The New York Times has a story today about John Dingell’s change of heart on climate policy. The auto industry’s point man in Congress now favors a stiff tax on carbon emissions. There has been an undercurrent of suspicion that he has rallied to the least popular approach to the problem in order to discredit it. The Times’ Leonhardt gives Dingell the benefit of the doubt.
What I didn’t like were Leonhardt’s claims that a carbon tax “is the climate solution that economists and environmentalists have long dreamed of” and that the only alternative is cap-and-trade, giving away emission permits to longstanding polluters. The third approach, and by far the best, is setting up a permit system and auctioning off each one of them.
There are two reasons why permits rule. (1) There is great uncertainty about the future relationship between carbon prices and pollution levels (long run elasticity of demand for fossil fuels). Taxes place the burden of this uncertainty on the environment (the amount of pollution); saleable permits place it on costs faced by energy users (fossil fuel prices). (2) Politically, if we go the tax route, we end up in a discussion about taxes. That’s why skeptics thought Dingell might be boring from within. If we center the policy on permits the debate is over how much greenhouse gas emissions we are willing to tolerate. That’s the discourse we need.
Folks, this is a very important issue at a very important time. In the next year the contours of the national debate over climate change policy will be set. Huge ecological consequences – and gobs of cash – are on the line. It is essential to start off in the right direction. I’d like to see enough clarity and truculence in the activist community that journalists are forced to take notice.
49 comments:
Are you proposing permits on fuel, or on fuel users?
Permits on fuel might work--they'd be functionally equivalent to a variable tax.
Permits on fuel-users would be onerous from a compliance standpoint (a permit for my cooking stove, my lawnmower, my kerosene lantern, etc.)
Whatever scheme is adopted needs to be universal--encouraging using untaxed ag fuel to create tax-exempt ethanol is not helpful.
SamChevre
Dorman
I hope you are able to achieve "enough clarity."
I am a little too tired today to really start to think about what you are saying...and i care.
You'll have a harder time reaching people whose minds are already made up, or who care only about their short term profits.
I have been (until just this minute) a "carbon tax" kind of guy. Pollution permits struck me, without much study or thought, as a way to keep on polluting while playing games trading "permits."
But I'll listen. And hope you can make it clear. And convince those who count.
The reason all proposals to limit carbon emissions seem imperfect is that they don't want to face up to the real issue of demand.
What is needed is that the developed countries, especially the US, need to moderate consumption. This means buying less "stuff", not discarding usable stuff because of fashion or boredom, and overbuying. There isn't a single politician who is willing to propose a plan that would eliminate SUV's, for example. Everyone continues to pretend that each person's rights to use resources are only limited by their wealth.
There is no acknowledgment that the oil I burn today won't be available tomorrow for someone else. It's called a non-renewable resource for a reason.
What every pol proposes is some plan to continue expanding our capitalist/consumerist economic system. Conservation means doing the same with less. What is really needed is doing less with less.
We need to work towards a sustainable society. This means we take only as much from the world as can be replenished. Since the world is currently exceeding this by about 50% the current situation is untenable.
I suggest reading some of the works of ecological economist Herman Daly as a good place to start understanding this.
Here's a sample:
Steady State Economics
None of the current plans are sincere. They want to have it all: growth without consequence. It can't be done. Either we plan how to transition to a steady-state society or Mother Nature will do it for us.
I'm with Robert Feinman on this. Perpetual growth is the problem. Trying to mitigate the consequences of the problem without addressing the problem can do no more than buy time. And buying time in this game is a fool's paradise because every success of stop-gap measures is used to "prove" that there never was any problem to begin with. Jevons's Paradox times two.
Work less, consume less, enjoy life more.
Coberly: The way the program would work is that we'd simply decide how much carbon we wanted to allow to be burned in a given year. The government would then sell permits, presumably reducing the number sold every year, causing prices to rise and generating revenue.
Feinman/Sandwichman: I think that's a pretty silly response. From a climate change point of view, we ought to cut carbon emissions by 80-90% by 2050. There's no reason not to, using this program, simply cut them to zero sometime this century. This plan absolutely provides the tools needed to eliminate unsustainable fossile-fuel usage.
Elimination SUVs is not a plan, it's a joke. Setting up a system that provides huge market incentives and a ton of government revenue to actually alter the way our society operates is what's being proposed here. Why shoot it down?
