A Liberal Who's Cool with Cap and Trade
0 Comments Published by Matt Miller on Thursday, December 20, 2007 at 10:04 AM.
Our first Guest Blogger post.
As an unapologetic liberal, but also a pragmatist, I'm glad this conversation is happening. The number one political issue for me is the perilous relationship between population growth, energy needs, carbon emissions and global warming. This is an issue that ignores borders, affects everyone, and will take a gargantuan effort to solve, using every tool in the proverbial shed.
What bothers me about the current debate is that there's too much of a "silver bullet" approach to thinking about it. Every lobbyist has a single interest in mind. The truth is far more complex. We need to keep ourselves under 500 ppm CO2 over the next 100 years and bring it down thereafter. There's no one solution to making this happen. It's not an "or" thing, it's an "and" thing.
We need wind power AND nuclear power. We need carbon taxes and CAFE standards, as well as conservation efforts and marketplace incentives. Restoring prairie land is good for carbon emissions, and that paints a pretty picture. But cap and trade and carbon offsetting (down to the individual consumer) is also an important part of the mix.
Some of my friends don't agree with this. They're skeptical of anything that involves the free market. They probably don't know that a Climate Exchange exists and would scoff if they did. My response is that there isn't time to do this exactly the way you'd want it to happen. I'd say the same thing to those in the Right who don't think there should be any interference via the government, or subsidies of any kind.
Things need to happen fast. Wind energy, as one example, can play a huge role quickly. But for that to happen, you need to make it affordable for companies to produce the materials and set up the infrastructure. One way of doing that is buying carbon offsets that contribute to subsidizing the infrastructure.
If there's any issue that is NOT political, it's this one. It's not about the planet, it's about the species. We have to think of ourselves, humbly, as animals. What are we good at? What are we bad at? What do we respond to? What do we ignore? I think cap and trade has a role to play. I think it's something people can get behind and feel good about. And in the incredibly complex world economic system we've created, it's one of the ways to work within that system, cut through the clutter and achieve bottom line emissions reductions.
~Marc Conklin
As an unapologetic liberal, but also a pragmatist, I'm glad this conversation is happening. The number one political issue for me is the perilous relationship between population growth, energy needs, carbon emissions and global warming. This is an issue that ignores borders, affects everyone, and will take a gargantuan effort to solve, using every tool in the proverbial shed.
What bothers me about the current debate is that there's too much of a "silver bullet" approach to thinking about it. Every lobbyist has a single interest in mind. The truth is far more complex. We need to keep ourselves under 500 ppm CO2 over the next 100 years and bring it down thereafter. There's no one solution to making this happen. It's not an "or" thing, it's an "and" thing.
We need wind power AND nuclear power. We need carbon taxes and CAFE standards, as well as conservation efforts and marketplace incentives. Restoring prairie land is good for carbon emissions, and that paints a pretty picture. But cap and trade and carbon offsetting (down to the individual consumer) is also an important part of the mix.
Some of my friends don't agree with this. They're skeptical of anything that involves the free market. They probably don't know that a Climate Exchange exists and would scoff if they did. My response is that there isn't time to do this exactly the way you'd want it to happen. I'd say the same thing to those in the Right who don't think there should be any interference via the government, or subsidies of any kind.
Things need to happen fast. Wind energy, as one example, can play a huge role quickly. But for that to happen, you need to make it affordable for companies to produce the materials and set up the infrastructure. One way of doing that is buying carbon offsets that contribute to subsidizing the infrastructure.
If there's any issue that is NOT political, it's this one. It's not about the planet, it's about the species. We have to think of ourselves, humbly, as animals. What are we good at? What are we bad at? What do we respond to? What do we ignore? I think cap and trade has a role to play. I think it's something people can get behind and feel good about. And in the incredibly complex world economic system we've created, it's one of the ways to work within that system, cut through the clutter and achieve bottom line emissions reductions.
~Marc Conklin
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