The Problem With Carbon-Cutting Programs 219
Med-trump writes "Alberta's $60 million carbon-cutting program is failing, according to the latest report from the Canadian province's auditor-general, Merwan Saher. A news article in Nature adds: 'the province, despite earlier warnings, has not improved its regulatory structure — and calls the emissions estimates and the offsets themselves into question.'"
It's Alberta... (Score:4, Insightful)
What? Do you really think the tarsands province has an interest in putting carbon emissions on its beloved oil? Or that the federal Conservative government of the corporate elite wants them to either?
Re:It's Alberta... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's Alberta... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, we'll run out of fossil fuels but it won't be for a long time yet. Canada and the US both contain so much oil in the form of tar sands and oil shale that they could become the world's premier oil exporters. Techniques for extracting these reserves are being developed that would not require strip mining so you wouldn't even know there was an oil operation going on. Sorry, but the age of oil is not over yet unless you can find another source of energy and methods of storage and transportation that are as cheap, convenient and energy dense as plain old oil, gasoline or other hydrocarbon fuels.
Re:It's Alberta... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Techniques for extracting these reserves are being developed that ..."
That just raises costs even more. Funny thing is, without those really really heavy subsidies fossil fuels wouldn't be so cheap as they are today. Think about it for a moment, when it was first used, the oil came from wells so close to the surface, that drilling was so simple and could be done with that "ancient" technology. Nowadays we have oil platforms, underwater pipes and transcontinental pipes, gargantuan ships travelling from one side of the globe to the other. Costs are incredibly higher now, than 100 years ago. Fossil fuels will stop being used long before we run out.
You might argue that the technology doesn't exist. Well, you might find it shocking, but people don't invent things just because they "had an idea". There has to be a need for something, before it's invented. Oil is already becoming expensive, not expensive enough to ground aircraft and force ships to switch back to steam power, but enough to make people take another look at alternatives.
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oil subsidies? wtf? oil is fucking cheap. it's TAXED to a level where some other sources make seemingly sense if those are not taxed as highly.
oil price is chosen(via natural selection) so that it's cheaper than processing liquid fuel from coal - and even doing that is actually pretty cheap if you have to. you know, there's profit still in oil, profit that you could skimp on if you're the oil provider. all those technical advancements, supertankers, platforms, pipelines etc are there to make oil _cheaper_,
Re:It's Alberta... (Score:4, Insightful)
For politically incorrect sources of energy, you take all the direct costs. Then you add in the costs of regulation (never mind that they're largely already included in the price). Then you add in some amount you made up to cover conventional pollution. Then you add a bunch more to cover CO2. Then you add in the cost of any military presence you can, by logic chains strong or tenuous, connect to oil. Then you add in the cost of road congestion, lung disease, oil worker pensions, and anything else you can come up with. Then you double all this to provide a margin of error.
For politically correct sources of energy, you take the current costs (ignoring the huge direct subsidies and the fact that the providers are losing money anyway), and project them downward for technological improvement.
And still it's a close call.
A link about "really, really heavy subsidies".... (Score:4, Informative)
Next time you are standing on a road, have a look down and contemplate what you are standing on, why it is there, how it got there, and who paid for it.
Who paid for the crusades in Iraq? Who benefitted? Why? While we are at it, what is the cost of the middle east policy? Who benefits? Why?
Without even jumping into climate destruction ( although, again, who will pay for it? Who benefitted? Why? ), there is the 'other' environmental disaster - air pollution. How much does it cost? Who pays for it? Why?
Subsidy doesn't quite describe the situation; perhaps "hand out" or "graft" are closer to the mark.
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Next time you are standing on a road, have a look down and contemplate what you are standing on, why it is there, how it got there, and who paid for it.
First thing that should have come to your mind is that the road works just as well for biofuel-burning or electric vehicles as it does for fossil fuel-burning vehicles, that is, it doesn't force a choice of fuel. So it is disingenuous to claim it is merely a subsidy for fossil fuels. Especially when you consider that a considerable tax on gasoline exists in the developed world.
