My family and me.
The Economist has a couple of articles on energy policy and climate change, both related to Britain's Committee on Climate Change, an untested body. My title comes from the first, which basically says that a carbon tax would be a good idea (I agree). The second sits rather oddly with the first, and says that the markets won't work, and doesn't mention the word tax at all. How can they come from the same report?
It looks like you can read the CCC report from http://www.theccc.org.uk/reports/progress-reports (not to be confused with the similar HoL committee here). No, the CCC is far more sexy and has a twitter feed and all that jazz. Still, the twitter feed will point you towards their report, so that is good. I just looked at the Executive summary - well, life is too short, no (I got home at 22:10: do I win a prize? Answer: no, don't be stupid William).
They do suggest UK action to underpin the carbon price could provide support for required low-carbon investments (e.g. through introduction of a tax that adjusts according to EU ETS price fluctuations to deliver a target carbon price in the UK). Unfortunately that seems to be the only place that the mention "tax" in the context of carbon price.
The presentation of the report manages to say Our analysis suggests that in a risky, uncertain world, even with very high carbon prices, the market may not deliver necessary low-carbon investment, resulting in high emissions intensity (and high costs for consumers). which I take to be the source of the not-tax-but-reform-markets meme. But I don't know where in the report itself this text comes from! At the moment, I'm not at all convinced they have clearly demonstrated why carbon taxes can't do much of the work, and why they shouldn't be pushed now.
[I forgot to mention: Gareth has already covered this -W]
Environment
Comments
As you say life is too short, so I have not even read the executive summary, but I think I can explain why a carbon tax is not guaranteed to work.
Say you taxed aircraft fuel to stop people flying off on their holidays, what would they do? They would spend the money they had saved by not flying abroad on traveling in the UK or caravaning in France.
In other words, if taxing people prevents them spending their money on one fuel consuming item, they will only spend it on another. Or if they do buy the original item and pay the tax, then the government will spend that tax because otherwise the economy would stagnate. So the money will come back to the consumer who will spend it on goods produced by (and from, i.e. plastics) fossil fuels.
The old economic idea was the labour theory of value. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
Today, pretty well all labour is supplied by burning fuels. Thus every time you spend money it is on something that has been created by burning fossils. The only quick way to reduce the growth in CO2 is to spend less, not to pass it to the government for them to spend.
You may say that taxing carbon would encourage people to spend their on other energy sources. If there was a source of energy which could fill the gap left by not burning carbon, then a carbon tax would work. But as things stand that is not the case, and the only way to stop CO2 rising is for every one to become poorer :-(
Posted by: Alastair McDonald | October 22, 2009 3:13 PM
> become poorer
Or smarter:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3135/2912280503_3d3525d996.jpg
Posted by: Hank Roberts | October 22, 2009 5:27 PM
William, I'm not exactly clear on your argument. The full report supports there being a carbon price, either through a hybrid instrument (EU ETS price floor) or carbon tax.
As a general comment, people do not like carbon taxes, and politicians have responded to this. People are more in favour of regulations and standards to reduce emissions, even if this is higher cost.
[EU ETS price floor is a stupid unworkable idea; fortunately it will never happen. My point was that "carbon tax" gets one very brief mention in the Exec Summary, easily missed, since there is no clear "these are our recommendations" section. If you've read the full report, great: where is the carbon tax bit?
people do not like carbon taxes, and politicians have responded to this. People are more in favour of regulations and standards to reduce emissions, even if this is higher cost. Alas this is true. The obvious stupidity of it does not recommend it to me, though. The reasons we all know, so lets not re-hash them. They are fixable -W]
Posted by: Thomas Bewick | October 23, 2009 3:09 AM
"where is the carbon tax bit?"
If you search the report for "carbon price", you'll find mention of a possible UK carbon tax to stabilize the carbon price.
Posted by: Thomas Bewick | October 23, 2009 10:09 PM
Dorothy over at RC
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/350/comment-page-5/#comment-140944
points to "... an even darker perspective, that of Australian professor Clive Hamilton, who has posted his October 21 lecture to the Royal Society of the Arts, “Is It Too Late to Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change?” http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/media/documents/articles/rsa_lecture.pdf.
Hamilton is:
1 Charles Sturt Professor of Public Ethics, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University (clive.hamilton@anu.edu.au).
The speech linked to:
2 It is adapted from Chapter 1 of my forthcoming book, Requiem for a Species....
Kids, don't try this on your home planet.
[I'm sure he is a very nice ethicist, but he is in no position to be giving lectures on climate change science. 'One of the most striking features of the global
warming debate has been how, with each advance in climate science, the news keeps
getting worse: I don't believe this, per http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/09/cassandras_of_climate.php. I must have ranted about tipping pont mania somewhere, but http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/10/cool_it.php is the best I can find right now. It now seems almost certain that, if it has not occurred already, within the next several years enough warming will be locked in to the system to set in train feedback processes that will overwhelm any attempts we make to cut back on our carbon emissions. - nah, this is b*ll*cks. The accelerating rate of melting of the Arctic Sea ice has shocked the scientists studying it, with many believing that summer ice will disappear entirely within the next decade or two. At that point I gave up. This guy is pushing the 2007 ice, he is pushing quotes about the 2007 ice, yet it is written in October 2009. He is deliberately ignoring the 2008 and 9 ice. He is lying to us by omission, very deliberately.
But I was making an effort to be nice, so I'd better stop that stuff.
In an effort to be positive, I kept reading on, hoping that he'd stop recycling Hansen and Lenton at some point and actually talk about ethics, nominally his strong point. But I didn't see him do that. So I think his whole approach is wrong. He has no value to add in discussing the science; people in that position should just stick to the IPCC. He should talk about ethics -W]
Posted by: Hank Roberts | November 8, 2009 12:56 PM
I thought I'd elaborate on my previous post.
William wrote:
"The presentation of the report manages to say Our analysis suggests that in a risky, uncertain world, even with very high carbon prices, the market may not deliver necessary low-carbon investment, resulting in high emissions intensity (and high costs for consumers). which I take to be the source of the not-tax-but-reform-markets meme. But I don't know where in the report itself this text comes from!"
Lord Turner of the CCC has explained the current problems in the market (Q230):
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmenvaud/uc616-iv/uc61602.htm
Professor Newbery has covered these issues as well:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmenvaud/memo/carbonmarkets/et0302.htm
William wrote:
"At the moment, I'm not at all convinced [the CCC] have clearly demonstrated why carbon taxes can't do much of the work, and why they shouldn't be pushed now."
Professor Grubb, who works on the CCC, has commented on the problems of a carbon tax (Q109):
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmenvaud/c393-ii/c39302.htm
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmenvaud/memo/carbonmarkets/et1902.htm
[That all sounds rather familiar (I think you meant Q 107). Carbon taxes face opposition from people who don't like the word "tax". There appears to be an illusion that by calling it "cap and trade" you can get meaningful results instead. I don't believe that. Yes previous attempts to put in place something like a carbon tax were riddled with bizarre loopholes for special interests. The motto to take from that is no loopholes -W]
Posted by: Thomas Bewick | December 31, 2009 9:06 AM