Roger Caiazza
One of my pragmatic interests is market-based pollution control programs that are a key component of net-zero transition plans everywhere. As part of New York’s budget process Governor Kathy Hochul announced a plan to use a market-based program to raise funds for Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) implementation that is included in the Budget Bill. I have looked at the language for proposed amendments to the original Budget Bill proposal and am stunned at the disconnect between reality and the perceptions of the authors of the amendments. I recently argued that the numbers do not add up but if these amendments get passed it will guarantee failure.
Climate Act Background
The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible and power the electric grid with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040. The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies. That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021 and approved on December 19, 2022.
The Final Scoping Plan included recommendations for a comprehensive economy-wide policy to support implementation. The recommendations included a cap and invest market-based emissions control approach similar to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The policy is supposed to provide compliance certainty and “support clean technology market development and send a consistent market signal across all economic sectors that yields the necessary emission reductions as individuals and businesses make decisions that reduce their emissions.” The “market signal” translates into an additional source of funding to implement policies identified in the Scoping Plan. But that’s not all. A key narrative in New York’s version of the Green New Deal is equity and the cap and invest recommendation includes “prioritizing air quality improvement in Disadvantaged Communities and accounting for costs realized by low- and moderate income (LMI) New Yorkers.”
New York Cap and Invest
Hochul’s state of the state address included a proposal for a cap and invest program. It stated that “New York’s Cap-and-Invest Program will draw from the experience of similar, successful programs across the country and worldwide that have yielded sizable emissions reductions while catalyzing the clean energy economy.” Subsequently other legislators have jumped on the bandwagon and offered legislation to modify the Hochul proposal. My first article on this plan, initial impression of the New York cap and invest program, gave background information on the Climate Act’s economy-wide strategy and my overarching concerns. I looked at potential revenue targets in a couple of subsequent posts here and here. More recently I compared the emissions reduction trajectory necessary to meet the 40% GHG emission reduction by 2030 mandate relative to observed emissions trends.
My analyses to date indicate that New York’s belief that the proposed cap and invest program can build on “the experience of similar, successful programs across the country and worldwide” is misplaced. The idea that the RGGI market signal was a significant driver for the observed emissions reductions is inaccurate because the primary driver was fuel switching to cheaper natural gas caused by the fracking success in other states. New York has been investing RGGI auction proceeds for years and the cost per ton reduced is no less than $469. At that rate, if the program were to fund all of the reductions necessary, auction revenues of anywhere between $10 billion per year and over $40 billion per year would be needed depending on the assumptions used. Finally, the required emission reductions per year to meet the 2030 mandate are so aggressive that it is unlikely that there will be sufficient allowances available for all sectors to meet that mandate. The result will be an artificial energy shortage that will limit electric production as well as gasoline and natural gas availability.
Incredibly, the legislative amendments (Senate Bill 4008-B) to the Hochul Administration bill proposal described below would make things worse for New Yorkers.
Fatal Flaws for Cap and Invest
In my opinion, the Hochul Administration and other Progressive legislators have been trying too hard to incorporate environmental and climate justice concerns into the net-zero transition plans. In the first place, I don’t think that constituency will ever be satisfied because their insistence on zero-risk policies ultimately requires a shut down of all power sources. There is no benign way to make power or use energy so ignoring the possibility of pragmatic tradeoffs means they will never be placated. Worse, their rationale for the tenets of their beliefs is flawed.
The Climate Act requires the state to invest or direct resources in a manner designed to ensure that disadvantaged communities to receive at least 35 percent, with the goal of 40 percent, of overall benefits of spending on:
- Clean energy and energy efficiency programs
- Projects or investments in the areas of housing, workforce development, pollution reduction, low-income energy assistance, energy, transportation, and economic development
In order to implement these goals, the Climate Act created the Climate Justice Working Group (CJWG) which is comprised of representatives from Environmental Justice communities statewide, including three members from New York City communities, three members from rural communities, and three members from urban communities in upstate New York, as well as representatives from the State Departments of Environmental Conservation, Health, Labor, and NYSERDA. The 22 members of the Climate Action Council were chosen mostly because of their ideology but most at least had relevant expertise. None of the representatives appointed to the CJWG outside of the agency staff have any energy or climate science background. Nonetheless, all of their comments on the Draft Scoping Plan were explicitly addressed and responses to their concerns are evident in the cap and invest plan.
