Charles Komanoff – Page 169

Carbon Tax Center

Pricing carbon efficiently and equitably

Majority of Surveyed Economists Favor a Carbon Tax to Encourage Develoment of Alternatives to Fossil Fuels

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According to the Wall Street Journal’s Monthly Economic Forecasting Survey; February 2007, 85% of the surveyed economists believe the government should encourage development of alternatives to fossil fuels. When asked "what is the most economically sound way for the government to encourage development of alternatives to fossil fuels," 54% responded with "taxes that raise the cost of purchasing fossil fuels." The next largest category was "other" at 28%, followed by "subsidies for producers of alternative fuels" at 13%.

According to former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, as quoted in the International Herald Tribune, taxes either on emissions or on petroleum could be effective in
reducing global warming, that it would be wiser to impose a tax on oil
than wait for the market to force prices up, that measures to reduce
global warming would not be economically devastating and, putting the
issue in perspective:

"What may happen to the dollar, and what may happen to
growth in China or whatever," he said, raising his voice, "pale into
insignificance compared with the question of what happens to this
planet over the next 30 or 40 years if no action is taken."

(Economist Paul Volcker Says Steps to Curb Global Warming Would Not Devastate an Economy, Feb. 6)

IPCC – "Warming of the Climate System is Unequivocal"

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“Feb. 2 will be remembered as the date when uncertainty was removed as to whether humans had anything to do with climate change on this planet,” declared Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program. Steiner was quoted in the New York Times’ Feb. 3 front-page lead story on the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report of the drivers of climate change, observed changes in climate and projections for future climate change.

The Summary for Policymakers released with the IPCC report states:

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level…

“At continental, regional, and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed. These include changes in Arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones…

“For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2 deg C per decade is projected for a range of … emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1 deg C per decade would be expected…

“Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century…

“Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes.”

Urgent action is required. As set forth elsewhere on this site, charging American businesses and individuals a price to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential to reduce U.S. emissions quickly and steeply enough to prevent atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from reaching an irreversible tipping point.

"A Carbon Tax Is Inevitable" — Chirac

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The New York Times reported today that French President Jacques Chirac has demanded that the United States sign both the Kyoto climate protocol and a future agreement that will take effect when the Kyoto accord runs out in 2012.

According to The Times, Chirac warned that if the United States did not sign the agreements, a carbon tax across Europe on imports from nations that have not signed the Kyoto treaty could be imposed to try to force compliance. The European Union is the largest export market for American goods.

“A carbon tax is inevitable,” Mr. Chirac said.  “If it is European, and I believe it will be European, then it will all the same have a certain influence because it means that all the countries that do not accept the minimum obligations will be obliged to pay.”

French officials have recently floated the idea of imposing carbon-equivalent tariffs on imports from countries that do not tax or otherwise regulate carbon emissions. These tariffs would help level the playing field for early adopters of carbon controls.

At Davos, Stern Calls for Carbon Tax

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"Humankind’s failure to pay for damaging the environment is the "biggest market failure ever seen," declared Sir Nicholas Stern, the author of last year’s groundbreaking report on climate change and former adviser to Tony Blair.

Sir Nicholas called for higher taxes on fuel to combat environmental damage yesterday at a summit of business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

As reported by The Guardian (U.K.), the issue of global climate change dominated the agenda of the first day of the
World Economic Forum’s annual meeting.

Making the environment pay is one of 17 sessions focusing on climate
change this week. According to The Guardian, a majority of attendees at a standing room-only
session yesterday backed Sir Nicholas’s contention that carbon taxes
were a force for good and twice as many of the high-level attendees
said environmental protection should be a priority for world leaders as
did a year ago.

NY Times Blog Spotlights Carbon Tax Center

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Times science blogger John Tierney beamed the spotlight on CTC big-time in his front-page blog today:

If you thought there was something missing in the energy section of the State of the Union Address, there’s a new Web site to fill in the gap.

President Bush last night dutifully mentioned the "serious challenge of global climate change" and reeled off ways to address it – burn less gasoline, subsidize other forms of energy. In the Democrats’ response, Sen. James Webb of Virginia dutifully talked of "affirmative solutions" and "a wave of entrepreneurial growth in the form of alternate energy programs." But neither he nor Mr. Bush went anywhere near economists’ favorite prescription for slowing global warming: a carbon tax.

The tax is taboo in Washington, but now there’s a place it dares speak its name: the Carbon Tax Center,
which opened this week with the aim of becoming "the village square for civic and political conversations about the why, who, and how of taxing CO2 emissions in the U.S. and, eventually, the world."

Tierney notes that taxing carbon is an uphill fight. Okay, carbon taxers, let’s start evening the odds. Post a comment on his blog and let the fur fly!

We Want to Hear from You

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Charles and I created the Carbon Tax Center because prompt and effective action to reduce carbon emissions is imperative to slow and then stop the world from hurtling towards a climate disaster. We are convinced that a carbon tax is essential to reduce U.S. emissions quickly and steeply enough to prevent atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from reaching an irreversible tipping point. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration is doing practically nothing and most of the proposals for action do not go far enough. We want CTC to serve the climate advocacy community. Please tell us what you think about our web site, what you like, what you want to change, etc. We’ll listen and respond.

The World Welcomes CTC!

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Here’s a sampling of e-mails to info@carbontax.org since our launch yesterday.

Keep those cards and letters coming. Even better, comment here, on this blog. Please also add a link to CTC on your Web site. Tell your friends and neighbors.

And feel free to donate. Already received: 6 contributions totaling $500. We’re thrilled and grateful.

