as the CO2 on the left side of the equation increases, some will become carbonic acid in the center of the equation. As the CO2 and carbonic acid increase, then more H+ ions will dissociate, leading to a lowering in pH). The problem with this is that it may decrease the amount of oxygen produced by phytoplankton in the open ocean (which produce about half of yearly oxygen production) and also may decrease biological oceanic carbon sequestration.
Totally! The world is totally behind the Global Warming Truth crusade! They're just secret about it in polls and everything.
This is a conflation of the emissions rate and the atmospheric level of CO2. When you fill your pool with a garden hose, the flow rate of the hose per hour might not be very large compared to the pool volume, but either way the hose eventually overflows your pool. See here if this concept still is unclear to you.
You must not have seen very many models. CO2 dissolution in the oceans is included in the vast majority of models that I have seen. It doesn't happen as fast as you think. IIRC, the mean residence inorganic carbon in the ocean is 100 years. That means it will take a long time for the oceans to take up the extra CO2 in our atmosphere.
I agree that the ignorant should keep their mouths closed! Let's ignore people who spread false and irrelevant climate claims!
Unless there are restrictions on a carbon market, such as only people who have the capability to use credits can buy them, and credits expire quarterly, and anyone with expiring credits is fined a substantial amount (at least double the average credit price for that quarter). Without controls like that, you're going to be burdening the overall economy in excess of what is necessary to cut carbon emissions.
If the temperature change is zero for a given year then no one pays anything. If the temperature goes up (say) .1 deg, then make the total world tax = W(.1). Then you pay some fraction of W according to how much carbon you emit. Thus if I own a private jet, then I pay according to the amount of jet fuel I consume. Ditto for the automobile driver or the operator of a coal-fired power plant. Under this scheme if average global temperature starts dropping, the tax is effectively canceled. If global temperature really starts to climb, then the tax increases. If a country refuses to pay then their exports get hit with a tariff. We can use the IPCC model, and demand elasticities to calculate the function W(ΔT) to stabilize the average temperature.
Is there any reason to believe that the actual tax rate will be under $1/ton?
Note that one problem with the "tax to take care of damages" argument is that the money gets spent elsewhere and the folks who thought that they'd get money from the tax keep coming back and asking for more, hoping that eventually they'll get what they thought that they were promised from the beginning.
Who cares what that idiot has to say. He was the one who suggested that people be brought up on criminal charges for spreading doubt about global warming. What now scientists aren's suppose to be skeptical. The guy hasn't a clue about how science is suppose to operate.
What's so great about civilization? What was it that Douglas Hofstadter wrote, something about how many people argue it was a mistake to have come down from the trees in the first place?
On the other hand, C&T offers potentially increased efficiency from trading between producers that can more easily mitigate their output and those that can do so only at great expense.
Whether or not this benefit is enough to offset the increase bureaucratic demands of C&T is tied up in the details and administration.
Is this supposed to make me think everything is okay? Adding 0.73% might make any individual year seem small, but for those of us who manage to keep on living, years have a way of adding up.
I'm not sold on AGW, but I'd love to see the income tax be replaced with a carbon tax, purely on economic grounds.
In other words, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will double in about 100 years. This is best illustrated by a graph shown here:
http://www.nybooks.com/images/tables/2008061244img1.gif>
In other words, the natural world is not absorbing CO2 as fast as we can produce it. The amount in a given year may be small but as it accumulates and accelerates with global economic growth, it will become a problem.
This is why realists on this issue sometimes advocate (as yet infeasible) carbon capture technology to prevent carbon emissions from reaching the atmosphere in the first place. Ignoring emissions though is incredibly foolish.
If you have a comment about spelling, typos, or format errors, please e-mail the poster directly rather than posting a comment.
Comment Policy: We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we'd rather you went elsewhere. We're happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.
We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can't possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don't read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.
And remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.