California adopts Cap-n-Trade

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hey China, how much are you willing to chop off our debt if we just give you California?



Suicide, mindless suicide.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Suicide, mindless suicide.

For the poor, sure. I don't think VC money in Silicon Valley hates this bill that much. This is yet another step in creating a more unequal state.

For the CA economy in general but also the poor. It takes more then VC to drive an economy.

 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

And in a few years, when this has had no measurable effect on California's economy, or even a positive one, this won't be a big deal any more.

Yeah, because raising the price of energy and therefore the price of everything for no good reason never has any effect on the economy.  As usual, California is doing everything in its power to make its business climate the worst in the country.

So you deny that human CO2 emissions cause climate change?  The economic rationale for taxing pollution is that the damages from the pollution are doing more damage to the economy than the extra profits from unabated pollution add to the economy.  Can you demonstrate that CO2 caps have hurt the EU economically in any meaningful way?  Given the uncertainty in possible outcomes of global warming, some of them so severe that they would make 10% unemployment for the rest of our lives look rosy, some regulation is justified as a societal insurance policy even if you might question the science.  And China is right now cornering the market on clean energy, in hopes that we will be dependent on them if/when we realize that all of those scientists were actually on to something. 

Can you demonstrate that the caps have actually reduced emissions?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

And in a few years, when this has had no measurable effect on California's economy, or even a positive one, this won't be a big deal any more.

Yeah, because raising the price of energy and therefore the price of everything for no good reason never has any effect on the economy.  As usual, California is doing everything in its power to make its business climate the worst in the country.

So you deny that human CO2 emissions cause climate change?  The economic rationale for taxing pollution is that the damages from the pollution are doing more damage to the economy than the extra profits from unabated pollution add to the economy.  Can you demonstrate that CO2 caps have hurt the EU economically in any meaningful way?  Given the uncertainty in possible outcomes of global warming, some of them so severe that they would make 10% unemployment for the rest of our lives look rosy, some regulation is justified as a societal insurance policy even if you might question the science.  And China is right now cornering the market on clean energy, in hopes that we will be dependent on them if/when we realize that all of those scientists were actually on to something. 

Can you demonstrate that the caps have actually reduced emissions?

Isn't that a little unfair of a burden?  A cap, by definition, is more of a limit on growth than a reducer.

Well if something is growing at a lower rate, then technically it will be smaller now then it would be if it was growing at the original rate. The reduction is the difference between what it would have been without them and what they are now. Of course we can't be sure how much they would have been without them by now because projections can't account for recessions, technological changes, etc.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What happened to the idea of States as Laboratories of Democracy and political experiment?

Which also includes the the freedom to fail at those experiments should they fail. Thus, no bailouts.