The "crusades" in Iraq? While a lot has been spent on them, most of the money hasn't had much to do with securing oil and more to
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So many questions, so few answers. I'll help you with the first ones
I'm standing on a road.
It's made of asphalt, largely a petroleum product
It was built to facilitate the movement of people and goods from point A to point B
It was paid for by the taxpayers who wanted it and who's lives would be a lot harder without it.
It is just silly to consider a road a subsidy, graft, or handout to a particular industry sector. Try riding your bike to get to work through miles of mud.
Re:It's Alberta... (Score:5, Interesting)
You seem to ignore the role of demand and scarcity; if the price of oil rises to $200/barrel, there are extraction methods that would be profitable, that are not profitable now. The technology does not "cause" the price, that is true, but in this case it only lowers the price from a very high level to one that is somewhat more tolerable -- the energy return on energy invested is not nearly as good. I assume, unless we get some really nasty climate-related bite in the ass, that we will eventually get all the oil that can be gotten, but not necessarily at anything we would call a "low" price.
And if that price exceeds the cost of alternatives for obtaining transportation (non-oil electricity + batteries; bicycles for short trips; robot-assisted taxi/carpooling), then we might leave it in the ground after all.
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A price of $200 per barrel translates to a cost of something like $7 per gallon. Which would put it on par with the price of the bottle of tap water you buy when you fill up. Perspective, it's important.
We're not leaving anything in the ground until it's used up. Increasing scarcity will drive the price up, and when the price goes up to where common folk won't bear it, we'll turn over the governments that won't take it by force. That's the sort of selfish critters we are.
Someday crude oil will be rese
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Cluebat for you (Score:2)
I invite you to read The Energy Trap [ucsd.edu].
Enjoy the other articles on that blog too.
bjd
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Well, for some values of "evenutally," maybe. But we still have something like two-thirds of all discovered fossil fuels left to burn, and we've not begun to investigate the arctic circle, the antarctic basin, some deeper reservoirs, methane clathrates on the ocean floors, permafrost hydrocarbons, limestone catalysis, and some other things I forget. The future is quite far, but I'm OK with that. I kind of like our CO2 blanket and the end of the glaciation cycle it means to me.
Unfortunately for Canada in
Re:It's Alberta... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, for some values of "evenutally," maybe. But we still have something like two-thirds of all discovered fossil fuels left to burn, and we've not begun to investigate the arctic circle, the antarctic basin, some deeper reservoirs, methane clathrates on the ocean floors, permafrost hydrocarbons, limestone catalysis, and some other things I forget.
I was curious about this a while back and one of my wife's uncles worked in the oil industry for years as a geologist so I asked him shortly after he retired, about 10 year ago. At that time I got the following numbers as the best estimates of the total oil that the world held:
6 trillion barrels as the estimated total oil the world ever held
4 trillion barrels as the maximum recoverable amount of oil at any cost
3 trillion barrels as the actual recoverable amount of oil at a profit
1 trillion barrels as the total so far consumed of the initial 6 trillion, thus 2 trillion are still recoverable at a profit
These number may vary but seem to be reasonable based off of things I have read in other sources
Re:It's Alberta... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's only 20 years of fossil fuel left in the ground. At least, that's what we were told in the '70s, the 80's, and the 90's. With oil usage increasing as much as it has been lately, mostly because of China, I'd guess that we're now down to 20 years left.
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Re:It's Alberta... (Score:4, Insightful)
Solar Panels....
It's not a substitute. Oil products are incredibly convenient. They concentrate energy into a small space (compare energy density for jet fule with Li batteries one day) doen't spontaneously burn (compare with hydrogen) but it burn easily when you want it to (compare with coal / wood etc).
However, oil is even more valuable as the base material for things such as plastics. Burning it is a true sin and our descendants are likely going to hate us for it.
To make solar panels a direct oil substitute, fundamentally we need processes for turning electricity (+CO2 from the atmosphere and H from water) into hydrocarbons. These do exist, but most are in early research stages and/or quite inefficient. Getting them going at large scale, together with much cheaper solar panels would be great.