What's your alternate proposal for getting people to work less, consume less and enjoy life more so much that climate change ceases to be an issue?
-Sam L
Sandwichman,
I am pleased to say I agree with you entirely here. And this is even more important than SS.
Feinman
I agree with you. it's important, though useless, to say this. We need to start thinking in terms of less consumption...not necessarily less consumption of pleasures. but i am not sure how much real pleasure there is in an SUV anyway.
I have been touting one quick fix: present day technology can build a plug in electric car that is slow, short range, and cheap.
no one would buy this instead of a "real" car. but they would buy it as a second car for city use, if the cities made them all but mandatory. their use in cities would cut ground level pollution to near zero. and would cut greenhouse gas emission, and gas use, by 50% over gas cars in similar usage, and this would amount to a 10% reduction in overall greenhouse gas, and gasoline, consumption over the entire economy.
the only thing to prevent, is the oil and car lobbies telling people it would infringe on their "free choice."
but note, again, i am talking about a SECOND car. they can keep their sex symbol / freeway cruiser for the jobs it does best.
these all electric cars already exist. i have seen them. they cost about 1 cent per mile to drive, and about 10 cents per mile overall including battery replacement.
detroit is stalling, hoping to build an electric, or hybrid, that is all things to all people. that will be expensive and take more time than we have left.
coberly,
See how good it feels to agree with Sandwichman?
Sam L,
"Setting up a system" isn't something you do in your spare time with a bunch of friends. It requires a government committed to "alter the way our society operates" and a society/culture that supports those intentions. Look around. See any resemblance to Wall Street, Madison Avenue or inside the Beltway?
Coberly,
Why would the electric car (powered by coal-burning power plants) reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% over a comparable gas-powered car? Better fuel efficiency because of a more optimized plant, or where?
SamChevre
"Taxes place the burden of this uncertainty on the environment (the amount of pollution); saleable permits place it on costs faced by energy users (fossil fuel prices). "
That's a really good way of boiling down your argument to essentials.
Great, concise post. But you missed something.
There's *also* a great deal of uncertainty about dose-response relationship between emissions and global climactic change.
Furthermore, following Weinstein, what matters is the *slope* of the marginal damage curve for emissions. If it's steep, quantity controls are favored. If it's flat taxes are better. And in any case a tax schedule (taxes ramp up with cumulative emissions and damages) would be best.
But the political argument is solid. Bigwigs at Resources for the Future advocate a hybrid approach: permits with a cap on prices. But we might wait until we hear more moaning before pushing that.
Carbon just wants to be free.
SamChevre
alas I am no expert
but in general the gas engine is so inefficient at low and variable speeds that generating electricity and trasmitting it to a battery to an electric motor uses half as much input for each unit of output (horsepower hour or such.)
in fact, a small slow electric could be built light and cheap and driven in such a way that it would be even more efficient.
but i don't know this of my own knowledge. just claims by others and reports of owners i have stopped in the street.
Sam L
thanks for the explanation
it's going to take a bit of argy bargy before i can see with enough clarity to support my truculence.
I thought the suspicion with Dingell was that he was trying to oppose stricter CAFE standards without coming across as a global warming denialist.
I agree that there are virtues to auctioning off emissions permits (esp. vs. cap-and-trade), but it's a stretch to suggest that permits are necessarily the best approach across the board. In particular, it's necessary to consider the possibility that different systems may be better for individual vs. industrial emitters.
The cap-and-trade system for motor fuel use by individuals proposed by Feldstein in the W$J last year, for instance, requires big start-up costs and has a circle of hell's worth of devils in its details such that it's hard to imagine even his mother loving it. In our second-best world, it's far from clear that it's worse building an estimate of permit price into a fuel tax other than for political reasons. (Admittedly, the political issues are major.)
Even with industrial users for whom permits might be better in principle, there would be a need for enforcement mechanisms to make sure emitters don't cheat on their emissions; with a properly-set carbon tax rate, there's not so much of a need to monitor emitters.
Sandwichman:
I see the possibility that we can just maybe in the next few years pass a law that would be a huge first step in rearranging our economy. It wouldn't end inequality, it wouldn't end environmental racism and injustice, it wouldn't end patriarchy, it wouldn't dismantle the multinationals, but it would sure as hell move us towards a more sustainable society.
