From the same woman who gave us the brilliant “The Story of Stuff” a while back, a new film that says cap-and-trade policies are destructing and not to be trusted. What do you think?
I think it’s a great explanatory piece, despite my disagreements with her policy. It’s probably a great film to use in economics class, yes?
This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 5:31 pm and is filed under air pollution, Economics, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
(The Life of Reason, vol. 1: Reason in Common Sense)
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump:
Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control. My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it. BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub
Ed,
On your first point, I’ll admit basing my opinion on pessimistic views. Energy companies have the lobbying influence to water down the cap and trade legislation. Also, where I live, most people very rarely observe the smokestacks of the coal powered plant supplying their electricity. As long their lights and air conditioning work they like it like that, and will probably fight the “ugly” intrusion of solar panels and wind turbines upon our landscape.
Second point – excellent idea! Ensuring carbon emitters are contributing to the deployment of renewable sources even if they are not directly doing it themselves should be a cornerstone of cap and trade.
Concerning the Massachusetts Senate race… A lot of talk of Scott Brown flip-flopping on the climate issue. I don’t know what this means for cap and trade.
LikeLike
How would cap-and-trade inhibit the development of competing energy?
You do raise an interesting question: Could a wind-power company get credits for the carbon it doesn’t emit, and sell those credits for profit? That would only seem fair.
LikeLike
I think the problem we are facing here is that for the transition from unsustainable and nonrenewable energy to sustainable and renewable energy to work we need not just new technology but also a drastic change in the markets. The current infrastructure is an oligopoly which will fight, probably at any cost, to maintain its share of wealth and power. Any honest investment in renewable energy will probably result in a large redistribution of wealth from the few to the many. Therefore, cap and trade will probably be manipulated to maintain the status quo while giving appearances of environmental consciousness.
My fear is that cap and trade at its best will simply slow the emission of CO2 while inhibiting the development of competing energy sources. In the long run the same amount of greenhouse gases will be released with nearly the same devastating effects. Everyday our ability to adapt and deal with global warming grows exponentially more difficult. Everyday it becomes easier to accept that it may be already too late to stop our collapse.
LikeLike
Annie Leonard’s video generated a lot of discussion in the “green” blogs few months back. Personally, I like her video and don’t see it as biased or uninformed. A little searching will turn up some posts. This one on Terrpass was good:
http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/why-does-annie-leonard-hate-the-environment
Terrapass sells carbon credits, so their own bias shows in the critique.
LikeLike