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Cap and Trade is about as far away from the free market principal as you can get. You're creating a market for something that has no value except that its been legislated. This will artificially increases the cost of one source of energy to the benefit of others. The reason renewable energy is not used is that it cannot compete on a playing field that is already heavily titled in their favor through current subsidation.
Short term because people will be using less energy which is one of the principals of Cap and Trade and because renewables will become more competitive through artificial price increases in other sectors you might get the desired result but at great cost.
Long term however since the renewable sector no longer has any incentive to innovate and make their product truly competeitve with fossil fuel new technology is going to languish. In fact you're putting the ball back into the fossil fuel sectors court which you may think is good thing but it's certainly not as the incentive to truly go renewable has been removed from the table.
Cap and trade is a short term solution to a problem that needs long term solutions.
Free market?
As much as I don't like wiki links, this one is pretty good, I suggest you read it.
This was the first implementation of cap and trade in the United States. It was put into law in 1990, now wait for it, who was the President in 1990?
Should have stuck to your guns and not linked to wiki.
Ironic as it is the Acid Rain program ignored the science and passed purely on politics.
Here's the real deal (it's very lengthy article this is just the first few paragraphs):
Quote:
The EPA vs. Ed Krug (http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/epavskrug.html - broken link)
ACID TEST
by William Anderson
Published in Reason Magazine, January 1992
Some people don't like what Edward Krug has to say about acid rain. That was apparent when he spoke at a seminar on the subject last April in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Krug, a soil scientist who had helped conduct a 10-year federal study of acid rain, spoke with some expertise. He told his audience that he and his fellow researchers on the National Acid Rain Precipitation Assessment Project had determined that acid rain was an environmental nuisance, not a catastrophe.
It was a message that environmentalists didn't want to hear. One woman hissed at him, "You need to take a reality check."
Unfortunately for Krug, she isn't the only one who doesn't like his ideas. Congress ignored NAPAP's findings, and when Krug tried to point out that the federal government is forcing utilities to spend billions of dollars to solve a problem that doesn't exist, a federal agency did everything in its power to keep the media from listening to him. Krug's research has upset the plans of some of Washington's most powerful bureaucrats, and they aren't happy. Because of them, the 44-year-old Krug has experienced numerous reality checks.
Krug is respected in his field. His mentor, John Tedrow, a world-renowned soil scientist at Rutgers University, says that Krug borders "on genius." Krug has developed an internationally accepted theory on lake acidity. He has published in prestigious scientific journals. He organized the Acid Rain Symposium at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served as an adviser to two directors of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But today, because of politics, he cannot find work in his field.
After Krug appeared on 60 Minutes to talk about what his research for NAPAP revealed about the relationship between acid rain and acidic lakes, the EPA branded him a scientist of "limited credibility," called his statements "outlandish," and said he was "on the fringes of environmental science." The Agency, under pressure, later recanted those accusations.
After he published an internationally praised acid-rain assessment, the EPA organized a scathing secret review that other scientists called a "sham." The producer of the 60 Minutes broadcast says the EPA attempted to discredit Krug while CBS was preparing the story. The EPA denied the charges.
Why did this happen? "He was," a colleague says, "a bit immature in the area of political science."
Ever wonder why you don't hear a lot of scientist speak up about this issue who hold an opposing view where the environment is concerned? You have a well respected scientist that has helped form the conclusions accepted by other scientists for a study commissioned by the US government that lasted ten years and cost 600 million dollars and he still got ran over by the politics involved with environmentalism.
Certainly cap and trade will lower CO2 emissions but at what cost? You can't label it free market because again the idea is to make renewables competitive by titling the table even more in their favor. Driving up costs of one product to make another more competitive and to try and control consumers habits through the same rate increases is about as anti free market as you can get.
Even if CO2 is an issue none what so ever. China just recently passed the US as the number one producer of CO2 emissions and India is pulling up fast. Neither of these countries is slowing down but instead accelerating the use of coal for an energy source and combined they account for roughly 1/3 the world's population.
Even if CO2 is an issue none what so ever. China just recently passed the US as the number one producer of CO2 emissions and India is pulling up fast. Neither of these countries is slowing down but instead accelerating the use of coal for an energy source and combined they account for roughly 1/3 the world's population.
Be that as it may, the reach and depth the United States still holds over other countries in terms of influence is still quite prevalent. One needs to only look back less than a year ago to see how prevalent that influence is by taking a look at what happened to the rest of the world when our economy crashed.
One of the main reasons China and India have become so powerful is because of their enormous exportation of business into our country. If we can truly get serious about limiting carbon emissions, it provides us with a "leg up" to demand that all products and services delivered by these other countries be done through 'Green Measures.'
More or less, this can be comparatively examined with how the U.S. (and many other countries) attacked the problem of nuclear weapons. When we all begin to work together on a global front (U.S., the EU, parts of Asia, etc...) we can more or less 'force' countries like China and India to succumb to those 'demands.'
It makes things tremendously more difficult by demanding a country to do something that you are not doing yourself. The largest problem with this approach is that it will take a lot of time. Unfortunately, places like India and China will be even slower to pick it up. Nonetheless, I think it's one of our only options.
Amazing that people still believe in global warming.
Moderator cut:
Do not Hit and Run post. Please state your reasonings why you agree or disagree as in debatting.
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