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However, oil is even more valuable as the base material for things such as plastics. Burning it is a true sin and our descendants are likely going to hate us for it.
It is very likely I may be wrong but I thought that when oil is refined a certain amount can be turned into gasoline, a certain amount into diesel, a certain amount into plastic and so on. I didn't think you could use the hydrocarbons that make up gasoline to make plastic and vise versa.
Re:It's Alberta... (Score:5, Informative)
You can do a fractional distillation on crude and separate it into it's various types, tar, diesel, octane, propane, etc. You can also take long chains and "crack" them (break the chains) and create more of whatever you want, as long as it has a smaller chain.
Most refineries crack now and can get up to 50% octane from a barrel of oil. Without cracking it is less than 10%.
Re:It's Alberta... (Score:5, Insightful)
Energy is king.
Can't emphasize this enough. For example, if you need the elements carbon and hydrogen (basic building blocks of hydrocarbon chemistry) and you have a vast amount of cheap electricity available, then you can pull both from atmosphere. Electrolysis gets you water and heating wood in a reducing atmosphere (the trees which you can light up with LEDs) gets you carbon. Running hot hydrogen over carbon gets you methane. I don't know electricity-based tricks for going from methane to ethene (but they're there), but the latter is apparently the building block for most plastics.
Re:It's Alberta... (Score:4, Informative)
Fischer-Tropsch process [wikipedia.org]
Thermal depolymerization [wikipedia.org]
Staged reforming [wikipedia.org]
Gas to liquids [wikipedia.org]
Biomass to liquid [wikipedia.org]
Coal liquefaction [wikipedia.org]
If we really wanted to get serious about renewable fuels in the US we would quit wasting our time with corn to ethanol and setup some biomass to liquid hydrocarbon plants.
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Re:It's Alberta... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly the line of reasoning that explains why every government program inevitably gets bigger and bigger.
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Why would anybody possibly stay in a province whose tax rate increases by 20 percentage points? Increase taxes (at least on that scale) and you choke off your taxable base.
Not much of a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not much of a surprise. Kyoto was designed (intentionally or not) as a subsidy that would allow business as usual while just writing a check to Eastern Europe. The baseline CO2 levels were set at 1990 levels, which was right before the collapse of the USSR and the resultant massive decrease in their CO2 output levels. (Likewise, our CO2 production has decreased since 2007 since our economy has tanked.)
The various carbon markets and carbon trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud. It comes as absolutely no surprise that Alberta's emissions trading scheme has run into identical problems.
While carbon trading schemes are admirable in their attempt to internalize external costs, in practice they're just not a very good idea.
Re:Not much of a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
The various carbon markets and carbon trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud
Equally true statement for all other markets if you cut out the word "carbon"
The various markets and trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud
Its just another crooked tax and intermediary scheme to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. What a huge surprise.
Re:Not much of a surprise (Score:4, Informative)
This is why carbon offsets and caps don't work. Nobody is encouraged to stop polluting.
I don't think you get the point. A carbon market is intended to cover the externality of carbon dioxide emissions. If it does so and the market participants don't change their behavior, then that is an acceptable outcome. Behavior modification is not an indication that the system isn't working, it's rather an indication that the uses of fossil fuels or whatever are important enough to pay the additional cost.
Re:Not much of a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not much of a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not much of a surprise. Kyoto was designed (intentionally or not) as a subsidy that would allow business as usual while just writing a check to Eastern Europe.
Because Eastern European countries have such great international bargaining clout? Come on. It's not a subsidy, it's not a conspiracy, it's an effort to do something good about something bad. They picked a year with a target that they thought they could hit. Obviously some places would be effected by this to a greater degree than others.
Doubtless there was some weedling and self-centered manipulation going on, so what? Whenever you have a broad and painful treaty like this there will always be someone hurting more than others - you make it as fair as you can and then you suck it up, because it has to be done regardless. My own country, the United States, pollutes far more by every metric than any of the signatories of the Kyoto treaty so we, to my chagrin, decided to take our ball and go home. Hopefully we'll step up and own to some of the problems that we've caused with the next one.
