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Lost in the jumble of news last week were the reports from a White House meeting with congressional leaders in which President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress were willing to abandon proposed legislation that would have set an economywide cap on carbon emissions.
That’s welcome news, because the economic consequences of such a broad cap remain unclear. Many predicted they would hamstring the economy.
The question is what to do next.
Even Republican senators say they support the idea of providing more support for energy efficiency and renewable energy.
At some point in the near future, it may be time to consider a straightforward carbon tax, which would allow people to easily see how much their carbon use — whether from electricity, auto fuels or home heating — is costing them. Such a tax would hasten the move away from the most polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy.
But doing so now would only cripple an economic recovery that is, at best, limping along.
It’s been nearly a year since the House passed a cap-and-trade bill that would allow carbon emitters to purchase the rights to emit more carbon from others. But that complicated scheme of dubious effectiveness didn’t garner enough support to move in the Senate.
So Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Kerry came up with another plan for capping carbon emissions. After the meeting last week, the two senators said they were willing to scale back their proposal, according to The Wall Street Journal.
One proposal now is just to cap carbon emissions from electric utilities, but even that is drawing opposition from Republicans and a growing number of Democrats.
The dispute highlights the complicated nature of the discussion, and why it is important not to rush through something whose consequences might be very unintended, indeed.
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Politics putting cap on the carbon cap: | Sourced From Gjsentinel |
Lost in the jumble of news last w… #carbonoffset
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Politics putting cap on the carbon cap: | Sourced From Gjsentinel |
Lost in the jumble of news last week were the …
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