Henry Waxman is doing the right things....

Today’s post: Wednesday, 6-3-2009

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

Cap & Trade laws are one way to do that. They may well be an essential part of making it happen in time.

If the caps are really low and the penalties much more expensive than eliminating the excess CO2 released or paying to help others do so in some way, they will get the job done.

1. But to do that, they have to exist at all and begin soon.

That means that they have to be passed into law sometime. And we need for them to pass in the next few months to have them work in time.

What exercise benefits do you get if you never start exercising?

What health benefits do you get from losing excess fat, if you never give up soft drinks, fast food French fries, and other fattening foods at all & never eat even a bit less in any way whatsoever?

None. Absolutely zero.

2. What happens if you do these things but only do a tiny bit – not enough to really do very much?

That depends.

If you gradually do more and keep track of what results you get and then do even more and keep it up, the benefits can be outstanding and massive – even better than your wildest dreams in fact.

If you simply stop or never do any more than they tiny bit you started with, you’ll likely get no benefits to hardly any.

3. What happens if you stop going to work in order to exercise 8 hours a day and stop eating anything except vitamin pills and water?

You can starve or get admitted to the hospital with exhaustion or get evicted from where you live. Not good outcomes at all.

Your intentions were good but you’ll cause more problems than you intended to solve.

In Henry Waxman’s efforts to pass our first Cap & Trade bill, he made a number of concessions that make it initially weaker than we need it to be to solve the problem of excess CO2 emission; & he specifically allowed some of the companies and industries that release the most CO2 to initially escape it in large part.

So, Bloomberg reported that Waxman was criticized by Greenpeace and other environmental groups who said he conceded too much to such businesses, and they will seek to reverse that in the measure before it goes to the full House for a vote.

Who is correct here?

Is Henry Waxman’s set of concessions the right way to go? Or should the bill be re-written as these environmental groups wish?

It can’t be simpler. If the initial cap and trade bill is as strict as these environmental groups would like, one of two things will happen. It simply won’t pass and will have zero effect; or it will pass and harm our economy in these recessionary times and it will infuriate the companies and communities that have no lead time to adjust to it and it will very likely be revoked or successfully evaded.
That won’t, repeat will NOT, get us where we need to go.

So, the environmental groups are well meaning, but unrealistic people.

They very clearly are wrong.

But that’s not the key issue here. If they knew why Henry Waxman was right, they would be much less worried and active in trying to reverse him. They might even support his efforts!

Here’s why he is totally correct and the environmental groups should support him instead of opposing him.

Once we have a cap & trade system that starts in a way that avoids harming the people and businesses that can prevent that from happening, given what else is going on, we will have a cap and trade system within a few years that is very effective.
Here’s why that is so.

Today, we do not have enough renewable energy built to take over supplying the people and industries electricity to replace coal fired electricity. And in many cases, we don’t yet have the electricity distribution grid to get it from the producers to the people and industries who use it.

We don’t yet have the majority of people driving cars that get over 30 miles a gallon or have many industries produce as much using half the electricity they do now.

But in 2020, we will begin to have these things. At that time, we can make the cap and trade a good deal more restrictive and have more teeth.

Then, about that time, between those cap & trade rules increasing the cost of using coal and oil, and new technologies and economies of scale beginning to make renewable energy cost less, the market itself will begin to favor using renewable sources. And within another 20 years after that, we can make the cap & trade extremely restrictive because we WILL be able to do the job with far less electricity from coal and oil.

But a good bit of that scenario is based on having a cap and trade system at all & having it in place soon.

If the environmental groups succeed in making the cap & trade bill more restrictive now, we may not have one or we may have one that does more harm than good.

So, Henry Waxman is correct. Even more than that, as the Bloomberg article points out, though it did take many stages over several years, Waxman’s efforts to increase the regulation of tobacco have become effective.

I think that given today’s situation, the cap & trade bill as he has it now may well pass. And, once it has done so, it will be made stricter at the times that our economy is able for it be. Further, that will happen more quickly than either the environmental groups or many of the businesses who release CO2 today now imagine it will happen.

The people in the environmental groups should remember this.:

The income tax was initially only a tiny tax on people with truly huge incomes. Now almost everyone pays a much larger percentage of their income than the initial percentage the income tax started with.

That did take a long time to be sure. But not only will the same thing happen if we succeed in passing an initially not very restrictive cap and trade law, for dozens of reasons, the transition will be something like 10 or 20 times faster.

But to recap the key point, we have to have a cap and trade bill, however mild initially, for that to occur.

Three cheers and applause for Henry Waxman!