There are four CJWG concerns that legislators are trying to incorporate into the cap and invest proposed laws or are in the Climate Act itself that make the proposed approach unworkable. Their four concerns are “hot spots”, allowance banking, allowance trading, and the use of offsets. I will address each one below. In each case, CJWG members, climate activists, and environmental justice advocates have seized on an issue based on poor understanding or something else and are demanding their concerns be considered and the legislators are addressing their concerns.
Hot Spots
As mentioned previously a key consideration in the Climate Act is “prioritizing air quality improvement in Disadvantaged Communities”. Chapter 6. Advancing Climate Justice in the Scoping Plan states:
Prioritizing emissions reduction in Disadvantaged Communities should help to prevent the formation or co-pollutant emissions despite a reduction in emissions statewide. A broad range of factors may contribute to high concentrations of pollutants in a given location that create a hotspot. The result can be unhealthy air quality, particularly for sensitive populations such as expectant mothers, children, the elderly, people of low socio-economic status, and people with pre-existing medical conditions.
The poster child for egregious harm from hotspots is fossil-fired peaking power plants. I believe the genesis of this contention is the arguments in Dirty Energy, Big Money and I have shown that that analysis is flawed because it relies on selective choice of metrics, poor understanding of air quality health impacts, unsubstantiated health impact analysis, and ignorance of air quality trends. In this context, I have seen indications that there are people who believe that GHG emissions themselves have some kind of air quality impact exacerbated in disadvantaged community hot spots. That is simply wrong – there are no health impacts associated with carbon dioxide emissions at current observed ambient levels. Dirty Energy, Big Money and arguments in the Scoping Plan are based on co-pollutant emissions (NOx and PM2.5) that allegedly cause impactful hot spots that result in unhealthy air quality. Note that all facilities in New York State have done analyses that prove that their emissions do not directly produce concentrations in the vicinity of power plants that contravene National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) mandated to protect human health and welfare. Trying to make the cap and invest program, that is appropriate for controlling GHG emissions to mitigate global warming, also address a neighborhood air quality problem already covered by other air quality rules is not in the best interests of a successful cap and invest program. I do not know how the allowance tracking system could be modified to address hot spots without creating major unintended consequences.
Allowance Banking
The proposed amendments to Hochul’s budget bill include a new section to the existing Climate Act law. Proposed § 75-0123. Use of allowances states that:
- Allowances must be submitted to the department for the full amount of greenhouse gas emissions emitted during such compliance period. If greenhouse gas emissions exceed allowances submitted for the compliance period, such shortfall shall be penalized pursuant to section 75-0129 of this article.
- Any allowances not submitted at the end of the compliance period in which they are issued by the authority shall automatically expire one hundred eighty days after the end such compliance period if not submitted prior to such date.
The provision for expiring allowances would prohibit allowance banking. Allowance banking is a feature of all existing cap and trade programs and is one of the reasons that they have been successful. Banking enables affected sources to handle unexpected changes in operation, compliance monitoring problems, and long-term planning.
The authors of this amendment have not figured out that the primary source of GHG emissions is energy production. One major difference between controlling CO2 and other pollutants is that there are no cost-effective control technologies that can be added to existing sources to reduce emissions. Combine that with the fact that CO2 emissions are directly related to energy production, the result is that after fuel switching the primary way to reduce emissions is to reduce operations. Consequently, CO2 emission reductions require replacement energy production that can displace existing production.
A feature of RGGI that addresses the link between energy use and CO2 emissions is a three-year compliance period with banking. It is included because it was recognized that in a year when it is either really cold or really hot GHG emissions go up as energy use goes up. In a year when it is mild, energy use goes down and emissions go down. To address that variability RGGI has a three-year compliance period and allows sources to bank allowances for this balancing inter-annual variability. The inevitable result of this amendment language would be insufficient allowances in a year with high energy use and that translates to an artificial shortage of energy.
Allowance Trading
There is no better example of ideological passion over-riding reality than language in the proposed amendments to Hochul’s budget bill that prohibits allowance trading. Proposed § 75-0123. Use of allowances states that:
3. Allowances shall not be tradable, saleable, exchangeable or otherwise transferable.
Words cannot describe how little I think of the authors’ understanding of cap and invest based on this language. Cap and invest programs are a form of cap-and-trade programs. Anyone who thinks that a program that excludes allowance exchanges has no concept whatsoever of how these programs are supposed to work and how they have been successfully working.
