Who Killed Cap & Trade?

[beachmom]

Let's face it, although KGL is not dead, cap and trade has become less and less popular since 2008. Harvard economist Robert Stavins has a great article (http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-29-who-killed-cap-and-trade/) that links to a NYT article about this decline:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/science/earth/26climate.html?scp=1&sq=John%20Broder%20Why%20did%20cap-and-trade%20die&st=cse

‘Cap and Trade’ Loses Its Standing as Energy Policy of Choice

WASHINGTON — Less than a year ago, cap and trade was the policy of choice for tackling climate change.

Environmental groups and their foes in industry joined hands to embrace the approach, a market-driven system that sets a ceiling on global warming pollution while allowing companies to trade permits to meet it. President Obama praised it by name in his first budget, and the authors of the House climate and energy bill passed last June largely built their measure around it.

Today, the concept is in wide disrepute, with opponents effectively branding it “cap and tax,” and Tea Party followers using it as a symbol of much of what they say is wrong with Washington.

Mr. Obama dropped all mention of cap and trade from his current budget. And the sponsors of a Senate climate bill likely to be introduced in April, now that Congress is moving past health care, dare not speak its name.

...

Why did cap and trade die? The short answer is that it was done in by the weak economy, the Wall Street meltdown, determined industry opposition and its own complexity.

The whole article is worth looking at. However, Robert Stavins adds another really good point:

Furthermore, the nature of the climate change problem itself helps to explain the relative apathy among the U.S. public. Nearly all of our major environmental laws have been passed in the wake of highly-publicized environmental events or "disasters," ranging from Love Canal to the Cuyahoga River.

But the day after Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught on fire in 1969, no article in The Cleveland Plain Dealer commented that "the cause was uncertain, because rivers periodically catch on fire from natural causes." On the contrary, it was immediately apparent that the cause was waste dumped into the river by adjacent industries. A direct consequence of the "disaster" was, of course, the Clean Water Act of 1972.

But climate change is distinctly different. Unlike the environmental threats addressed successfully in past legislation, climate change is essentially unobservable. You and I observe the weather, not the climate. Until there is an obvious and sudden event -- such as a loss of part of the Antarctic ice sheet leading to a disastrous sea-level rise -- it's unlikely that public opinion in the United States will provide the bottom-up demand for action that has inspired previous Congressional action on the environment over the past forty years.

I commend Sen. Kerry for continuing to fight for this legislation, however watered down it has become, but I think these basic factors are why it has not been moving in the direction we would have preferred.