Earth Equity News

The House Bill Is Like a 'Rube Goldberg' Device. OpEd by Marshall Saunders, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 1, 2009. "The more I look at Congress' legislation to address climate change with a cap-and-trade program, the more it looks like a Rube Goldberg device -- one of those amusing contraptions that employ all manner of moving parts in a complicated, convoluted process that performs a simple task. The task we're talking about - reducing carbon emissions by making fossil fuels more expensive -- is pretty straightforward. And yet to accomplish it, Congress has come up with a 1,400-page bill that makes War and Peace read like a short story. To raise the cost of carbon-based energy and make clean energy technologies, such as wind and solar, more competitive, cap-and-trade creates a market in which thousands of companies are required to purchase permits to emit carbon dioxide. But wait -- most of the permits will initially be given away rather than auctioned off. And there's also this messy contrivance called carbon offsets, which allows polluters to invest in projects that reduce carbon emissions. Good luck verifying the efficacy of those offsets. Which brings us to even more moving parts, including a huge, mind-boggling bureaucracy that would be established to inspect industries and verify compliance. There's also a need to regulate the trillion-dollar market in carbon futures; Wall Street is already salivating over the speculative opportunities in subprime carbon... The carbon tax and dividend... would impose a steadily increasing fee on carbon at the source, whether it be a well, mine, or port of entry. Most of the revenue from the tax would be returned to consumers through payroll or income-tax reductions - a carbon rebate, if you will... The carbon tax and dividend may not be as fun to watch as a Rube Goldberg machine, but I would gladly sacrifice the entertainment for something that works better."