The lies being spread on Cap and Trade

There is a tremendous amount of disinformation regarding the significance of the proposed energy bill that is flooding the media and making its way to DU. The core of the disinformation campaign is the lack of understanding regarding what cap and trade actually is. The GOP and their fossil fuel financiers are intent on conflating the devastation caused by unregulated derivatives on Wall Street with the use of this well understood and proven mechanism that focuses market forces on social problems caused by corporations wanting to avoid paying for for the external damage caused by their business practices.

CAP AND TRADE WORKS WHEN SITUATION IS APPROPRIATE - CARBON EMISSIONS ARE AN APPROPRIATE USE.

CAP AND TRADE IS WELL UNDERSTOOD.

CAP AND TRADE IS TRANSPARENT.

CAP AND TRADE IS NOTHING LIKE THE FINANCIAL DERIVATIVE MARKET.

The only way cap and trade isn't successful is if it is applied piecemeal by the states. As long as it is a federal program, it will achieve the desired results of directing private capital towards non-carbon emitting technologies and infrastructure.

The goals in the bill are weaker than some would like, but those goals are nonetheless real and substantial. I'm a renewable energy and carbon management policy analyst, so I have a somewhat different take on this than many. One thing that positively influences my interpretation of what the bill will do is that I understand the biggest barrier to moving away from carbon fuels is the energy system that has developed in a haphazard, non-planned fashion over the past 100 years. IT is an intricate network of technologies, laws and regulations that is designed to facilitate centrally generated power produced by extremely inexpensive fossil fuels. This system has had no place for technologies that weren't streamlined to fit the operating paradigm of central control.

What we KNOW is that a differently designed system can meet our needs just as well as the old system. The moves of the Obama administration and this Congressional proposal are designed to open up the regulatory process in a way that shifts the focus from one dedicated to central energy generation by fossil fuels to one oriented around dispersed generation and advanced energy management. It goes a long way towards eliminating the institutional and systemic obstacles that made investment in alternative energy technologies undesirable from a market viewpoint and instead shifts that flow of private money looking for safe secure investments to the technologies of tomorrow.

I read the targets incorporated in the bill and wish they were stronger, but if the shift in capital flow works as I think it will, those targets will become increasingly less significant as market driven economic forces accumulate against the technologies that are poisoning the planet and starve them of the lifeblood of capital investment.

Some people say that the energy costs to individuals will skyrocket - but the estimate most accepted is an increase in energy cost for the average family of $175 per year. That is significant to some people in our country, but those who are in the lower income brackets are provided for in the legislation. I have no sympathy for those who make more and just don't want to pay an extra couple of bucks a month. The current system is problematic in the financial sense because energy prices are almost completely dependent on fuel prices. We all know the volatility experienced by interruptions in those fuel supplies, don't we? If prices do rise as predicted, what will we get for that increase? Over time we will get price stability. Since virtually all of renewable energy costs are in the initial capital investment the price is predictable for decades. In the long run, I have to believe that the percentage of my income that goes to meet my energy needs will decline.

Anyway, I wanted to give a general response to the hysteria that is inundating us all. Here is an EPA website that discusses past uses of cap and trade to give you a better sense of what is happening.
http://www.epa.gov/captrade/

If your congressional representative voted for the bill, give them a call and say "Thanks".
Find out: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll477.xml

We agree on something. :P

Thank you for this!

and that is what "Cap and Trade" is going to do

Not to mention "Cap and Trade" is the Brainchild of the same Global Capitolist that brought you the current financial melt down

Count me out .... its a peice of shit

The op says it will only raise electric costs $175 per family. I (worked) on an electric arc steel furnace, we used around $2,000,000 in electricity a month. The plant is currently shut down and me and over 2000 others are laid off, I have almost 40 years service. A big reason the furnace was located here was because we have inexpensive coal generated electricity. How much more will it increase costs to run that furnace? If Cap and Trade is passed I doubt our plant will ever reopen. You know what will happen, that coal will go to China and they will produce the steel over there with ZERO concern about pollution or any global warming or CO2. Another dose of reality I read that those huge wind mills contain about 250 tons of steel each. Where they going to get the steel? (CHINA) We won't make it here any more it will cost too much for electricity. What gives these people the idea it will create all these green jobs here? American companies will go to China where there is cheap labor, no environmental laws, no OSHA and no unions.
Yesterday I was sitting at a lawn furniture display while waiting for someone at K Mart. I happened to look at the bottom of a plate that was on the table and it was made in China. So anyway I wondered if anything was made here, table China, chairs China, drinking glasses China, umbrella China. Now believe it or not I found something on the display made in the good old USA a 99 cent package of paper plates. Out of about $200 worth of products $199 of it came from China and 99 cents from the USA.

on edit: I thanked my Democratic Congressman for opposing this bill.

The house bill has a provision that would address you complaint by a levy of taxes on imported goods when the exporting country isn't charging an amount for carbon that is equivalent to what a company must pay here.

