That’s how I’d paraphrase the old Bill Clinton internal campaign motto in the context of the present-day campaign to get an American law into place to combat GHGs. I’ve written about cap-and-trade and the Carbon Markets dozens of times here, including on the cap-and-trade vs. carbon tax debate. For an interesting look at the history of this debate, see this “NY Times” article from the other day. What you need to know about the support for cap-and-trade is that it “…has been embraced by President Obama, Democratic leaders in Congress, mainstream environmental groups and a growing number of business interests, including energy-consuming industries like autos, steel and aluminum.”
Paul Krugman has another great column today on the subject. What you have to remember about Krugman, aside from his being a progressive commentator and a Nobel laureate in economics, is that he’s a teacher. He’s got a gift for explaining abstruse concepts like….well, cap-and-trade. What I remind my students is that the most important word in the phrase is “cap.” I tell them that Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said, in speaking of the last President, that he “…has refused to accept the only path that’s ever solved an air pollution problem – and that’s mandatory legal limits.” With a cap, we can steer toward a quantifiable diminution in GHG emissions. That’s what we need and that’s what we can get.
Krugman says that Waxman-Markey “…would limit greenhouse gases by requiring polluters to receive or buy emission permits, with the number of available permits – the ‘cap’ in ‘cap and trade’ – gradually falling over time.” One of the objections from environmentalists with the present state of the bill is that it gives away too many of the permits, rather than auctioning all of them as President Obama and most environmental groups would prefer. But Krugman, as I often do, tells us not to make “…the perfect the enemy of the good.”
Even with some allocation of free permits, we’re still going to be moving significantly toward lowering our GHG output. “Now, these handouts wouldn’t undermine the policy’s effectiveness. Even when polluters get free permits, they still have an incentive to reduce their emissions, so that they can sell their excess permits to someone else.” It’s worked on the acid rain precursor, sulfur dioxide, and it will work for carbon dioxide.
Not incidentally, if you think the American public doesn’t want this, as some folks would have you think, well that dog just don’t hunt. See Americans support climate action: Polls from carbonpositive, an Australian-based news service and agro-forestry enterprise. See also this from “US News & World Report.” 77 percent of voters favor action.
Those polled reflect the views of nearly all environmentalists, climate scientists, and hundreds of millions of others around the planet. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill put it this way: “I never worry about action, but only inaction.”
