A Question for Senator McCain About Cap-and-Trade
By blackhedd Posted in Economy — Comments (51) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Senator, I'm a businessman, and your cap-and-trade proposal will have a direct impact on my businesses, which in turn affects the livelihood of the people I employ, and their families.
So this question is not merely of academic interest.
You've proposed, as a matter of moral and scientific urgency, to cap total emissions of carbon dioxide by business operations.
Here's what I need to know: does your plan cap emissions only on the US operations of American companies, or on their emissions from all operations worldwide?
Because if it's the former, then all I have to do is move my operations overseas and hire workers in other countries. If it's the latter, I'd have to find a way to move the whole enterprise overseas.
Do let me know, won't you?
- Even if you set the levels low enough, you won't see enough companies hitting those targets. They will pay the tax.
Kinda like the tax on "luxury automobiles." If you can afford the Mercedes in the first place, another $500 isn't going to stop you.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
want to tell me why the businesses/companies/evil corporations/people who hire me !
...will not increase prices all through their chains down to where the customer (that would be me ! ) pays a higher price?
Or, is it simpler to ask, as you do, why continue operating in countries that tax energy?
Sure, companies do stay in their country of origin, but how many people do they have to lay off in order to do so?
McCain is very pro-nuclear, which I think is a great thing. Personally I am a AGW sceptic but I think most of the actions taken to prevent it have positive collateral spillover to issues I DO care about (e.g. funding Islamic Fundamentalist Theocracies via our gas bill).
Moving to nuclear from coal is a great thing in my opinion. I am a hunter and fisherman and seeing wetlands blighted by sulfuric acid and mercury from irresponsible coal mining was a truly depressing experience for me. This has nothing to do with CO2 of course, and I wish McCain would talk more about pollution in general vs AGW if he wants to court environmentalist independents.
More relevant to this post perhaps, how you go about addressing the issue is another matter (if you choose to acknowledge AGW). I will throw in my 2 cents with the rest of you in saying that Cap + Trade is ridiculously broken and bad for business and America. I wish the state would instead ease nuclear power laws and make the change through positive incentives rather than unfair and subjective penalties.
bur C02 doesn't make it dirty.
Whatever the system is put in, it will be bent to the wishes of those best able to exploit it.
Get ready for another road paved with "Good Intentions Asphalt".
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Thanks for the laugh, Joli.
""Good Intentions Asphalt"." Indeed.
That's one big road they've already paved.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.“--Jeff Cooper. From Bill Coffey's collection of military quotations
I can see a US cabinet position deciding who gets to emit and how much. The cap and trade economists must be channeling Karl Marx.
why do plants breathe it in?
why don't we encourage the cutting down of trees since as long a the wood isn't burned, carbon is trapped inside?
why has global warming stopped and cooling started, even though carbon dioxide concentrations are presumed to be increasing?
why don't the Chinese and Indians take unilateral action to protect themselves?
Reducing carbon emissions harms the plants. Pass it on.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
After reading McCain’s climate change speech -- http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjM0MTU3NTQxN2VhMjNjNmQ1NzU... -- I was dismayed that he made statements that appear to concede that global warming is significant problem and that the cause is man-made – yet another example of the maverick in action once again. That being said, in the opening paragraphs or “problem statement” portion of his speech, he did not say anything that most Americans will find controversial. As conservatives, we need to understand and accept that the environmental left, especially those in scientific academia, have done a very good job of marketing man-made global warming. A majority of the electorate actually believes in man-made global warming to some extent. Whether we like it or not, independent voters who will decide this election in the battleground states believe this is a real issue. The left is thrilled that they have finally found a way to market more government control of economic output (i.e. socialism) to American voters.
In the context of the 2008 election, man-made global warming is now a purely political issue that cannot be addressed effectively with a fact-based counter-argument. Why? There is no way to undo quickly the damage caused by years of propaganda from a significant portion of the largely government-subsidized scientific academic community on this issue – alas, they are mostly leftists who receive most of their funding from government sources. Even with a $500 million dollar marketing campaign between now and November, it would be impossible to make a dent in the public’s beliefs about the science surrounding this issue. This, sadly, is the reality on the ground, politically.
What is to be done from a conservative perspective? Once you accept that man-made global warming must be addressed purely as a political issue in this election cycle, an interesting opportunity presents itself for conservatives: the revival of the nuclear power industry in the United States. Reduced reliance on imported energy is a worthy goal for conservatives to embrace for both economic and national security reasons, and nuclear power is a technology that can realistically help achieve this goal. Furthermore, I think the McCain campaign realizes this and there is more to the McCain campaign’s rhetoric on the global warming issue than appears at first glance.
To his credit, McCain addressed nuclear power in his speech. For fueling our vehicles, there is no near-term replacement for gasoline and thus the need to keep importing oil. He talked about hybrids; even Victor Davis Hanson talks about hybrids from a purely national security perspective. However, both imported oil and imported natural gas are used to generate electricity and consequently contribute to the demand driving higher prices for these sources of energy. In turn, these higher prices help finance Islamist terrorism and Hugo Chavez. Coal and nuclear fission are two energy technologies available today for generating electricity that can actually provide sufficient energy to reduce the demand for imported oil and natural gas. Only one of these produces no greenhouse gases and has been excluded from the domestic energy marketplace for purely POLITICAL, rather than technological reasons.
Quite frankly, the public’s current beliefs about man-made global warming may be the only way to accelerate the revival of the domestic nuclear power industry. From a tactical perspective, taking an agnostic approach as to whether man-made activity is behind global warming while working toward “a cleaner environment” is shrewd politics. While I would prefer a purely market-based solution, the sad reality is that energy market is already a manipulated mess due to the patchwork quilt of government regulations and outright prohibitions. A domestic cap and trade program might be an effective way to “campaign green” during 2008 to appeal to the moderates, before driving legislation in 2009 favorable to the return of nuclear power as a major source of electricity generation in the years ahead.
On a final note, the one institution in the United States that knows more about nuclear power than any other is the United States Navy – modern submarines, aircraft carriers, and cruisers are all nuclear powered and have been for decades. Know anybody running for president with a navy background who has considerable national security policy experience as a legislator?
"You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war." -- Winston Churchill
this can go two ways. In the best scenario the nuclear power industry is revived and electricity becomes the available energy of the future. Our economy moves to build electric rail and mass transit and plug in hybrids become practical. All this from the folks who stopped nuclear power in the first place because they were against planned growth. (As corollary to this the oil companies sat back and waited for the inevitable price rise because of supply and demand. The left should kick themselves for playing into these corporate giants.) However the other way this can play out is for the left to gain power and institute higher taxes on oil profits. Once addicted to these income sources, the socialist scenario can play out and the nuclear power industry becomes part of the cap and trade system with the left bureaucrats overseeing the life blood of the economy.
I am a strong proponent of nuclear power, but I would like to see a free country too. We need to be careful whose bed we jump into.
Electricity generation uses a lot of oil. Not as much as transportation, but a significant amount. If we started building nuclear plants again, that oil would be applied to tranportation, and it *would* reduce the amount of oil we need to import. Also, if we can keep the price of electricity low, then rising gas prices will create market incentives for all-electric vehicles (actually, "create market incentives" is a little tame for what will happen; a better phrase might be "open the floodgates"). And, of course, that means we can get rid of ethanol, because even with a blending credit (read: gov't subsidy), it's not going to be competitive.
