Let’s Just Call It ‘Cap and Tax’

This article says nothing about the existing real technology to convert CO2 emissions into oxygen by use of green algae as implemented by Greenfuel Technologies (www.greenfuelonline.com). This company has an ever-growing nimber of sites around the USA where CO2 emissions are being eliminated. There is too much gloom and doom thinking by journalists, politicians and lawyers who imagine that technology stands still and never innovates anything new. These people need to get their heads out of the sand or wherever else the sun doesn't shine and find out what progress has been made and what can be done in the near future.

I read with frustration yet one more economist's criticism of those who put forth a solution while offering up none of his own. For years environmentalists have been dismissed for advancing ideas that were economically inefficient because they did not rely on Market forces. Now that The Market has been incorporated into a possible mechanism for reducing carbon emissions, Mr. Samuelson dismisses it as amounting to a tax, which we all know is distortionary -- that is why there is a deep divide between those who advocate CAT and those who advocate a carbon tax.

The basic tenets of supply and demand tell us that as prices rise, demand falls until we hit the choke price and transition to a substitute occurs. If The Market alone were allowed to dictate price, we would reach this transition point much sooner than the artificial curbing of price through subsidies and war with oil producing nations. Is Samuelson advocating that as a nation we instead agree to remove all subsidies and end all wars as a way of letting market forces induce the transition? Which of these two alternatives is mostly make-believe?

We need R&D with WW2 style focus and Ike style oversight. Is that possible anymore?

Cap it, trade it, tax it, or paint it purple, carbon emissions are still carbon emissions, and as long as we have them, they will pollute.

We need alternative energy sources that are non-carbon based. Period.

And until that is the focus, the rest of this is hocus pocus.

Their economies will grow. They don't have to grow much to end up gigantic .. their populations are more than 10x of ours. The US won't to be the source of everyone's revenue .. they will fund each other. I studied oil my entire senior year of college. We need an oil for energy alternative for a lot of reasons. R&D is the answer. The Cap and Trade method of getting us there is nothing more than another DC money grab.

I think it'd be really groovy to get an actual positive economist in here as a cybercolumnist instead of a shill for a way of life that outlived its usefulness shortly after WWII. JDNC-you'd be exactly right except that the economics of "China, India, Russia and the rest of the world" will be exploding in an era of $100+/barrel oil. They can ???dwarf??? all they want, if and only if they can afford it.

Right about the time America reduces its emissions with the accompanying economic belt tightening, China, India, Russia and the rest of the world will be dwarfing what America had previously done. They will NEVER sacrifice their economies. It will all have been for nothing.

Right about the time America reduces its emissions with the accompanying economic belt tightening, China, India, Russia and the rest of the world will be dwarfing what America had previously done. They will NEVER sacrifice their economies. It will all have been for nothing.

As any first year economics student would know, what the author fails to understand is that the fossil fuel based energy companies have been using the economic externality of greenhouse emissions without allocating it in the price. Cap and trade will force the consumer to pay the actual cost of the fossil fuel and not a lower cost that is already subsidized by the public through this externality, thus allowing true competition.

As any first year economics student would know, what the author fails to understand is that the fossil fuel based energy companies have been using the economic externality of greenhouse emissions without allocating it in the price. Cap and trade will force the consumer to pay the actual cost of the fossil fuel and not a lower cost that is already subsidized by the public through this externality, thus allowing true competition.

"ferval" paraphrases Genesis 1:28, but you need a more complete quote: "God said unto them [mankind]: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over . . . every living thing . . . ."

Now, we have just about filled the earth -- Now what? We have to avoid overfilling the earth, and stop using up resources we cannot replace. God gave this earth to us, but it is now our duty to keep it going. If we don't, we'll be totally screwed.

From the Green State. Enough already as the greenies want remove man from our state. I will follow when they leave first. Till then we have it gods given right to multiply and prosper as humankind. What are we going to do to temper (stop) these special interest groups from changing the very way we live? Shall we have a Washington Politician Party and throw them all in the bay? As I ready to light my torch, march around chanting get government out of free market!

A carbon tax is a much better option than cap and trade, but it must be passed along with an offsetting income tax cut for middle and lower tier wage earners. The middle class is getting pounded right now, and pushing a heavier tax burden on them isn't exactly going to help stave off a recession.

On the other hand, the boomers aren't geting any younger, and Congress desperately needs to raise revenue to get back in the black before the entitlement wave hits. To close the budget deficit, the next administration must push congress to go where the money is. Raise the tax rate on capital gains, just like Warren Buffet says.

Great column. One thing that Samuelson didn't mention is that cap and trade contains all sorts of ways to "contain costs" -- mainly by pushing compliance with the law far into the future. Breakthrough Institute has done an analysis which can be read here:

http://thebreakthrough.org/index.shtml