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>>Because Eastern European countries have such great international bargaining clout?
That's why I said, "intentional or not"... 1990 was a terrible year to pick. The worse bit is, even the wikipedia page for Kyoto has a graph labelled "what they promised and how they are doing" with all of the countries with, quote, large percentages achieved in CO2 reduction all Eastern Bloc Countries.
In order:
Latvia
Lithuania
Estonia
Bulgaria
Ukraine
Romania
Poland
Hungary
Slovakia
Russia
Czech Rep
before getting to non-Eastern
Alberta tar sands (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alberta tar sands (Score:4, Insightful)
Dirtiest source??! I'd say they'd have to work really hard to be dirtier than deep sea drilling has been.
Re:Alberta tar sands (Score:5, Informative)
Dirtiest source??! I'd say they'd have to work really hard to be dirtier than deep sea drilling has been.
Oil sands extraction produces massive quantities of contaminated (lead, arsenic, mercury, ammonia, naphthenic acids, and other fun things) water which is stored in tailings "ponds" (they're really more like lakes) which currently cover about 170 square kilometers.
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Bet you've never been to alberta in your life either, or visited one of those sites after they've finished the cleanup either. We don't use tailings ponds anymore.
Re:Alberta tar sands (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Alberta and I can assure you that tailings ponds are still in use.
Re:Alberta tar sands (Score:5, Informative)
We don't use tailings ponds anymore.
Bullshit. The Government of Alberta's own tar sands propaganda site [alberta.ca] backs up GPs claim of 170 square kilometers of tailings ponds— that's about two Manhattans. It goes on to state that "(e)fforts continue to develop new tailings performance criteria, management technologies and practical solutions to reduce and potentially eliminate tailings ponds as we know them today." Still, tailings ponds are expected to expand to about 250 square kilometers— almost three Manhattans— by 2020.
Re:Alberta tar sands (Score:4, Insightful)
That tagline's got to go. (Score:3)
I live in Alberta, I've flown over the oil sands, and I've seen the tailing ponds. Calling it the dirtiest source of petroleum is just stupid.
If you don't think resarch is being done to reduce carbon emissions, then it's clear you haven't actually looked into the matter. All the major players are invested in it, often collaboratively. Same with research on
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It is good that some people are starting to realize that the toxic tailing ponds need to be cleaned up but it looks like this will be a huge problem.
http://notquiteunhinged.blogspot.com/2008/04/alberta-tar-sands-tailing-ponds-fast.html [blogspot.com]
And here's the current state of "cleanup":
"The tar sands tailings ponds currently con
Like they're going to do anything effective (Score:3, Insightful)
Like the Alberta government is going to do anything effective when almost their entire economy rides on the oil and gas industry. And like the Conservative Federal government is going to call their heartland to task.
Offsets are problematic (Score:5, Informative)
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"Carbon offsets" are just more bullshit to funnel money from the poor to the bankers.
But it's actually worse than that, because third-world governments are now evicting people from their land so they can plant trees to rake in some of that cash:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/22/uganda-farmer-land-gave-me-everything [guardian.co.uk]
The Global Climate Warming Change scam spreads evil wherever it goes.
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Agreed. We're supposed to reduce carbon output worldwide, and carbon trading doesn't do this. It just stops new carbon emitting economic development in poorer countries by allowing existing carbon emitting industries to emit more. I don't see how this is supposed to help reduce CO2 levels. It really is just another add on to the political bullshit machine.
On the other hand, it could force poorer countries who have already traded their carbon output away to become experts in "green" technology. Eventually th
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Re:Offsets are problematic (Score:5, Informative)
What are the problems with the credit methods?
Lax verification for carbon-offset projects has been a problem for several schemes. For the credit-creating projects to be effective at reducing overall greenhouse-gas emissions, the scheme operators are supposed to approve only projects that would otherwise not have gone ahead. The auditor-general criticized the Alberta Department of Environment and Water for allowing carbon credits for emissions-reducing activities that have become common practice.