Offsets
There is one aspect of the proposed cap and invest legislation that is conspicuous by its absence – offsets. In RGGI a CO2 offset allowance represents “a project-based greenhouse gas emission reduction outside of the capped electric power generation sector.” In the California program Offset Credits are issued to “qualifying projects that reduce or sequester greenhouse gases (GHG) pursuant to six Board-approved Compliance Offset Protocols.” Recall that Hochul stated that “New York’s Cap-and-Invest Program will draw from the experience of similar, successful programs across the country and worldwide that have yielded sizable emissions reductions while catalyzing the clean energy economy.” Furthermore, the Climate Act has a net-zero target. In other words, emissions from certain sectors that can never be expected to reduce their GHG emissions to zero (like aviation) will have those emissions offset by programs that reduce or sequester GHG emissions.
In a rational world, it is obvious that the agriculture and forestry sectors that are the likely sources of most offsets in New York would get incentives to develop offsets compliant with qualification protocols used in other successful programs. After all the Climate Act needs offsets to meet its net-zero targets and offset programs are components of the similar, successful programs New York wants to emulate.
New York’s Climate Act is not rational. Chapter 17 in the Final Scoping Plan explains why offsets are not mentioned:
The inclusion of offset programs in some cap-and-invest programs, such as RGGI, has engendered some criticism, particularly from environmental justice organizations that contend that the availability of offsets reduces the certainty of emission reductions from the regulated sources. In any cap-and-invest program adopted to meet Climate Act requirements, the role of offsets would have to be strictly limited or even prohibited in accordance with the requirements of ECL § 75-0109(4). Under that provision, DEC would have to ensure that any Alternative Compliance Mechanism that is adopted would meet various requirements specified in that provision of the Climate Act. Therefore, offsets would have little, if any, role under a cap-and-invest program designed to comply with the Climate Act.
In short, because there was “some criticism” from environmental justice organizations, the Progressive Democrats in control of the Administration and Legislature are excluding this “important cost-containment element” used in other successful programs. Given that offsets are a necessary component for meeting the net-zero by 2050 target I expect that a different subsidy will be used to incentivize offsets.
Conclusion
In New York and elsewhere climate justice considerations are making their way into legislation. New York legislators are trying to incorporate into the cap and invest proposed laws or are in the Climate Act itself, provisions that will make New York’s cap and invest plan fail. All cap and invest programs are intended to reduce emissions that have regional or global impacts. Trying to combine cap and invest global obligations with “hotspot” neighborhood air quality obligations already covered by other air quality rules would be difficult if not impossible to do without unintended consequences. Prohibiting allowance banking eliminates a compliance mechanism widely used in all existing emission market programs. Cap and invest is a variant of cap-and-trade emission market programs so eliminating trading is absurd. Emission offsets are a necessary component of economy-wide net-zero targets. If offsets are prohibited in the cap and invest plan they will be subsidized elsewhere.
A primary component of New York’s Climate Act and cap and invest legislation was to address climate justice. I do not dispute that is a reasonable goal but appeasement of the naïve and misguided demands of the zealots pushing these demands will make NY’s program unworkable and cause reliability, affordability, and safety problems. When those problems occur, the communities that will be impacted the most will be the ones this mis-guided appeasement is intended to protect.
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Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. More details on the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act are available here and an inventory of nearly 300 articles about the Climate Act is also available. He has also addressed cap and invest programs and RGGI in other articles. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
Thank goodness for the internet, remote work, and voting with their feet. Otherwise, NY redistribution of wealth schemes would cause real hardship for longer before eventually failing. Bad public policy can fail faster in the modern era of the climate crusades.
Just when you think it can’t get any worse, New York says, “Hold my beer.”
“Can’t fix stupid”. And NY is showing that to be true. Along with a bunch of other “blue” areas.
New York and California are competing to see who can destroy their economies the fastest.
but it’ll be MA that will win that one
No I think it will be Minnesota, my home state. In my household it know as Minnestupid. I left Minnestupid 43 years ago and have not looked back.
Article says”…they have been successfully working.”
Does the author think that “cap and trade” is a success? And that it works?
There are conditions to “success”.
