Paul Krugman: Supports Cap and Trade as the better option over a Carbon Tax...

[S_E_Fudd]

The Perfect, the Good, the Planet

If we’re going to get real action on climate change any time soon, it will be via some version of legislation proposed by Representatives Henry Waxman and Edward Markey. Their bill would limit greenhouse gases by requiring polluters to receive or buy emission permits, with the number of available permits — the “cap” in “cap and trade” — gradually falling over time.

It goes without saying that the usual suspects on the right have denounced Waxman-Markey: global warming isn’t real, emission limits will destroy the economy, yada yada. But the bill also faces opposition from some environmentalists, who are balking at the compromises the sponsors made to gain political support.



So is Waxman-Markey — whose language was released last week — good enough?

Well, Al Gore has praised the bill, and plans to organize a grass-roots campaign on its behalf. A number of environmental organizations, ranging from the League of Conservation Voters to the Environmental Defense Fund, have also come out in strong support.

But Greenpeace has declared that it “cannot support this bill in its current state.” And some influential environmental figures — most notably James Hansen, the NASA scientist who first drew the public’s attention to global warming — oppose the whole idea of cap and trade, arguing for a carbon tax instead.

I’m with Mr. Gore. The legislation now on the table isn’t the bill we’d ideally want, but it’s the bill we can get — and it’s vastly better than no bill at all.

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One objection — the claim that carbon taxes are better than cap and trade — is, in my view, just wrong. In principle, emission taxes and tradable emission permits are equally effective at limiting pollution. In practice, cap and trade has some major advantages, especially for achieving effective international cooperation.

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Still, the bill represents major action to limit climate change. As the Center for American Progress has pointed out, by 2020 the legislation would have the same effect on global warming as taking 500 million cars off the road. And by all accounts, this bill has a real chance of becoming law in the near future.

So opponents of the proposed legislation have to ask themselves whether they’re making the perfect the enemy of the good. I think they are

So we have two nobel laureates supporting this - Al Gore and Paul Krugman

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/opinion/18krugman.html?_r=1

[Oregone]

1. The biggest problem with taxing carbon is we have no idea if it actually reduces emissions.

They will pay out the tax until it becomes cost-ineffective (and it may never). Therefore, it may not reduce emissions at all.

It also sucks because it hits normal people at the pump. When you fill up, it becomes a regressive consumption tax, but hell, you still gotta get to work

I think Krugman is spot on here

[ProSense]

2. You say "nobel laureates "

Some will say sellouts.

[S_E_Fudd]

3. Depends on whether Dennis Kucinich agrees with them I guess...nt