[Pen-l] Re: [eadvocates] My first take on the Obama Cap and Dividend Proposal

[Eugene Coyle <eugenecoyle@xxxxxxx>]

Thanks Jim Lazar and Ned Ford for your comments on the Obama plan on climate change.  The plan seems so detached from political reality that we need to participate at a much deeper level than tweaking Obama's.

Obama's combination of "Cap & Auction" and using the auction proceeds to cover some budget outlays and tax cuts is clearly doomed to political failure.  The proposal's potential impact on customer electric bills in the mid-west and south carves out a block of US senators large enough to stop cold Obama's stalking horse on climate change.

The Obama proposal does throw red meat to liberal environmentalists who love the auction part for both revenue and justice reasons.  But don't start spending the auction proceeds on your favorite item, be it energy efficiency or payroll tax cuts.  What it looks like to me is that insiders like Holdren, Chu, and others -- Rogers of Duke Energy, Rowe of Excelon and Cavanagh of NRDC -- are taking us on the road to a nuclear transition.  That means only a trivial reduction in GHG for decades.  Sayonara!!

A version of "Cap & Trade" has been enshrined at "the" policy choice as a response to global warming.  Rick Wolff made this comment about policy in another context:

The great practical importance of policy is to shape
events by restricting the public discourse about
what steps are appropriate to deal with problems. ...
 Economic policies have little relevance to actual solutions.
 
 Policies are relevant to controlling how people think about and act on
 problems. That control function emerges from the
 limits on what is considered as policy, limits
  accepted and enforced by the 'experts'.
 
         Richard Wolff, University of Massachusetts economist, in 'The Critique of Economic Policy' PAEReview, # 22.

Multitudes of environmentalists (and many senators) will keep busy for years trying to enact a meaningful "Cap & something" while the whole charade is designed to keep them busy.

Unless and until the analysis turns in a very different direction, emissions will not be reduced except through economic collapse.  An alternative is available -- sharply reducing working time -- but if we diddle with "Cap & whatever" we are failing.  Time to look in another direction.

Gene Coyle

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