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"You can't save the Earth unless you're willing to make other people sacrifice" - Scott Adams (speaking through Dogbert)
Sooner or later we will have to go all nuke.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
may be mutually exclusive. Nuclear plants have low fuel and operating costs, but the capital costs will be high. SOme of the latest estimates are saying $9 - $10 billion each (for a 1400 MWe plant). I think that is high, but real costs will probably be in the $5 - $7 billion range. Even though we'll probably continue to see high capacity factors, that much capital spending will inflate electric rates. Plus we still have the issues around the capacity of the US economy to support these large construction projects. We're going to need a lot more engineers, electricians, pipefitters than we currently have (overlooking the fact that about half of the engineers in the nuclear industry will be retiring in the next 10 years) and we'll have issues with suppliers. We just don't have the industrial base to support more than a few plants under construction at the same time. There is not going to be an easy solution to this problem.
I too have seen the high estimated costs, but nuclear plants were built in the past at competitive prices and the French (with 80% electrical power from nukes) have not bankrupted themselves which leads me to believe the costs are highly inflated. That said, oil is clearly inflated too and this is what the nuke has to compete with.
In the SF Chron today an article suggested that with a massive transmission line construction project CA could generate 20% of their needed electricity from wind on the high plains. They mentioned that a back up power plant would be needed and suggested it be a natural gas fired plant. No mention of nukes.
I believe the nuke industry can rebuild the required engineering and infrastructure staff (and create some local high paying jobs) faster than the nuke approval process. Of course the approval process is what takes a lot of the estimated cost. BTW, the US Navy is constantly training nuke engineers who could go public.
weren't very cheap. In fact they nearly bankrupted quite a few utilities. A lot of the factors leading to the high cost then aren't present now (i.e. double digit inflation and interest rates as well as massive construction delays arising from the post-TMI retrofits). However, we have to deal with a number of new factors such as tremendous inflation in the cost of specialty steels and a shortage of manufacturers of large power plant equipment. The licensing process won't be a huge cost element, since the licensing process was simplified several years ago. Staffing won't be solved any time soon. Look at engineering enrollments aren't what they used to be, and after they get out of school, it still takes about 5 years to make a fully competent engineer. Also, we aren't getting many engineers from the nuclear navy. The navy trains a lot of operators but not that many engineers. We don't let operators design power plants for the same reason we don't let unlicensed engineers man control rooms, neither is trained for that job. Also even the navy engineers require some training, since a ship or sub is not a powerplant. One problem is that powerplant engineering isn't glamorous work compared to computer engineering for kids. Also when the utilities do get new engineers, they tend to work them like dogs, so retention is an issue. This is going to take quite a while to solve.Note however, no other energy source is going to be cheap. Natural gas plants have low capital costs, but are extremely expensive to build. Oil plants also have high operating costs. Coal used to be relatively cheap, but as environemntal restrictions keep being aded, the capital costs for construction have increased accordingly. DOn't expect anyone to meet more than about 10-12% of their grid requirements with wind. It isn't dispatchable also the long term maintenance costs for wind power are much higher and their reliability is much lower than the windmill manufacturers typically claim. Next time you drive past a wind farm,count the number of windfalls out of service. My eyeball estimate is that approx. 1/4 of the windmills typically are down for maintenance. They are subject to severe vibration issues (try keeping a 200 ft diamater rotor balanced) and only operate efficiently in a relatively narrow band of windspeeds. Windmills and solar are ok for peaking, but youare,t going to baseload them. With regard to the cost of the French plants, they weren't cheap either. However, since they were built by the French government, the finance charges were lower and many of the costs were hidden. The next few years are going to be very challenging, without Kyoto style restrictions. If McCain is serious about CO2 restrictions, the economic results will be disastrous. Our economy will not grow without relatively abundant inexpensive energy.
I am an engineer, (electrical) and I believe if the jobs are forecast there will be some response to the demand. I am also a HS Math teacher (now) and I know the raw material is weaker than a generation or two ago. But the kids do know where the jobs are and I would place nuclear engineering in the same level of difficulty as mechanical engineering.
