Articles by Gar Lipow

Carbon tax is better on merits, cap-and-traders trade away political advantages

Standards-based regulations and public investment are superior to either carbon taxes or cap-and-trade. But we need some form of carbon pricing to reinforce public action, and a carbon tax is superior to carbon trading.

The main policy advantage cap-and-traders offer over a carbon tax is certainty. They claim that it is better to fix the ceiling on emissions and let the price vary than to fix the price and hope it produces the reduction you want. However, most cap-and-trade advocates favor an escape clause, a price ceiling which would trigger the issue of more permits, either because they see it as the price you have to pay to get a bill through, or because they honestly favor the policy. In either case, once you have an escape clause, you no longer have the certainty advocates tout so highly.

Standards and public investment — primary means to lower greenhouse gas emissions

More and more climate science seems to imply we need to eliminate most greenhouse emissions over a time frame closer to 20 years than 50. This has a number of important implications:

It strengthens the case for standard-based regulation and public investment as the main drivers of change, with price as secondary reinforcement. As Tom Laskawy points out, price "will certainly help smooth the bumps in the road to a low-carbon economy. But it will be governments -- through mandates, efficiency requirements and infrastructure spending -- that will pave the way."

It implies a strong case for diverting carbon revenue into refunds rather than green investment. If we effectively lower emissions, then emissions will have to begin to drop faster than prices rise about halfway through the process. At that point revenue from auctions or taxes will peak and begin to drop. However, the transition will only be around half-over at that point. We don't want reductions to depend on a declining revenue source before emission drops are complete. At the point where dedicated revenues drop, the pressure is always to be "responsible" and reduce the program to match the declining funds, rather than finding additional sources.

It implies a strong case for deploying the technology we have rather than waiting for breakthroughs. If we have to massively reduce emissions over the next 20 years, a five-year delay loses a quarter of our transition time.

We need to cut emissions faster than 80 percent by 2050, but how fast?

For a long time, the climate science consensus suggested that to avoid increased average surface temperatures beyond those to which our civilization could adapt, we need to reduce emissions 80 percent by 2050. (No one suggested we stop there, but that goal was advocated as a way to avoid tipping points.)

There were voices from the beginning arguing that this was too slow a phase-out. But as Joe Romm has argued, the consensus-seeking nature of the IPCC process tends to downplay and ignore real dangers. It has become obvious that we need to reduce emissions faster than the conventional wisdom of a few years ago suggested.

For example, the rate at which the oceans absorb CO2 has slowed drastically as they become saturated. This suggests another tipping point looms: when the oceans begin to release the CO2 they contain, they'll become a source rather than a sink. At any rate, if the ability of nature to absorb our emissions has dropped, we have to cut emissions more than we would have.

Similarly, the ice caps are melting at a much faster rate than mainstream predictions suggested. Because water reflects less heat than ice, this is another cooling mechanism that has been reduced. Again, we have to cut those emissions faster than we planned.

How fast do we need to cut emissions?

Media Matters commenter provides one of the greatest snarks at the denier wingnut mentality

Craig C. Clarke made one of the all-time great comments about delayers and deniers over at Media Matters: