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bob - From The New York Times Quote:
Climate Signals
Published: November 7, 2005
President Bush has long argued that a nationwide program of mandatory controls on carbon dioxide and other global warming gases would saddle the country with crippling electricity costs. He may be surprised to learn that his own Environmental Protection Agency no longer believes that to be the case.
In the course of a study comparing costs and benefits of various clean air bills rattling around Capitol Hill (including Mr. Bush's Clear Skies program), the E.P.A. found that under a measure sponsored by Senator Thomas Carper, a Delaware Democrat, the cost to electric utilities of controlling carbon dioxide would be only $1 per ton, imposing little burden on consumers and business.
To be sure, Mr. Carper's is the least aggressive and least expensive of the bills requiring mandatory controls. It applies only to power plants, which account for about one-third of carbon dioxide emissions, and would not regulate emissions from cars and others sources.
Still, that measly $1-per-ton figure should embarrass the Bush people who've been warning that controls will bring economic ruin (Clear Skies regulates other pollutants but not carbon dioxide), while providing encouragement to those in Congress who believe that action on warming is long overdue.
Not that there's any shortage of incentives. A recent series in The Times provided fresh evidence that there is already so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that the Arctic, where the sea ice has been steadily disappearing, may have passed "the point of no return." But the series also said there's still time to avert catastrophic consequences, like the melting of the Greenland ice cap.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's staunch and patient friend, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, has once again - this time in The Observer - appealed to the president to join in a global effort to limit greenhouse gases. Without American participation, Mr. Blair suggests, there's little hope of securing the cooperation of the Chinese, who are building coal-fired power plants at a rapid clip and whose future emissions could overwhelm Western efforts to get a grip on the problem.
Add in the fact that 2005 is almost certain to be the hottest year on record (continuing a 25-year trend of rising global temperatures); add also what Mr. Blair calls "vicious climate disasters," including stronger hurricanes, and the stage would seem to be set for serious debate.
bob - and in the admittedly highly remote off chance that anyone is left wondering which side won this round consider...
Some members of Congress appeared to be shocked to learn that oil companies would have record-setting profits this year, some $100 billion, collectively, for Exxon Mobil, BP Amoco, Royal Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco. Soon they began thinking aloud about a windfall profit tax, with Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, saying that the oil companies had "taken advantage of the trust of the American people."
A windfall tax is a good idea. But justifying it by demonizing the oil companies only perpetuates Americans' false belief that high energy prices are primarily the fault of Big (Bad) Oil. They're mainly due to supply and demand, so consumers' insatiable oil thirst plays a major role. The oil companies are indeed reaping profits from hurricanes and other events, and a strong case can be made for taxing those windfalls. But outsized consumer demand made those external events so profitable.
To be effective, a windfall tax should be part of a strategy to reduce oil dependence. Such a strategy would depend on reducing consumption.
Top executives of the world's biggest oil companies will appear today at a Senate hearing. Lawmakers would be wise to stress why a windfall tax is both fair and necessary. In brief, for consumers, oil price increases are like a tax with no public benefit. Americans have deep national interests in reducing oil demand, but oil companies have little incentive to invest their windfall profits in ways that would advance those interests.
Properly structured, a windfall tax would generate money for mass transit and alternative fuels, for helping carmakers move from sport utility vehicles to energy-efficient models, and for other ways to cut demand. It would bring in so much money - more than $24 billion this year, if it was set at 50 percent of the profits on oil sales above $40 a barrel in 2005 - that some could also be used to help consumers cope with the current high prices, including providing a few billion dollars for home heating aid for the poor.
But using all of the revenue to provide consumer rebates - as some lawmakers propose - would be counterproductive because that would foster only more consumption.
The windfall tax would also make it easier for Congress to take the more difficult but necessary step of raising the federal gasoline tax.
Money from the windfall tax could pay for the initial investments encouraging conservation. Then, as higher gasoline taxes took effect, some consumers would have alternatives to long commutes in gas guzzlers. When the windfall taxes dried up, the gasoline tax money would be available to continue investments in an oil-independent future.
OutofChaos - It’s a shame some folks think discussion is all about winning and losing, they completely miss the value of learning. Then again, falsely claiming a win when you have already lost is a safe, albeit counterfeit, refuge when you can’t produce any valid counter arguments.
Since the misguided and inept NY Times is flashed about with such bravado and naivety, I will post a reasoned and intelligent response from Christopher Helman commenting in Forbes. I will, however, adhere to the rules of the forum and post only brief excerpts of his completely insightful and educated prose, as opposed to the voluminous and vacuous meanderings of the NY Times.
Christopher Helman, Commentary, Forbes
Quote:
In a sense, America should be happy to see those profits; they imply that America's energy supply system is efficient. If Big Oil wasn't making money in a time of record energy prices, then we'd really have a problem.
