Waxman-Markey Bearing Fruit Abroad
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (official photo)
No U.S. climate bill, no matter how tough, will really make a dent in global climate patterns on its own. Rather, the hope is that passage of a decent climate bill domestically will, like Europe’s earlier adoption of a cap-and-trade scheme, be part of an iterative international process moving toward an international accord and global action. And via Ryan Avent, some evidence from down under that it’s working. Per Reuters:
Australia’s emissions trading laws look more likely to pass a hostile Senate after U.S. Congressional support for a similar climate bill eroded political opposition in Australia to carbon trading.
One can only imagine that a bill that actually passes the Senate and gets signed by the President would do even more good. And of course this is a road that goes in multiple directions. Any positive action from the Chinese, even if mild, would make good climate measures more politically palatable in the U.S. and Europe. And the Chinese are, in turn, more likely to act when they see a more-or-less united West acting in good faith on this issue.
21 Responses to “Waxman-Markey Bearing Fruit Abroad”
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July 7th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
And the Chinese are, in turn, more likely to act when they see a more-or-less united West acting in good faith on this issue.
And if a “united West” credibly threatened carbon tariffs, the Chinese would really have no choice.
July 7th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
You are living in a fantasy world if you think the Chinese would ever be so stupid as to hamstring their economic growth. They care about lifting people out of abject poverty, not hypothetically, possibly, maybe decreasing global temperatures by some slight amount 100 years from now.
July 7th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
not hypothetically, possibly, maybe decreasing global temperatures by some slight amount 100 years from now.
You presume that the Chinese are as stupid and craven as you, Brad. That’s really quite insulting.
July 7th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
They care about lifting people out of abject poverty, not hypothetically, possibly, maybe decreasing global temperatures by some slight amount 100 years from now.
Yes, if there’s one phrase that can be used to decribe the actions of the Chinese over the last three decades, it would have to be “maximizing short-term profits at the expense of stability in the long run.”
July 7th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
In truth, the Chinese are simply trying to get the highest possible subsidies from the developed world when it comes to developing and deploying carbon-reducing technologies.
July 7th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Usually, the people “living in a fantasy world” are the ones who frame issues in absolute, either/or, ever/never terms.
July 7th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
You are living in a fantasy world…says the guy who thinks global warming is about hypothetically, possibly, maybe decreasing global temperatures by some slight amount 100 years from now.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I love this. Matt thinks that the US attempting economic suicide will get China to go along. Right. Meanwhile, other people want tariff walls.
It looks like we’re going to get a rerun of the 1930’s, with all of the worst ideas of Hoover and FDR packaged up at once. That should work out well.
The worst part of this is, the bill that passed the House would have minimal impact on the problems global warming worriers worry about, but it would increase the cost of energy (and thus of everything else) by a non-trivial amount. Even better, it includes provisions that are a wet dream for the bankers, since they get a new toy to create a trading bubble with, the carbon credit.
The bill serves no purpose if you worry about climate change, and it adds a huge drag on the economy – all while giving Wall Street free gifts. I’m trying to figure out which part of that is a good idea…
July 7th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
They care about political stability. If lifting people out of poverty does that, then they’re all for that. If they think that preventing massive coastal flooding from rising sea levels would be good for stability, then they’ll deal with that too. Although in China’s case, they’re just as likely to decide building a bajillion mile long sea wall is a good a solution as actually cutting down on CO2 and the like.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
And the Chinese are, in turn, more likely to act when they see a more-or-less united West acting in good faith on this issue.
I think this is right…the question is “how much more likely?”
If the Chinese government’s motivation in pushing rapid economic growth is to increase its national power vis-a-vis the West, then Western carbon taxes would allow them to enact carbon taxes on their own (since only relative growth matters).
But if the Chinese government’s motivation in pushing rapid economic growth is to maximize urban employment growth for its farmers, then it’s unlikely to want to slow that down, and so Western carbon taxes will have little effect.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
James,
Because democrats don’t care about results, they only care about intentions. You see, they have really good intentions (saving the planet) so the results are meaningless.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Even better, it includes provisions that are a wet dream for the bankers, since they get a new toy to create a trading bubble with, the carbon credit.
