CLIMATE POLITICS--WHAT HAPPENS IN PARIS WON'T STAY IN PARIS--21H., B38
Obama, backed by the moral authority of Pope Francis, believes will befall the world if we do not slow the pace of c*****e c****e. There will be to treaty to enshrine the deal, for the very good reason that such a treaty would not receive the consent of the US Senate.
Still Others are determined to deny Obama a victory that in history to treat him kindly adding to his "legacy," as his supporters would have it. Most important to many members of Congress is a desire to put the world on notice that any agreement reached in Paris will be, to borrow from George Gershwin, "a sometime thing," to be abrogated by an incoming Republican president on day one of his tenure. But such a move by a new president is highly unlikely and, more important, undesirable. It is one thing to promise to wipe the slate clean, when campaigning for the nomination or for the office.
It is quite another to sit in the Oval office and announce to 200 countries that they cannot take the word of an American president, especially when it was that president who was the driving force in getting them to sign on to the Paris accord. The next president of the United States will have as one of his or her major tasks restoring the credibility of a country that has made a practice of abandoning its allies. Surely, voiding an agreement with our world partners is not a new president's sensible first step on the road to renewed U.S. credibility.
Energy investments have long lives, many 40 years or more. Businessmen, even while cheering the victory of a successor who will have no truck with the Obama version of g****l w*****g, know that in four or eight short years he or she will be replaced, perhaps by a greener presidentor that more evidence might have established that there is indeed a carbon-caused trend towards a warmer climate. So even if the EPA's so-called Clean Power Plan does not survive the court challenge being mounted by a variety of business interests and more than two dozen states, it already has changed how many companies do business.
These executives are convinced that the anti-global-warming train has left the station. As they see it, they are faced with a Hobson's choice: hop aboard or explain to shareholders why they are risking waving goodbye to billions in assets, as some in the utility and coal industries are finding themselves forced to do.
So there is a sense in which the state and corporate litigantseven those who profess confidence that the courts will find that the EPA has exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Actfor all practical purposes have lost their fight. Many states are accepting the EPA's offer to develop compliance plans suitable to their particular circumstancessubject of course to EPA approvalwith some likely to incorporate market-based cap and trade systems or taxes ; on carbon emissions in their plans. "The initial read is that a market-based approach is more workable.
As for the corporate sector, 81 companies with a combined market capitalization of $5 trillion have pledged to reduce their carbon footprints by signing on to the "American Business Act on Climate Pledge" sponsored by the White House, some out of conviction, others out of fear of the consequences of snubbing the president.
The American contribution to the Paris deal will rely on an elaborate and costly regulatory mechanism, taxing or pricing carbon so that consumers and investors, rather than regulators, can decide which use of f****l f**ls to reduce or eliminate.
The developing nations are arguing that we are in the mess in which we find ourselves because of the industrial activities of richer nations. and that any costs they are asked to bear to stem the rise in temperatures should be compensated by income t***sfers from richer to poorer.
Pope Francis, who has replaced Karl Marx as the world's most famous opponent of the distributional and ecological consequences of market capitalism, has made just such a case in his encyclical Laudato Si. Cardinals, patriarchs, and bishops from five continents, key leaders of the pope's divisions, inspired by that encyclical, gathered recently in Vatican City to appeal to the negotiators to craft a "fair. legally binding and truly t***sformational climate agreement... linking c*****e c****e to social injustice and the social exclusion of the poorest and most vulnerable of our citizens." They also called for "an end to the f****l f**l era". Satisfied with their work, they boarded planes and returned home.
At this writing, the intended beneficiaries of the income t***sfers, set to reach $100 billion annually by 2020, are not satisfied with the quality of the guarantees of payment: They want specifics on how the money will be raised before they sign on the dotted line.
The goal of the meeting was to limit increases in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Judging from the plans filed by China, the EU, and the United States, along with about 150 other countries that together account for 86% of the emissions, the combined effect of all the plans will fall short of that goalin part because China, which has misreported its coal usage since 2000 and emitting a billon more tons of CO2 than it has reported. Japan and Russia have offered a mere fraction of the reductions promised by the United States and the EU.
At a recent meeting in Berlin, U.N. officials assessed all the plans then available and concluded that "fully implemented,... the INDCs intended Nationally Determined Contributions have the capability of limiting the forecast temperature rise to around 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, by no means enough.
