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Louisiana's Governor Declares State Of Emergency Over Disappearing Coastline (npr.org)
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has declared a state of emergency over the state's rapidly eroding coastline. From a report on NPR: It's an effort to bring nationwide attention to the issue and speed up the federal permitting process for coastal restoration projects. "Decades of saltwater intrusion, subsidence and rising sea levels have made the Louisiana coast the nation's most rapidly deteriorating shoreline," WWNO's Travis Lux tells our Newscast unit. "It loses the equivalent of one football field of land every hour." More than half of the state's population lives on the coast, the declaration states. It adds that the pace of erosion is getting faster: "more than 1,800 square miles of land between 1932 and 2010, including 300 square miles of marshland between 2004 and 2008 alone."
Oil from all over the place is processed here.
The people that work these jobs, live on the coast and the sealife that supports these folks and provides a good amount of seafood to the US will disappear if this coastal erosion is allowed to continue.
This isn't just for the people of Louisiana, but for the great resources it provides the rest of the US.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And the Republicans insist climate change isn't real . . . well maybe when half the red leaning states are under water they'll open their eyes. Probably be way too late by that point though.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
No, it's pretty much just New Orleans that sits below sea level.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Don't worry, carbon taxes will fix it. Carbon taxes can fix all environmental problems.
But how many libraries of congress of land every hour is that?
I can't believe all you idiots believe this is actually happening. What a bunch of libtard climate-change believing fuck-muffins you are! Lucky for me I'm a diehard Republican through and through, so I'm busily buying up all this supposedly disappearing land. I stand to make billions!
Decades of saltwater intrusion, subsidence and rising sea levels
No, that's not why the delta's disappearing. Here are the reasons why:
1) Levees and flood protections prevent silt from the Mississippi from depositing into the delta to maintain it, and
2) Oil drilling required dredging up the delta to permit pipelines and shipping lanes, destroying wetlands that help capture and build-up the silt.
It could. Where are the floodwaters coming from? What is the ground composed of and what does the water table underneath look like? Are there any dikes or dams along the way that we might adjust? Boiling flood risk down to a single number might work for insurance companies, but devising a real solution to the problem requires a bit more analysis and thought.
seem to indicate that Louisiana is losing 3300 acres a year to the Gulf. about 5 square miles.
Plaquemines Parish is about 780 square miles, so if all loss were in Plaquemines, it would be losing about 0.6% per year land mass. Of course the loss is spread amongst 9 or more parishes, probably 10x the area total, the loss then becoming more like 0.06% per year.
This, my friends, is a Democrat emergency.
Mind you, this is an emergency to any family who used to live on land claimed by the Gulf, but not many do, as they are wise to the ways of water, and build differently there than elsewhere. I've played nine-ball in the Bayou. It's different there, mostly in good ways. But the Governor is certainly working this for all it is worth.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
No one is talking about carbon credits anymore. And they haven't in a while. But don't shit on people with an idea when you don't have a better one.
Basically anything south of Alexandria (which sits dead center of Louisiana) is consistently flooding. This includes many major cities (New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette).
There is really no way to stop this, the state is literally sinking.
The problem with your explanation is that it's fact-based, and stands on good science. This is the post-truth era. Thus, the counter to your argument will be:
Bruce Perens.
At the current rate of carbon emissions pumping energy into storms and glacial melt in Greenland, along with sad attempts to stop flood plains from renewing decaying soil mass by siltration deposit of alluvial soils, four fifths of Lousiana will be under water for part of the year.
Look, flood plains are supposed to flood. Stopping the river deposits is why it's getting worse. Destroying the biomass buildup from salt infiltration from Gulf storms.
Florida is way worse off, quite frankly. And it's all the fault of people sticking their heads in the sands (which will also disappear).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Might have had?" Your ignorance is showing.
The whole point of carbon taxes is to set a price for CO2 emissions, with the baseline assumption that the market will produce solutions based on creating a sort of "artificial scarcity". If you're a free market advocate, carbon taxes are the way to go, because they are far easier to administer than regulatory regimes, carbon credits, and other regulation-style structures. Upping the price of carbon means alternatives become more attractive, and isn't that the name of the game?
Unless, of course, you don't believe in free markets.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A few problems with that...
1) So who sets the prices? Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are) means there is no free market involvement.