I'm sure my vision for what the world should look like is not dramatically different than yours. A carbon auction is a better tool than either a tax or cap and trade to lower consumption of non-renewable resources and generate revenue to make other changes (including increasing the availability of renewables). Unless there is some other political or policy approach you imagine to be more practical or effective, why don't you support it?
-Sam L.
And let's be clear. Even if it does nothing to weaken the global capitalist system, it does address climate change which, if left unchecked, would have disastrous consequences for many, including millions (billions?) of the world's most vulnerable and disadvantaged people. And it would do so at the expense of the biggest consumers in the world.
-Sam L.
Sam L
i am not up to speed on this yet, but the virtue i see to the gas tax is that it's simple, and we could have one tomorrow at a penny a gallon, and rise from there to a dollar a gallo or ten dollars a gallon ... whatever level cuts gas (or coal) use "enough."
...as determined by measuring CO2 levels.
and no, i don't see much hope in waiting for a rearranging of society that produces economic justice.
But this is in some ways in fact simpler and more effective than a gas tax. With a gas tax, we have to set the price, and if it's not high enough, we have to raise it. That's (I think) what he meant by "taxes place the burden of this uncertainty on the environment." By simply banning all non-permitted carbon emissions, we decide how much carbon we're willing to emit, and the burden is on the companies to figure out how to do without it.
Anyway, if the debate were between an auction and a stiff tax, I'm sure we'd all be thrilled. I don't mean to suggest that this is the only possibility, but it's a pretty good set up, as far as I can tell. I think it allows us to reduce consumption better than even a carbon tax does.
-Sam L
A carbon auction is a better tool... why don't you support it?
That's easy, I don't know enough about its efficacy to support it. On the other hand, I don't oppose it, either. I'm amazed at the zero sum political games people that keep imagining here. "If your not with us, your against us." What's wrong with the options of either giving or witholding tentative or qualified support? Why can't I say, "x may be a good idea but only in the context of y"?
And I'm curious to know: is the USA going to require its military operations overseas to purchase carbon permits? Can we look forward to a more environmentally sustainable war in Iraq?
I assumed based on your first comment "fool's paradise", "stop-gap measure" that you wouldn't support a carbon auction. My apologies, if that wasn't true. I happen to think this is better both politically and from a policy perspective, but if Nancy Pelosi thinks she can get a big-fat carbon tax passed into law, she has my support.
As for you second point, I assume it was in jest, but it's an interesting question. The pentagon is the largest user of electricity in the country, and as far as I'm concerned if they (and every other government agency) want to keep emitting carbon they should have to compete for permits just like everyone else.
Interestingly, I've heard some talk that we would actually be performing far better in Iraq if we were investing more in portable solar panels and spent less time trucking fuel around. Not that I particularly want to see the U.S. military become a more efficient invade-and-occupy machine.
-Sam L.
Sam L.
My second point was sardonic but none the less sincere. A tradable carbon permit system that effectively reduced GHG emission would be a nice thing, indeed. I would be concerned though, that horse trading on technical issues, special concessions and the complexity of enforcement might result in an unacceptably permissive permit system. As far as I'm concerned, the thing that counts most is outcomes. A policy tool may be conceptually elegant but the devil is in the implementation. Or as a colleague used to say, "good ideas are a dime a dozen."
well,
you don't need a "humongous" tax
to start with.
and aside from politics as usual, i don't see any great technical difficulty in raising the tax as fast as you need to discourage carbon use.
and i am not sure i can see through the bureaucracy of carbon permits.
but like Sandwich, i dunno yet.
I would note that if one goes with a serious carbon tax that would bite hard enough to actually push people substantially off generating carbon, one will probably want to combine it with some kind of income tax cut for lower income folks, given that many poor people buy a lot of gas and otherwise find themselves generating a lot of carbon, given exising infrasture in place that is hard for people to change.
The problem with permits, as everybody who lives in a zoned neighborhood knows, is that the rich can apparently get "permitted" for anything they want.
In fact, not even just the rich, just put a bit of financial strain on the governing body and it rolls over like a cat in heat.
I don't see what the countervailing force against over-permitting would be. I mean, I give it about 10 minutes before the argument "hey, Dr. Joe Fraud says the environment can afford more carbon emmissions, and if the government sells more permits it will have more money and less children will starve. You don't want children to starve, do you?"
However, if you want to do it, I think it would be interesting to survey how fisheries are managed/mismanaged. Seems like the model is almost identical - Mother Nature only has so much to give, take to much and the game's over, so the pure free-market has to give some ground and all the participants understand that.
