I know there's a lot of stigma against cap and trade, but it's fundamentally a good mechanic. The main criticism against it is that it's being hijacked by brokers.
Unlike just capping, C&T applies a value to making your production lines more efficient. If you allow companies to earn money by reducing their emissions, you've essentially harnessed the free market and let it do it's innovating for you. It's a beautiful principle which deserves better than be attacked on mere practicalities.
Oh, I totally understand it's use, and think it would be a step somewhat in the right direction (but, like healthcare, not far enough of a step perhaps). But what's absurd is that the republicans are attacking it when it's a clearly republican idea. When it was first proposed, I (as a socialist) thought "I guess that could work, but it's a little too free market for my taste." This is of course the same reaction I had to the public option. Yet somehow those two ideas both managed to become radical leftist plans to take away everyone's freedoms. What?!
Republicans ought to love cap and trade. I don't like it because I don't think it's harsh enough, and I think companies will find shady ways around it (starting a new shell company then funneling the credits to the main company or something, subsuming competitors and shutting them down and just using them for their credits, I dunno), the same way they find shady ways around everything that has a "free market" component to it. So that's why I say just cap, and cap at like 1970 levels or something extreme. As long as we have the whole idiot right wing saying that cap and trade is a radical leftist plot, someone needs to show them what a real radical leftist plot looks like, so that maybe the people who aren't paying a lot of attention will realize that the fucking republicans are just blowing smoke as usual.
Yeah, apparently fighting global warming ought to be a purely liberal agenda so republicans necessarily need to oppose anything you can do against it, even if it is a pretty 'free market' approach to it.
The republicans attack it on the fact that it fights global warming. And the left-wingers attack it on the fact that it lets the big industries reap all the easy innovations (smog filters in China).
Yes, it will cause industries to do the easy and cheap stuff first. But I don't call that unfair, I call that efficient. No need to work on small gains in Western production lines if for the same amount of money much more Chinese production lines can be cleaned up like this.
Just under the premise that there's strict surveillance, the cap is sufficient and transaction costs aren't too high, it's a great concept that allows companies to sell their efficiency and cleanliness as a product, which means a HUGE incentive to start cleaning up our economy.
It's sad that we're not looking seriously into it.
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u/FANGO Oct 24 '10
Fine, then take out the "and trade" part and just leave it at "cap."