THEY ARE TALKING EVERYTHING WILL GO GREEN. IS THIS GOOD OR BAD. YOUR THOUGHTS  PLEASE.

Cap and trade is an environmental policy tool that delivers results with a mandatory cap on emissions while providing sources flexibility in how they comply. Successful cap and trade programs reward innovation, efficiency, and early action and provide strict environmental accountability without inhibiting economic growth.

Examples of successful cap and trade programs include the nationwide Acid Rain Program and the regional NOx Budget Trading Program in the Northeast. Additionally, EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) on March 10, 2005, to build on the success of these programs and achieve significant additional emission reductions.

Government involvement and meddling in the free market is almost always bad. It is speculated that Cap and Tax will increase the imported oil since domestic oil will be taxed so heavily.

It is another big government tax ploy. Spain has tried it and studies have shown it costs 2.2 jobs for every "green" job. Most of the money will go to govt cronies who have lobbyists. Big government ends up crowding out private business and not helping.

It will help but more so for other countries as more and more businesses will be looking offshore. We are in a global market and our Elected Elite need to realize we have to compete internationally and a bloated government with more regulation and higher taxes makes us less competitive.

I shall remain slightly in favor of this policy, even though I would much have preferred a "Pay as you Burn - not as you Earn" approach. For automobiles (personal use) a program such as the one used in Europe by the U.S. Military (monthly Gas coupons - set amount per POV @ set "Discounted price") might work for us civilians also. If one were to require more; one should have the freedom to purchase fuel at the standard price - with the additional revenue to be set aside for either "Green energy Tax credits, job training, R&D etc.

Will it help the ICF Industry? Good question...but I think that it won't hurt - as more and more people are realizing a more urgent need (rather than choice) to consider "Green" alternatives.

Lime kilns/cement-bakeroes have a substantial carbon output (worldwide it accounts for ~ 5% of the total carbon emissions) so it will impact the price of concrete, but not so much so's you'd notice. On a per-cubic yard basis it's ~200lbs/yard, o r~ 0.1 tons/yard. The emissions related to the EPS forms is at least an order of magnitude lower, so we'll ignore that for now.

Assuming the US cap & trade ends up near the European price levels (and there's no good reason to believe that it will- it's a different market entirely at the moment), carbon credits are running ~ €15 per metric ton, or ~$19/US-ton.

That would be a cost adder on the order of ~$2 per cubic yard of concrete. ("In the noise" on delivered concrete pricing.) If it doubles in the next 5 years as some are predicting, it still won't add up to a significant fraction of the concrete price.

Cap & trade is by all economists analysis (on both the right and the left) the slowest & most expensive way to reach the goal since it insulates the end buyer from the price, with insufficient price signal to induce different choices. But politicians love it 'cuz although it can be though of as a tax, it's an indirect tax, so they can't be accused of tax gouging. A Clinton-esque BTU tax would have a much quicker ramp toward the target, and end up cheaper overall according to most economists (again, across the political spectrum.)

That is a load of propaganda.  Cap and trade has NOTHING to do with the enviornment.  It is about taxing and controlling.

Besides human caused gorebal warming is a complete fraud.

Thanks for the replys, any more ideas. We need to look at this.

How many 'green' jobs are there really out there anyway? I can't remember what article I read a few weeks ago but it indicated that a lot of the current estimated 'green' job numbers were WAY bloated. The notion that we can create 'millions' of 'green' jobs in an economy that is losing 500,000-1,000,000 jobs per month is not only misleading but completely irresponsible. Sure there are a lot of issues with trade that need to be dealt with. Regulation isn't at this moment the answer. Our politicians (DEMS & REBS) are WASTING there time implementing meaningless and extremely dangerous anti-positive-economic legislation that is driving this country into the ground.

It just pisses me off that our politicians have used the down economy as an 'excuse' to introduce and implement bills that are not justified in terms of positively having an impact on the economy.