--a different chris
The diabolical intricacies of the Clean Air Act. as remarked elsewhere, Orwell has been put to shame.
The biggest use of liquid fuels in the US is transportation, with private autos being the bulk of this (freight is most of the rest).
Now proposals to limit consumption by raising costs (tax or credits) all assume that the "magic of the marketplace" will, perforce, generate a solution. This is just wishful thinking. People have been working on alternatives for decades and nothing economically or technologically feasible has come out of it. Imposing a higher cost can't push people to a new situation if none exists.
What are you going to do with all those who have moved to the exurbs? They have no mass transit to switch to. How are you going to get the fish from Chile to the supermarket in Kansas?
Raising costs is an incentive not a solution.
I'd like to propose an old standby - rationing. Here's a rough draft of one way it could work. Every registered automobile in the US gets an allotment of gas "coupons". With modern electronic tracking (think credit cards) there is no need for physical coupon books.
The coupons allow you to buy a specified amount of gas. If you drive less you can sell the excess, if you drive more you can buy extras. This imposes no costs on those who fit the profile, while a gas tax would negatively impact the poor more.
There is nothing strange about having ration coupons, they were in use during WWII in both the US and UK. There was some fraud, but nothing excessive. Electronic tracking would eliminate counterfeiting.
Barkley
one would hope a serious gas tax would generate enough revenues at first to allow for serious tax reductions at the lower end of the tax brackets.
just don't lower the payroll "tax."
different chris
from what i hear, "all the participants," even in the fisheries, do their share of whining. and the fish stocks are seriously, seriously, depleted anyway.
but yes, you are probably right about the way permitting would work out.
feinman
but there are solutions. electric cars for cities. no need to import all that much, develop streetcars, and redesign cites. some will take more time than others. but people are smarter than they look.
i am a little worried about excess concern for "the poor." rosser notes one solution. if every effort to solve greenhouse warming falls on concerns about our fffreedom on the one hand, or the poor poor on the other hand, we might as well join the frat boys and throw a party to end all parties.
Well, regarding global warming, the biggest victims are in poor, tropical countries, with Bangladesh primed to be the biggest one suffering the highest costs and worst consequences.
rdfeinman,
They tax hell out of gasoline in Europe, and the gas efficiency of cars driven there is a whole lot better than it is in the US. SUVs? Not there, certainly not in any noticeable numbers.
The poster boy for cap and trade is the US sulfur dioxide emissions trading program. It has been successful in obtaining a steady decline in SO2 emissions over time since it was introduced in 1990, although there have been fortuitously favorable circumstances that have helped it, and some c and t programs have been flops, such as the current one for CO2 in Europe.
Robert Feinman,
Why the focus on liquid transportation fuels? Most of the action in carbon is electricity generation. IIRC, replacing all coal-burning power plants with nuclear power plants would reduce CO2 emissions more than eliminating transport-generated CO2 altogether.
SamChevre
Sam
if only nuclear was safe, clean, and cheap.
but if you like fighting to control arab oil, breathing the fumes, and poisoning the ground water
as well as the sheer waste of "transport generated"
then stick around for the ride.
good, no one used the word ethanol, a fuel that on millimoles per vehicle miles travelled basis generates very nearly as much CO₂ as gasoline but more, much more, water vapor, N₂O and NOx.
now i feel better and since we're "what if'ing" and, as the present wars demonstrate, expense is no object
time already for a national maglev 'rail' system + nice little intra-urban electrics and revival of urban mass transit. power generation? nukes are fine with me.
all technologically feasible right now though the maglev might require some more input from argonne nat. lab.
but, hmm, there are a few big barriers such as all those 'fordist' sectors, fear of change, most politicos...
As I said before, tax polices or other fiscal manipulations are incentives to innovation, not guarantees that something will be developed.
The techniques for SO2 emissions were known, the trading provided an incentive to implement the technology, not invent it.
As for light rail and other forms of mass transit, they are all good ideas, but are very expensive and take a long time to build. They also aren't optimum for getting people from dispersed suburbs and exurbs to dispersed office parks.
For all the talk about electric cars, alternative fuels, etc. none of these are ready for prime time. If the only impediment was industry reluctance aided by friendly congressmen, than why hasn't the technology been developed elsewhere? With gas prices so high in Europe, why are they still using gas and diesel engines? The fact that they are get higher mileage is only a detail.
