Quote:
Obama is choosing to be weak
By Clive Crook
Published: June 28 2009 19:09 | Last updated: June 28 2009 19:09
As he promised last year, Barack Obama has brought climate change and healthcare reform to the centre of the nation’s attention. As well as evangelising, he is pressing Congress to act. Last week the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill to curb carbon emissions, a measure that, if enacted, would touch every part of the US economy. Both House and Senate have drafted far-reaching healthcare bills, with stunning price tags.
Mr Obama aims to keep his promises, which is admirable. Unfortunately, there is a problem. This is not, as many Republicans argue, that neither issue requires forthright action. Both do. The problem is that the bills emerging from Congress are bad and Mr Obama does not seem to mind.
The cap-and-trade bill is a travesty. Its net effect on short- to medium-term carbon emissions will be small to none. This is by design: a law that really made a difference would make energy dearer, hurt consumers and force an economic restructuring that would be painful for many industries and their workers. Congress cannot contemplate those effects. So the Waxman-Markey bill, while going through the complex motions of creating a carbon abatement regime, takes care to neutralise itself.
It proposes safety valves that will ease the cap if it threatens to have a noticeable effect on energy prices. It relies heavily on offsets – theoretical carbon reductions bought from other countries or other industries – so that big US emitters will not need to try so hard. It gives emission permits away, and tells utilities to rebate the windfall to consumers, so their electricity bills do not go up. It creates a vastly complicated apparatus, a playground for special interests and rent-seekers, a minefield of unintended consequences – and the bottom line for all that is business as usual.
|
Full Article Available at
FT.com
I largely agree with this assessment. Cap and Trade or Carbon Taxation schemes should be relatively simple to implement, the entire purpose of either system is to apply a direct cost to carbon emissions and to allow the industry to find the most efficient solution, this is overall not that difficult and can fit into a short document one which is largely comprehensible and an easy read. 1,200 Pages suggests nothing except failure to adhere to the original purpose of attaching a cost to carbon and instead a document which will simply skew the market into all manner of perverse incentives. Although I don't particularly find fault with the idea of a pressure valve (I lean more towards a standard per ton tax as a general rule because of the heightened instability involved with a Cap&Trade system) ultimately the analysis is sound, the bill itself seems primarily a feel good measure which won't accomplish anything good.
A similar view comes to health care reform. Half measures don't really help anyone, and the proposals given by congress simply seem to exaggerate the worst parts of our health care system, while making no attempt to actually improve matters for the general public. As it stands I can't really support either issue, and not because I'm not sympathetic to either issue, but because the bills don't really make a genuine attempt to solve the issues.