The Alberta report found a lack of standards for how agricultural credits were verified — not one of the credits the auditors checked could be confirmed. It also pointed out that there was no standardized, accurate method for measuring the emissions from oil-sands tailing ponds, which store contaminated water, clay, sand and bitumen from oil-sands processing.
Many opponents of emissions trading programmes also argue that companies are likely to purchase carbon offsets instead of reducing emissions by adopting new technologies or changing their operating practices.
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just pay for activities that would have occurred anyway without the subsidy
I don't see that as a problem. The goal is to reduce CO2 emissions on a global scale, which is what happens. Intentions are irrelevant, and impossible to know anyway.
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But you get more bang for the buck if you can avoid rewarding "reductions" that would have happened anyway, and use the money instead to cause reductions that would not have happened on their own. I agree that the spin -- "oh, teh incompetent government and international global warming conspiracy" -- is wrong, but it would actually be better if we could audit these a little more stringently.
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We know very well how much coal, oil, natural gas etc is consumed in various countries. The IEA keeps pretty good accounts that you can download.
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Goes way, way beyond that, kiddo... (Score:2)
Va
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This is relatively easy to fix. Just tighten up the rules on offsets.
Relatively easy to fix, assuming the political will is there. But it's not. This is Alberta we're talking about. The province whose former Environment Minister said that it's not his job to protect the environment.
Regulation 1.0 (Score:2)
Some passionate NGO spokesperson comes up with a master plan to correct the problem they've achieved public passion for or recognition of, legislators pass legislation allowing a plan to be implemented. The actual implementation and regulations are then turned over to government employees. Per TFA:
"In Alberta, the Department of Environment and Water requires facilities to have their emission estimates (and offset projects) independently verified. The department also uses another set of verifiers to con
Doesn't help when states sell carbon... (Score:3)
...did that read weird to you? Never mind. What happens is highly industrialised states go cap in hand to developing states and buy carbon allowance off them - basically a license to carry on polluting at the rate they are yet still meet their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.
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If properly implemented, it is a reduction, because, while the purchaser of the credit does not have to reduce their emissions, the seller of the credit does. The theory is that it really doesn't matter who reduces their emissions, as long as somebody does.
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problem is, it isn't. States that sell carbon offsets can do so because they have little industrial infrastructure (for example, some of the poorer Indian states like Himachal Pradesh which either don't have significant industrial output or don't have significant fossil fuel consumption). Some weird math caps the carbon output according to population among other variables; this cap is not hit by those who sell carbon offsets to those who, if allowed to continue, would actually increase their output due to i
ALL OF THIS IS BUNK (Score:2)
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Proposal for an Emmission Trading Infrastructure (Score:2)
First, there is a maximum of CO2 which earth can process, lets call that value X. Second, there are 7 billion people on earth. Logic and principals of the enlightenment allow us to conclude that every person has the same right and therefor the same share of that CO2. In recent years that value was calculated and the result was 1.5t CO2 per person. So if everyone gets a certificate over 1.5t CO2. The problem with that. Every Chinese is already at 2.5t, European are at 10t and the US with 19.78t CO2 per pers
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First, CO2 is far more tied to economics and ag than to ppl, so per capitia is not only unfair, it is just plain brain-dead.
Secondly, nations will lie about population.
Thirdly, this encourages ppl growth, not cutting them back. You actually REWARD a nation to have more ppl. Kind of a foolish concept.