The acid rain program initiated massive fuel switching that brought down SO2 and NOx emissions by 90% at a far lower cost than expected. Mind you that a big part of the success was railroad de-regulation that enabled the cost effective use of coal from Wyoming. The acidic deposition observed has gone down too. This is pretty much a success.
EPA has multiple versions of NOx control programs that use cap and trade. The most recent iteration (Cross State Air Pollution Rule) is pushing the envelope of cap and trade simply because the limits are so low that nobody has anything to trade. Ozone concentrations have come down as a result so this has also been successful but it cannot do much more to reduce emissions and still be called a cap and trade program.
The presumption that those successes would provide similar results for GHG emissions is misguided. Because there is no add-on control technology, fuel switching or reduced operations are the only reduction options available. The fracking revolution produced natural gas that was so cheap that fuel switching was an option and CO2 emissions went down. The RGGI cap and invest program was not the primary driver of emission reductions but they showed that you could set up an auction program and they did produce revenues. I think RGGI was a failed emission reduction program but successful as a revenue generator. Of course, we can debate whether that is a good thing.
New York presumed that past results would be indicative of the future. The biggest flaw is that they think this programs will get you to zero. Their magic bullet cap and invest economy-wide program has fatal flaws that cannot hope to replicate the past conditional successes., They are changing the gun so much it cannot fire.
Thanks for answering.
I will take your answer to be no in regard net zero/CO2/GHG emissions.
Yes – I don’t see any way that net zero can be reached on the schedule proposed using cap and invest as the primary driver of compliance and revenue needed
Acid rain was never a real problem.
I heard, long ago, that it was caused by rainfall on the pine needles washing into the lakes.
It ‘worked’ for SOx and NOx, but these were real pollutants that had practical means of abatement.
Frank, honest question.
Was that cap and trade or just straight EPA requirements being instituted?
Drake
It was using cap and trade in order to implement new EPA requirements.
Success is conditional.
In the Acid Rain Program the cap and trade emissions reductions were deeper and the costs less than expected and observed acidic deposition decreased so it was successful. There is a caveat because the primary reason that the emissions were deeper and less costly was railroad deregulation that enabled fuel switching to low sulfur Wyoming coal. That made the cheaper option of fuel switching possible because it could be shipped all over the country cost effectively.
EPA has used cap and trade for NOx reductions connected to ozone. These programs also reduced emissions cost effectively. The caveat with those programs is that the latest iteration (Cross State Air Pollution Rule) has set such a stringent cap that it is essentially a command and control program because no one can over control to produce tradeable allowances. The condition should be don’t try to go to zero.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has more conditions on its success. While CO2 emissions have gone down, the primary reason was the fracking revolution that made fuel switching economical. On the other hand they did develop a workable auction mechanism and raised revenues. It is arguable whether they invested the auction proceeds wisely but they successfully got money. Given that there are no cost-effective control options for CO2 means that fuel switching and reducing operations are the only control options available. I believe natural gas fuel switching is just about used up as control strategy so the future of this program to produce revenue and not mandate emissions reductions that could adversely impact electric grid reliability is not assured.
Proponents of the NY cap and invest program claim their plan will emulate the success of these programs. I don’t think New York’s proponents of cap and invest understand the conditions of the success of these programs. They have ignored that past success does not guarantee future results and claim they have a silver bullet solution. However, I think the proposed legislation will break the gun needed to shoot the silver bullet.
So the first version of this got hung up because I made too many edits? I wrote this version while the first one was off in moderation
Unlike their wiser neighbor to the south (PA), New York State has banned fracking and building new natural gas pipelines, and fuel-switching to natural gas has been the largest contributor to CO2 emission reductions.
If they try to impose this statewide, they will probably run into lots of resistance from New Yorkers who live outside the lower Hudson Valley, in the snowbelts downwind of Lakes Erie and Ontario, where winters are brutal, compared to relatively mild NYC and Long Island. Upstate New Yorkers will still need fossil fuels to heat their homes and clear the roads!
We already know that New York State has been losing population recently, mostly to the benefit of Florida. Enacting this law will probably hasten the exodus, and those who can’t afford to move to Florida may move to Pennsylvania, a pro-fracking state.
Agreed.
Typical politician believing you can legislate wind and solar power into being successful. At the very least they must provide a backup plan for the inevitable failure.
I’ve been told by a number of socialists that having a back up plan merely indicates a lack of faith in your leaders.
