Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (463145)	3/12/2009 12:59:00 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1578550

Not just temporarily. It permanently (unless its later repealed) increases the costs of all CO2 emitting energy sources, and we will be using those for a long time even with "cap and trade" or other methods to push down CO2 emissions, so it will increase energy costs for a long time, and probably will never decrease them. Its main effect is on coal, which causes the most CO2 to be emitted. It might actually increase the construction of natural gas power plants, burning natural gas causes CO2 to be emitted, but a lot less, so it gains a competitive cost advantage over coal when you pass cap and trade or a CO2 tax, and to the extent we do build more wind or solar plants, having natural gas as a backup for when they aren't producing much would be useful. cap and trade is cheaper than government mandate Agreed. Going from lowest cost/highest efficiency I'd say it would be 1 - CO2 tax 2 - Cap and trade 3 - Command and control/government mandates I'd put cap and trade below a CO2 tax, mostly for two reasons, a simple tax allows for more predictability and transparency for those paying the cost, it allows less opportunity for political game playing and rent seeking, and its simpler and easier to implement, to administer, and to comply with. But the difference between the tax, and any but the most unreasonable version of cap and trade, is likely to be less than the difference between those two and centralized command and control solutions, probably by a huge amount. Not that I support any of these policies at this time, but even if you oppose all of them, we might face one, and working out which one you dislike least and why is useful. Like it or not it's a capitalist solution. Its harnessing market forces (in a similar way to pigovian taxes like a CO2 tax), but its not "a capitalist solution", but rather a government initiative.