The Washington Post over the weekend ran an article discussing how one of the biggest hangups Congress seems to have with addressing climate change is the sheer expense involved:
The potential economic impact of meaningful climate legislation—enough to reduce U.S. emissions by at least 60 percent—is vast. Automobiles would have to get double their current miles to the gallon. Building codes would have to be tougher, requiring use of more energy-efficient materials. To stimulate and pay for new technologies, U.S. electricity bills could rise by 25 to 33 percent, some experts estimate; others say the increase could be greater.[...]
“I sincerely doubt that the American people are willing to pay what this is really going to cost them,” John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a recent C-SPAN interview, adding that he intended to introduce legislation that would impose a carbon tax “just to sort of see how people really feel about this.” He said his proposal would boost the gasoline tax by 50 cents a gallon and establish a “double-digit” tax on each ton of all carbon-dioxide emissions.
A couple of thoughts:
First, I suspect that most global warming activists would be quick to point out that the costs of such changes may appear large on a standalone basis, but in fact appear miniscule when compared to the nightmare scenarios presented of runaway climate change. Fair enough, but I do wish that there would be a reasonably unbiased study done of what the costs of runaway climate change might realistically be.
I suspect that such a study would still lean towards attempting preventive action being the more economically feasible route to go. However, I would hate to find out later that we had been wrong about the efficacy of whatever preventive measures were taken, when an “insurance policy” could have been taken out in the form of some (comparatively) cheap preparations made assuming that some climate change would occur.
Of course, I also expect that if presented with the costs of combating climate change and the costs of global warming, our politicians will dislike both options and choose to do nothing.
Second, the article goes on to discuss the debate about whether government should prod a shift away from carbon emissions through the use of either a carbon tax or via the creation of a carbon cap-and-trade system.There are pros and cons with both, of course, and a fair amount of the debate seems to be based on degree of trust of the government to handle carbon tax revenues appropriately, distrust of big business, fear of providing a way to reward past polluters, and concerns about possibly driving polluters to less-developed countries with weaker environmental controls.
I’ll chime in by favoring cap-and-trade. Yes, it opens the door to abuse by providing a mechanism for current polluters to profit by cleaning up their act (assuming that emissions caps are allocated based on current emissions levels). While it superficially seems unfair, isn’t getting polluters to clean up the point of such measures?
Also, I do distrust the government’s backbone to not abuse carbon tax revenues. With a cap-and-trade system, companies have a very real incentive (profit!) to find ways to reduce their emissions, whereas it would be all too tempting for the feds to divert carbon tax revenues away from funding development of new, environmentally friendlier tech to pet projects and boondoggles.