Economics does not solve technological problems, and wishing won't make it so.
Juan
i am not enthusiastic about bio fuels because of the environmental destruction involved in growing them and their effect on food prices. but in principle at least the CO2 they generate is CO2 that was taken out of the air last year. this is different from CO2 that was taken out of the air over the last million years: that is, no net increase. as to the H2O... i would have to say that is no problem whatsoever.
Feinman,
the technologies are available for a start. my guess about the electric car is that the SECOND car solution i suggested above is not yet understood by the people. It would need a big push from city government to "move the market."
Waiting for the magic solution that will give us clean air and NO inconvenience otherwise is just a way of waiting until we all choke to death.
Those of you who are "fine" with nuclear, just haven't thought about it in a while.
Coberly,
of course you're correct; i was deluding myself that 'taken out last year' might remain 'taken out'. i'll add that the corn ethanol brewers are also not all so clean.
RDF,
am i correct that maglev tech has already been developed, is not science fiction and that argonne had, during the 1990s, worked up plans for implementing a national system.
Europe - quite an excellent passenger rail system that, in its high speed form, i believe is about to be expanded to the east.
why still gasoline powered vehicles there? large companies with large amounts of accumulated production capital most often do not intentionally close shop but strive to expand on the preexisting basis, which has to do with above mentioned 'barriers' to green transportation. then also the politics of job loss/creation + inertia of social psychology...
Coberly (again),
yes, no magic button solution, whatever is going to be done will have to be multi-modal... and to extent private capital is involved, provide an expected profit rate, another barrier.
on the ev's, and it would take me hours to find the articles again, but very very improved batteries have already been developed.
biofuels could in principle be carbon neutral. they have other bad consequences.
as for taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and actually lowering the concentration, i am not aware of any serious progress along those lines, but i have heard a few ideas.
the new batteries are expensive. but only necessary if you want a fast long range car. we don't need such. a "second car." would do fine in cities even if it was slow and short range.
the reason this is not done on a large scale in europe yet is that no one would buy a slow short range car for their only car. and the idea of a second car seems to be hard to explain to people who haven't thought about it yet.
Coberly,
The problem with your second car idea is that you could get much better fuel mileage with a gas engine if the car is small, light, and slow--and range woudln't be a problem. (I would guess that 200 mpg would be pretty achieveable).
And again--coal-fired electricity generation is the BIGGEST producer of CO2. If you want to reduce CO2 production, you need to replace the power generation capacity with SOMETHING; nuclear is the only known and tested option we have.
SamChevre
Sam
I have been yelled at for being repetitive. My sources claim that electric is twice as efficient, all losses considered, IN THE SAME SERVICE. If you have evidence to the contrary I will be glad to consider it.
Hand waving doesn't count.
Nuclear has other consequences you won't like so much.
I prefer to walk. And my electrical needs are about one tenth my neighbors. And I am just as comfortable as they are.
And of course, I am not afraid of the un known.
oh, yeah
my daughter was driving one of those little electric cars. quiet. doesn't stink. easy to drive. quite zippy enough for city streets.
Coberly,
I'm not disagreeing with you on efficiency; I'm disagreeing on commercial feasibility.
My point is that if people were willing to buy (and the government was willing to have sold and driven) a small, slow second car for commuting, CO2/mile would go way down. You get a lot of the benefit from small and slow; gas vs electric is a smaller factor.
For example, the smart fortwo with a diesel engine gets 71 MPG--and it's not slow.
SamChevre
Sam
gas cars stink. and they are only about half as efficient... for the same weight and speed... as electrics.
and you don't need fast in the city.
now, as to commercial and political feasability, that is what happens when the insane run the asylum,
but once we get serious about carbon dioxide, the cities could quite easily make that Second car, the car of choice... in the city.
coberly,
if the idea is to in fact shift from present modes of transportation to others, selling people on slow ev's strictly for intra-urban use has much more to overcome than selling faster and longer range electrics with fast charge batteries.
longer distances, very high speed rail competes with these and, i'd bet, would win. if you decided to travel from corvallis to sacramento, would you prefer a few hours trip in comfort to a longer less enjoyable one.
in re. europe (or anywhere else), it's not simply a matter of consumer preference, not simply demand side, but - since capitalism still exists - accumulation and profit rate side, i.e. too far below avg rate of profit and it will not be produced no matter the real and percieved needs,,,or, like ethanol, large and ongoing subsidies must be provided.
assisting in the salvation of the same system that attempts to commodify everything while socializing as much of its costs as possible seems, imo, upside down. there are limits to reform, whether 'the insane run the asylum' or not.
