Is “Cap and Trade” Really Dead?

A message from Dorothy:

Years ago, when I first heard of “Cap-and-Trade” as an acceptable political and economic solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, I was caused to wonder how “carbon offsets” would really work. If an industry were allowed to continue emitting carbon into the atmosphere so long as somewhere else an effort was made to draw down an equal amount of carbon, by planting large forests of trees, for instance – how would global emissions actually be reduced? The status quo might be maintained, but there as is already too much carbon in the air – four Mount Rainier’s worth – we really need to make a big effort to remove much of this to avoid unacceptable temperature levels by mid-century. So why the big push for Cap-and-Trade?

Could it just be that there is money to be made with this so-called solution, perhaps a great deal of money?

If you haven’t done so already, please read about “Bubble #6: Global Warming” in Matt Taibbi‘s fascinating article The Great American Bubble Machine in the July 13, 2009 issue of The Rolling Stone. The subtitle of this article is “From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression – and they’re about to do it again.” It’s easy to believe that Cap-and-Trade may turn out to be the “market manipulation” to dwarf all others before it.

This is not to say that Goldman Sachs is the lone player in this lucrative field. Big oil and especially, big coal, see Cap-and-Trade as a license to keep doing business as usual, much to the detriment of our planet and its life systems.

And sadly, many large environmental organizations have also been pushing for the adoption of Cap and Trade legislation, citing concerns that this may be the only politically possible solution for controlling carbon emissions. They have ignored the fact that the flawed multi-billion dollar economic infrastructure Cap-and-Trade would create will be impossible to dismantle once it is shown – and it will be – as disruptive, inefficient and dangerous.

An analogy: You meet the love of your life and decide to get married. You buy the ring, she tells all her friends, her parents plan the wedding. As the weeks go on, some little voice in your ear is telling you that maybe, just maybe, this might not be such a good idea. But the marriage momentum continues to build, and you choose to ignore your feelings of uneasiness. Years later, you’re married and have kids, and you see you’ve made a big mistake; that you should have pulled out when you could and not be faced with a no-win situation of possible broken lives and financial problems.

Momentum is a force like a surging river, and should never be ignored or underestimated. The more money in “the current,” the faster it can carry you away.

There is some good news, however. For whatever reason, President Obama, going for an energy bill alone, has said, “Let’s do the fun stuff before we do the hard stuff.” In other words, Cap-and-Trade is dead, at least for now.

This gives us the opportunity to reflect on what might have happened under the cumbersome, confusing and unjust cap-and-trade legislation pending in Congress and choose a simpler and more equitable framework, like the Cantwell-Collins bill CLEAR (Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal).

Read more in The Economist, February 4, 2010 - A Refreshing Dose of Honesty: Maria Cantwell and the politics of global warming….
and in the Globe and Mail, February 10, 2010 - Cap-and-Dividend: the jolt Harper needs