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Seventh largest economy just approved cap and trade. What will we do?
Dr. James Tansey, associate professor at the Sauder School of Business at UBC and founder of Offsetters.
Hospitals and schools must pay the Pacific Carbon Trust, but what are they really buying?
These Olympics use 5,600 vehicles, burn 20 million litres of petro, carve up nature. Critics cry 'greenwash!'
Usually, those of us who live on the West Coast are acutely tuned to tectonic activity, but the regulatory shift last week triggered by the California Air Resources Board (ARB) did not register on the seismographs of any major Canadian newspapers. This is surprising, given that the cap and trade system that California approved represents the most significant advance in climate policy in the U.S. and Canada in decades.
The ARB voted unanimously on Friday to approve the final regulations that will create the second largest carbon market in the world, beginning in 2013. While the U.S. Federal government's interest in climate policy has declined, California, still the world's seventh largest economy, will implement a cap and trade scheme that represents the most significant issue in U.S. climate policy since the Kyoto Protocol.
Mary Nichols, the chair of ARB linked the significance of the decision to broader energy security concerns that are perhaps more politically important in the U.S., "For over half a century, every American president has been calling for America to move away from our dependence on foreign oil and become energy independent. The reason we did not succeed in addressing our addiction to petroleum is because we did not have the right set of policy tools. Now we do."
How cap and trade will work
The cap and trade scheme will allocate and auction emissions permits to industrial sites that emit more than 25,000 tonnes of CO2e per year, establishing a fixed cap on the overall system. Over time, the number of permits available under the cap will be reduced, encouraging companies to innovate to find affordable emissions reductions. The most innovative companies will be able to sell their surplus permits to those with growing emissions, or less room to change. This market-based approach ensures that there is a binding cap in place, but that companies innovate and trade to find the lowest cost reductions in the economy.
Global trade in carbon in 2010 was more than $142 billion, underwritten largely by the European Emissions Trading scheme. Similar systems are being developed in China and Australia.
California is not acting in isolation. British Columbia was an early leader in Canadian climate policy through a series of policies under the 2008 Climate Action Plan. The province's Climate Action Secretariat has played a central role in building the WCI system, alongside California.
However, the front-running partners in the Western Climate Initiative are now Quebec and Ontario. The success of the provincial Liberals in the recent election and the rise of the NDP, who have aggressively advocated for strong climate policy, bode well for Ontario's involvement in the cap and trade system. Once linking agreements are in place, the cap and trade system will allow for investments to flow between the provinces and states, almost certainly creating new economic opportunities for WCI provinces, given the scale of California's economy.
With British Columbia’s participation, the WCI will cover up to 79 per cent of Canada's emissions, making the debate about the federal government's position on climate change almost irrelevant.
Will premier move ahead with WCI?
While British Columbia's interest in climate policy was affirmed by the premier earlier in 2011, the government's commitment to the WCI is currently subject to an economic impacts review; often in government this kind of study is the earliest sign of a retreat from a policy position.
Perhaps the province is feeling pressure from the oil and gas sector as it seeks to expand shale gas production. This would be surprising, given that market pricing signals would suggest that the cost to industry of participation in a cap and trade system would be lower than the cost of the carbon tax.
While there is an ongoing debate about the benefits of a carbon tax versus cap and trade, one of the advantages is that the latter system should establish an enforceable maximum level of emissions. Carbon tax pricing is based on an estimate of the price required to drive innovation in emissions reductions and provides less certainty, in return for greater simplicity. States and provinces that do not participate in the WCI will likely face charges related to the export of products and energy services, to ensure that businesses that participate in cap and trade are not penalized.
As Premier Clark considers whether to move ahead with participation in the WCI, the new question triggered by ARB's decision is whether we can afford to stand back and allow these seismic regulatory shifts to happen around us and not participate in a system with our biggest neighbour to the south and our strongest allies in Canada. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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snert
1 year ago
So?
If the other kids jumped off a cliff would you do it?
Jdt
1 year ago
Cliffs
Do climate denying flat earthers believe in cliffs? Is the consensus about gravity real? Some 'scientists' have their doubts.
pwlg
1 year ago
smoke and mirrors, carney shell game
Here we go again...
Let's see, oil and gas companies make modest attempt to reduce their emissions, receive millions of dollars of carbon credits, sell them to government agencies (taxpayer's money).
What's wrong with legislation to reduce GHG emissions. More marketeers to create a commodity from thin air.
What have we become now that we make our atmosphere a traded item in the stock market?
If you want to read about the bogus claims and failed carbon trading market go to:
http://www.carbontradewatch.org/
How about this one? The factories that manufacture the refrigerant in our refrigerators are not the cleanest in terms of emissions. There are 23 of these factories and in order to get them to clean up their act they were given carbon credits based on a formula that granted them $50 billion in credits. The cost to reduce and eliminate the detrimental emissions was $2 billion. These companies then made a net profit of $48 billion which they can sell to another industry to pollute our atmosphere with far greater impacts than the 23 factories. Go figure.