The plans contain no penalties for nonperformance. They are in essence promises by the signatories to take certain steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While government delegates to the Paris meeting are congratulating themselves on their cool accomplishments, their colleagues at home and the energy markets are creating a reality that will eventually make it more difficult than they now imagine to achieve their goals. The promises made may very well not turn out to be promises kept when they come into contact with the harsher political, technological, and economic realities that await their return home.
The collapse of commodity prices in the face of a fall-off of demand from China and a strengthening dollar. Combined with the increase in ine******y being experienced in many countries, slow growth is an invitation to social discontent, often resulting in the or the one thing politicians fear mostbeing turfed out of office.
Slow growth has another consequence not favorable to compliance: fiscal stringency. A shortfall in tax revenues needed to fund welfare states and military budgets inevitably causes treasury officials to hunt for cash. New taxes are politically unpopular, and the international mobility of the rich, and of major corporations, makes them a less promising source of added revenue than they once were. So nations short of cash have taken to reducing subsidies, often inefficiently deployed, to the renewable sources of energy that Obama and friends are counting on to replace f****l f**ls.
Renewable sources wind and sun especiallyalready suffer from the disadvantage of their intermittent availability and from storage costs (batteries) that are currently three-to-five times higher than levels that would make them economic.. The issue with existing batteries is "theyare expensive, unreliable, and bad in every way," says Elon Musk, who will sell you a battery-powered Tesla SUV for $135,000, or a sporty sedan for around $80,000, less if you net out the subsidy federal and some state governments pay those who buy these vehicles..
In America, regulators who thought it a good idea to force electric utilities to pay consumers for any excess solar power their rooftop panels rated at the same rates those consumers paid the utilities at night or when the sun doesn't shin.
Net metering" in the jargon of the trade, now realize that such consumers ire contributing nothing to the cost of the grid on which they remain dependent for reliable supplies. Customers subsidizing the solar users have become increasingly restive as middle-class incomes stagnate and other things they must haveelectricity among them become more expensive.
The cost of natural gas, the f****l f**l of choice of electric utilities. It has plunged from a peak of almost $12 per thousand cubic feet in 2005 to a bit more than $3 today. The American Council on Renewable- Energy notes that the growth in investment in renewable is likely to come to a screeching halt in 2017: When the full impact of the end of subsidies is felt, that investment will plunge by 73 percent, according to a study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. And if solar subsidies expire at the end of next year as now scheduled, solar photovoltaic installations are forecast to drop 46 percent. The Economist sums it up: "How far renewable energy can develop without further subsidy is one of the world's hottest questions. It will surely need to become a lot more economic if the world is to Stop using f****l f**ls by 2100."
Incinerating one every two minutes in the case of the $2.2 billion (backed by $1.6 billion in government loan guarantees) Bright Source solar plant in California's Mojave Desert, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. My guess is that when the unenforceable political promises made in Paris collide with slow growth, the high cost of renewables, the difficulty of persuading v**ers with stagnant incomes to pay now for difficult-or-impossible-to-measure benefits in the far distant future, and the cost of natural gas and oil, it is the political promises that will be reexamined.
At has established a process for coordinated international action to reduce carbon emissions. It has forced countries to at least describe a plan to contribute to reducing their emissions.
Wh**ever their pique at a president who derides them as "deniers" of a "settled science" and says they threaten national securityclimate change being a greater danger than ISISthey cannot simply stand in front of the environmental express train and yell "Stop!'
Pressures on Paris promises will create an opportunity to reconsider how those promises are to be redeemed.
A carbon tax makes it possible to stimulate growth by lowering marginal tax rates on businesses and workers, and that a $16 per ton tax, according to Jerry Taylor of the Niskanen Center would add only about 16 cents per gallon to the plunging price of gasoline, which could be offset in whole or part by reducing payroll taxes, should we use the tax reform that may be in our future to replace the long arm of the EPA with an approximation of Adam Smith's invisible hand?" That's a long and loaded question, I know. But it does need answering.
source--weekly standard (1116/15), irwin stelzer, mark carney, john ncmanus, nicholas stern, indc, grantham research inst, elon musk, economist, jerryu taylor, niskanen center
thebigp wrote:
CLIMATE POLITICS--WHAT HAPPENS IN PARIS WON'T STAY IN PARIS--21H., B38
Obama, backed by the moral authority of Pope Francis, believes will befall the world if we do not slow the pace of c*****e c****e. There will be to treaty to enshrine the deal, for the very good reason that such a treaty would not receive the consent of the US Senate.
