What the US Can Learn From Europe's Pollution Credit System

Al writes "Technology Review discusses what a US carbon trading scheme could learn from the flawed European experience. Advocates of carbon-trading schemes like to point to Europe's cap-and-trade program as a model worthy of emulation, but the reality has been less than perfect. A glut of pollution credits, distributed without cost during both the first, transitional phase of the program and the current working phase, drove down the value of the EUAs. As a result, Europe's carbon dioxide emissions remain priced well below 20 euros per ton. With the price of pollution so low, economists say, industries that generate and consume energy have no incentives to change their habits; it is still cheaper to use fossil fuels than to switch to technologies that pollute less. Establishing a carbon price in the US system now, and tightening the system later, could send a dangerously wrong signal to financial markets looking to invest in new energy technologies."

Comments

Huh?

[el3mentary]

You mean the US doesn't Have one yet? I thought You guys loved Capitalism and the Market system?

Re:Huh?

[hedwards]

Because it's not really about free markets, it's about completely unregulated markets that don't interfere with people getting a lot of stuff and rich.

Then there's the people who call it a tax and therefore an unwarranted interference into the lives of people.

Of course I'll get modded flamebait to, but meh.

Re:Huh?

[Lemmy Caution]

It is based on a finite resource created by consensus: the amount of pollution that a society is willing to put up with.

All property is based on consensus at some point: intellectual property, real property (which, of course, was irrelevant to hunter/gatherer and nomadic societies), currency, etc. All those forms a property are also enforced by one mechanism or another. Land is "scarce" only because there is a social fiat which forbids me from using or traversing land I don't own.

Re:That any government attempt to control...

[sexconker]

Yup.

I particularly like how we're taxing carbon. Carbon is a dirty word now, despite it never harming anyone.

Embarrassing for the time we live in....

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Carbon Dioxide is NOT a pollutant.

2. Global Warming has been exposed as false (Hence
the name alteration to "Climate Change" in the media. And if it was at all about the greenhouse gasses, CO2 is 5% of which we contribute less than 1% of. Good grief!

3. What's next? Are we going to try to fight Autumn?

Re:The thing about a carbon tax...

[McBeer]

and you're 1/300 millionth the cause of this nations financial problems.

If everybody bitches about 100% of taxes and only 20% of expenditures, we'll still have 80% of the expenses which eventually we'll have to pay for. Only because we bitched about every tax, good taxes won't get passed significantly more then bad taxes.

Contrast that with a system whereby people bitch about 50% of expenditures and 50% of taxes. We would then have 50% of the expenses to be paid, and they would be funded by the 50% of the tax proposals that made sense and didn't get bitched about.

The amount the government spends is based on the number of projects people approve. Trying to starve the government into inaction by complaining about taxes will just give you a screwed up tax system, a lot of debt, and no appreciable reduction in spending.