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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."
The U.S. doesn't learn anything. It "instructs" and it "enforces" but it doesn't learn anything. When the rest of the world moved to the metric system, every school kid was given a metric ruler and a conversion chart for various weights and measures. We were all moving into a newer, bigger, more progressive world... right? Wrong! Business didn't want to retool -- it was expensive and the older minds were unwilling to adjust. The whole idea of prepping the younger generation was for "them" (that would be "us" today) to do the hard work of converting over so that "we" (the "us" of 30+ years ago) would have a plan in place but wouldn't have to actually do anything themselves. But what happened? That's obvious... "they" grew up, got jobs at places of employment who were still unwilling to retool.
The U.S. still doesn't have a difficult time enforcing our will upon others, but the fact that we still haven't updated our game to work well with others is indication enough of how the U.S. doesn't learn anything.
who gives a shit? this is political/financial news, not news for nerds. TFA never mentions new tech, emerging tech,or existing tech in ANY light that seems slashworthy.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Science most definitely has found a correlation between temperature increase, and atmospheric carbon increases. Most certainly.
But, to claim that science has established a cause and effect is either ignorant, or dishonest. Ignorance can be cured, though.
The zealots have proclaimed the cause and effect that you just referred to. Scientist on the other hand, have not made such a proclamation. Look more closely at those charts that the zealots like to refer to. Look very closely at the timelines. It looks like temperature increase often precedes carbon increase. Temp increases often occur simultaneously with carbon increase. None of the charts can put carbon increase ahead of temperature increase. This looks like a case of getting the cart before the horse.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Right. "The Market" as we practice it here in America is the one, true free-market system given us by that original free market capitalist, Jesus Walker Christ. You can look it up in the Bible.
This horrible, athiestic "cap, tax and murder babies" system that is being forced upon us by fascistic decree by Barack Hussein Obama (notice how the number of letters in his name almost add up to "666"?) may claim to "employ market mechanisms" it is no more "Free Market" than any religion that claims to worship "god" is anything like the True Free Market Faith given us by our real Founding Father, when the Constitution was handed down to Moses on Mount Sanai.
I know all this because I heard it on the AM radio.
By the way, the AM radio also says that this so-called "health reform" is actually a plan to kill everyone at age 64 and make food out of them for the coloreds and the muslims like all those "european-style socialist" countries do.
You are welcome on my lawn.
90% of the electricity generated in Brazil comes from hydroelectric power stations.
And environmental laws are much stricter here than in the US. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
"Don't bother explaining to the converted, they're already committed regardless of facts. It's the new religion."
Which religion busting facts are you referring to? It stikes me that someone who can't/won't explain their position is the one who's acting from blind faith.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
> the idea that the environmentalists are Soviet-controlled sounds rather suspicious, as well as out of date
They aren't Soviet controlled anymore since the Soviet Union fell. But Communism didn't end and the failed religion still has many followers, plenty of money and a will to regroup and triumph over their foes.
> you should call them terrorists instead. ;-)
Nah. Besides, it wouldn't be correct. The terrorists are a totally different problem. Frightening in their decentralized nature and utter lack of moral restraint but less of a longterm danger compared to Communism. In the end the terrorists are stuck in the 6th Century with their deranged religion.
Terrorists, if someone else gives (they can't make much of anything themselves) it to them, can use an airliner or a nuke to at most destroy a city. At some point they anger us enough to go Ann Coulter[1] on their asses and it's over. Communists are a different animal entirely, burrowing into a civilization and corroding it from within. Communists are attempting to destroy our entire civilization and to date have been winning. Occasionally our team gets a Reagan who slows the losses for a time but even their team's loss of the Soviet Union has failed to slow their relentless march through OUR institutions. A disciple of Saul Alinsky and William Ayers has now marched all the way to the White House. So who is in a position to do more damage, UBL in his cave or BHO with a pliant fillibuster proof Congress?
> the Sovs didn't exactly consider pollution a problem, and were quite anti-environmentalist.
Agreed. All the more reason to subvert western environmental groups by their lights. Groups they controlled could be depended upon to help hide the ecological horrors going on behind the Iron Curtain. And they were very useful tools to attack the economic vitality of the West.
Note the same pattern with "Human Rights" Organizations. For some reason most seemed to be obsessed with real and imagined defects in various Western (but usually the US) societies and almost totally oblivious to the brutal oppression happening behind the Iron Curtain. And even today the pattern goes on. Hugo Chavez is shutting down the last TV outlets not under his control and exactly how many "Human Rights" Organizations are raising Hell over it? A few can muster the courage to denounce some of the misfits in the Middle East for their more barbaric practices but they are notable for the exception. Communists have no use for "Human Rights" themselves, it being an alien notion, but that doesn't stop them from seeing the utility in gaining control of organizations devoted to them for use as both cover and a weapon.
[1] In case you don't know, Ms. Coulter lost a close friend on 9/11/01 and so on 9/12 wrote in a 'controversial' (even by Ann Coulter standards) column that we should "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Democrat delenda est