Still Others are determined to deny Obama a victory that in history to treat him kindly adding to his "legacy," as his supporters would have it. Most important to many members of Congress is a desire to put the world on notice that any agreement reached in Paris will be, to borrow from George Gershwin, "a sometime thing," to be abrogated by an incoming Republican president on day one of his tenure. But such a move by a new president is highly unlikely and, more important, undesirable. It is one thing to promise to wipe the slate clean, when campaigning for the nomination or for the office.
It is quite another to sit in the Oval office and announce to 200 countries that they cannot take the word of an American president, especially when it was that president who was the driving force in getting them to sign on to the Paris accord. The next president of the United States will have as one of his or her major tasks restoring the credibility of a country that has made a practice of abandoning its allies. Surely, voiding an agreement with our world partners is not a new president's sensible first step on the road to renewed U.S. credibility.
Energy investments have long lives, many 40 years or more. Businessmen, even while cheering the victory of a successor who will have no truck with the Obama version of g****l w*****g, know that in four or eight short years he or she will be replaced, perhaps by a greener presidentor that more evidence might have established that there is indeed a carbon-caused trend towards a warmer climate. So even if the EPA's so-called Clean Power Plan does not survive the court challenge being mounted by a variety of business interests and more than two dozen states, it already has changed how many companies do business.
These executives are convinced that the anti-global-warming train has left the station. As they see it, they are faced with a Hobson's choice: hop aboard or explain to shareholders why they are risking waving goodbye to billions in assets, as some in the utility and coal industries are finding themselves forced to do.
So there is a sense in which the state and corporate litigantseven those who profess confidence that the courts will find that the EPA has exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Actfor all practical purposes have lost their fight. Many states are accepting the EPA's offer to develop compliance plans suitable to their particular circumstancessubject of course to EPA approvalwith some likely to incorporate market-based cap and trade systems or taxes ; on carbon emissions in their plans. "The initial read is that a market-based approach is more workable.
As for the corporate sector, 81 companies with a combined market capitalization of $5 trillion have pledged to reduce their carbon footprints by signing on to the "American Business Act on Climate Pledge" sponsored by the White House, some out of conviction, others out of fear of the consequences of snubbing the president.
The American contribution to the Paris deal will rely on an elaborate and costly regulatory mechanism, taxing or pricing carbon so that consumers and investors, rather than regulators, can decide which use of f****l f**ls to reduce or eliminate.
The developing nations are arguing that we are in the mess in which we find ourselves because of the industrial activities of richer nations. and that any costs they are asked to bear to stem the rise in temperatures should be compensated by income t***sfers from richer to poorer.
Pope Francis, who has replaced Karl Marx as the world's most famous opponent of the distributional and ecological consequences of market capitalism, has made just such a case in his encyclical Laudato Si. Cardinals, patriarchs, and bishops from five continents, key leaders of the pope's divisions, inspired by that encyclical, gathered recently in Vatican City to appeal to the negotiators to craft a "fair. legally binding and truly t***sformational climate agreement... linking c*****e c****e to social injustice and the social exclusion of the poorest and most vulnerable of our citizens." They also called for "an end to the f****l f**l era". Satisfied with their work, they boarded planes and returned home.
At this writing, the intended beneficiaries of the income t***sfers, set to reach $100 billion annually by 2020, are not satisfied with the quality of the guarantees of payment: They want specifics on how the money will be raised before they sign on the dotted line.
The goal of the meeting was to limit increases in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Judging from the plans filed by China, the EU, and the United States, along with about 150 other countries that together account for 86% of the emissions, the combined effect of all the plans will fall short of that goalin part because China, which has misreported its coal usage since 2000 and emitting a billon more tons of CO2 than it has reported. Japan and Russia have offered a mere fraction of the reductions promised by the United States and the EU.
At a recent meeting in Berlin, U.N. officials assessed all the plans then available and concluded that "fully implemented,... the INDCs intended Nationally Determined Contributions have the capability of limiting the forecast temperature rise to around 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, by no means enough.
The plans contain no penalties for nonperformance. They are in essence promises by the signatories to take certain steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While government delegates to the Paris meeting are congratulating themselves on their cool accomplishments, their colleagues at home and the energy markets are creating a reality that will eventually make it more difficult than they now imagine to achieve their goals. The promises made may very well not turn out to be promises kept when they come into contact with the harsher political, technological, and economic realities that await their return home.
The collapse of commodity prices in the face of a fall-off of demand from China and a strengthening dollar. Combined with the increase in ine******y being experienced in many countries, slow growth is an invitation to social discontent, often resulting in the or the one thing politicians fear mostbeing turfed out of office.