I definitely agree about the need for an abundant source of energy. We are facing water restrictions in CA, if electricity were available, water desalination plants would be feasible. Likewise, water could be more widely distributed if the power were there. Of course this will be opposed by the left leaning because more water means more growth, food, people. Our political correct group has been anti-growth for years -- using each crisis as a reason for more government control.
I was going to hold my nose and support him, but what's the point? He's clearly not interested in that. I won't support this socialism. We need a president who will take a stand against wacko environmentalists, not embrace their lunacy. I'd rather lose on principle than win by selling out. McCain just can't be trusted. Don't believe a thing he says on taxes or judges. He's already talking comprehensive immigration reform again and he wants to ruin our economy and create a global warming bureaucracy to run our lives. Forget that. There's no point in fighting for our freedom in Iraq if we're pissing them away here at home without a fight.
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Halls of Justice Painted Green, Money Talking.
Power Wolves Beset Your Door, Hear Them Stalking.
I think that Bush feels that whoever the next president is, INCLUDING McCAIN, is going to set up some sort of regulatory furball in which every agency on the books has some sort of AGW mandate (like the creeping criminalization of smoking that's going on in Minnesota). Knowing that something like that is virtually impossible to undo, his recent policy change on AGW legislation is the political equivalent of punting on the fourth down to deny the opposition a favorable field position; he's trying to put in place a single law mandating AGW restrictions is going to be a lot easier to repeal once the cost has been felt and the AGW "science" has been fully discredited.
Seems to me that if the sitting president has to protect the economy against the idiocy of the candidate from his own party, I don't have much interest in voting for said candidate.
I started my journey to conservatism when I realized that I couldn't vote for a candidate who wanted to see the internal combustion engine, and I just don't see myself being able to pull the lever for someone who's in favor of reversing the industrial revolution. Hopefully, some conserative-leaning Greenie will step in to take my place (Lord knows, there's SO MANY of THOSE out there!)
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"You can't save the Earth unless you're willing to make other people sacrifice" - Scott Adams (speaking through Dogbert)
I meant to say "candidate who wanted to see the internal combustion engine outlawed"
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"You can't save the Earth unless you're willing to make other people sacrifice" - Scott Adams (speaking through Dogbert)
McCain's cap and enslave program will do precisely what you said. Kind of like taxing domestically drilled oil makes us more dependent on foreign oil. I think there must be something in the water in Washington's fever swamp that makes these damned politicians so dumb.
Tim Schieferecke
stupidity, the substance of McCain's speech and even more, the self righteous tone, is a real threat to his prospects, much as Rev. Wright's is to Obama's. McCain and Obama seem to both be trying to lose.
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
I've probably said this here before.
McCain suffers from the mental malady that Bush was accused of, but didn't have. I can't imagine why McCain is so prone to say this kind of stuff, except because of stupidity, self-righteousness, personal arrogance, and/or tunnel-vision.
Did I leave out anything else, after you got me started?
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.“--Jeff Cooper. From Bill Coffey's collection of military quotations
assessment of the race
Obama is ignorant
Hillary is a liar, and
McCain is stupid
more later if requested
btw
I am voting for stupid
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
I hate to say it--but I can't resist.
Combine that picture of Johnny with your slogan, and I think you have a winning T-shirt.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.“--Jeff Cooper. From Bill Coffey's collection of military quotations
And that's why Carbon caps are a dumb idea. If the intention is to stimulate alternative energy sources, like solar, then subsidize them at levels equivalent to coal and oil (see 2007 subsidies). This would encourage businesses to do the R&D here instead of off-shore.
"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921
“Global warming” is an abject canard. I consider the environmental extremists to be watermelons - green on the outside but red on the inside. These alarmists use cute polar bears to frighten innocent naïve children.
The world socialist movement is using “global warming” as a ruse to impose their anti-capitalist agenda on the United States. These extremists would have us live a Unabomber-type lifestyle. Obviously, Americans would never voluntarily accept this way of life.
