I am also a proponent of sprinkling small, tasteful nuclear power plants around the country. Unlike wind and solar, they don’t care what the weather is doing. They just keep churning out electricity.
Excellent post. I'm even more sceptical of the "green" movement after reading that article in this month's NR magazine about wind turbines. I don't think the majority of people understand just how massive and expensive this so-called green energy is. Nuclear or natural gas is the only way to go. The sooner people realize that the better off we'll be
Climate change Grand Political Bargain: Implement a carbon tax or carbon fuels tax, offset by cutting other taxes, and in exchange for repealing the whole rat’s nest of regulations, mandates and subsidies that try to micromanage the way we produce and consume energy. Let market forces, driven by the carbon tax, find the biggest carbon reduction bang for the buck. Regulations can be “gamed” and are inevitably driven more by politics than an objective technical and economic analysis (ethanol, anyone?).
1 - How does this address the global non-compliance problem?
2 - How is a government-established tax rate described as "market?" In a market, prices are a signal, and vary with changing inputs. Would a carbon tax adjust over time? How? How would it be set? What metrics?
3 - What incentive is there to wipe the board clean of all other regulations, tax incentives, subsidies, and the like in favor of a "neutral" carbon tax? Who would vote for such a thing?
Air pollution, including greenhouse gases, is a "commons" issue. Nobody owns the atmosphere so nobody is there to collect a user fee. The carbon tax would be a highly imperfect way of internalizing that externality.
Do I have high confidence that politicians and their appointees would get the carbon tax right? No, but it's all relative. I have even less confidence that they could, for example, effectively administer a network of EV charging stations - that would surely end up a typical overbudget, behind schedule public works boondoggle. I would rather give the political process a few big things to work on than a lot of little things.
As for global non-compliance, no matter what scheme we come up with, we can't make those other horses drink the water. The best we can do is have a sensible plan worthy of emulating.
Without global compliance, what would be the point? This isn't an abstraction, it's a very real and substantial cost to society, i.e. you and me and everyone else living under such a tax. That cost means lower living standards and harder lives, and it'll hit the poor and working classes far more than the wealthy.
And, to what end? The economic/actuarial analysis tells us that it'll be cheaper to simply adapt to whatever the forecast temp increases bring (assuming those changes happen) than to spend trillions today, and that's assuming that those trillions actually address the problem. Again, without global compliance, they won't. They'll simply transfer wealth and economic power to those nations that don't comply.
Forgive me, but you're engaging in exactly the wishful thinking I noted in the article. What I propose is more sensible: Go robustly into nuclear power, and spend money on geo-engineering research. The former has benefits way beyond global warming, and the latter is the only path to a workable remedy, given global noncompliance with brute-force carbon caps.
By your reasoning, why even bother with nuclear if the rest of the world won’t comply? And is nuclear viable without subsidies or deliberately making fossil fuels more expensive?
Because nuclear offers a laundry list of benefits beyond carbon mitigation.
- It's cleaner and safer than everything else.
- It would allow America to export oil and gas, and get Europe unhooked from Russian exports.
- It would advance energy independence.
- Unlike wind and solar and batteries, it can scale up without massive amounts of rare earth metals that are currently sourced 90% from China.
- A modular approach stands a good chance of competing economically with gas and oil, providing a natural economic incentive for places like India, where 25% of the populace still has no electricity... and by extension, offer a carbon-free path forward that didn't require coercion or wealth transfer.
- It would not require massive modifications to the power grid.
I am also a proponent of sprinkling small, tasteful nuclear power plants around the country. Unlike wind and solar, they don’t care what the weather is doing. They just keep churning out electricity.
But the Left doesn’t like them. 🙄
Most don't like them out of simple ignorance. The rest, because they solve the problem without requiring people give up their happy lives.
Well written and well-reasoned.
Excellent post. I'm even more sceptical of the "green" movement after reading that article in this month's NR magazine about wind turbines. I don't think the majority of people understand just how massive and expensive this so-called green energy is. Nuclear or natural gas is the only way to go. The sooner people realize that the better off we'll be
Climate change Grand Political Bargain: Implement a carbon tax or carbon fuels tax, offset by cutting other taxes, and in exchange for repealing the whole rat’s nest of regulations, mandates and subsidies that try to micromanage the way we produce and consume energy. Let market forces, driven by the carbon tax, find the biggest carbon reduction bang for the buck. Regulations can be “gamed” and are inevitably driven more by politics than an objective technical and economic analysis (ethanol, anyone?).
Several questions:
1 - How does this address the global non-compliance problem?
2 - How is a government-established tax rate described as "market?" In a market, prices are a signal, and vary with changing inputs. Would a carbon tax adjust over time? How? How would it be set? What metrics?
3 - What incentive is there to wipe the board clean of all other regulations, tax incentives, subsidies, and the like in favor of a "neutral" carbon tax? Who would vote for such a thing?
4 - Who gets the money?
Air pollution, including greenhouse gases, is a "commons" issue. Nobody owns the atmosphere so nobody is there to collect a user fee. The carbon tax would be a highly imperfect way of internalizing that externality.
Do I have high confidence that politicians and their appointees would get the carbon tax right? No, but it's all relative. I have even less confidence that they could, for example, effectively administer a network of EV charging stations - that would surely end up a typical overbudget, behind schedule public works boondoggle. I would rather give the political process a few big things to work on than a lot of little things.
As for global non-compliance, no matter what scheme we come up with, we can't make those other horses drink the water. The best we can do is have a sensible plan worthy of emulating.
Without global compliance, what would be the point? This isn't an abstraction, it's a very real and substantial cost to society, i.e. you and me and everyone else living under such a tax. That cost means lower living standards and harder lives, and it'll hit the poor and working classes far more than the wealthy.
And, to what end? The economic/actuarial analysis tells us that it'll be cheaper to simply adapt to whatever the forecast temp increases bring (assuming those changes happen) than to spend trillions today, and that's assuming that those trillions actually address the problem. Again, without global compliance, they won't. They'll simply transfer wealth and economic power to those nations that don't comply.
Forgive me, but you're engaging in exactly the wishful thinking I noted in the article. What I propose is more sensible: Go robustly into nuclear power, and spend money on geo-engineering research. The former has benefits way beyond global warming, and the latter is the only path to a workable remedy, given global noncompliance with brute-force carbon caps.
By your reasoning, why even bother with nuclear if the rest of the world won’t comply? And is nuclear viable without subsidies or deliberately making fossil fuels more expensive?
Because nuclear offers a laundry list of benefits beyond carbon mitigation.
- It's cleaner and safer than everything else.
- It would allow America to export oil and gas, and get Europe unhooked from Russian exports.
- It would advance energy independence.
- Unlike wind and solar and batteries, it can scale up without massive amounts of rare earth metals that are currently sourced 90% from China.
- A modular approach stands a good chance of competing economically with gas and oil, providing a natural economic incentive for places like India, where 25% of the populace still has no electricity... and by extension, offer a carbon-free path forward that didn't require coercion or wealth transfer.
- It would not require massive modifications to the power grid.
I could go on, but that's enough.