Sooke
1 year ago
California - be careful what you wish for
Thanks partly through environmental extremism like this, California has been rated the worst of the 50 states to do business in.
It also has a 12% unemployment rate, double that of BC.
Is that what we're shooting for?
pwlg
1 year ago
Europe's Carbon Market
The European Commission has identified carbon as a commodity that is susceptible to excessive speculation.
New regulations on carbon trading have been consistently opposed by financial services lobbyists in Europe.
In January 2011 the European Commission halted trading on carbon after a series of fraud cases were uncovered. Despite the halt the International Emissions Trading was in Brussell's indicating that there may be no need to regulate the carbon market.
In 2008 the world discovered that financial institutions everywhere had created financial instruments that created value from not only thin air or the thinnest air but from air that doesn't exist.
This same corporate body wishes for you to believe that they are capable of regulating themselves when it comes to carbon trading.
What is known is that verification of claims are not well established and most believe it is impossible to do so on a global scale.
If the financial mess of 2008, which is still impacting millions of North American and European residents, was able to slip through the so-called safeguards of the numerous security regulating bodies globally just how can a small body 'overseeing' the trading of carbon credits expose the fraud, corruption and deception which will be prevalent.
Despite billions of dollars being traded in the carbon emissions market in Europe most analysts believe there will be no reduction in emissions until at least 2020!
This is Thin Air Capitalism at its best and something we should oppose vehemently. Trading 'cleaner' air for more dirty air is hardly a solution.
MichaelT
1 year ago
A loyal Canadian would say,
A loyal Canadian would say, "We will become California" and at least begin to understand just how the cold is holding us down in this country. A little patriotism can go a long way.
Don't be naive, adapt or die is our only option humans, the solar heating is more complex than what our current crop of homo hubrist hopefuls opine half-wittedly.
frank2
1 year ago
Let's hope something
Let's hope something happens.
That said, I wish everyone was talking carbon tax, which is simpler, provides less scope for sculduggery, promises more complete coverage of emissions, provides incentives (revenues!) for government to monitor emissions (rather than following a BC Liberal system of letting firms do this themselves) and provides a basis for better estimates of carbon content in final products --especially important when it comes to international trade. Cap and trade promises more protectionism. Even the vaunted clarity of caps is dubious, as the cap figure will be subject to heavy political wrangling. The tax system can be monitored and adjusted to provide higher/lower emissions over time, without having to get into all sorts of allocations among industries....
Anyway, half a loaf is better than none.
mopled
1 year ago
It's funny how people who have seen through the skullduggery
surrounding the idea of trading "carbon" credits can't manage to reevaluate their positions on AGW. I have a hunch it was as the result of having seen Gore's movie on the big screen, surrounded by people, surrounded by sound, in the dark. What a wonderful place to experience the trance induction in the beginning of the movie. Sometimes it is hard to snap out of mass hypnosis.Maybe that's what is going on.
My Heroine of Investigative Journalism, Donna Laframboise, the creator of NOconsensus.org has published a book called
The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert,
Why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can't be trusted. https://www.createspace.com/3704702
Since the Carbon Tax boondogle is based on the IPCC's 2007 Summary For Policy Makers, released months before the scientific review was finished, I think it behooves you believers to at least read her columns if you can't bring yourselves to buy her very inexpensive book.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/09/12/al-gores-money-grubbing/
"Al Gore says climate change is a planetary emergency. But he’ll only tell a campus audience about it if the cheque is big enough."
The Truthinator
1 year ago
Cap and Trade is the newest Goldman-Sachs scam
Seriously, google it. This is going to be the next huge ripoff of future generations' wealth. All the usual Wall Street suspects are all for this, when simply capping and taxing are all that is needed and far more efficient. If you think letting banks loan money into existance is bad...
Arthur_Ralfs
1 year ago
Carbon pricing
Cap and trade sounds like a disaster to me for reasons already indicated in previous comments. Although probably better than doing nothing I much prefer carbon pricing.
However it is important to realize that a price is different from a tax. Confusion can arise because the extra price due to environmental costs would most likely be collected by the government and so would look superficially like a tax. However the extra price is to pay specifically for the environmental remediation needed as a direct consequence of producing and using the product. This is in contrast to a tax which is used to pay for things generally considered in the public good, like health care, physical infrastructure and policing.
A "green tax" that imposes a penalty on carbon but directs the money into general revenue misses at least half the solution. Again, the extra price
imposed on carbon must be used to pay for the damage being done, not to pay for health care, welfare, military hardware or anything else usually paid for by taxes.
Even if we eliminated our carbon emissions we would still have to pay taxes.
