THE VINE FEBRUARY 12, 2010
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
If Congress doesn't pass a climate bill this year, then, as I've mentioned before, individual states are likely to pick up the slack, either through their own efforts to promote clean energy or through regional carbon-trading systems. But an obvious pitfall of a regional system is that participation is totally voluntary, and a state can always leave for any reason. Arizona is announcing today that it's pulling out of the Western Climate Initiative, which plans to set up a cap-and-trade system for seven states and four Canadian provinces starting in 2012. Berkeley economist Matthew Kahn ponders the consequences:
1. Will Arizona's decision trigger a domino effect such that the regional pact unravels? Why? Fear of leakage of jobs. Will Nevada now say to itself; "If we remain in the pact; our electricity rates will be higher (reflecting carbon pricing) but Arizona's won't be; footloose electricity intensive consumers such as a Google may move to Arizona rather than here." If Nevada believes that this story is true, then their probability of staying in the pact declines. Erin Mansur and I have been studying this job migration issue as a function of local electricity prices and will report some results soon.
2. If other West Coast states drop out, how does this affect California's AB32 initiative? In particular, do issues of thin markets arise as there are not enough buyers and sellers in the carbon market to have a competitive market?
3. If all of the West Coast States remain in the cap & trade initiative, will there be more R&D innovation because there are a larger number of potential buyers of "green energy" low carbon? Hopefully California is a large enough market to create a "home market" effect so that innovative nerds keep tinkering away even if Nevada and Arizona drop out.
Kahn also points out that the "guinea pig" states that go first on cap-and-trade are providing a real benefit to the rest of the country—they're testing out a brand-new policy, seeing what works, what doesn't. That info is a positive externality, and there's a case for finding some way to compensate these states. Under the House climate bill, states don't get penalized for acting early (they're allowed to trade in their existing pollution permits for federal permits), but they don't get rewarded, either.
(Flickr photo credit: Al_HikesAZ)
4 comments
Mr. Plumer, could you please comment on this fascinating interview with Phil Jones. I note that he is a much chastened believer. For example he has dropped the hockey stick, and he agrees that there was no statistically significant warming from 1995 to 2009. http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/01/column-the-us-is-broke-heres-why-.html
- bulbman1066
February 14, 2010 at 11:06pm
I apologize. I put the wrong URL below my comment. Here is the right one. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
- bulbman1066
February 14, 2010 at 11:10pm
Jones says there was a positive warming trend from 1995 to 2009 that was close to the 95% significance level, but not quite there (which is not surprising given that it's a fairly short time period). What's surprising about that? In any short time period it's harder to be confident that trends are not just statistical noise. That's why you look at longer-term trends. Here's a good post on that subject: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/how-long/
- Bradford Plumer
February 15, 2010 at 12:47am
Plumer, in his other posts, seems too anxious to explain away the mounting evidence that there is little science behind the scarier warming claims and that there is no consensus. It is time for the IPCC and others to withdraw their reports, books, and papers, fire people who are responsible for this sloppy science and all the mischief being uncovered daily, and bring in a new group of uncompromised scientists to take a fresh look at what they have found. The earth is not heating as rapidly as the warmists expected, and that piece of good luck buys us the time we need to slow down and collect more data. Since the earth has not warmed significantly in 15 years, take a good 15 years and report back to us. We should have a clearer picture by then. In the meantime, work quietly, please. Recent polls show that global warming is now a dead issue (dead last to be exact), and climate science is no longer taken seriously by much of the public. Until climate scientists and politicians get their story straight, let's assume global warming was a false alarm, celebrate this good news, and focus our energy on solving real environmental problems--the local, not the global, kind. Here is a laughingstock alert for those who "know" that AGW is real. A hundred years from now, it is certainly possible that history and science textbooks will have a brief sidebar poking fun at an amusing case of public hysteria. It seems a a prominent politician and a group of scientists convinced a gullible public that carbon dioxide, the earth's fertilizer, is a pollutant. Imagine that. Carbon dioxide a pollutant. People were sure silly back then.
- kcrichmond
February 15, 2010 at 4:06am