1a) If the government sets prices, it is nothing more than a de facto regulatory scheme dressed up as commodity.
2) Enforcement? Good luck with that.
3) What's to keep government from requiring individuals (in addition to businesses) to buy these things, as a form of consumption tax?
4) I thought we all got out of the business of selling indulgences back when Martin Luther showed up?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
CNN has a similar article about disappearing Louisiana coastline. One of the people interviewed has been shrimping for 54 years. His best comment, "It doesn't concern me.What is science? Science is an educated guess," Dotson says defiantly. "What if they guess wrong? There's just as much chance as them to be wrong as there is for them to be right."
Mind you, Louisiana is the top most uneducated state in the nation and this particular area of Louisiana, Cameron county, has the highest percentage of people who do not believe climate change has an effect on plants or animals. Not man-made climate change, but any climate change.
Another person in the article says he likes his AC and gas at reasonable prices so therefore, why, based on a prediction alone, should humans try to limit CO2 production?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Yes, the government will have to set the price, so it won't be a truly free market. But seeing as leaving it to the market to actually set the price means oil is obscenely cheap and it's use continues, until costs in other parts of the economy hit damaging levels (ie. how much do you want to spend on house insurance, flood remediation, and rising food costs, etc.) I did say "artificial scarcity".
The fact is that CO2 emissions are trapping more heat in the lower atmosphere, the oceans and the surface of the planet. If you have some alternative solution, explain how it will solve this problem without creating an extremely intrusive regulatory regime, which everyone is going to hate a helluva lot more than simply setting a price on CO2 emissions.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
From a 2005 post https://pesn.com/archive/2005/...
Summary... the City of New Orleans is sinking, and sliding off the continental shelf. It's doomed even if sea levels did *NOT* rise.
> The river is moving away from the city. The city is sinking because of its
> weight, because no upbuilding by new muck for many decades, because of
> being cut off from the fresh water, because it is sliding off a cliff (the Continental Shelf),
> and because the Oil and Gas Industry is extracting oil out from under it.
> It is a city that for all intents and purposes is now Sea domain.
And, oh yeah, the very fact that ships can navigate from the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River is an anthropogenic artifact.
> To understand the City of New Orleans one must first understand the
> massive Mississippi River delta. New Orleans was built at the site of the old
> "French Quarter" on the high ground adjacent to the Mississippi river.
> This location was picked because the Mississippi River didn't have a mouth
> into the ocean. The river simply went into the "Black Swamp" and disappeared.
> This was where ships headed down river had to stop and unload their
> goods to be transshipped across Lake Pontchartrain to the sea. This was
> done by unloading the goods at the docks and then hauling them to the
> lake where shallow draft boats would take the goods to the seagoing ships.
>
> By using some ingenious methods, Henry Shreve -- after whom
> Shreveport, La., is named -- forced the river to dig its own channel out to
> the sea where it now goes. This allowed the ocean-going boats access to
> the enormous Mississippi river. This, together with the work of the US Army
> Corps of Engineers, produced what is functionally the largest ocean port on earth.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
"What is the ground composed of and what does the water table underneath look like?"
That entire area is in the Mississippi Delta Floodplains. Everything from Memphis to the Gulf of Mexico is practically FLOATING on a giant aquifer. All it takes is for New Madrid to go 7.5 or higher to put most of everything from Memphis down to Hattiesburg underwater. A large influx of water on the floodplains further south would probably cause a quicksand effect (and in fact there's tons of that in Louisiana) and simply wash everything away or drag much of it under the ground (as we witnessed with Katrina and New Orleans.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Out in California, during the drought, a lot of water was pumped from underground. This ended up in lowering the ground level. Maybe the oil and gas industry are doing the same in LA?
A few problems with that...
1) So who sets the prices? Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are) means there is no free market involvement.
Only if you think like a Sith.
The government charging you rent to store you carbon in public air is rather a lot more free market than "we're annexing all coal, natural gas, and petroleum related industryis under eminent domain and will be shutting them down.
That's just silly. Why would Mexico have to pay for the wall? Atlantis should have to pay for the wall since they control the oceans.
I will have ocean front property in North Louisiana! If you buy that I will throw the Golden Gate in free!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
The fact is that many people have dearly held religious beliefs. These beliefs are held with a bond that is far more than any combination of logic or emotion; such conviction in any human is not to be trifled with.
