The Island of Doubt

the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion--or about $175 per household. That figure includes the cost of restructuring the production and use of energy and of payments made to foreign entities under the program, but it does not include the economic benefits and other benefits of the reduction in GHG emissions and the associated slowing of climate change. CBO could not determine the incidence of certain pieces (including both costs and benefits) that represent, on net, about 8 percent of the total. For the remaining portion of the net cost, households in the lowest income quintile would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020, while households in the highest income quintile would see a net cost of $245. Added costs for households in the second lowest quintile would be about $40 that year; in the middle quintile, about $235; and in the fourth quintile, about $340. Overall net costs would average 0.2 percent of households' after-tax income.

I repeat: this is only slightly better than a wild shot in the dark. For one thing, there's no way to anticipate just how much various forms of electricity production and transportation and heating fuels will cost by then. But even if the CBO underestimates real costs by a factor of five, I think it safe to say the cost of ACES is more than acceptable. We're talking about less than 50 cents a day per household, according to this analysis; multiply that by five and we're still in single-cup-of-Starbucks territory.

So now that we've dispensed with the notion that this particular piece of legislation will hit Americans hard in the wallet, we're back to the more important question: Will it actually reduce emissions?

The Breakthrough Institute says no. Joe Romm says yes (and would probably be mad at me for even mentioning TBI).

I wish I had something useful to say on the issue, but alas, the bill is far too complicated and makes so many assumptions that I don't think an honest answer is possible at this or any other juncture. For starters, most of the actual emissions reductions brought about by the bill will almost certainly be made in the offsets market, which is pretty near impossible to regulate or control. It might work, but it might not. TBI says this is a good reason to oppose the bill. They might be right.

At the same time, I can't find a flaw in Joe's conclusion that this is the only game in town. He might be overselling the potential of ACES in order to drum up support, but I can see the logic in that. Joe writes:

... if Congress rejects this bill, then, domestically, legislative action on greenhouse gas emissions will be dead for a long time. How long did it take before we got a chance to take up serious health care legislation after it died? How long since we reconsidered an energy tax after the BTU tax died? How long since we have passed major legislation to strengthen the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act to deal with obvious dangers to public health? Still waiting!

But what if Joe -- and Al Gore, and most of the insider cheerleaders for ACES -- are wrong? Consider this excerpt for the current New Yorker (not online yet), in which Elizabeth Kolbert profiles NASA's Jim Hansen:

Hansen pointed out that the bill explicitly allows for the construction of new coal plants and predicted that it would, if passed, prove close to meaningless. He said that he thought it would probably be best if the bill failed, so that Congress could "come back and do it more sensibly." I said that if the bill failed I thought it was more likely Congress would let the issue drop, and that was one reason most of the country's major environmental groups were backing it.

"This is just stupidity on the part of environmental organizations in Washington," Hansen said. "The fact that some of these organizations have become part of the Washington 'go along, get along' establishment is very unfortunate." Hansen argues that politicians willfully misunderstand climate science; it could be argued that Hansen just as willfully misunderstands politics. In order to stabilize carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere, annual global emissions would have to be cut by something on the order of three-quarters. In order to draw them down, agricultural and forestry practices would have to
change dramatically as well.

So far, at least, there is no evidence that any nation is willing to take anything approaching the necessary steps. On the contrary, almost all the trend lines point in the opposite direction. Just because the world desperately needs a solution that satisfies both the scientific and the political constraints doesn't mean one necessarily exists.

Hansen's credentials on climatology are impeccable. Not so much on politics. That doesn't mean he's wrong, but....