A bill setting up a US emissions trading system – known as Waxman-Markey after its two cosponsors – has passed the US house of reps, squeaking through 219-212 with 8 Republicans “yes” votes and 44 Democrat “noes”. Some of those Democrat “noes” were, however, people like Dennis Kucinich taking something akin to the Greens position here – that the bill isn’t strong enough and that killing this version would result in a stronger version coming up in future.
If the US does pass some kind of carbon-limiting legislation, it does of course put pressure back on the Liberals here. If your position is “do nothing until the US makes up its mind”, what do you do when the US makes up its mind and your party is still split straight down the middle?
Waxman-Markey is a collection of compromises and payoffs to big carbon, just like the CPRS, and Greenpeace opposed its passage. But, as described in the first link, Joe Romm thinks it’s a step forward, and the best that can be realistically expected from the American political system at this point in time. Its major weakness is, just like the CPRS, grossly inadequate 2020 targets. But if it passes the US Senate (not a given) and becomes law, it’s better than the alternatives at this point. If it’s not stopping the US digging the world into a hole, it at least might encourage the diggers, both there and elsewhere, to take the occasional rest break.
Still has to get through the Senate. Senators are much more in tune with their electorates than the House so those that will be directly effected by job losses won’t b supporting this. Hopefully enough of them will come to their senses to can it.
Well, if nobody’s satisfied with the bill, it’s probably on the right track!
I think this is a huge political fillip for those trying to get schemes into the market. The excuse that ‘America is not on board’ is almost out the window now. It places huge political pressure on the opponents of such reforms later this year at Copenhagen, both internationally and in their domestic contexts.
As for that Senator from the Fielding First party: Last week, he put himself on the wrong side of scientific reality. This vote has put him on the wrong side of political reality as well.
But I’m not worried. I am absolutely certain that the conservatives will come up with the right answer…25 years after everybody else.
http://theland.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/us-emissions-trading-concessions-for-agriculture/1550398.aspx?storypage=0
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Some concessions given to farmers to allow them to capture C credits for them selves.
Also there is mention of a technical issue to do with indirect land use and ethanol production-an explanation from a knowledgeable reader would be appreciated.
From Beats and Pieces -
“BUBBLE #6 – GLOBAL WARMING
Fast-Forward to today. It’s early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs – its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign – sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.
AS ENVISIONED BY GOLDMAN, THE FIGHT TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING WILL BECOME A “CARBON MARKET” WORTH $1 TRILLION A YEAR.
Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm’s co-head of finance) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits – a booming trillion-dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an “environmental plan,” called cap-and-trade.
The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that’s been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.
Here’s how it works: If the bill passes; there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy “allocations” or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billions worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.”
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http://beatsandpiecesblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/the-case-against-goldman-sachs/#more-1586
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The article linked to above goes into more detail of how GoldmanSachs has benefited from past speculative bubbles and it looks likely the cap and trade sysytem will be anther.
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“Well, you might say, who cares? If cap-and-trade succeeds, won’t we all be saved from the catastrophe of global warming? Maybe – but cap-and-trade, as envisioned by Goldman, is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax-collection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it’s even collected.
“If it’s going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it,” says Michael Masters, the hedge fund director who spoke out against oil-futures speculation. “But we’re saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That’s the last thing in the world I want. It’s just asinine.””
With this Bill, just like with the CPRS, I wax between hope that something’s getting started, and waning hope that enough will be done in time. The unaffordable payoffs to coal poisoners are a huge concern, but I suppose there’s some merit in saying that these companies are by and large the ones that will build our emissions free energy generation in the future.
Hey razor, are you relying on economic analysis to suggest that inaction on climate change is cheaper than action? Can I see such analysis, for a whole economy? The only decent studies (e.g. Stern, Garnaut) have clearly indicated that the net benefit is with action. On what basis do you disagree with this?
Less than 1% (4) of those that voted needed to change their vote for this Bill to be defeated. Where is the consensus???
wilful – you just need to look at the Spanish experience of their green energy attempts (failures).
I saw in a media report that “Minerals Council of Australia said the US bill proposed a less harsh transition for industry and its passage “highlights the need for substantial changes” to Australia’s scheme”.
Like most things that the MCA say, this is total nonsense. The Waxman-Markey bill does provide assistance to polluting industries, but this is less than 20% of permits. And emissions intensive trade exposed industries receive less than 10% of all permits between 2012 and 2050. The Waxman-Markey bill is much less generous to emissions intensive industries than the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
The Waxman-Markey bill would benefit from better targets and a higher price floor, but overall it is a very good piece of legislation.
Not much of an answer razor. I put it to you again – what basis is there for a claim of NET job losses by addressing climate change?
Wilful, there are huge net job losses if we switch to a Green economy that prevents catastrophic climate change.