Obama zombies need to wake up. (just my .02) lol

Well, I see this guy is well informed.   ;-)

I suspect his failed and flawed political ideology is preventing him from seeing the facts.   Baldwin2012 is, of course, quite correct.

Ummm, actually I do know what's in it.  First, off, I'm an energy economist that has worked in the oil and utility industries for 20 years.  It's my job to know.  Second, it's really not hard to know what's in the bill -- just read it.  There are a lot of people that have a lot more than the "slightest idea" of what's in this bill.  They have taken the time to find out and inform themselves, instead of just spewing forth knee-jerk responses to something they know nothing about.

Now, if you have ANY knowledge of the history of this type of legislation you will know that that Baldwin2012's brief description of the success of past cap and trade programs is accurate.  But some people just don't let the facts get in the way of their opinions. 

Yes, the bill will increase energy costs.  We need to waste less energy and reduce the external costs of it's consumption.  A cap and trade program, compared to a simple tax, will produce a smaller overall cost, be more economically efficient, and reduce the burden on sources where it is very expensive to reduce their carbon output.  Ultimately, its a good thing for nearly all of the green industries discussed in this form even if a modest increase in cement costs increases the relative cost of using ICF's -- I think that relative cost increase will be modest and more than offset by grow of their business sector.

There are many that say this bill could be a lot stronger and that a lot has been given away to industrial interests in it.  That is all true.  I prefer to think that this is a good start.  This is what could be accomplished, politically, now.  The sad part is that there are a lot of people out there that are still uniformed, or refuse to be informed, and still believe that global warming is a "complete fraud".   Thankfully, with the facts increasingly unavoidable, their numbers are declining rapidly.

ModGreen,

As an economist I expect you are able to quantify the benefit of cap and trade bill. First, tell us which version you are basing your numbers on. Then tell us year by year (for say the next 50 to 100 years) what global temperature effect will occur due to passage of the bill. Degrees F or C will work fine.

Face it, this is a religion to you.  In fact there is no warming since 1998 by any and all measurments.    The great fraud is merely computer models that spit out what is programmed in.

All anyone needs to know about ration and tax and Gorebal warming

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE56562Y20090707?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Here are some facts for you. It's amazing how some people who don't know what they are talking about so vehemently deny that global warming is occurring. There is overwhelming broad scientific consensus on this.

See here for a good start:  http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm<!--Session data-->

Modgreen,

 

The earth may be warming, but to blame it on CO2 is a wild ass supposition based simply on computer models, which can't tell next week's weather correctly.  For some scientific EVIDENCE go back through the geologic record and see that the earth's temperature has fluctuated all over the map for the past 5 billion years.  I suppose you'd be telling the woolly mammoths that it was the carbon dioxide in the breath that caused the warming after the last ice age?

Ice core samples going back 250,000 years show that the earth temperature cycles over 1500 years.  Did you know that is was warm enough when Rome ruled Briton that they could grow wine grapes? Britons today are beginning to grow wine grapes again because the temperature has increased sufficiently. What are you going to blame the previous warm period on - Nero's burning of Rome?

What about the Middle Ages, often called the mini Ice Age.  What caused the cooling?  what caused the subsequent warming?  The earth's path through space is not perfectly repeatable, nor is the sun's output constant.  Variations in both cause significant changes in temperature here. 

I agree that we all can and should build efficiently as resources are finite.  I think that's why most of us are on the forum.  But to begin imposing legislation to cut a gas that composes a tiny tiny fraction of the atmosphere, based on computer models that can be made to predict anything, is crazy.  Worse yet it wastes the very resources we, our children and there children will be so dependent upon.  Do you understand that carbon sequestration from a fossil burning power plant, currently will take 20% of the plant's electrical output to run the capture system?  I know this number as I work with companies that design these systems.  A power plant being generally less than 30% efficient now means 60% more fuel being burned to run the system at the original desired final electrical output to the grid.  And that doesn't even include the cost to transport and dispose of it down a well or where ever.  What a waste!  And all because your MODELS predict an issue.  Get your models to tell me if it's going to rain this weekend reliably, then maybe you can begin to look to next month.  30 years from now? hogwash.  Look at history, look at the geologic record.   THERE is the science that debases the theory.  There is NO science that supports it.  Just a religous zeal based on a the great god - Computer Model.