Having a detailed action plan of any sort whatsoever allows tracking of the plan’s actual progress — which is one key element among several of holding politicians accountable for their promises and their commitments. Can’t have that.
The lefts backup plan has always been to eliminate the people that point out their plan is not working.
I love the way these loons always set some future year for ultimately reaching their goal, but not a year by year, ex. 16% reduction of the goal EVERY year until 2030 target date as opposed to 100% of the target in 2029.
One more way to ensure that nobody currently in office can be held accountable.
Puts the goal beyond the end of their “term” so that the inevitable failure can be somebody else’s fault.
Ed Ball’s toast applies in this situation: “Confusion to the Enemy”
The more screwed up the plan is the sooner it will collapse and serve as a demonstration of the futility of nut zero.
I forgot:
Can we just build a wall somewhere between NY and Florida? Not sure where exactly, maybe at the NC/SC border? Too many libs in NC anymore and don’t want them coming here either.The wall would need to meander westward – TN would be fine for the most part except Nashville. Just a thought…
If we can make it about 50 miles south of DC, we might be able to save Virginia.
Yep, just do what the libs want, move EVERYBODY into cities, then restrict movement out of all cities. Since the privacy of the election booth has been removed by “mail in voting and vote harvesting” require ALL votes to be public, and anyone who votes for the Dem city governments are NOT ALLOWED to roam freely about the country. Only air travel from Dem city to Dem city. Or Train travel in secured “prison” trains from city to city. No freedom of movement for any liberals. AND no allowance to leave the country. The restrictions to apply for 5 years after their last liberal vote.
THEN within a couple of years, those who have voted liberal FOREVER and sort of want their freedom, will STOP voting at all, self voter suppression, and Republicans will begin taking back control of marginal Dem run cities.
Now if I wanted to be extreme, I haven’t been YET, LOL, I would require MANDATORY voting in Dem run cities. Anyone who does not cast a ballot would automatically be considered a Democrat voter, and thus be on the No Travel List.
AND just to be safe, no EV chargers on any escape route from any area where Dems routinely receive more than 60% of the vote. Any problems caused for conservative voters who have electric cars, tuff.
Lots of rational people here in NC too. Just need to clear out Charlotte, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill, Asheville, and Raleigh.
Maybe put walls around all of them.
‘There is no benign way to make power or use energy so ignoring the possibility of pragmatic tradeoffs means they will never be placated.’
I assume ‘benign’ here means there is no source or use of energy that will placate the Left’s relentless desire to return mankind to the primitive state of nature that people like Rousseau said we supposedly enjoyed before the notions of property rights, specialization and the division of labor ruined everything.
At some point the good people downstate are going to have to reconsider their habitual enabling of leftist clowns like Hochul. Either that, or the good people upstate are going to have to consider full-blown nullification of this nonsense and/or making other arrangements for statehood.
Yes. Every source of power and energy has some impacts and demanding zero is absurd.
I remember having a discussion recently with someone who was convinced that allowing cars to emit CO at parts per billion levels was unacceptable.
You would be amazed at the number of people who think one part per billion is a higher concentration than one part per million.
Not really. McDonald’s couldn’t sell their “one-third pounder” because people thought it was smaller than the quarter pounder.
Way meeting with a politician of a low population county who owned a B and B. A guest was leaving and mentioned she had just started “farming” in rural Washington state. I mentioned the British show Clarkson’s Farm and how he bought a farm and his adventures. She said she didn’t want to watch the show because she liked to figure things out herself. I laughed internally since the show is about a rich dodad buying land and farming without a clue, and the money he spends being trained up.
I mentioned the fiasco in the Netherlands where they have reduced fertilizer by 50% and how farmers don’t go around using twice the necessary fertilizer.
Her response was, “people don’t know the true cost of food, and the reduction was probably to force use of “natural” fertilizers like manure, etc. and to have food cost what it should.”
The scary part about this is she wasn’t some recently indoctrinated 20 something, she was retired, with her husband, and in her 70s.
You cant fix stupid, and she has to be stupid to be that ignorant.
Great analysis, Roger. I wish all citizens would read these plans and the reports (see Stan Liebowitz’s article nearby) that these endless bureaucratic boards produce. Perhaps people who view this endless stream of regulation as progressive would moderate their views.
