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Well, here you go!

On the surface, it has been quite successful. But you have to remember that most of the reduction has come from natural gas displacing coal - which thanks to fracking would have happened even without the carbon trading.

The RGGI has better documents, but it's in this document. Poor people get rebates. Richer people get assistance winterizing their homes. Factories and businesses get similar investment assistance. It varies by state, and you can see the breakdowns of where the tax gets spent. Businesses get most of it (on average), and the document lists energy savings. The investments create jobs for construction and technology companies that provide measurable energy savings. The document lists (p5) that there have been $240million in saved energy bills to date, and lifetime projections for existing improvements of $2 billion.

This document gives some analysis on actual energy bills with the carbon tax in them, and you can see they hardly change. The analysis has assumptions in it, and this analysis is conservative. I've seen other analysis that shows on average that electricity bills are slightly less. The bill change is so close to zero that it simply fluctuates around zero over time.


This has created 1000s ongoing jobs directly -- far more than keystone will create. The improvement services are provided by the private sector, with individuals and businesses getting the investment money from the raise in their tax bill. (Money raised from the carbon tax.) The financial services industry is supposed to allocate investment dollars to businesses; however, they've failed miserably in doing this, and America's corporations are sitting on $1 trillion of cash looking for good investment opportunities. This program is doing something that the financial services industry has failed to do over the last 20 years.

As renewables come down in price (and solar is now only twice the price of coal, wind cheaper -- I'm talkin levelized cost), expect to see new financial instruments created as a threshold is crossed where it is cheaper for people to borrow money to pay 20 years of electricity bills at once (i.e., install solar). The carbon tax is a way of doing this without anybody borrowing money -- by putting a small price on carbon pollution. The net economic effect is (as demonstrated) less carbon pollution, which is what the world needs.

There is no economic catastrophe.

In the real world, where economists measure these things, and such taxes have been implemented, carbon taxes reduce power bills for businesses and residents. There are other more ambitious examples. The part you might have missed is that the tax is revenue neutral. Every tax dollar collected goes back to the people paying the electricity bill. So your bill goes up $1 and then goes down $1. It shouldn't take too much thought to work out why such a procedure reduces peoples electricity bills overall -- its just basic high school level economics. Look it up if your interested.

Ha ha. The RGGI states just get their power from non-RGGI states and Canada.

Question: How CO2 is produced out-of-state to support RGGI states??

Answer: of course you don't know what you are talking about

And Eastern Canada is doing the same thing as RGGI. Heard of Dunning-Kruger?

The USA has implemented cap and trade over 20% of its economy. Energy prices have come down in this part of the USA relative to the rest of the country, for both factories and consumers. Furthermore, the part of the USA has seen relative economic growth compared to the rest of the USA. It is because of RGGI, similar carbon regulations in other parts of the world, and the history of such programs, that economists think that the cost of climate action will be negligible. The true alarmists are the ones preaching economic Armageddon.

If the cost is close to zero then you won't need to enact any taxes, carbon trading, or restrictions.

A tax can be revenue neutral.

While one part of the economy shrinks, others grow.

This is exactly what is happening in places that have implemented a carbon tax.

Not theory. Real life, to pick on example.

The real alarmists are the ones who say nothing can be done, because it would destroy the economy. It simply isn't true.

The fact that electricity bills have not gone up in 10 years, assuming that is true

In other words, you know jack, but you talk like a policy wonk.

A real policy wonk would know about the RGGI, and know where to get a policy document detailing how the carbon tax saves everyone money.

Of course, you're an expert on climate change and the costs of mitigation.

There isn't empirical data to support your claim

Yeah there is no evidence that costs are small in the USA.

Germany is now about 25% renewable, and their economy grew relative to the rest of the world. OBVIOUSLY their policies have no impact, and just benefit a few corrupt individuals.

Like the IPCC, the RGGI make up all of their data, for Agenda 21 purposes. OBVIOUSLY we cannot believe that this has any impact on reducing peoples energy bills whilst reducing carbon usage.

You're really that guy, aren't you.