You can't attack people on such a personal, intimate, foundational level and expect people to follow you, or your ideas.
Unfortunately, for decades, many claiming to represent science have been loudly proclaiming (without evidence, as it's unprovable either way) that "science" says that religion, and by extension the listener's very being, is false. It's a normal human reaction that, provided a choice between dismissing dearly held, foundational beliefs, and unprovable claims made by a "scientist", that the unprovable claims will be rejected wholesale - and religion is retained.
Consequently, whenever there is a real, insight with multiple independent lines of evidence all pointing to a very similar conclusion (ie. good science), it is immediately discarded with prejudice -- all because of the asshat making unprovable claims about religion, often in an entirely different subject.
There are a few assclowns that need to realize that human beings are not logical, rational creatures, never have been, and it's important to work within that constraint.
It's harmful to both science and the world to evangelize science against religion (and by extension, saying that somebody who has a religion cannot be scientific), the result is exactly what we see in Louisiana: "What is science? Science is an educated guess" -- ie. contempt for science.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are)
GP is talking about a carbon tax, not carbon credits. A tax has many benefits and doesn't have the pitfalls you describe above. Best of all, a revenue neutral carbon tax would allow government to lower tax on things they ought to be encouraging like income and sales.
Louisiana consistently elects small-government, anti-EPA, anti-climate Representatives and Senators. Now they want an environmental conservation bailout? They decry federal handouts, and then they turn around begging for help. How about "No".
They cite:
"Decades of saltwater intrusion, subsidence and rising sea levels"
Yet, they ousted their only politician who even pretended to care about the environment and replaced her with Cassidy, whose policies will only hasten that outcome.
New Orleans couldn't be arsed to maintain their levees, then Hurricane Katrina happened. Now this. Louisiana should change their motto to "The No Foresight State".
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've long mused that despite the climate deniers howls, at some point we're going to hit an impasse. Due to historical reasons, we'll save New Orleans and other big name towns on the gulf coast in regions that sit at or below the water line.
However, if you're from some town nobody's ever heard of that's on the coast, you're pretty much fucked. If we believe the models and so far they've been spot on, every year some percentage of these towns are going to get flooded and/or walloped by hurricanes.
Each year the federal government and insurance agencies swoop in (for some value of swooping) and rebuild these towns. At some point insurance companies are going to cry uncle. They'll boost rates so high that literally nobody will be able to afford to rebuild. I could even see a situation where after a federal government has to step in and say "We're moving your entire community 50 miles in land and combining it with this other community" Why? Money and resources. At some point as wasteful as the government is, they're going to see the folly of rebuilding a town over and over and as the tide rises it's going to become less and less financially tenantable and take more and more resources.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Can I ask why you left off the third reason that the article you link to very clearly explains: sea level rise?
"All of this results from three processes that reinforce and amplify each other’s effects: levee construction, oil and gas exploration and sea level rise."
I don't respond to AC's.
Companies do not own the atmosphere. Citizens do. If they want to put things in our property we have every right to charge them rent by means of a tax.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/748/
carbon tax and cap and trade systems are both valid, free market solutions to the CO2 problem
what is NOT a free market solution is incentives such as electric cars subsidies.
Government doesn't actually have to set the price. They just cap the availability and an auction process sets the price. Cap and trade ends up being more flexible and responsive to market conditions than a flat rate pollution tax.
The government can manipulate the auction results via supply or reserve tranches of credits, (effectively at cheaper prices) for some nationally important industries or exempt small emitters (like you and your car) while requiring large emitters like an airline or rail conglomerate or a electrical utility to purchase the credits each year.
Pull up Google earth and look at all of the Oilfield canals in the coastal marsh. The 1st offshore oil well in the world was drilled south of Morgan City and offshore drilling was born there. http://www.rigmuseum.com/charl... The problem is the US Government has stolen all of the money from offshore drilling in Louisiana's waters from the 1950's to today. States that do not allow drilling in their own waters get a cut of what is rightly Louisianans money. It will not cost the Fed anything. Just give LA the royalties from the existing infrastructure.
http://www.nola.com/politics/i...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.thetowntalk.com/sto...
