[I hope it's ok to post this..]
Posted on 04/08/2007 9:31:11 PM PDT by ricks_place
Wout Kusters, director of a manufacturing plant in the Dutch lowlands, knows something the U.S. Congress needs to know. So does Gervais Pruvost, a laborer in a small cement plant in northern France. So does just about every German homeowner.
When you're trying to slow down global warming, beware of unintended consequences.
As U.S. lawmakers work on the details of their greenhouse-gas legislation, they are looking carefully at Europe's experience. Five Senate proposals all use the same basic approach, known as "cap and trade," that Europe has used for the past two years. But what the snappy name "cap and trade" means is that the market will put a price on something that's always been free: the right of a factory to emit carbon gases. That could affect the cost of everything from windowpanes to airline tickets to electricity.
Europe has already hit a few bumps with its program. There's the Dutch silicon carbide maker that calls itself the greenest such plant in the world, but now can't afford to run full-time; the French cement workers who fear they're going to lose jobs to Morocco, which doesn't have to meet the European guidelines; and the German homeowners who pay 25 percent more for electricity than they did before -- even as their utility companies earn record profits.
In some ways, Europe's program has been a success. It covers 45 percent of the continent's emissions, 10,000 companies and 27 European Union countries. It has built registries that list carbon dioxide emissions for every major plant.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Effect on CO2: Increase 3X rather than Decrease!
Effect on Global Warming: Nothing!
Effect on France:More unemployment - Cez't la vie!
Unintended Consequences: Priceless!
The Dems will not be re-elected in 2010 if they push this crap.
[I hope it's ok to post this..]
What evidence does the author have that these are "unintended" consequences? Clearly they were forseen and well understood by anybody with even half a brain (well, guess that leaves out a whole bunch of liberals and other dupes).
They were also well-understood by the Al Gores of this world - such consequences were planned by them and welcomed by them. One of their most important and heartfelt goals has always been to chop the legs out from under Western civilization by destroying its engines of wealth creation. It's too early for them to start celebrating just yet, but undoubtedly they have a stash of special champagne already chilled and waiting for a few more dominoes to fall...
Great toon!
New!!: Dr. John Ray’s
GREENIE WATCH
The consequences are rather easily predicted using rather conventional economic models.
I think you give them too much credit and also sound a little like a moonbat.
What!! Costly regulations will drive jobs to countries that don't have costly regulations? Tell me it isn't so.
May we hear the second opinion? Please?
How do think the Dems win any elections in this country? Only because the MSM takes advantage of most persons' rational ignorance by acting as the propaganda organ of the left.
We only have a free press because the Founders thought a multiplicity of partisan news outlets would ensure that at least some of the press would keep tabs on the politicians in power all the time. Now we have a univocal, braying left-wing press that only reports bad news about one party and pushes even the party it supports further and further into left-wing cuckoo-land.
Unfortunately many of the people pushing these schemes do not believe in classical economics (not that they are fans of Keynesism either). Thus basic economic theory which has been proved correct more often than can be readily enumerated is ignored.
Best MSM article on carbon trading I’ve read.
Calcow: it states Californian politicians are in Europe “studying” the system.
Cap and Trade does NOT work. PERIOD.
It won’t cut CO2. it only distorts economic incentives in bizarre and unintended ways.
“French cement workers ...lose jobs to Morocco
where the Moroccans use twice the energy for half the production!”
Careful - a global problem will, in the eyes of the socialists require a ‘global solution’ ie UN taxes.
Be vewy vewy careful.
This is true. How about the unintended consequences of carbon sequestration schemes for power plants?
Or 20 million windmills and solar panels all over the place?
Or the machines that are being proposed for the purpose of sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere to be sequestered?
Or the crazy schemes to shade the earth with solar shades in space or a billion little reflective streamers in the upper atmosphere?
I tell you, some of these people are dangerous. Status quo is pretty reliable, affordable, and safe (coal burning power plants etc.)
YUK! Would they be “Bug Nuggets”, “Bird Nuggets”, or “Bat Nuggets”?
California Plots Greenhouse-Gas Strategy
State Board Responsible for Cutting Emissions Hopes to Once Again Set a National Example
Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2006(snip)
CARB, the nation's largest and most influential state environmental regulatory agency, has about 1,000 employees, including scientists and engineers who, working there in the 1960s, helped design the nation's pioneering antismog program. The agency enjoys enough bipartisan political support that when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced in August that California would impose the nation's first broad cap on greenhouse-gas emissions, the state Legislature simply set deadlines for reducing emissions and left it mostly up to CARB to figure out how to do it, telling the agency to prepare regulations by 2012. California's goal is to cut emissions by about 25% by 2020.
To flesh out California's law, Dr. Sawyer, who was appointed by Mr. Schwarzenegger in December, says he will push every approach that is cost-effective. He plans to send staff members to the United Kingdom and Japan to see how their pioneering regulatory programs work. He plans to hire 100 experts, including economists who will develop computer models of the state's past and future emissions. He is also looking for specialists who can design an emissions-trading program tailored to California's economy.
... In emissions trading, a company that reduces emissions below its assigned cap can finance its efforts by selling excess credits to companies that may need them to cover their own emissions.
California's legislature has left it up to CARB to determine whether and how to use emissions trading; Dr. Sawyer says it is a tool he wants to use, designed in a way that makes trading possible beyond the state's borders. "It is essential that what we do will be compatible with other states, nationally and internationally," he explains. "We definitely anticipate trading across boundaries. California can't solve this alone."
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