Slow growth has another consequence not favorable to compliance: fiscal stringency. A shortfall in tax revenues needed to fund welfare states and military budgets inevitably causes treasury officials to hunt for cash. New taxes are politically unpopular, and the international mobility of the rich, and of major corporations, makes them a less promising source of added revenue than they once were. So nations short of cash have taken to reducing subsidies, often inefficiently deployed, to the renewable sources of energy that Obama and friends are counting on to replace f****l f**ls.
Renewable sources wind and sun especiallyalready suffer from the disadvantage of their intermittent availability and from storage costs (batteries) that are currently three-to-five times higher than levels that would make them economic.. The issue with existing batteries is "theyare expensive, unreliable, and bad in every way," says Elon Musk, who will sell you a battery-powered Tesla SUV for $135,000, or a sporty sedan for around $80,000, less if you net out the subsidy federal and some state governments pay those who buy these vehicles..
In America, regulators who thought it a good idea to force electric utilities to pay consumers for any excess solar power their rooftop panels rated at the same rates those consumers paid the utilities at night or when the sun doesn't shin.
Net metering" in the jargon of the trade, now realize that such consumers ire contributing nothing to the cost of the grid on which they remain dependent for reliable supplies. Customers subsidizing the solar users have become increasingly restive as middle-class incomes stagnate and other things they must haveelectricity among them become more expensive.
The cost of natural gas, the f****l f**l of choice of electric utilities. It has plunged from a peak of almost $12 per thousand cubic feet in 2005 to a bit more than $3 today. The American Council on Renewable- Energy notes that the growth in investment in renewable is likely to come to a screeching halt in 2017: When the full impact of the end of subsidies is felt, that investment will plunge by 73 percent, according to a study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. And if solar subsidies expire at the end of next year as now scheduled, solar photovoltaic installations are forecast to drop 46 percent. The Economist sums it up: "How far renewable energy can develop without further subsidy is one of the world's hottest questions. It will surely need to become a lot more economic if the world is to Stop using f****l f**ls by 2100."
Incinerating one every two minutes in the case of the $2.2 billion (backed by $1.6 billion in government loan guarantees) Bright Source solar plant in California's Mojave Desert, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. My guess is that when the unenforceable political promises made in Paris collide with slow growth, the high cost of renewables, the difficulty of persuading v**ers with stagnant incomes to pay now for difficult-or-impossible-to-measure benefits in the far distant future, and the cost of natural gas and oil, it is the political promises that will be reexamined.
At has established a process for coordinated international action to reduce carbon emissions. It has forced countries to at least describe a plan to contribute to reducing their emissions.
Wh**ever their pique at a president who derides them as "deniers" of a "settled science" and says they threaten national securityclimate change being a greater danger than ISISthey cannot simply stand in front of the environmental express train and yell "Stop!'
Pressures on Paris promises will create an opportunity to reconsider how those promises are to be redeemed.
A carbon tax makes it possible to stimulate growth by lowering marginal tax rates on businesses and workers, and that a $16 per ton tax, according to Jerry Taylor of the Niskanen Center would add only about 16 cents per gallon to the plunging price of gasoline, which could be offset in whole or part by reducing payroll taxes, should we use the tax reform that may be in our future to replace the long arm of the EPA with an approximation of Adam Smith's invisible hand?" That's a long and loaded question, I know. But it does need answering.
source--weekly standard (1116/15), irwin stelzer, mark carney, john ncmanus, nicholas stern, indc, grantham research inst, elon musk, economist, jerryu taylor, niskanen center
CLIMATE POLITICS--WHAT HAPPENS IN PARIS WON'T STAY... (
show quote)
No new taxes, period. We probably wouldn't be having this conversation about carbon at all if the environmentalists didn't k**l nuclear power in the US. if you do the research you will find that there are about 8 different entities who think they have the correct design for a fusion power plant. The one I happen to like the best is the concept proposed by Helion Energy of Redlands, WA. Their fusion concept would by-pass the steam cycle and does not produce any radiation. Other private companies with workable fusion reactor designs are Tri-Alpha , Irvine, CA and Lawrenceville Plasma, NJ. The Germans have their stellator and even the University of Washington claims to have a workable design. The time for a carbon tax was long past, the future will have new technologies, let's move on. Besides the Paris Climate Meeting was about world governance not g****l w*****g. The g*******t are the problem.
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