Where Louisiana is going to come up against the biggest hurdle isn't it's own particular issue, but the problem with regard to the entire Eastern Seaboard, the Gulf, and to perhaps a lesser extent, but just as fraught with pitfalls, the West Coast.
This scares the living daylights out of the White House and Congress, because anything they do in Louisiana will be under a huge microscope, will set perhaps irreversible precedents, and is going to have other states lining up for the same treatment.
Paralysis is clearly the best option, from the Fed's perspective. They see a seemingly endless range of issues, they fear any response will bite them in the future, and, frankly, they can't afford to do much in the first place.; It's like a 30-state Disaster Zone they don't want to know anything about.
The irony of it is that the guy that designed the water pump system for the Big Easy had/has a sail boat in his front yard.
I hear that the current EPA secretary screams it while pleasuring himself.
It's time to start considering how much money should be thrown into Louisiana at this point just to buy a little extra time, and if instead we should be considering moving people out of the state altogether.
True, but I see a hitch: exactly how are we going to do this considering? In particular who will make the decision to pull the trigger. Someone is going to have to make the decision to put Louisiana out of its misery if you're going to be "moving people out of the state". Or by "moving people out of state" do you mean letting nature take its course and generating millions of environmental refugees.
I see megaengineering projects in our future -- not because they make sense, but because the political decision to face the consequences is too hard. In part the LA situation is the result of past megaprojects to contain flooding, which is what deposited the soil in coastal LA in the first place. What's more these megaprojects will likewise have an exclusively short-term focus, because facing long-term trends are too politically difficult. Should the project factor in IPCC sea level rise projections? Hah! Good luck with that.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Consider the reality of it. Those that have the resources to effectively cause a solution are beating the drum loudest for humanity it ignore the issue of raising sea levels and those human actions that cause it. So you've got to ask yourself some serious questions. One such question is, "What would the sea level be if both polar caps and Greenland melted?"
Elon Musk declares state of emergency over disappearing hairline.
So we, the citizens, own the air. And the government will tax corporations that put CO2 and other pollutants into our air. Then, those corporations will raise their prices to cover the cost of the tax.
So we, the citizens who own the air, will be paying to have our air polluted. ...........!
This is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard of.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Well, with a carbon tax the government would set the taxation rate, and it would be like any other tax... and that's the problem with carbon taxes: regulatory capture. In the US people who pay a lot of taxes have outsized influence on tax policy.
This is why some environmentalists prefer cap and trade. In that system the government sets limits based on overall carbon emission goals. You'd first try to meet those caps by developing emission reduction technology, and if you reduced more than necessary you could sell the credit for the extra reduction to someone who was having trouble meeting their cap at a price mutually agreed upon without regulatory oversight. In other words the market would determine carbon credit trading prices.
The economic advantage of this system over carbon taxation is that it is more flexible. Imagine that an overall reduction of, say, 50% in CO2 emissions is technologically feasible, but that doesn't mean every industry can feasibly achieve 50%. Under cap and trade if the airlines have trouble meeting their cap they could buy credits from the industries that can find ways that will save more than 50%.
This leads to the environmental benefit: more carbon reduction. You can tell the airlines they've got to reduce CO2 by 50% but they physically can't do it, they can't. But if the electricity generators could cut their carbon by 75%, they aren't going to do so unless they have a financial reason -- either carbon taxes or the ability to sell the extra reduction. Cap and trade has the same effect as carbon taxes, but it uses a carrot and stick approach.
This leads to the political benefit: carbon reduction will be someone's rice bowl. In a system where money talks loudest, that's important.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Citizens do.
Oh? Where is that written down? I mean sure it's implied, but where is the legal document declaring the air the property of the citizens. Also how much do they get? What control is legally given to us over it? If someone passes wind in an elevator can we hold them legally liable?
And only THEN will Trump allow you to build a wall.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
some people are beyond the reach of argument and reason. They will NEVER change their belief.
That's a contemptible attitude. Considering human being a lost cause because you're not interested in accommodating their humanity is abhorrent.
It's entirely possible to promote science while respecting other people's religions, even for subjects like evolution. I've seen it done superbly by professors who took the time to understand their students, and were able to show they actually cared about the student and their humanity.
The bottom line is we're all part of the human family, and denying the humanity of another - including their religious beliefs - is the essence of evil.