If the bill becomes law as written your company would gain nothing by shipping the work to China except whatever benefits they are getting right now. In the OP I wrote of the problem of doing on a state by state basis. Your concern is precisely why that is a problem and you are correct, it is a legitimate concern on the international front also. The answer is already in the bill. We need this bill and we need your support to get it done.

Please, call your senators ad tell them to ensure that provision doesn't get stripped out when the senate takes up the legislation.

he opposed NAFTA as written and claimed he would put in safeguards for labor and environmental standards, it didn't happen or wasn't enforced. If there is such a provision in this Bill the Free Trade Republicans and some Democrats will strip it, if they don't the WTO will rule it violates trade laws. We went through that back in the late 90's when the Chinese and the old Soviet block countries dumped steel in this country below our cost. We begged President Clinton and he did absolutely nothing, around 40 steel companies liquidated. Then President Bush put in trade sanctions on illegally dumped steel. The American auto companies and other users such as Caterpillar and the WTO fought it tooth and nail. Within around 6 months virtually every product was eliminated from the list. There were two things that saved what was left of the steel industry, the Chinese started using more steel than they could produce so they quit dumping it here and the Steelworkers Union gave huge concessions. Most of us had our pensions dumped on the PBGC and drastically cut and most of us lost our retiree health insurance. Nobody was there to bail us out like the Auto industry.
I feel those provisions will be either removed by the Republicans and if not the WTO will rule against this country if it is left in place just like they always do. So I have no choice but write both my Senators opposing the entire bill. Do you know 40 years ago the USA was the largest steel producer in the world I think it was over 300 million tons a year. Today the US only has a capacity of around 100 million tons and is currently running at about 40% of capacity. The Chinese now have a capacity of over 600 million tons. I read there is a new coal fired power plant going on line every 10 days in China. Many of those are being built to supply electric arc steel furnaces. Neither of these are being built with any environmental concerns. The Engineer that built our furnace built one in China before he built ours. He told me in the town where the thing is built it is covered with red dust from the furnace. That dust contains lead, zinc, arsenic, cyanide,
mercury and who knows what else. At our furnace that is all taken out and nothing leaves the stack but some water vapor. Now if the cost of electricity goes up even more we are done.

There is an obvious problem with your reasoning in that the circumstances that prevailed under Clinton are not controlling the situation today. Additionally, you clearly don't know what is in the bill nor do you understand the need for such legislation. You also seem to have absolutely no understanding of what is happening in China regarding their commitment to renewable energy.

If you want to judge and condemn based on such ignorance, there is nothing anyone will be able to do to convince you otherwise. But let me remind you that is precisely this type of ignorance of important information that allows the corporate lobbyists to screw you. The social conservative base of the right has been voting against their own self interests for decades now, you'd think they would eventually learn, wouldn't you...

from New York, Michael Arcuri.

Thanks for this info, kristopher.

Actually, cap and trade will create a large derivatives market for both carbon offsets and carbon allowance permits. Due of some of the unique features of the carbon pollution market, it's likely to function rather differently than derivatives markets for traditional commodities. There's really no way to predict what kinds of problems could arise, but it's a near certainty that traders will be able to find ways to manipulate this market, investors could be put at risk and consumers will pay for Goldman's profits.

There are people who are going to game any complex system, but relating cap and trade to what has just occurred in the insurance field is nothing but scaremongering.

the Kyoto treaty has failed, it is cap and trade

the first European system circa 2007, failed when
the price went to zero.

the current European system, seems to be sorta working,
only because it doesn't change anything.

for sulfur, there is a straightforward remedy.

not so for CO2. if there was a remedy,
the countries that are part of Kyoto
would use it.

I know its those damm RATpubliCONs

first and foremost is the support it provided to spur technological development and deployment of renewable energy. Take a look at the price of electricity generated by wind, solar etc., and the increase in manufacturing capacity for these systems. The cost of wind electricity is now comparable to coal, and solar electricity from some systems has parity with natural gas for meeting peak demand. The cost trends for both types of renewable systems continues on a steady downward trend.

It is funny how growth like this works, but I saw a good example in my garden this past month. My cucumber plants produced flowers that bloomed from small, one inch cucumbers. IT took nearly 3 weeks for the cucumbers to reach 3 inches long by 3/8 inches thick, it took 2 days for them to achieve 5 inches long by 1/2 inch thick. It took only one more day for them to grow to 8 inches long and nearly an inch thick.

Watching the beginnings of growth for anything that increases at an exponential rate can often leave the observing thinking that nothing is happening, but, there is a certain point at which that perception gives way to the exclamation "Wow".

I know that Kyoto didn't achieve its emission reduction targets, but with the US acting to undermine the treaty it is hard to lay that at the feet of the tool that was used. Comparing this bill out of the House to Kyoto is another one of the lies that is being spread by those of you on the right.