— Dan and Charles

Great idea. I like your FAQs addressing the various issues. It’s about time someone did this! — (veteran energy policy analyst)

You can count on me to promote the idea whenever and wherever I get the chance because it’s the right way to go on this important issue. (economist, author, educator)

Nice work! Better late than…. But it may be too…. (longtime sustainability writer-activist)

This new clearinghouse for information on Carbon Tax is great. I’ll pass this on to the authors I am working with in environmental studies. (editor)

Site looks great! I think it will make a big impact. (a friend)

Dear global warming activists: great news below! Please forward this to your friends and lists, and spread the word. (climate activist)

Sounds intriguing. Please keep us in the loop. (CEO of an international environmental policy org.)

Good luck! I posted this on The Oil Drum. (eco-activist, Peak Oil-er)

My instinct has always been that imposing a tax on carbon is a better way to go than the cap-and-trade approach simply because it would force all actors to reduce their emissions no matter how efficient or inefficient they presently are and we need all the reductions we can get if we hope to arrest the worst case scenarios. (CEO of a grassroots enviro org)

The site looks good. Like the name of the newsletter vis a vis Al G. Signed up. Good luck! (family member)

Congratulations on your new carbon-tax group! I signed up for your email. I think the time is right for a c-tax. (author)

Good for you. The debate is needed. (founder of a major sustainability org.)

Your proposal, it seems to me, is the very sort of thing we need more of — and the very sort of thing that any number of well-heeled, self-styled “greens” would like to avoid (e.g., let’s stick a wind tower in Podunk and let’s drive our SUV out to take photos of it). (writer)

This is really a great contribution to the dialog. I especially like your assertion of how a CT is better than cap and trade. That really deserves its own slide show.  (Solar-photovoltaic and energy-efficiency entrepreneur)

Congratulations. This is a noble effort. (cycling and livable cities advocate)

Interesting, and even elegant site…I am freezing on behalf of the cause, etc. (writer)

Carbon Dioxide Emissions are Growing Dramatically

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U.S.
per capita carbon dioxide emissions are at least twice those of most European countries such as Belgium, Germany and the U.K., and 2.3 times those of the Netherlands. Americans also emit 2.1 times as much CO2 per person as Japanese … and roughly five-and-a-half times as much as the average for all non-Americans on Earth combined. Click here for 2003 country data.

Prices, Taxes, and Amory Lovins

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Last week’s New Yorker magazine carried a profile of energy-efficiency apostle (and, as it happens, my college classmate and longtime acquaintance) Amory Lovins by the magazine’s global-warming reporter Elizabeth Kolbert. "Mr. Green — Environmentalism’s most optimistic guru" is a fair, digestible (at just 8 pages) portrait of the Rocky Mountain Institute CEO who reconceptualized the energy debate in the 1970s and is still tirelessly pitching his message of synergistic, human-scale energy solutions to the world’s political, financial and industrial leaders.

Gas_for_Less.jpgBack in the day, I was a member of Amory’s worldwide web of energy analysts who fed him our cutting-edge research (mine concerned cost escalation in the building and operating of U.S. nuclear reactors) and benefited in turn from his incisive editing and brilliant framing of our work. Along the way, however, I grew skeptical of his faith that human ingenuity and care would catalyze the dreamed-of wholesale shift to energy efficiency and renewables. Advances in efficiency, and there were many, seemed scattershot and outweighed by humankind’s capacity to invent ever more uses of energy and our boundless appetites for using them.

The key difference in our outlook turned out to concern price. Amory, the physicist and optimist, considers high energy prices helpful but not necessary, whereas I, an economist and, dare I say, a realist, regard them as necessary though not sufficient. Thus, the Carbon Tax Center.

Toward the back of Kolbert’s article is this useful passage:

… the example Lovins likes to point to — the drop in oil use in the early nineteen-eighties — is, at best, equivocal. As Lovins notes in his book, what made people "pay attention" to oil consumption was the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the second, even more severe 1979 oil shock. Part of the drop was due to structural shifts in the economy away from oil-intensive activities. Part of it was fuel substitution by both individual consumers and industry, as homeowners and factories switched from oil to, for example, natural gas. The largest part of it was increased fuel efficiency in both automobiles and buildings, led by the creation of federal auto efficiency standards in 1975. And, finally, part of it was a change in consumer behavior as Americans bought smaller cars and turned down their thermostats. Thus what Lovins offers as a demonstration that federal regulation and new taxes are unnecessary could just as plausibly be seen as evidence of exactly the opposite.

My point — and CTC’s point — exactly.

And Thomas Friedman’s point too, perhaps. In his first New York Times column after Kolbert’s article appeared, Friedman wrote of the need to require "power utilities, factories and car owners … to pay the real and full cost to society of the carbon they put into the atmosphere." In case the point wasn’t clear, Friedman added: "… prices matter. They drive more and cleaner energy choices."

Although Friedman didn’t mention Lovins by name — he’s a big admirer of Amory, as am I — I’ll bet he wrote with the New Yorker profile in mind.

Photo: karbon69 (Flickr)

Carrying Coals to Newcastle (Global Warming Version)

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helicopter.jpg

The photo shows a helicopter delivering snow from a nearby mountain pass to a low-lying ski area for a race to be held Jan. 26-28 in Austria. If you look carefully you can see the suspended net dropping the white stuff on the barren hillside.

The ski race organizers spent $389,000 bringing snow from high to low elevations for an entire week, the New York Times reported on Jan. 19:

If even half the cost went for fuel, and if the fuel cost $3 a gallon, then the aerial ski portage consumed 65,000 gallons of petrol, roughly what 100 SUV’s would burn in a year. To enable a ski competition … incapacitated by global warming!