The leaders of the “global warming” movement (not necessarily their gullible acolytes) care little about the environment. They have seized upon the issue as a ruse to frighten Americans into accepting their radical extremist views. Americans need to be frightened in order to voluntarily accept a reduced quality of life. “Global warming” is merely a backdoor scam to convince America to accept socialism.
Our spirit and our industry are what make America great. The liberals are assaulting religion because they believe in moral relativism and do not want us to believe our inherent right to freedom comes from God. Environmental fraud will cause America to lose its global advantage in industry. The radical extremists on the Left need to eradicate our spirit and industry in order to impose big government socialism on America.
The fact that McAmnesty is too thick to realize this causes sever reservations about his judgement.
Cap and trade is a good free market solution to pollution. We should give it a try. I like how McCain takes the environment seriously. He's gonna be the next TR!!! McCain '08!!! Better get ready for some competent conservative leadership!!!
"there’s more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus, and waterboarding at Gitmo." P.J. O'Rourke
insult my intelligence.
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
I sure hope that post was done with tongue-in-cheek....
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
-- H. H. Williams
I think this guy actually believed this stuff.
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
Socialism doesn't work.
Tim Schieferecke
They usually try to cram everything into a foot-long suicide paragraph.
Other mutually exclusive terms- fire and water, liberal and conservative, evil and holy, or danny n and conservative.
Tim Schieferecke
First you win the argument, then you win the vote. Let's start winning the argument.
It's in the Senate. Specifically the Majority Leader's chair.
As long as Harry Reid is running the Senate, nuclear will go absolutely nowhere. That's because the only place to dump the waste is in his home state.
I remeber reading a rather long article on nuclear energy that described the whole nuclear process in detail. It seems that the only real suitable place for nuclear waste is the place in Nevada - there are numerous conditions to consider for a waste site. It has consistently been politically stalled, and I see nothing changing in that regard.
If I remember correctly, nuclear waste is currently being stored at the nuke plants. That is not a long term solution to the problem.
If Nevada is such a darn fine place to put waste (about a shoe box per citizen per year), why doesn't Harry start the bidding? There must be a price that would solve this dilemma unless Harry is one of those anti-growth at any price leftists. When I fly or drive around Nevada, except for the gampling meccas I see a lot of space that will never be used for housing, industry, or recreation; come on Harry, open up the desert for something more than top secret aircraft development.
There are perfectly good nuclear waste dumps in both Iran and North Korea. Just fly over and dump. Of course we'd have to process it first to make it unusable as weaponry.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.“--Jeff Cooper. From Bill Coffey's collection of military quotations
flown in. A little radiation poisoning might just help him lose that pot-belly.
Tim Schieferecke
He's looks like a metro-sexual Darth Sidius.
Tim Schieferecke
Has there ever been anything this Socialist done before in the United States? The plans we're seeing represent to my eyes the most blatant intervention in the energy market and the overall economy that I've ever witnessed: all in the name of increasing the cost to consumers and slowing the economy down while accelerating the flight of American jobs and redistributing wealth to special interest groups.
Once these legislative schemes pass, the transition of the United States into a de facto Socialist country will be complete. The government will be actively controlling the amount of energy produced as well as the cost of that energy, all from Washington.
Yeah, I think that FDR's New Deal stuff was pretty close. Social(ist) Security, whithholding, wage and price controls, the whole ball of wax. That's why the SCOTUS shot down a large chunk of it.
At least FDR didn't resort to shooting the dissenting voices, as his fellow travelers in Russia and China had (have) a tendancy to do. I don't know how long THAT will last when were talking about "saving the planet".
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"You can't save the Earth unless you're willing to make other people sacrifice" - Scott Adams (speaking through Dogbert)
This is one policy that is anti-growth even when looked at in the best of lights.
As has been said elsewhere too, what good does a cap and trade do? Even if you set the levels low enough, you won't see enough companies hitting those targets. They will pay the tax. It's income redistribution. Plain and simple.
Now also found at The Minority Report