The vast majority of the scientific community around the world disagrees with your view on global warming. It is far from, as you put it, a "wild ass supposition". They are looking at the same geologic record. They overwhelmingly disagree with the fringe position on global warming you are repeating above. The position you outline has been dispensed with countless time, and i have no interest, nor the time, to repeat it for the millionth time here. Quite frankly, and I know this to be true having been in the industry in the economic and political areas), the fringe position you've citing above only still gets some air time because it has been actively promoted and financially supported (including donations to politicians) by the oil and coal industries who clearly do not want to see the necessary changes in the consumption of their product.

Believe what you want, but the overwhelming majority of the scientific community does not agree with you. The position you outline is increasingly be relegated to the radical fringe, and increasingly is just a faint fanatical cry in the wind of naysayers and vested industrial interests. Sorry, but that's just the way it is, and continuing to put forward widely discredited positions isn't going to change things.

What I find so incredible about the current debate is the fact that there really hasn't been an open and honest debate on the subject.  If one has any doubt on the accuracy of the rate of warming, or how much is due to carbon dioxide, one is labeled as a tool of the oil companies or in their hip pocket, but if one argues the opposite no mention is ever made of how much money their side stands to make if they prevail.  For example there is a show on the Public Broadcasting System that is about global warming and all of the dire consequences of it and the imperative need for an immediate change.  It's funded by the world's largest manufacturer of wind turbines yet no mention of the conflict of interest is ever mentioned.  I think most of us on this forum want to see humans living with as little as impact as possible on our resources but that doesn't translate into blindly giving over more and more control to government bureaucracies that will control more and more aspects of our lives.

 This is a complicated subject and there are many aspects of it which I won't go into but here's a couple of points that I think should be addressed and that the true believers continually neglect.  One is we're not going to eliminate oil from our economy.  It's needed for far too many purposes.  If one is truly concerned about the environment one should be encouraging our oil companies to develop our own resources because our companies are far more environmentally aware and take precautions than foreign companies.  Another point is that the greatest polluter is poverty.  If one is really concerned about reducing pollution then one should be concerned about reducing poverty and should be doing everything they can to bolster our economy, not hamstring it.  There's many many more questions and points that are rarely addressed but I'll end with one observation I've had that has helped shape my skepticism on the subject.  Why is it that one only hears about the dire consequences of global warming?  There is never any good to come of it.  It's always, drought, bugs, disease, famine.  One would think that, as with any major change of a system, there will be bad and there will be good but apparently there will be no good with a warmer environment, be it caused by the sun, people or a combination thereof.  BTW I'm typing this from San Diego where so far we have been consistently 10 degrees below our normal temperatures since May.

To all the scientists out there who absolutely know that man is responsible for global warming, I have one question. Eons ago, before man was a factor in the earth's environment, what caused the global warming that melted the ice cap from off the North American continent? How do we know the same phenomenon isn't reoccurring?

As usual all you can do is spew fallacious argument.  That "everyone knows" and "all scientists agree" is a load of crap used by shallow thinkers.  Then of course you go on to personal attack.  You are pathetic.

Here is are a few scientists for you.  And you better hope to whatever tree you pray to that it starts getting warmer because the alternative is cooling and the starvation it brings.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

http://www.examiner.com/x-13886-New-Haven-County-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m7d6-Solar-Physicist-Predicts-Ice-Age-What-happened-to-global-warming


http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=5EF55AA3-802A-23AD-4CE4-89C4F49995D2

Thank you Wildblue for the links.  The New Haven one especially is interesting as it documents previous cycles and correlates them to sunspot activitity.  Now that may not the root cause, still a theory in itself, but it does document past temperature cycles.