It's very practical to promote science to everyone. As with most things,getting half of the work done is easy. The other half is not as easy, but no less important.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Why don't we deal with what scientists, rather than you going off on tangents about "alarmists" and seeming to accept the inevitability that which we could change. It's almost as if you don't actually want to deal with the science or the repercussions of human activities, but would rather play some pointless rhetorical game. I'll state right here that I don't give a fuck what Al Gore or Greenpeace says. They are not sources of information I go to, so throwing out what they say (or what you claim they say, since I don't recall any report that Al Gore said all the coast lines would be underwater by 2017) doesn't mean fuck all to me.
Yes, things change. Eventually the house you're living in will fall down. So I guess it's okay if I come and light in on fire, right?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Came here to say just this. "News for Nerds, news that matters".....
- it's not really news; since the same thing is happening all over the planet and has been for many years
- it's not for nerds, it's for everyone; and besides, I'm doubtful that there are any nerds in Louisiana
- it doesn't really matter *that* much; certainly it does matter some, but hey, it's Louisiana
Now if the same thing was being reported in London or NYC or LA or SF or Tokyo..... well then yeah, it's slashdot worthy. Of course it *is* happening in all of those places; but for some unknown reason people are concerned about Louisiana.
"those corporations will raise their prices"
You have assumed that the amount of pollutants emitted is immutable.
If a corporation merely raises prices to exactly cover the taxation, they sell fewer units and have lower earnings without reducing pollution.
If they reduce the pollution at a lower cost than the tax rate for the pollution, this creates a smaller shift in the supply curve, creates a market incentive for advancement in pollution reduction for their specific processes, and reduces their specific pollution.
If pollution credits can be traded, this creates a smaller shift in the supply curve, creates a market incentive for advancement in pollution reduction for every process, and reduces pollution broadly.
Meanwhile you present no method for dealing with external costs at all.
No one has to set prices. You simply set emission standards by granting a certain number of carbon credits which can be spent to pollute. The price is determined by free trade of said credits.
Still a dumb idea, because using markets to solve environmental issues (especially global ones) is terribly inefficient and subject to abuse.
We COULD solve water quality issues with no regulation on pollutants, but by slicing up the waterways with private rights. Most people rightly see this as a horrible idea that only works on paper.
For some reason, those people seem to think it will work for carbon, though.
yes, but their are several issues with 'carbon taxes'.
1) we really need to apply it to GOODS/Service based on where the worst part/service comes from. This way, it involves ALL nations.
2) we need a standard approach to measuring CO2. The ideal way is to use Japan's new CO2 sat, along with OCO-3, that trump just grounded. With these 2, we can get absolute numbers and can see CO2 moving IN and OUT of an area.
3) need a better form of normalization. Considering that ppl in general do NOT make the choies on emissions, then this should be tied to emissions / $GDP. That way, businesses and govs will work together in their local area to drop their emissions. Otherwise, as taxes go up on an area, the businesses will leave.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There is a significant difference between labeling a behavior versus labeling a person.
I have no problems with describing a behavior as contemptible; there's nothing hypocritical in that. How any reader decides to apply it to themselves is their own problem, not mine.
Moreover your initial response is that people were beyond help, which is quite different than and your most recent response — that consider it a waste of effort. The first implies impossibility, the other that you're not willing to spend the effort. They are very different attitudes.
I clearly diffe in opinionr: I believe in a democracy, its vitally important to help everyone understand that science is a process to understand the world, and that understanding the world helps us make better decisions.
Alienating people en masse is never wise in a democracy, and a little extra effort can make all the difference for all of humanity
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
The Dutch managed it pretty well, centuries ago. Would there be any objections from Louisianans to having huge dykes in their state? Call them walls and tell Trump they'll keep out Mexican waves and he'll pay for them (well, use other people's taxes to pay for them).
You seem wise. My post was in half-jest. An oversimplification based on the presupposition that government and corporations will co-create this tax system and do so in a way that it favorable to them, not the people.
I would ask you this: How do you reconcile instituting an entirely new tax scheme when we already have regulatory bodies in place that monitor and control the means of production in this country?
Meaning, why would it be beneficial to create an entirely new tax system when you can achieve the same end result (lower pollution) by changing regulations for these industries?
