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You don't have to be Al Gore to be concerned about carbon pollution's effect on our Earth. Scientists and world leaders are constantly considering new ways to reduce emissions, and some have proposed a process known as carbon trading, where companies are given carbon credits that they can either use for their own emission needs or sell to bigger polluters who need more credits. Is this the remedy for our ailing environment, or just a lot of hot air?
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Cap-and-Trade is Relatively Easy to Establish
- From International Emissions Trading Assoc
By International Emissions Trading Association
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Cap-and-Trade vs. Carbon Tax
Carbon trading is good, but a carbon tax is better. The argument that a suitable cap is easier to determine scientifically than a tax is wrong.
Some argue that it will be very difficult, even for PhD researchers, to estimate the environmental cost of emitting a ton of a greenhouse gas, so the government shouldn’t try to set the tax rate, whereas anyone, even politicians, can choose a volume level of emissions to allow. Well, sure they can, but it will be as arbitrary as picking a tax rate out of a hat. The only reason it seems easier is because no one would expect any rational basis for an emissions limit, so we’ll just let the politicians fight it out as they always do.
The truth is, if you think about it, that in order to determine the appropriate level of emissions to allow, you have to know, or estimate, the amount of damage caused by each ton. The more the damage, the more you want to limit emissions. No damage—no limit. And that estimate must be compared to an estimate of the cost per ton of reducing emissions in the most economical way. So you have to estimate both the damage per ton and the cost per ton of reducing emissions most economically to arrive at the best tradeoff. With the carbon tax approach, on the other hand, the government needs only an estimate of the damage per ton. You can let the industries consider the costs of reducing emissions for their own businesses, and make their own tradeoff decisions. So the individual businesses do what they are best equipped to do, while academicians estimate the future social costs of environmental damage, which they are best equipped to do.
The above is excerpted from my blog on the subject: http://fearlesstheorist.wordpress.com
- Fearless Theorist
January 13, 2009 9:11PM
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