Comments on: Guidance from The Gipper http://www.terrarossa.com/guidance-from-the-gipper/ Where Conservatives Consider a New Energy Future Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:09:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Tucker http://www.terrarossa.com/guidance-from-the-gipper/#comment-3217 Tucker Tue, 22 May 2007 19:51:17 +0000 http://www.terrarossa.com/?p=162#comment-3217 thanks for the feedback, but don't confuse anything I'm favoring with synfuels. That's a government-chosen, Carter style subsidy. Here's why my approach is more Reaganesque: the best part of cap & trade: it's a market based approach. First, it does require government to say, "let's limit carbon by these amounts" but then it's turned over to the marketplace -- innovators and profit-makers -- to figure out the most efficient solutions. Many conservatives don't know that the Reagan-roots of cap & trade. Let me turn it over to AEI's Bill Tucker, who wrote: http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18821/article_detail.asp >>In a 1977 Harper’s article, George Schultz, who became Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, argued that the EPA ought to consider two economic strategies. First, it might tax pollution. This would give companies a financial incentive to clean up, since it would be cheaper to clean up rather than pay the tax. Second and more intriguing, the government could sell the rights to pollute. Place an imaginary bubble over a city, Schultz said. The government could pick a tolerable level of emissions and then sell rights to pollute for that amount. Companies would buy and sell among themselves to decide who got to pollute, and who had to clean up. By pursuing economies, polluters would discover the cheapest way to clean up. Now there would be a reward for developing new technology. Companies could go beyond some arbitrary requirement and sell their leftover rights to someone else. Environmentalists were horrified. A right to pollute! Buying and selling pollutants? This smacked of crass commercialism, whereas environmentalism was about nature and purity. Gradually, however, some of them came around. The turning point came with the Clean Air Act of 1990, when a Democratic Congress and Republican President Bush compromised on a “cap-and-trade” system for reducing sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain. With cap-and-trade, the EPA simply sets a limit and then allows emitters to trade “marketable rights to pollute.” Before the compromise, the EPA was predicting cleanup would cost $10 billion a year and take 20 years to put into effect. Instead, the system worked beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Sulfur emissions have been cut in half since 1990 at a cost of only $1 billion per year. thanks for the feedback, but don’t confuse anything I’m favoring with synfuels. That’s a government-chosen, Carter style subsidy. Here’s why my approach is more Reaganesque: the best part of cap & trade: it’s a market based approach. First, it does require government to say, “let’s limit carbon by these amounts” but then it’s turned over to the marketplace — innovators and profit-makers — to figure out the most efficient solutions. Many conservatives don’t know that the Reagan-roots of cap & trade. Let me turn it over to AEI’s Bill Tucker, who wrote:

http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18821/article_detail.asp
>>In a 1977 Harper’s article, George Schultz, who became Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, argued that the EPA ought to consider two economic strategies. First, it might tax pollution. This would give companies a financial incentive to clean up, since it would be cheaper to clean up rather than pay the tax.

Second and more intriguing, the government could sell the rights to pollute. Place an imaginary bubble over a city, Schultz said. The government could pick a tolerable level of emissions and then sell rights to pollute for that amount. Companies would buy and sell among themselves to decide who got to pollute, and who had to clean up. By pursuing economies, polluters would discover the cheapest way to clean up. Now there would be a reward for developing new technology. Companies could go beyond some arbitrary requirement and sell their leftover rights to someone else.

Environmentalists were horrified. A right to pollute! Buying and selling pollutants? This smacked of crass commercialism, whereas environmentalism was about nature and purity. Gradually, however, some of them came around.

The turning point came with the Clean Air Act of 1990, when a Democratic Congress and Republican President Bush compromised on a “cap-and-trade” system for reducing sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain. With cap-and-trade, the EPA simply sets a limit and then allows emitters to trade “marketable rights to pollute.” Before the compromise, the EPA was predicting cleanup would cost $10 billion a year and take 20 years to put into effect. Instead, the system worked beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Sulfur emissions have been cut in half since 1990 at a cost of only $1 billion per year.

]]> By: Daniel http://www.terrarossa.com/guidance-from-the-gipper/#comment-3203 Daniel Tue, 22 May 2007 14:01:26 +0000 http://www.terrarossa.com/?p=162#comment-3203 The Gipper would do what he did when he killed Carter's wasteful spending on synfuels. The Gipper would oppose cap and trade to the death and he would end subsidies for alternative energy such as coal to liquids (he did just that as President), wind power, ethanol, etc. The Gipper understood that people should control the economy through markets, not governments through pervasive regulation such as cap and trade. The Gipper would do what he did when he killed Carter’s wasteful spending on synfuels. The Gipper would oppose cap and trade to the death and he would end subsidies for alternative energy such as coal to liquids (he did just that as President), wind power, ethanol, etc. The Gipper understood that people should control the economy through markets, not governments through pervasive regulation such as cap and trade.

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