Fourth, US is already below 18 and probably closer to 15, while EU is climbing towards 15, unless you choose to ignore those nations with all of your growth. [wikipedia.org]
Fifth, the idea of
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The primary idea is, that the people get the certificate not the state. So companies have to buy CO2 certificates from people. And as the CO2 amount of certificates is reduced every year, it will get more expensive for those polluting the most. For example, when the Chinese would increase their CO2 output they need more certificates making it for them more expensive. And in when the population growth in one country certainly that country's people get in total more certificates. However, the total number of
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China gets about 85% of their electricity from Coal and natural gas, of which 75% is from coal. Now, China is building 1-2 NEW COAL PLANTS of
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Does florida require ALL HOMES to upgrade that way? Nope. Just new ones. That is a diffe
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That's an interesting claim, but it doesn't seem to hold water. Sulfur emissions are predominantly from power plants (73%), and the U.S. hasn't exported power plants to China. You could argue that exporting industry to China has effectively exported power plants to China, but as far as I understand the number of power plants in America has not fallen by 33%, thus actual reductions have been achieved and the sorry state of China's sulfur emissions are the result of China not taking any such measures. And
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Turn that into a slowly increasing carbon tax and you have the same effect with the benefit of improved state/federal finances.
Make it the cost of doing business and get it done (Score:2)
You know, businesses don't seem to have a problem with fines and all manner of requirements. Why not simply REQUIRE the reductions where technically possible (forget about 'cost efficiency') and update the requirements as new technology arrives.
They can and they will do it. They will scream about "lost jobs" and "cutting back" and crap like that, but it's a huge lie -- they know if they want to earn more, they have to product more. If there is additional overhead involved, they will eventually accept it
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Then the next obvious answer becomes "tariffs and embargoes." The fact is, this is the planet we are talking about -- the only planet we have access to. We are seriously putting money before survival? We need a little more sanity.
China will stop polluting when it becomes a requirement of doing business. The EU, I have little doubt, would follow the US if such trading requirements were made. After that, you would see some amazingly fast reform occur when China's best customers won't buy from them. And
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As to China, it is already a requirement of doing business that they allow their money to float, stop subsidizing, stop dumping and even per the Japanese treaty, stop the heavy polluting. Yet, they simply ignore it and other nations allow it because businesses push this so that they can get
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Corporations will just tell their employees (i.e. senators/representatives) to enact an exception for them. See Sears in Chicago.
Reagan's cap & trade works. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not simply REQUIRE the reductions where technically possible (forget about 'cost efficiency') and update the requirements as new technology arrives.
1. Because it is disconnected from the physical limits of the environment.
2. Because it would require a myriad of standards, each one of which will be twisted by it's fight with industry. (ie: it makes "divide and conquer" an obvious strategy for industry)
I'm not saying that standards enforced by law are a bad thing, I just don't think they're the best solution to such a broad problem. In the early 90's Reagan was proud to be a leading supporter of the international cap and trade treaty that is now in place for sulphur emission. As usual, economic alarmists of the day all started screaming about an economic apocalypse. The treaty was signed by most industrial nations, the economic apocalypse failed to materialise and acid rain has gone away as a major environmental problem. As you say this is how it always goes, at least it has been in the 50yrs I've been watching. Some other examples are, lead in petrol, asbestos, clean air act(s), DDT, tobacco health warnings, the list is long and the propaganda on every one of these issues from industry has been without exception utterly immoral.
International cap and trade treaties are by far the best long term solution to AGW and many other tragedies of the commons (such as overfishing)...
Cap - Because there is time dependent physical limit to the resource.
Trade - Because capitalist markets are the most efficient way to distribute a finite resource.
The size of the cap is the only detail that is rightfully determined by science, the rest of the detail is politics and accounting. Will greed and fraud occur? - Of course, it does everywhere else.
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But you know, in many areas, we are ALREADY doing this. We stopped a huge amount of pollution which companies have been known for -- water, air and land. This is just another kind of pollution which needs to be controlled. It's a difficult one to be sure. But you know? There is great research being done in the area of small nuclear reactors which can go a long way to reduce the amount of carbon emitted either by using the power to capture the carbon or by using that instead of burning things.
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Actually, new rules and regs isn't anything like programming. But to go with your programming analogy, by tightening constraints, you force the coders to make their code more efficient and perhaps even learn to write in assembly language to get things done instead of using inefficient canned functions.