Rather the government can collect the extra price and create a fund for dealing with the problem. If global warming is real then dumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is unacceptable and the extra price levied on fossil fuels should be sufficient to remove the carbon from the atmosphere. The fund so created would rapidly
become huge and would be available quickly to fund entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, or indeed anybody, with a viable plan to remove carbon from the atmosphere as well as research and development into alternative sustainable energy, efficiency, energy retrofit rebates for citizens, funding for public transit or indeed anything that reduces our carbon emissions.
Although it is depressing to contemplate the way we humans are destroying our environment and spending trillions on killing each other I remain optimistic in one way. Human creativity, inventiveness and ingenuity are astounding. It is my belief that if carbon emissions were priced properly in the way I suggest then the problem would solve itself and we would probably be turning
the corner on our fossil fuel economy in ten years.
bob1964
1 year ago
California went to a carbon
California went to a carbon credit system not because it will work, but because people want something done without them having to make any changes. If you want something to be used less you charge more for it. Very simple, very effective, very unpopular.
Not many governments will have the guts to tax carbon as it's a great way to not get voted in.
mykolass
1 year ago
Writer bias
Let's re-read part of the brief bio of James Tansey:
"He is also founder of Offsetters, a carbon management solutions provider that was created at UBC and was responsible for making the Vancouver 2010 Winter & Paralympic Games carbon neutral."
In other words, he has a vested financial interest in the 'carbon' economy. His personal views cannot be separated from his financial interests, he'll make a lot of money if this happens in BC ! A bit of an 'Al Gore light'.
M
Chatterbox
1 year ago
Olympic Games Carbon Neutral???
How does it slide into a Tyee article, even in a speaker bio, that someone "was responsible for making the Vancouver 2010 Winter & Paralympic Games carbon neutral."
WE ALL KNOW THAT ASSERTION IS RIDICULOUS.
UBC's Rob VanWynsberghe, who heads the research team at the Centre for Sport and Sustainability, calculated--on behalf of the IOC--that "greenhouse gas emissions increased during the Games to eight times what they are normally" (quote from CBC).
The greenwashing of the Olympic Games is one of the biggest and most cynical scams, and does a real disservice to a once pure and positive sporting event.
Tyee, do not let this greenwashing slip by your truth squad again. It is insidious.
Fish-counter
1 year ago
Don't worry; nothing could move BC
in any direction at all. Not even the next Big One, the earthquake, that is. Regardless of what Califormia does, BC will do nothing useful. Sure there will be meetings. Someone will use the phrases "value-added", "over-arching values" and "consensus approach" and they will go home feeling smug and do nothing.
Don't get me wrong. BC will change, but not until the current Grade-12 class students are 32 years old and they finally decide to retire all the old farts and tackle the problems we have created for them.
[ADVOCATING VIOLENCE IS NOT ALLOWED ON THIS SITE. COMMENT REMOVED. -MODERATOR.]
mopled
1 year ago
Cap and Trade is an old Goldman Sachs interest
They were to be the only broker between the Chicago Climate Exchange and the European Climate Exchange. They were invested in both exchanges, and would have collected a fee on each transaction, but Chicago died last year. Boo hoo!
Please, you naive yearners after being shafted by professionals, read the following:
http://news.investors.com/Article/553236/201011091851/The-Crash-Of-The-Climate-Exchange.htm
The cast of characters is familiarly slimy.
ireckon
1 year ago
THE SIMPLEST SCAM
Climate change is documented and real. The earth has gone through numerous heatings and coolings.
Have scientists proven that carbon was responsible for all the previous temparature rises?
For that matter has any rational human being proven carbon is the main culprit?
Fish-counter
1 year ago
Ireckon: atmospheric CO2 may not be the biggest problem
Ocean acidity is. Get with the program and start filing posts about, "scientists deny the role of pH in the formation of calciferous shellfish" etc.
Carbon isn't the main culprit; carbon dioxide is. For the record, CO2 is a toxic gas. It is deadly at concentrations of over 8%. It causes panic reactions at around 5%. It is an ugly way to die. I mention this because many AGM deniers don't seem to know it.
Fossil temperature records show close to 100% correlation with CO2 levels. Don't take my word for it though. Don't take anyone's word for it. It doesn't matter what you think because you are nothing; an atomie that sits athwart men's noses. You probably think the fossils were put there by god as a decoy.
mopled
1 year ago
It's AGW, by the way
And CO2 isn't toxic. It is a natural product of respiration. Too much water or oxygen isn't good for you either. We are hardly in danger of being knocked out by the dreaded 8%, except maybe when cleaning out a fermentation vat!
You do know that 391 parts per million translates to less than 4/100 of 1%?
That's all the CO2 there is in the atmosphere, my fishy friend. It is scarce because plants on earth and yes, in the seas, "sequester" it as fast as possible.
