The US CO2 emissions dropped from 2008 to 2009 as well, perhaps it’s the global recession that is responsible for the reduction, not cap and trade.

It will be much harder with WM than without it for the points I provided earlier, these things tend to be weakened, not strengthened. Dems are in jeopardy of losing a number of seats, and what do you think the first thing the Republicans are going to do if that happens? Gut it further.

If you think WM is good then refute the points I made earlier about it’s flaws.

As I’ve said repeatedly cap and trade can work, but not WM, it is too flawed and will only delay finding a real solution. I believe WM is worse than nothing. I believe a simple fee & rebate system is better than cap and trade, and far better than WM.

I am open minded and willing to change my opinion. If you can show me how I am wrong, then I will do so, but linking to an article is not sufficient.

Not true. The overwhelming majority believe that cap and trade will work. A small, extremist fringe opposes it.

Note that your link saying that cap and trade failed in Europe was from 2008. My link saying that it worked was from 2009. In fact, they initially set too low a target, and so it looked like it failed at first. Then they strengthened the target, and it worked. The recent evidence all shows that it works.

I think that fact also responds to your claim that WM is not worth supporting because it is too weak. Once the cap is in place, it is possible to strengthen it as new science comes in showing how serious a problem global warming is.

It will be much harder to respond if you kill WM and we do not even have a framework in place that we can strengthen. By the time we get a different framework in place, it will be too late to avoid catastrophic global warming. Getting WM in place and then strengthening it does give us a real chance of avoiding catastrophic global warming.

Your second link starts with:

“The flaw in the Waxman-Markey bill is not the too-many offsets that domestic polluters are (potentially) allowed to purchase in lieu of actually reducing their own emissions. The flaw in Waxman-Markey is the too-mild 2020 target — a 17% reduction from 2005 levels — which will be so easy to achieve with various low-cost clean energy strategies that it’s hard to see why polluters would avail themselves of the higher-cost offsets option”

His basic argument is that the bill is so weak the inclusion of offsets is irrelevant. He also fears that the already weak bill will be further weakened. That seems to support the argument that the bill is not worth supporting.

Providing links doesn’t prove anything, and there are just as many contradictory articles out there.

Cap and trade is unnecessarily complex and easily watered down with loopholes, can be gamed by traders and speculators, and gives control of the system (and lots of money) to the same people who are largely responsible for the current economic crisis.

As I said earlier, a cap and trade system can work, but a tax and rebate system is much simpler, can work at least as well, and loopholes are much more obvious and therefore easier to block.

There are many errors in that article. Here are just two:

“In Europe, cap-and-trade has failed to deliver on climate change.”
for a response, see http://climateprogress.org/2009/08/14/european-trading-system-report-lessons-us-cap-and-trade-bill/

“the bill sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) and Edward Markey (D., Mass.) has many of the same flaws and adds massive “offsets” that blow away the “cap” in “cap-and-trade.”
for a response, see http://climateprogress.org/2009/05/27/domestic-international-offsets-waxman-markey/

It is indeed disheartening to encounter global warming denialists at Critical Mass, but then again it was Hallowe’en night and maybe “idiot teabagger” was some sort of conceptual costume.

However to me the operative phrase in what I just said is “given the current political landscape”, as I share several commenters’ deep cynicism on how this, or any other thing nations might agree upon, will work out in reality. After what we have seen just the past few years (bailouts, cash-for-clunkers, Goldman bonuses etc.) I don’t think that there can be any doubt except in those most naive/fanatic among us, that this is a fundamentally flawed and unfair system, that very little will change in the way the bullies are allowed to conduct business, and that it is easier than ever to circumvent any checks and balances, if only the money is right. Dominance and greed (quite different from profit), are the determining factors in every big business, which is exactly why everyone who’s “in” will fight transparency with all they have.

Irrespective of what method you choose, the heretofore zero-value waste of carbon dioxide (and many other GHGs, incidentally) from our human practices, needs to attain a value for our dominant commercial system to recognize and begin to emit it wisely.

Any system needs to have: transparency (the record for government agencies and committees is as patchy as board rooms and shareholder AGMs); accountability (who did what, when); validation (how much longer are we going to delay our OCO ( http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco/main/index.html ); enforcement (there is NO Chapter 11 for the global climate); and flexibility so that we can continue to experiment and evolve solutions as we invent them.

Europe’s ETS offers BIG LESSONS for America’s attempt at cap-and-trade which unfortunately Congress seems to be ignoring. We can be certain that if climate legislation follows the American tradition of environmental law, it’s going to be flawed, protect vested interests, and maybe offer enough opportunities to change the dominant way of doing things that the protected parties become increasingly obsolete within a generation.

Problem is: we literally don’t have much more than a generation to work with now.

Hard-nosed reality: we privileged people of the Internet and our convenient electricity get to decide how many poor people without a voice here aren’t going live through this.

The value of information has nothing to do with the form it is presented. But here’s a copy of a written version released by the creators of the video:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20090624_Cap-and-trade_does_more_harm_than_good.html

Any cap and trade system that includes offsets (such as the system proposed in congress) can, and very likely will, result in increased pollution.

A cap and trade system can work, but the system currently proposed is nowhere near being system that can work. If only the primary producers were allowed to bid on the initial carbon allowances, no offsets, and only a small amount of secondary market trading went on, then the system can possibly work. It’s still much more complex and wasteful than a simple tax or fee, but it could work.

If the current plan is the only politically viable option, then it’s better to wait and generate political support for a good system, than to move forward on the current horribly flawed plan.

I have read a lot about carbon taxes and cap and trade. I prefer reading to watching videos.

It is completely untrue that cap and trade can potentially result in more pollution than nothing at all. In a cap-and-trade system, there will only be emissions up to the level of the cap.

If you have a cap that decreases over time, then emissions will decrease over time. If the cap for 2050 is 80% less than current emissions, then emissions in 2050 will be 80% less than current emissions.

A carbon tax is the simplest and best method of controlling emissions. Cap-and-trade is the only politically feasible method of controlling emissions.

To avoid the worst effects of global warming, we have to control emissions within the next few years. If cap-and-trade is stopped, action will be delayed for many years, and we will have no chance of avoiding catastrophic global warming.

People who work against cap and trade are working for catastrophic global warming.

But, at the very least, cap and trade will give energy companies an excuse to raise energy prices, even if they just pocket it all as extra profits. At this point just about anything that raises the costs of fossil fuels is valuable because higher costs are about the only thing that make Americans give some thought to using energy more wisely. We are running out of time on climate change. The permafrost is melting, releasing methane into the atmosphere. If we refuse to do the simplest, most efficient and fairest thing (carbon tax with money returned to low and middle income folks to insulate and weatherize their houses), then the more loathsome thing (cap and trade with profits for the most despicable) will have to do. We have to remember that the poorest among us on this planet are going to be a great deal poorer when the world’s agricultural productivity drops by half, and that starvation is a hard, hard death.

On a happier note, Chris, have a great time in Copenhagen. Take lots of pictures of beautiful bicycle infrastructure.

A simple fee or tax, with a rebate to consumers is the simplest and cheapest way to price carbon emissions.

Honestly it is eerie how well your sweeping accusations leveled at technocrats echo Stalin. It also gives me a headache the amount of generalizations in your writing.

It is absurd to claim that cap and trade “privatizes” the atmosphere. Privatization charges people for using a resource that used to be part of the commons. By contrast, cap and trade only charges those who pollute the atmosphere, not those who use it.

Given how central energy is to the world economy, it is essential to use the least-cost solution, which is cap and trade. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading