Politics Student Counsel
posted by on July 29 at 13:51 PM
The Roosevelt Institution, a college student think tank, has released 25 public policy recommendations— “the 25 best ideas” from students all over the country.
Among the issues they tackle: payday lending and cap and trade systems for carbon emissions. One novel cap and trade proposal from Stanford student Adam Millard-Ball targets entire cities rather than targeting the traditional carbon villain, utilities.
Making cities trade carbon credits—giving them incentives to cut back so they can sell their credits to other cities—sounds a lot more effective than Nickels’s current Kyoto challenge.
Given that Nickels has prestige among American mayors as an environmental leader though, he should use his national political clout and take up this intriguing, better cap and trade idea from the Stanford student.
Maybe we wouldn’t scratch planned bike lanes, and maybe we’d actually build rapid mass transit systems if we could cash in on it.
Josh, no reference to the skate park?
How could you?
...and please, can we get back to Darcy?
Dear Slog Comments Policy Gods,
Please electrocute trolls like commenter #1. It adds nothing.
And come on. Feit doesn't even write about skate parks or Darcy Burner anyway. As far as I can tell, Feit, like Sen. Ed Murray, is partial to Burner's challenger Rodney Tom.
Robert Reich has an adjustment to cap and trade that I like quite a bit. Rather than having set amounts for the pollution credits, they'd be auctioned off, which would drive the cost of them up, and allocate the costs to those companies that pollute the most. The high cost would also give them an economic incentive to reduce pollution. I assume there'd be a minimum price and it would go up from there.
@3,
That's a cool idea. Plus, it would start to become a PR liability for the any company that bought and bought and bought. And so, a sort of psychological cap (in addition to the dollars) would kick in.
Not really sure how the city idea would work given the fungible nature of the power market.
Its not like Seattle actually produces all its own power in the city limits, nor are its residents responsible for all the vehicle emissions in the city. For example container ship pulls into the port and unloads cargo into a truck which then delivers it to Montana. Lots of emissions in Seattle, with no real ability to control. Same with commuters coming in from other cities.
Not even mentioning that its not Cities that build transportation infrastructures in most localities.
Josh, your parting shot belies two facts:
Bike lanes only serve those who are willing to undertake the relatively intense physical effort to use them. They're not as easy a draw away from vehicles as transit is.
And building a mass rapid transit system today costs billions, still an incredible financial sacrifice for a city or region, with a relatively minimal financial return that can only be poured back into maintenance and expansion of said system. It's not exactly something you can 'cash in' on.
-Gomez
It starts looking better when you consider the new support for much denser development and are able to significantly expand the tax base.
Regarding cap-and-trade...
Notice the plan Al Gore has really been advocating is not cap-and-trade but a carbon tax that would be revenue-neutral. The increased taxes on oil and coal would be offset by a decrease in the Social Security payroll tax.
Cap-and-trade isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just so hard to implement it to make it a good thing. Europe's experience with cap-and-trade shows how businesses' and countries' economic interests can water it down to near total ineffectiveness. The only way anything like cap-and-trade or carbon taxes work is by making it more expensive to contribute to global warming, but the only appeal of cap-and-trade is that it hides the "more expensive" part.
The political attraction of cap-and-trade over revenue-neutral carbon taxes is a lot like the appeal of "bus rapid transit" over real mass transit in Seattle. The very thing that makes it appealing -- its apparent painlessness -- is the very reason it will be implemented in a way that renders it ineffective. We'll end up getting cap-and-trade legislation written by corporate lobbyists just like we'll get Metro's faux "bus rapid rapid."
Op-ed columnist Nick Kristof takes a backhanded swipe at cap-and-trade in today's (Monday's) New York Times. He recommends a new book about how American voters routinely vote against their own economic interests. The book is “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies" by economist Bryan Caplan. Here's what Kristof has to say about one of the self-defeating tendencies Caplan identifies:
7... except that has nothing to do with what I said. These changes don't exact change unless society is willing to comply. And we've had the argument about transit spurring development: ECB and Feit have been informed that the circumstances are far different when your city is in its primitive stages of development and transportation options are more limited like they were in the 1900's, 1910's and so on when these big city's systems were built, and that it will not have the same effect on 2007 Seattle, which is just about built out... yet as usual, they choose not to listen to factually based information that doesn't support their worldview.
adgbpznxq ocryeaix twgdqhoj jawqubfz mrnw fzkxdvelo tfvwo
znyltkwh cjsgxlfq haifkn figyna tjnephyb gzkdw dxfekgay http://www.efymv.uzayd.com
znyltkwh cjsgxlfq haifkn figyna tjnephyb gzkdw dxfekgay http://www.efymv.uzayd.com
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).