Acid oceans and man-made global warming were both made up to bilk good hearted, hard working fellers like you of your hard earned dough!
RickW
1 year ago
Sooke
In very SMALL part, I have no doubt. Too nad you don't post links to your "information".
RickW
1 year ago
mopled - R U sure about that?
http://www.springerlink.com/content/32370807846477k5/
Is this what is called "read 'em and weep"?
igbymac
1 year ago
The author spells it out clearly
"The cap and trade scheme will allocate ... emissions permits to industrial sites that emit more than 25,000 tonnes of CO2e per year...[and] will be able to sell their surplus permits"
In other words, the biggest polluters are given very valuable permits open for resale. Why? Because they are currently the biggest polluters, why else?
Th is just more conservatism propping up the large private companies through free market capitalism largesse with society bearing the cost.
freewilly
1 year ago
another scam lets not get fooled again please
Anne Leonard's video explains concept and the situation well and addresses my concerns
http://www.storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/
Until we find a truely revolutionary, efficient, clean and cheap way of creating energy, nothing is going to change.
The environmental movement just piles on the guilt for living in an affluent society.
I didnt create Global warming, I was just born here. We had a plan and a vision long ago, our governments let us down and contracted out our destinies to big corporations.
We are running out of fossil fuel and/or going to extreme measures to extract it now, and thats the best reason to change our behaviour.
I believe science will come up with a solution if the solution isnt already staring us in the face. Best we can do, is not participate, just try to solve the issues of waste and polution that are right in front of us. Raise chickens in Vancouver, build homemade wind generators, knit, grow your own food etc.........
When the day comes, we can go back to walmart or canadian tire and buy our eternal battery backs.
mopled
1 year ago
Rick W, what's the problem
This is what the abstract says, You proved my point.More biomass is created by higher CO2 levels.
"Plants were grown under controlled conditions at 350, 675 and 1000 mgrl l-1 CO2. Plants grown at 675 and 1000 mgrl l-1 had 72% and 115% more dry weight respectively than plants grown at 350 mgrl l-1. Increases in weight were partially due to corresponding increases in leaf starch."
So higher levels of CO2 allow the plant to produce starch more easily. It goes on to say:
CO2 enrichment also caused a decrease in chlorophyll concentration and a change in the chlorophyll a/b ratio. High CO2 grown plants had lower photosynthetic capacity than 350 mgrl l-1 grown plants when measured at each CO2 concentration."
Obviously, the plans that had less chlorphyll had adapted to the higher CO2 levels because they needed less to do more when CO2 is elevated.
Pathologizing the normal is part of the Warmist MO.
Now YOU read and weep:
Hansen Says That US Winters Are Getting Warmer, As His House Gets Buried In Snow
http://www.real-science.com/hansen-winters-warmer
If CO2 could warm the planet, how come temperatures have declined, -4.8degF over the decade, even though CO2 continues to climb?
There is no longer a correlation between CO2 levels and temperature.
Repeat after me 25X
THERE IS NO CAUSATION WITHOUT CORRELATION.
RickW
1 year ago
mopled
Increased CO2 causes irreparable damage to plant structure. You can't pick and choose what you want to read.
And increased snowfall is not a function of decrease in temperature.
mopled
1 year ago
Such nonsense
And a strawman too! The plants adapted. You can't say there was "irreparable damage" since they continued growing. With higher CO2 levels. they didn't need so much chlorophyll. Find me the research that shows that plants are damaged. That's only your interpretation.
And I didn't say increased snowfall is a function of decrease in temperature, because when it's really cold, the air is too dry, but decreased temperature certainly contributes to snowfall, at least it did in NYC this weekend, earliest in 60 years.
"Early snow warns of harsher US winter"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0Vz3v9zYXU
Here the very latest scandal. BEST also tried hiding the temperature decline.
"Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html
freewilly
1 year ago
the earth is getting warmer
no doubt about it, doesnt matter who or what caused it. its happening. biggest worry is the vast amount of frozen methane sitting on the sea floor beds under pressure, way down there. When it melts, and its happening already. many more gases will flood the atmosphere.
hate to say it, but it may be too late.
http://blogs.physicstoday.org/newspicks/2010/03/frozen-arctic-methane-shows-si.html
many more articles and books about this.
in one fell swoop the planet could cause mass extinction. humans who in my opinion havent done much to make the situation better, have had some influence GW on the planet, but really, we dont have that much control, compared to what the planet could hand out.
mopled
1 year ago
Wow! It's a catastastroke!
It's just not as warm as it was during the Medieval Warm Period which wasn't as warm as the Roman Warm Period.
Too bad, freewilly, you are more likely to get another Little Ice Age than another warm period. Now that really is a catastrophe.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/10/new-climate-scare-europe-may-be-facing-return-of-little-ice-age/
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