Just think of the millions of jobs that will be generated this century building thousands of miles seawalls!
I think that’s what Razor was getting at.
I’ve been trying to articulate, to myself and others, why I support Waxman-Morely, but support the Greens position of blocking the CPRS. They’re both similarly low balling targets with way too large payouts to big polluters.
As Peter Wood notes there are some aspects of Waxman-Morely that are better, but I don’t think that’s the real difference. The major thing is that Waxman-Morely is probably as good as we can get in the US for at least two years. The margin of victory suggests it couldn’t be much tougher – for every vote to the left a better bill would have picked up it would have lost several on the right. If Obama had exerted more political capital we could probably have got a slightly better bill through the House, but like this one it might well have failed in the Senate, and any improvement would have been small. Post 2010 the numbers might be better, but could easily be worse.
In Australia it’s different. Sure a tougher CPRS might have no change of getting through the Senate with the Lib/Fielding flat earth alliance in charge. But if Labor went for a better bill and fought a Double Dissolution on it the chances of them winning are very high, and the chances of having the numbers in the Senate with the Greens in that case are a certainty.
So Waxman-Morely is, regrettably, almost as good as we can get in the US. Best to pass it then. In Australia we could have something much better if Rudd wanted it. He needs to be prodded to do this, and Green opposition in the Senate is part of that.
feral sparrowhawk: yes, but Rudd, and a significant fraction of the Labor frontbench (and presumably bankbench), don’t particularly want it.
CPRS popular after all?
“The Nielsen poll on Monday found 65 percent of those surveyed backed the government’s plans for an emissions trading scheme, in a result which was unchanged from a year earlier.”
I recall a poll from earlier this year which indicated an even three-way split between support, oppose, not sure. It all depends who you ask and what you ask them, I suppose.
With Turnbull and Hunt now talking of introducing amendments to make the CPRS look more like Waxman-Markey, its fortunes have revived once again. Though no doubt this next chapter of the saga, like the ones before it, will also drag on and on.
Mercurius #10,
huge net job losses
Are you basing this on Treasury modelling? The international literature is not so cut and dried on this matter.
Some of the local consultancy modelling is also assumption in – assumption answered.
Feral, will you still support the US bill after it goes through the sausage factory that is the US Senate? Expectations are that even more concessions will need to be granted and even more compromises made to see the legislation pass. I find it a little odd to see greens supporters happy at the passage of the bill in the US (even in its present form) and happy to see legislation blocked here. Notwithstanding the coalition’s current problems, a double dissolution election fought entirely on climate change, and in the current economic climate would at least be risky.
Perhaps the critical difference is that you care more about the integrity of Australian policy than US policy?
At some stage the someone has to come out and say the “millions of green jobs created” are from 2 things.
A more innefficent power generation model.
An army of “carbon cops” with all the increased loss of privacy that will bring.
Your block of bush/land/house, will have another layer of regulators trying to find reasons to justify their existance.
Im happy if people are informed the current (this may change) sources of green energy are relatively expensive compared to coal/gas etc. What i dislike intensely is the shell game aspect of “look lots of jobs”, without the accompanying “but more expensive power”.
Coal isnt the worlds favourite method of energy production because of “big carbon!!!!”, its because its the cheapest. A carbon tax or cap and trade is to price it out of the market, to pretend otherwise is a bit of silly windowdressing.
For those interested the Parliamentary Library summarises Waxman-Markey and has a comparison with the proposed CPRS.
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/BN/2008-09/ClimateChangeBill.htm
Mole@16
I have no problem with people being upfront about renewables being more expensive, and more labour intensive (ooh, jobs).
I also don’t think we should shy away from talking about coalpower being cheap. Yet it is only cheap because we have an economic system designed to exclude everything that might make coalpower uncheap.
A CPRS/carbon tax/whatever is about moving towards a different sort of economic system entirely, one that starts to address the vexed problem of planetary limits on resources, ecosystem services etc.
Once we have a new(er) economic system that actually does this, then coal will not ‘really’-be-cheaper-but-actually-more-expensive, it WILL be more expensive, because the game is no longer rigged in its favour. Will I miss the thousands of coal mining related deaths each year (whether down a mine, or just breathing in the gunk)? You bet I won’t.
Yaz
Then you arent the object of my criticism then, good! Would it be to much for the pollies to do the same?
I agree coal is king because it is “cheap”, any cap or tax is designed to eliminate that edge it has. Eventualy I believe renewables will drop enough to become competitive, but will they do that quicker with a high carbon price,(thus giving more money for development) or will they go slower? (because they are now “the only game in town”?)
Im sure people a lot smarter than me are working it out, Im not so sure many of them are happy to settle for option 1.