Juan
it seems to me it might take a while to build that track to sacramento. and taking the train to the grocery store might not be so convenient.
the point about the "second car" was to save gas and greenhouse gas right now. provide a means to get around town for shopping and getting to work that was faster than walking, easier and faster than bicycling, and had a reasonable chance of being adopted soon.
not sure what costs i am socializing here.
to tell you the truth, i couldn't follow your first paragraph: intra urban means within the city, i think, but all of a sudden you have my slow cheap second car competing with inter urban rail transport?
if anything, my cheap plug in electric would be the car you rented at the station to do the rest of your getting around town.
given the actually existant 'car culture', which would people be more likely to purchase, 'slow ev's strictly for intra-urban use' or faster, longer range ones? which would have greater chance of adoption when both are zero emission? no doubt price differences but i believe these would have to be very substantial to offset qualitative differences and even then might not. neither would be 'right now' on any scale. any clearer.
having your 'cheap plug-in electric' as a rental at the station makes sense but i was thinking in terms of actual sales.
true enough, building that maglev system would not be overnight but i believe we have known how for ~decade. it would though 'cost too much', especially when there are trillion dollar wars to fight and pay for, especially when we don't have to worry about creating livable wage jobs or involve a wider spectrum of industries, the interacting of which should create some positive multipliers.
on a fully finished basis, it would be many years before it became profitable. on the basis of particular sections such as west coast and the northeast, this would not be so. overall, it would require subsidies for some time...which is to say a matter of prioritization of national interests.
'socialization of costs' has to do with subsidies to the capital side which can be seen as direct and/or indirect and most evidently take place through the mediation of government.
paid for by all of us but privately or quasi-privately appropriated. economic cost of war for example is obviously socialized, slightly less obviously would be policies that permit perpetuation of 'negative externalities', e.g, having reduced emission standards for particular industries.
'actual sales' to individuals, which could be enhanced by their rental experience
i did not imagine the slow cheap second car would compete with a fast expensive all purpose car.
the slow cheap second car could be built right now with existing technology. one drove past me just a few minutes ago.
the high speed long range electric still seems to be too expensive to compete with the gas car in the same usage. and to be honest, i think for longer trips the hybrid might be better than a plug in.
the point of the slow cheap SECOND car would be to replace all urban driving (about 40% of vehicle use?) with a car that is 50% more efficient, and incidentally a much nicer neighbor, than even a slow speed light cheap gas car.
that would result in an instant reduction in green house gasses of 10% economywide.
the rentals might be an excellent way to introduce them to the market.
i would bet the only thing preventing their manufacture right now on a large scale is lack of imagination, fear that there would not be a market.
city regulations could overcome that fear.
i am all in favor of more passenger trains.
but we need something now. the revolution comes later.
partial-zero emissions vehicles are available right now. your states just won't sell them to you....
http://autos.msn.com/advice/article.aspx?contentid=4024974
So, just how green is a PZEV machine? Well, if you just cut your lawn with a gas mower, congratulations, you just put out more pollution in one hour than these cars do in 2,000 miles of driving. Grill a single juicy burger, and you've cooked up the same hydrocarbon emissions as a three-hour drive in a Ford Focus PZEV. As the California Air Resources Board has noted, the tailpipe emissions of these cars can be cleaner than the outside air in smoggy cities.
more info for americans here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_zero-emissions_vehicle
almost infamous
not clear if you are talking about plug in hybrids.
their imminence might be the reason my cheap slow plug in second car is not being wildly promoted.
not sure myself whether a car that was designed to be slow would not also be lighter and cheaper and therefore more efficient in city use.
personally, i like air that is as clean as country air well outside of smoggy cities, and if you get rid of "pollution" but are still generating excess greenhouse gas, you haven't solved the problem.
Another reason for the US to lobby for a cap-and-trade system: the US would be a net receiver of transfers from the developing world.
According to some studies, the marginal cost of pollution abatement is lower in rich countries than in developing ones. In a world with a global market in CO2 allowances, rich countries would reduce their emissions (because it costs less to do so than in poor countries) and sell their allowances to poor countries (which would increase their emissions).
Read more here: www.econweekly.com
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