The Senate Climate Bill Misses an Opportunity
Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) introduced a climate bill yesterday that, among other things, establishes a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases. The virtue of a cap-and-trade program is that it establishes a market price for a pollutant and allows flexibility within and across regulated entities in how to reduce emissions. But any cap-and-trade program must decide whether to allocate the pollution allowances for free or through a government auction, as well as how to distribute both the allowances and any auction revenue.
As I wrote previously for TPC’s “Desperately Seeking Revenue” event, a full auction of allowances, which in turn uses the revenues to reduce high marginal tax rates or reduce deficits, lowers the overall cost of any cap-and-trade program. In this link, I show how the Senate bill distributes the allowances. Unfortunately, the measure gives away most for free and devotes very little revenue to reducing either high marginal tax rates or deficits.
That online video media is actually riotous. Sorts of strange, but really funny
The only thing that got us out of the Little Ice Age, which ended in the mid-19th Century, was likely man-made global warming. We have not yet gotten to the temperature range that existed before the LIA. I see no reason to stop warming now. When it never snows in London, we can stabilize carbon emissions. Until then, no.
Technologies that will replace emissions, such as Helium-3 fusion, are on the horizon. If we ever get there, we may have a problem with the cold, not the heat.