Cap-​​and-​​Trade Consistency

Rea­son is against cap-​​and-​​trade, with the stan­dard line:

Another way to look at the Waxman-​​Markey cap-​​and-​​trade pro­posal is that it func­tions like a tax increase. Under the bill, about half of all rev­enues raised by the cap-​​and-​​trade sys­tem between 2012 and 2025 will be recy­cled to busi­nesses and con­sumers, with the other half spent by fed­eral gov­ern­ment. While recy­cling rev­enues is bet­ter than noth­ing, it intro­duces inef­fi­cien­cies because the process dis­torts how work­ers and busi­nesses would have spent the money had it not been col­lected and redis­trib­uted by the government.

Blah blah blah big gov­ern­ment. But when you read the fine print, you find out they really are for it:

One proven solu­tion is a sys­tem called “catch share,” in which fish­er­men have the right to a cer­tain share of the total catch of a type of fish. This form of own­er­ship gives fish­er­men an incen­tive to make sure fish pop­u­la­tions grow, and accord­ing to Costello’s world­wide research, it’s the only thing that seems to work.

Just replace “catch” with “emis­sions”, “fish” with “pol­lu­tion”, and “grow” with “shrink” and you get the idea. Yes, the fish-​​cap-​​and-​​trade sys­tem adds costs, but it saves the fish. Cap-​​and-​​trade works, and it works won­ders. It stopped acid rain — so it’s the per­fect can­di­date to fight global warming.

Energy reform: up next.

15 July 2010 – 10:08 pm | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Economics | Comments (187)