I am very wary of giving our coporatist government the impetus and support required to create a new tax system. I have serious doubts that it would be implemented in a way that truly benefits the people of the country. I can see the undue influence of our political system's sponsors and lobbyists creating something that does not work as advertised and our elected officials telling us "you will need to pass it to see what is in it," yet again. Then, once it is passed and we start to see the poor results and broken promises hearing "nobody knew that energy policy could be so complicated."
Am I just too distrusting? Do you have faith that the US government would implement a sweeping new taxation policy in a way that doesn't end up fleecing the US electorate?
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
People should have moved inland already. We aren't more powerful than the sea. Here is a relevant web cartoon I made from 2006. http://jastiv.keenspace.com/d/...
Pollution of a given type is locally fungible. If two factories next to each other are emitting the same pollutant, you can't really tell the difference in origin. However, if the factories create that pollutant as an output of different processes, the costs of reducing the pollutants can be wildly different. As reduction of the total pollutants is the actual public policy goal, that public policy should focus on maximizing that total without overspecifying what the components are.
This method also includes several other good economic ideas, such as: prices are a means to compare dissimilar things; and absent a natural market, e.g. when dealing with external costs, you can create an artificial market via tradeable credits or taxes to take advantage of the optimization powers of markets.
Also, it allows you to say "market" a lot when selling a government policy, and say "public policy" a lot when selling a market. ;-)
The Dutch 'managed it' by having incredibly small cities.. and building on stilts. Take a look at a map of say New Orleans. Compared it to modern NO... and it is obvious what has happened. We drained swamps, built land-level buildings (some with even below ground basements) and wonder why those 'newly reclaimed land' flood costing billions in damage.
1) So who sets the prices? Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are) means there is no free market involvement.
1a) If the government sets prices, it is nothing more than a de facto regulatory scheme dressed up as commodity.
But without the complexity of the alternatives, the opportunities for rent seeking are limited although this benefit is the very thing which makes this solution unattractive to politicians; they are all about rent seeking. Pigloviant taxes are a way to account for negative externalities and one of the few places where government can play a constructive role.
2) Enforcement? Good luck with that.
Gasoline taxes? Good luck with that.
3) What's to keep government from requiring individuals (in addition to businesses) to buy these things, as a form of consumption tax?
What prevents the government from doing that now?
A carbon tax is exactly that; a tax on fossil carbon which will become carbon dioxide. It only has to be be taxed once in the production and consumption cycle.
4) I thought we all got out of the business of selling indulgences back when Martin Luther showed up?
Most of our taxes are effectively indulgences. Why would you think otherwise?
What is the difference between a sin tax and any other tax? Nothing, there is no difference. The government taxes productivity, savings, income, profits, and cigarettes because it considers them all to be bad.
Government doesn't actually have to set the price. They just cap the availability and an auction process sets the price. Cap and trade ends up being more flexible and responsive to market conditions than a flat rate pollution tax.
\
And most importantly, cap and trade allows for unlimited opportunities for rent seeking.
The government can manipulate the auction results via supply or reserve tranches of credits, (effectively at cheaper prices) for some nationally important industries or exempt small emitters (like you and your car) while requiring large emitters like an airline or rail conglomerate or a electrical utility to purchase the credits each year.
Exaclty, the advantage of cap and trade to facilitate rent seeking is what makes a Pigloviant tax on fossil carbon politically infeasible. A carbon tax is not corruptible enough.
My take is:
1) Smart move by the gov to improve Fed response to obvious urgent needs.
2) Global warming is a natural cycle here on Earth.
3) Based on all the research I have seen, global climate change (including warming) IS, in apparent fact, ACCELERATED by mankind's careless spewing.
4) Mankind would be prudent to get fully active on remediation ASAP.
5) Coastal dwellers need to understand, and accept responsibility for, choosing to live in such challenging locations.
6) Politicians need to take an extensive aptitude test prior to even running for office so as to prove that they have a grasp of how to UNDERSTAND issues, especially those that are out of their regular scope of education.
7) MONEY needs to be removed from all legislative and political endeavors (laws, elections, etc...); so as to allow PERTINENT FACTS to rule our decisions.
8) Corporations need to have their power severely curbed. Their ability to control anything at any capacity of more than ONE individual threatens any and most all of (us).
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
And I think a little whirlwind-reaping won't be far behind.