Taking the Fifth

William Nordhaus, an economics professor at Yale has written "The Challenge of Global Warming: Economic Models and Environmental Policy." Before you get too excited about it, keep in mind he'll keep revising it until he gets it right. This is the 5th model.

"It represents the fifth major version of modeling efforts, with earlier versions developed in the periods 1974-1979, 1980-82, 1990-1994, and 1997-2000. Many of the equations and details have changed over the different generations, but the basic modeling philosophy remains unchanged: to incorporate the latest economic and scientific knowledge and to capture the major elements of the economics of climate change in as simple and transparent a fashion as is possible." p. 6

This current model needs at least half of the countries of the world to participate in the carbon tax program for an abatement cost penalty of 250 percent--so those of us who are going to tax carbon will be paying for those who aren't. Has a familiar ring to it doesn't it? To achieve a 90% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 (the Al Gore goal), the tax bill for the U.S. economy would be $1,200 billion.

If I've ever seen a license to steal while polluting the carbon exchange tax is it. And I've never been able to figure out just who gets this tax--I mean after the wealthy Scandinavians who control it take their profit. Or do they get to keep all of it? I think it will be like Ohio's tobacco settlement, which recently went up in smoke. Wasn't it suppose to go for health care or something related to the damage cigarettes have caused. I remember when some of the librarians at OSU were given this stuff like play money! The legislators are just too sticky fingered to be safe around large puddles of uncommitted money.

"Trading emissions permits is one of the great innovations in environmental policy. The advantage of allowing trade is that some firms can reduce emissions more economically than others. If a firm has extremely high costs of reducing emissions, it is more efficient for that firm to purchase permits from firms whose emissions reductions can be made more inexpensively. This system has been widely used for environmental permits, and is currently in use for CO2 in the European Union (EU). As of summer 2007, permits in the EU were selling for about €20 per ton of CO2, the equivalent of about $100 per ton of carbon." p. 21

And for Ohioans? He's really, really negative about coal. Good-bye Ohio jobs. I think you can be quite sure none of this carbon tax money will go toward developing technology for clean-burning coal. Oh no. Send those jobs to China let them be done in their dirty coal fired plants so we can buy the stuff back (like "energy lite" bulbs). Although all Ohio's economic grief is good news for Democrats, because whenever they take away jobs through strikes or regulating the little guy out of business, or raising taxes, for some reason those poor dopes just beg for more and fall right in line and vote for more Democrats. Look at Cleveland--true Democrats all the way. It really is baffling.

So who pays the most? Well, the poor of course. That's who always pays with the schemes of the liberals to "improve" the world. They lose their homes in the name of urban renewal; they have to scramble for scarce housing so they can live in homes with no lead paint or asbestos; their children get to sit for hours on a bus so the children of legislators and government workers can go to private school (that's the rich's version of school choice) and spend their free time playing; they get to eat cheap processed food high in salt, fat and sugar so Obama Mamas can drive to the organic farm market in hybrid cars. Rich legislators don't put wind farms in their view; or nuclear plants in their back yard! And if the poor or retired live in rural areas--it's a dear price to pay to drive to Wal-Mart (if the liberals allowed one to be built) at over $4 a gallon, especially if they believed the Democrats pipe dream in 2006 that they would take care of them; and they are driving past fields of corn growing for the rich man's hybrid. Didn't you hear Obama's speech last night? NOW that you've finally selected a wealthy, biracial, inexperienced community organizer to be your president, we'll have health care for the poor! Well, golly miss molly, what in the world is this break-the-bank, Medicaid, SCHIP and Medicare we've been paying for?

I guess he's too young to remember the War on Poverty. Aren't we still paying the bill for that one?