The process of this Bill being considered by the US Senate is likely to lead to changes to the Bill that passed the House of Reps. I’m not as convinced as some others seem to be that the Senate’s changes will necessarily weaken the Bill. In any case, there’s still a way to go, and it wouldn’t have made sense for Obama to have expended too much political capital too early.
By the way, there’s a particularly scathing piece by Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times which is worth a read – accusing politicians embracing climate change denialism of commiting treason against the planet. Perhaps the political debate on climate change in the USA might be heating up as much as the planet is.
Anything is better than nothing I suppose, but if it gets even more watered down in the senate will there be anything left that is useful legislation? There does not seem to be a great deal of political will available for the topic of pollution reduction.
It’s very simple—the Bill won’t pass the US senate, not even if it is reduced to the White House’s limit for emissions. Not during this or the next congress.
But, should Obama have a strong reelection in 2012, and should the number of Democratic senators be set at around 60 for the foreseeable future by the congress beginning in ’13, that’s when we’ll see some action (fingers crossed).
Like CPRS, Waxman Markey is another complex system that is just made for anyone who wants to run a scare campaign. Obama, like Rudd might have been smarter to have challenged the idea that what was needed was a comprehensive, market based scheme that depends on “putting a price on carbon” to drive down emissions. In many cases leaving the price of carbon unchanged and using regulations, sales and price guarantees for the clean alternative etc. would result in better, more price effective schemes that are harder to demolish with scare campaigns.
Obama may acheive bigger cuts in net emissions by using his political capital to set schemes designed to deal with the specific issues associated with cleaning up electricty, reducing oil consumption etc.
Andrew Bartlett @20
Totally agree with Krugman’s argument
As a scholar working on climate change risks applying what I have learnt to a humanist philosophy (and variants thereof), I have to agree with Krugman and say that denialism is leading to widespread death, privation and inequity in the same way that denialism on tobacco, AIDS, public health and slavery has argued against well-established knowledge bases. That is, where a specific view negates knowledge and delays action. If this was seen as a sovereign risk aginst a country, it would be treason. But instead, it affects people, their livelihoods and the natural environment.
These are crimes against both humanity and nature (in so far as humans revere it), but there is no law and no court. It is entirely legal, preserved under the right to free speech. So where there cannot be a crime, where rights take precedence, there has to be a responsibility to hold these “arguments” up to the light. In the post-modern world all views are equally meaningless because they are all contestible.
It all comes back to risk, and how well we deal with this as people and as institutions. The science of climate change is not certain, but neither does it follow any particular moral or ideological line. And anthropogenic climate change is supported by so many branches of science, it’s just not funny. So when the science is traduced for short-term interests, and risk is framed according to bogus scientific and ethical canards it should be called for what it is*.
*In my previous place of employ, referring to any such position, even in general terms, if that view was thought to be held be a goverment somewhere (including Alpha Centauri), would be considered as making statements about policy.
Roger, that’s not all. The denialist position is a betrayal of conservative values and ideology.
If conservatives fail in this generation to conserve the earth, they will damn for all time their project. Conservatism (like Marxism) will be dead as a coherent, realisable political agenda.
Do the denialists even understand they are digging the grave of their own political movement?
Ain’t that the truth.
The IPCC rated the chance of GW being AGW as “high”, in other words with a 90% plus probability. I reckon that if there had been no pollies in the process and you took the view genuine climate scientists the probability would have been 95% plus.
But even if the probability had been 10%, prudent policy makers should regard the risks as unacceptable, given the implications.
Labor Outsider, whether I support it after it has gone through the Senate depends on what concessions are made. I can’t answer the question at this time.
And I’m not suggesting fighting a double dissolution entirely on climate change. The 1987 DD was not fought entirely (or even primarily) on the Australia Card. It was fought on the fact that the opposition was a joke. Rudd could have had a much better scheme, and a renewed mandate if he wanted. He doesn’t, and the only way to get real action is to make him take at least a little pain for that.
If Turnbull can hang on to the leadership, it’s looking more likely that the CPRS will get through the Senate with Liberal support.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/02/2614335.htm?section=australia
Labour never planned to consult with the Greens and never actually did. It was only a rhetorical device to close dissent from the business community.
Frank Jotzo notes the collapse of key coalition negotiating positions: ie. ‘waiting for Copenhagen’ and ‘moving ahead of others’
FWIW from the Rassmussen Reports national telephone survey:
Voters are closely divided on whether global warming is caused by human activity or by “long-term planetary trends.”
I just noticed Mitchell Porter repeating the line that 65% of people support the ETS based on new polling from Nielsen. That’s great, but how many of those actually understand its content? Do they know the extent of the international offset provisions? Do they know how large the EITE assistance and asset assistance is worth? According to another survey conducted last year, less than 10% of people actually claimed to have a ‘good understanding’ of what the scheme will actually achieve.