As I said before, this method is already in use for other forms of pollution and has been wildly successful against everything from acid rain to the hole in the ozone layer, from clean water to cleaner land.
T
Why bother with costly program? (Score:3)
When you can get your conscience clear by buying a couple of trillion carbon from http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com/home.do [freecarbonoffsets.com] ?
Definition of failure (Score:4, Insightful)
The program may be failing...
and that may mean the policy is succeeding.
A carbon tax would be much simpler (Score:2)
It would be much simpler for each country to tax carbon, and redistribute the revenue equally among all citizens of that country. It would give everyone an incentive to conserve, without being a hardship on anyone.
Markets work best when market failures, such as negative externalities, including carbon emissions, are corrected. If creating CO2 has a nonzero detrimental effect on the environment, then it just makes sense to internalize that cost into the price of, for example, gasoline.
This is a surprise why? (Score:2)
The same massive industries that report that they make no taxable profits also report that they now run on unicorn burps and pixie sneezes? Gasps of amazement.
If you make a box for it, they will check it.
The REAL problem? (Score:2)
It's all based on a LIE. And about 30% of people buy it. The percentage is quite high among /.ers so I will now be modded down. But who cares? SOMEONE has to speak the truth.
Some Numbers (Score:3)
Canada is the third worst CO2 emitter per capita in the world behind the US and Australia. (Surprise! China is actually quite low per capita, lower than than any EU country.) At 40M tons of CO2 per year the tar sands oil production is the single largest emitter of CO2 in the world, but even if the oil sands shut down completely, Canada would still be #3 ahead of Saudi Arabia. The sad part is that only 10% of the tar sands can be made into marketable oil by current means, the other 90% requires more energy to process, which means emitting even more CO2 per barrel. Already the process requires half the energy the oil can release to process it. Even if it reaches 100% they'll still do it if it makes money. They're going to need several nuclear power plants to keep up with production targets.
Granted, any country with long cold winters has a serious disadvantage. Air conditioning usually has to make a 15-30F difference to beat the heat, but in Canadian winters the furnace is called upon to make a 50-70F difference compared to outside temperatures. Up here, air conditioning is optional, heating is not. Many European countries employ district heating systems [wikipedia.org] to provide more fuel-efficient heat, but the lack of population density makes it less feasible in Canada to the extent seen in Scandinavia for example.
Here's a nifty gadget to check the CO2 emissions of any country [http]. I found Sweden to be interesting, they have roughly the same climate as Southern Ontario, the most populated area of Canada.
Sales Tax (Score:3)
Alberta is the on province in Canada without ANY sales tax. The reason for this is the oil companies pay enough to basically run government on those revenues.
If you don't see a conflict of interest there, you are blind.
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Interesting)
That fact remains that the air is completely horrible in China. Sure it is not a permanent or perfect solution to move pollution to china but in the short term, at least, it greatly improves our quality of life.
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The initial purpose of a smokestack is to provide draft to the hearth, the heated flue-gasses are expanded and therefore lighter than air, so the taller the smokestack the more air is drawn through the hearth.
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this is actually interesting. The entire idea of cap and trade is that a maximum is allowed if we count every business everywhere. How would cap and trade not also fall victim to this stream? Does this idiot proclamation apply to everyone who thinks this is a good idea?
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spot the weasel... (Score:2)
'Tar sand' is the historical name, and even Britannica lists 'Bituminous sand' as an alternate name for 'tar sand'. Notice 'alternate', not a primary.
White washing, a speciality of weasels, won't disguise the travesty that mining the tar sands is. Oil sand, and every other lame euphemism the clueless promote, will be just as dirty as 'tar sand'. It isn't just sticky, like tar, to the touch.
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That's a bit of a naive analysis. The government is elected by the people. I suspect that the people of Alberta are more willing to put up with extractive industries than we would like, although I'm sure they are by no means unanimously in favor of the tar sands: the main winning things in Alberta that I'm aware of are agriculture and mountains. But there's no doubt quite a bit more short term money in tar sands than in growing wheat, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to us that the Alberta governmen