Perfect understatement here:
Imagine any functioning market that had to operate under this provision, reworded to make its impact more clear.
3. Revenues earned shall not be tradable, saleable, exchangeable or otherwise transferable.
A market and wealth killer for sure.
This fits about here IMO
FWIW – worth a fair bit IMO!
“The Eggheads Vs The Doers”
Might stir your interest about here –
“There is a lesson in this. Theory without a reality check can make the world unlivable. This is because theorists can build beautiful models that hide grave errors, intentionally or not, and there is no means by which their mistakes are revealed until you test them against the real world.
You never want them in charge of the whole project.
The Theorists Dictated COVID Policy”
More at
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/eggheads-vs-doers
Q: What’s that ?
A: People who drive to their jobs and heat their houses so their kids aren’t cold, get to pay extra taxes so that downtown condo-dwellers can afford high-priced carbon offset electricity for their internet router and dual screen workstation, thus allowing them to think Net Zero is “easy”.
“Climate justice” is simply another Maxist redistribution scheme. The intention is to take money from whomever has it and “give” to those who “deserve” it.
The people supporting so-called climate justice are of course best qualified to adminter the redistribution and decide who gets what, all the while keeping some (or most) for themselves.
We aren’t supposed to notice when the money goes to fellow community activist groups instead of individuals. We aren’t supposed to ask if those receiving the money can demonstrate any actual harm.
The purpose of government is to transfer money from those who work for a living, to those who vote for a living.
Politicians in San Francisco are debating a plan to transfer money from those who never owned slaves to those who were never slaves, in order to apologize for slavery, which never existed in San Francisco.
I always thought that reparations should be paid to those who can genetically PROVE they are descendant from slaves and can provide to the government their family tree back to 1865. The before the $ are disbursed, every $ provide to their direct family line from any government free money program (housing, food stamps Medicade, housing assistance, etc. and any level, local state of federal, and any cost of courts or confinement, and lawyers for the defense (in the case of public defenders or pro bono), and for prosecution must be deducted from the proposed reparation amount. Any amount not repaid shall be a debt owed by the ‘recipient” or his or her aggregate family. The devil is in the details.
At the time of the adoption of the reparations bill, any use of any racial, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity information shall NOT be allowed on any employment or school application. Any records kept by ANY government entity that receives federal funding or any business that contracts with or sells ANYTHING to the federal government would be expunged of any identifiers other than age, citizenship and sexual designation at birth. I would almost agree to do away with sex at birth but I think that information might be useful.
I would call it the Sink or Swim act. All people will sink of swim according to their effort. No more preferences allowed.
Do the climate-change activist central planners really believe the market will solve these “problems?” Of course not. This is another ruse.
If the politicians would get the eff out if the market, it would solve the problem
You can’t fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
Which was the plan all along.
The bad news: the WOKE New York greenies are spiraling downward into oblivion. The good news: they are going to take a lot of mis-guided idiot voters with them. Wait for it.
Is the governor aware that the current level of atmospheric CO2 is only 4/100ths of one percent and that the CO2 level has only increased 1/100th of one percent in the past sixty-two years?
Sure you have that bass ackwards?Its good news that the virtue signallers are going down, its bad new they are taking the naive and innocent with them
When it comes to cost of reductions, one thing to remember is that the low hanging fruit are always plucked first.
That $469/ton cost is going to go up significantly as the more difficult changes are tackled.
That is such an obvious point and it is completely ignored
The USA will arrive at the correct energy policy, after it has exhausted every other money making alternative.
We will all suffer. Unless we have serious stakes in energy companies
The looming disaster in New York City and State reminds me of a scene with Leslie Nielsen from one of the Police Squad movies. Nothing to see here, everybody move along……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuAKnbIr6TE
Those Airplane and Police Squad movie really cracked me up. R.I.P. Mr. Nielsen.
Don’t forget about corruption. Despite having one of the highest taxes of all states in the US, New York state still cannot have a functioning government. The money is wasted, given to useless people just to satisfy some diversity quota or to keep the diversity police off your back. More money will lead to more graft and corruption. 10% will go to the big guy first. The big guy’s friends will also each get their 10%. That will leave nothing left to fix the problem or help those who need it most.
