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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Friday, December 27, 2002 :::
The Chicago Tribune (requires free registration) expresses ambivalence this morning about Bush adminstration changes to environmental regulations. I'll note that emissions fees would make a quite defensible compromise between allowing old sources of emissions to keep operating if they're not too bad — in which case forcing them to go away altogether seems to be a waste of those resources — but would require the sites to shut down if they're too dirty, and would certainly provide the right incentives to owners of old sources to clean them up when it becomes worthwhile; it generally makes it unnecessary to distinguish between "major" changes to old sources and general maintenance. They are a panacea that make war, pestilence, and death itself go away, damn it. We should do it now.
Anyway, "cap-and-trade" is very similar; allowing an old source with a generous cap to sell that cap if it proves worthwhile again creates exactly the right incentives as described in the previous paragraph. The one concern I have, though, is in the initial allocation of the cap; I expect the initial cap is being given out in proportion to pollution emited in the past, and giving out valuable commodities for past antisocial behavior grates on me somewhat. Expect to see terrible things done by polluters who expect their favorite emissions to fall under this regime in the near future. (The defense of this is that existing sources were built with a reasonable expectation that they would be allowed to dump at least a certain amount of emissions; certainly I generally oppose large, unexpectable burdens suddenly placed on reasonably-acting people and entities — I oppose ex post facto laws and support fair compensation for property taken for public use — but I also think actions taken when government activities are predictable should be less sheltered. This may argue for caps that are doled out for somewhat older sources of emissions, with the caps thus allocated diminishing over time, and the rest of the cap being auctioned off.)
::: posted by dWj at 10:31 AM
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