Cap and Trade: Is it Dead or Just Dormant?
Posted on 07. Apr, 2010 by keith in Environmental
In today’s corporate economy, the need for environmental friendliness regularly butt heads with corporations’ need to keep their shareholders satisfied; that is, despite the urgency of global warming, the urgency of sustaining profits, especially in a down economy, is greater still. But if you know your environmental legislation history, you may remember a concept that was supposed to rectify this scenario by making it profitable for large corporations to take environmental safety measures: cap and trade; a market-driven system that sets a limit on global warming pollution while providing companies with economic incentives to stay under that limit. So, what isn’t cap and trade as well spoken of today as it was a year ago?
As you may have suspected, the problem with the 2009 version cap and trade was not its philosophy or economic intent; the problem was with what cap and trade threatened to become once legislators started trying to apply its reach beyond power plant pollution to the more pervasive problem of carbon dioxide emissions, at which point the system was immediately rejected by the oil industry and conservatives that began calling it “cap and tax” because it included a modest tax on aviation fuel, diesel fuel and gasoline, although it provided economic incentives for oil and gas drilling, carbon capture and storage and power plant construction.
As it tried to go forward, the original version of cap and trade turned into a 1,400 page document where, to put it simply, the biggest companies ended up getting the best deals. Today, however, the 1,400 page “tax and redistribution plan” produced by representatives Henry A. Waxman (Ca) and Edward J. Markey (Ma) has been rebutted by a “very elegant”, according to President Obama, 39 page cap and trade proposal by Senators Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins. Given cap and trade’s prior success at reducing acid rain under the first Bush administration; with any luck, it’s dormant and not dead.