For example of the incompetence of New York’s government, check out right-to-repair advocate Louis Rossman’s recent videos on how New York put a lien on his business, but he never knew because the state mailed the information to a place he has never been. He documents how corrupt and incompetent they are.
https://www.youtube.com/@rossmanngroup/videos
Just making the state government bigger with all this climate justice nonsense will not fix the underlying problem of graft, corruption, and incompetence; it will only amply those problems.
A former police chief of San Francisco recently mocked a CEO who was complaining about one of his workers having their car broken into while visiting San Francisco.
According to the former police chief, being robbed is just another life experience and people should get used to it.
I used to understand San Francisco’s appeal. Now I don’t get it at all. It’s like they enjoy living in filth, don’t seem to mind the constant theft, and their preferred form of entertainment is watching homeless people shoot up and perhaps die right there on the street.
I don’t think Atlas can shrug any more. Atlas hurt himself building Silicon Valley, and is now addicted to pain-killers and spends his days sleeping in a Walgreens parking lot in San Francisco.
San Francisco still has beautiful views, but I would require a large payment to travel anywhere west of the Sierra in that state.
Agreed. I have fond memories of several trips there. But it’s changed now.
Seattle was the first to go. Pioneer Square was probably where it started. You’d go there and it wasn’t just asking for money, it was people chasing you and throwing a tantrum if you didn’t buy a newspaper. Then it got a lot worse and spread out.
Combine that with retail taking a huge hit from the convenience of Amazon (which, ironically, started in a warehouse not that far from Pioneer Square), and the draw of these beautiful natural locations simply isn’t enough anymore.
My state Maryland is all set to pass the full array of nut zero copy cat of California legislation,including a 100% phase out of Ice cars by 2035( aprox 50 percent by 2028-29!) Insanity. The entire insane and corrupt system can’t fail soon enough. But what they will do of course is partially push the deadlines off a few years instead of facing reality which will guarantee the economic destruction will continue.
But there maybe hope: I was pleasantly surprised to see people like Sean Stone and several others that used to be associated with the left in pop culture (Del Bigtree, Vivian Kubrick et el) have fully caught on to the lefts lies and are spreading the word. Go Team!
Was it ever “On” the rails?
Of course I have a different approach to dealing with these horrible people. I wouldn’t attempt to compromise with them at all. I would give them everything they want with one caveat. Any loss of life, added illness, increase in price, lack of energy basically any negative effect from their plan is on their head. I would run fossil fuel plants until they reached their emission quota then shut them down. Let all of New York know what you are going to do so the population can prepare, let them know it is their government that has brought this on them. If they have any sense they will take matters into their own hands and find a solution.
How does that game out, though? Running a utility means signing on to regulations that include not shutting it down when you’re losing money. People depend on you. Innocent people, even if their votes are made out of ignorance.
You’d probably be arrested. And then the left would have a convenient figure to blame when asking for even larger handouts from the government.
The biggest problem we have is that our elected officials have no reason whatsoever to listen to reason. They want votes and power and the best way to gain both is to embrace this mess and keep people ignorant and dependent, just like the Garden of Eden, only with meth and high crime instead of flowers and friendly animals.
You wouldn’t shut down because you’re losing money, you’re shutting down because you don’t want to break the law. They told you how much you can emit, so don’t emit one bit more. The point is I want their plan to fail, I would tell my customers I will produce as long as I can without going over the limit the government set but I am not going to break the law. I can not produce power year round under their regulations, I will produce power as long as I can. There regulations can not work, if they can’t see that then they shouldn’t be in a position of responsibility. We told them it wouldn’t work and they thumbed their nose at us. The only way to reach them is to allow it to fail. The sooner the better.
There is NOTHING “RATIONAL” about ANY OF THIS. The “plan” in its entirety, with or without the “modifications,” is built on a FALSE PREMISE -that being the ridiculous notion that atmospheric CO2 is going to “harm” the environment.
“I have seen indications that there are people who believe that GHG emissions themselves have some kind of air quality impact exacerbated in disadvantaged community hot spots. ”
WHO fabricated or dreamed up this falsehood? I served 20 years in the US Navy Submarine Service. Over 5 years under water breathing manufactured Oxygen and doing our best to keep the CO2 below 6 Percent. Typically it was less than 4 is percent, one hundred times greater than 0.04 percent. I am now 80 years old and know of very few shipmates that have died. We were told that the, at the time, that the effect of that high a CO2 level along with drinking distilled water was reduced calcium in your body. Thus, most drank lots of milk.