Robertson does have a point here. Check Taibbi’s new article (toward the end, “Bubble #6″).
July 7th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
From the post: Australlia’s emissions trading laws look more likely to pass a hostile Senate after U.S. Congressional support for a similar climate bill eroded political opposition in Australia to carbon trading.
From the post: No U.S. climate bill, no matter how tough, will really make a dent in global climate patterns on its own. Rather, the hope is that passage of a decent climate bill domestically will, like Europe’s earlier adoption of a cap-and-trade scheme, be part of an iterative international process moving toward an international accord and global action.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Rather, the hope is that passage of a decent climate
So hope is the official energy policy of the US. I guess that is what Obama ran on, but that seems pretty weak to me.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Isn’t it funny how the people claiming an incrementalist approach couldn’t possibly work also don’t think there is a problem anyway?
Funny, that.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
DTM,
People like you and Matt are the ones telling me that this is an absolute crisis, and that we’re all going to die if something serious isn’t done right now.
It seems to me that your endorsement of this bill implies that your crisis mongering is overdone at best, fear mongering at worst.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
People like you and Matt are the ones telling me that this is an absolute crisis, and that we’re all going to die if something serious isn’t done right now.
Yeah, except I never said any of that.
If all you got is strawmen arguments, you ain’t got much.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
The fact that a problem is particularly serious doesn’t make it less important for the efforts to address it to be, themselves, serious, implementable, and achievable.
It makes it more important that they be so.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
We are all going to die, what with being mortal and all.
We’re probably not going to raise temperatures or sea levels to the point of extinction though. We’ll just eliminate a lot of arable land, submerge coastal cities and render a lot of our southern land too hot for useful, dense occupation.
That might not seem bad, but consider the impact of the housing crisis. That is a crisis brought about by having too much of a resource. We didn’t lose anything, really, we just mismanaged our economy.
Now consider what would happen if we actually had large scale harm inflicted on our economy – reduced arable land, reduced access to fresh water, elimination of coastal habitation, elimination of southern regions as habitable land. These things would wreck our standard of living. As our standard of living declines significantly, our politcs will become violent.
We don’t need to boil the oceans or cause our ecxtinction for global warming to be catastrophic.
July 7th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Just to fill people in on the Australian debate: the Australian emissions trading scheme (called the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme or CPRS) is being attacked by both the Greens, and the denialist National Party (our rural conservatives), for being alternatively too weak on emissions and too tough on the economy.
In our upper house (Senate) the balance of power is held by two Independent Senators. One is a Christianist politician who did not seem to have firm views until he attended a Heritage Foundation conference in the US. He returned with a lot of ‘charts’ and announced that he wanted a fresh investigation into whether the sun caused global warming. No amount of evidence provided or meetings with Climate Scientists has shifted him – so he will probably vote against it.
So the question is whether our (right-wing) Liberal Party will vote for it. It has plenty of warming deniers in its ranks even though its parliamentary leader has accepted the science. That leader has recently been weakened by a botched political attack on Kevin Rudd, which is actually bad news for the CPRS because he will be inclined to oppose it to shore up his own internal party support.
Waxman-Markey is tougher on emissions cuts than the CPRS. W-M looks at 21% cuts by 2020, whereas the CPRS looks at 5-15%. CPRS does hold out raising that to 25% if there is an international agreement. The Australian Parliamentary Library has done a comparison: http://www.aph.gov.au/Library/Pubs/bn/2008-09/ClimateChangeBill.pdf
July 7th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
People like you and Matt are the ones telling me that this is an absolute crisis, and that we’re all going to die if something serious isn’t done right now.
Getting past the strawman: people like you, James, are the ones saying that as long as it doesn’t affect you personally, then there’s no crisis. And you’ll go on objecting to the putative long-term affects on your own bank balance till kingdom come.