“What, in short, if there is government failure in the quest to address what is seen as market failure? James Hansen should consider supporting his [fee and dividend] scheme inside the ivory tower, not outside in the real world. The two are not the same.”
As California labors under its cap-and-trade law for stationary sources, and as Tom Steyer pushes the state to include the transportation market for allowances as well, words of warning come from climate scientist/activist James Hansen. Such updates his biting analysis back in 2012 against California’s initial program.
Hansen’s latest concerns Australia, which ditched their carbon tax. In a July 29th post, Facing Facebook: Australia’s Cap-and-Tax, Hansen states:
…The two main points that I made in discussions in Australia re their cap-and-trade were (1) it would be ineffectual in reducing emissions, and (2) it would be recognized as a tax, and thus it would not survive and grow at the rate needed to phase out emissions.
“Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail…. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.”
– Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), pp. 219.
“It is a mark of how far we have gone on the road to serfdom that government allocation and rationing of oil is the automatic response to the oil crisis.”
– Milton Friedman, “Why Some Prices Should Rise,” Newsweek, November 19, 1973.
Milton Friedman is best known for Monetarism, a school of economics that effectively challenged fiscal-side Keynesianism.
“[Sen. Harry] Reid’s attacks have drawn cries of McCarthyism from around the political world, including MSNBC host Joe Scarborough and Mother Jones editor Daniel Schulman. And they’ve even created discomfort among liberal big-money donors and operatives, who worry the argument might expose them to charges of hypocrisy, while they also question the effectiveness of running against donors who won’t appear on any ballots.”
– Kenneth Vogel, “Behind Harry Reid’s War Against the Koch Brothers,” POLITICO, July 7, 2014.
It was an all-too-familiar reframe: guilt by association (and in this case guilt from false/good association). At Climate Progress, Joe Romm breathlessly reported last month that “Bjorn Lomborg Is Part of the Koch Network—and Cashing In.” In Romm’s vitriolic words:
…You know the T-shirt-wearing climate inactivist Lomborg (aka the Danish Delayer) from such recent gems as “Subsidizing renewables won’t stop global warming” and “What an increasingly wonderful world” and “The Poor Need Cheap Fossil Fuels” (seriously — or not).