Comments on: Why Design of Carbon Markets Is So Important

By: Recent Carbon Market News – April 2013 | Weatherdem's Weblog

Recent Carbon Market News – April 2013 | Weatherdem's Weblog — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 22:30:47 +0000

[...] (1/3 its original price, which many people think is the minimum necessary). As I wrote last year, one fundamental problem with the European market was the number of allowances was far too high. But even if the price was “right”, would carbon markets work? Probably not right [...]

By: State of the Poles – Mid-September 2012: Record Low Arctic Ice Extent; Antarctic Ice Above Climatological Normal « Weatherdem’s Weblog

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 17:09:41 +0000

[...] will not be reversed by paradigm shifts that are anything but. A good place to start would be designing carbon markets for success and not failure. I break from most of the science and activist communities by saying that I do [...]

By: Martin Lack

Martin Lack — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:05:46 +0000

James Hansen’s analysis of this issue is incisive, brutal, and – as yet – unfalsified. It has also been ignored by politicians because there is no benefit to them (or business) in pursuing it.

Hansen observes that the UNFCCC/Kyoto process has failed:
– Emissions have not been curtailed (they have continued to accelerate).
– Humanity is definitely interfering with the climate system (a clear breach of Article 2 of the UNFCCC).

Emissions Trading does not provide any incentive to reduce emissions (it only provides an excuses to continue polluting). Behaviour modification will only be achieved by providing incentives. The market alone cannot do this; but neither can taxation (because people are suspicious of governments and taxation is too opaque).

Hansen’s Fee and Dividend solution is elegantly simple: Suppliers of fossil fuels pay a fee per unit volume sold and the government distributes all the income received equally to all citizens in the form of a dividend (through the tax system). The government therefore gains nothing; and citizens who reduce their consumption the most will see the greatest benefit.

Sadly, this solution will never be implemented unless voters demand that it is. Government of the people, by the people, for the people is therefore the solution. Sadly, I know of no country where such a system exists: What most people in most Western countries currently have is government of the people, by the politicians, for big business.