Iowa and Indiana are red states and leading the way in wind energy. It is good business. The NE of america has a revenue neutral carbon tax that is driving down energy costs. The RGGI covers 20% of the US economy, all blue states, and that portion of the economy grew relative to the rest of the US economy. The notion that a carbon tax would trash the economy is scare mongering.

GHG market, which has obfuscated, irrational and un-achievable goals.

The nay sayers will just quietly move on to something else when they are proven wrong. Watch.

China may happily offer to sell them windmills etc to do it on a massive scale (and burn all the coal to do it ;) ).

China is building huge wind farms. Their energy-policy doesn't make sense at first blush because it isn't based on "four-legs-good, two-legs-bad" when it comes to traditional power generation.

The same could be said of the USA, which generates a huge amount of wind energy, and has developed (along with Europe) the know-how for integrating it seamlessly into the power grid. The USA also has a 1/5th of its economy under a carbon tax, which over the last 10 years, has saved industry and consumers $$$ on their power bills. Interesting how incentive structures give people the little push to save money long-term.

In particular, America and China.

China recognizes the necessity of action, and are developing huge wind farms. (6 at 20GW each. By comparison, France uses 80GW.)

A majority in the USA would like to see some action, and indeed, 1/5th of the USA lives under a carbon trading scheme -- with no evidence of any economic damage. A carbon neutral tax takes from the utility companies bottom line, and generates demand for energy efficient products and infrastructure. The official rggi report specifically shows that this is what has been happening over the last 10 years, with net savings for both consumers and business. Furthermore, this region of the US economy has grown in proportion to the rest of the USA. The "damage" of a carbon tax is a conservative myth. And besides, many Republicans want action on climate change, including supply-side economics guru Art Laffer.

Now, China wants the west to pay through the nose before it officially ties itself to any legally binding targets. Same with India, and the rest of the developed world. In my opinion, they have a victim complex, which does have some legitimate basis. But seriously: grow up.

But, returning to your post, it is too black-and-white to suggest that nothing is happening in the USA. And in China, the boots are marching.

Only the regressive climate-change denial machine stops real and cheap action on AGW, and for purely philosophical reasons that are not grounded in out best understanding of either science or economics. These people are not oil industry shills (although they do have oil-sugar-daddys) but they do really believe in the imminent threat of climate-change legislation.

History will not remember them kindly.

I used to think that way -- but I've been following the technology for a long time, and things are really starting to move. Here is some food for thought...

The missing link in renewable energy (cheap scalable batteries).
solar reaching price parity soon
Wind at a crossroads. The power output increases as a square of tower height -- so people are thinking about enormous off-shore towers, or towers in the great lakes.


There is really a lot more going on, including 20% of the US economy being under a revenue neutral carbon cap-and-trade for 10 years. (Bet you didn't know that.) This part of the US economy has seen the slowest growth in energy prices, and experienced more economic growth than the rest of the country. (Follow the link for reports.)

Renewable energy isn't just about the environment, or energy security -- it's also about growing the economy. Alas for the political discourse. The oil/coal lobby is well funded and very active, and the chief cronies in crony-capitalism.

In the absence of federal leadership, get your state to talk to other, adjacent populous states, kinda like this.

In the meantime, China seems to be the only large country that's actually working on decreasing CO2 output.

There are some grass roots changes happening elsewhere that are very hard to measure, let alone assess the results. Although the USA federal government rejected Kyoto, several states have adopted Kyoto goals for environmental policies (example: Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware have created the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative). Some USA municipalities have made significant changes in their infrastructure to comply with the Kyoto Protocol (example: Portland Oregon has met the first Kyoto goal of rolling back CO2 releases to pre-1990 levels. Other USA cities are beginning to recognize that encouraging their residents to adopt better habits wrt recycling, transportation, and so on not only generates lots of warm, fuzzy feelings but improves the local economy.

The Kyoto Protocol has been having a significant effect on public policy even within nations that didn't sign it. I'm personally pessimistic about whether any of this will avert the coming catastrophe (somehow the 6 billion people on earth today has to be reduced to the 2 billion that seems to be the earth's sustainable carrying capacity-- call me Malthus). But on the positive side, those who survive the next 50 years are likely to have habits wrt to reduce-reuse-recycle and mass transit that will be as significant in their new world as sanitation facilities are in today's cities.