Quote:
It's not as if Big Oil is squandering its cash. In the third quarter, Exxon Mobil (nyse: XOM - news - people ) invested $4.4 billion in capital and exploration projects--to ensure that it can maintain a steady supply of fuel to the world. The company also spent $6.8 billion on dividends and share buybacks--in effect giving profits back to shareholders so they can reinvest it wherever they see fit.
Quote:
A windfall profits tax on the oil industry would be a disaster to America's long-term energy health. It would give companies big incentive to simply reduce investment in gas-guzzling America and instead focus on getting oil and gas to the fast growing populations of China and India. And what happens if and when the oil patch goes bust? Will taxpayers then subsidize Chevron's (nyse: CVX - news - people ) losses?
It's simply un-American to penalize a person or a company for acting on a bright idea. It's no secret that oil and gas are commodities vital to the continued operation of modern society. Oil companies just had the foresight to go out and look for the stuff.
Quote:
Therein lies the perfect hedge for gas-guzzling Americans: Start investing in big oil stocks now, then over the next couple decades use the gains to outfit your roof with solar panels or make the payments on a hybrid car.
bob - Certainly a debate is about "learning" but it is possible that at some point you have "learned" so much that there are only two options left: 1) Admit that at the outset you were wrong, or 2) Give every appearance of being someone who can't admit they were wrong even when the truth is staring them and everyone else right in the face. Oil companies made one hundred billion dollars in profits last year. That's a one and twelve zeros, or USD100, 000, 000, 000, a hard number to really comprehend. I explained it to my wife this way - imagine a pile of hundreds totalling one million dollars. Now, imagine one hundred thousand of those piles. Wow that's a lot of money you have to admit.
CO2 levels are rising. Global warming is happening. There is a link between the two. New York Times columnists are neither misguided nor inept. Companies investing a portion of their profits (in this case a small portion) back into their own operations to ensure future profits is standard procedure. The oil patch won't go bust because they already know where a lot of the oil is and they know how much is there. Oil company executives are not being dragged through the muck on this one for nothing.
The following I admit is a valid argument:
Quote:
A windfall profits tax on the oil industry would be a disaster to America's long-term energy health. It would give companies big incentive to simply reduce investment in gas-guzzling America and instead focus on getting oil and gas to the fast growing populations of China and India.
There is, I suspect, no limit to big oil's disdain for this planet we call home, and a good percentage of consumers the world over aren't much different. There is also however a growing voice for change, that voice will grow louder and more persistant, and it will be saying that the two cars in the garage suburban Wallmart model of development was wrong , is wrong, and for the future is absolutely wrong.
boozle the New York Times?
Comrade Stalin - What can you say about a trusted professional who makes stuff up and publishes it as fact?
Last week, New York Times reporter Jayson Blair joined Janet Cooke, formerly of the Washington Post, the New Republic's Stephen Glass, the Boston Globe's Patricia Smith, and Jay Forman in Slate as journalists who got caught embellishing, exaggerating, and outright lying in print. The will to fabricate cuts across disciplines, with academics and scientists inventing data, too.
Embattled reporter Miller quits the Times
After Miller decided to testify, a Times article depicted her as a rogue reporter; and a staff memo from Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said Miller appeared to have misled editors about her “entanglement” with Libby.
bob - Thanks Comrade. I especially liked this part: Quote: She (Miller) spent 85 days in jail over the summer for refusing to testify about her conversations with a confidential source. But after her release, Miller was criticized harshly and publicly by Times editors and writers for her actions in the CIA leak case and for her reporting during the run-up to the Iraq war, later discredited, indicating that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Reading those links reaffirmed my belief that the New York Times is commited to journalistic integrity and in the event of the occasional slip up we can rest assured that they will come under intense scrutiny from other news organizations.
Thanks again.
Climate Signals
Published: November 7, 2005
President Bush has long argued that a nationwide program of mandatory controls on carbon dioxide and other global warming gases would saddle the country with crippling electricity costs. He may be surprised to learn that his own Environmental Protection Agency no longer believes that to be the case.
In the course of a study comparing costs and benefits of various clean air bills rattling around Capitol Hill (including Mr. Bush's Clear Skies program), the E.P.A. found that under a measure sponsored by Senator Thomas Carper, a Delaware Democrat, the cost to electric utilities of controlling carbon dioxide would be only $1 per ton, imposing little burden on consumers and business.
To be sure, Mr. Carper's is the least aggressive and least expensive of the bills requiring mandatory controls. It applies only to power plants, which account for about one-third of carbon dioxide emissions, and would not regulate emissions from cars and others sources.
Still, that measly $1-per-ton figure should embarrass the Bush people who've been warning that controls will bring economic ruin (Clear Skies regulates other pollutants but not carbon dioxide), while providing encouragement to those in Congress who believe that action on warming is long overdue.
Not that there's any shortage of incentives. A recent series in The Times provided fresh evidence that there is already so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that the Arctic, where the sea ice has been steadily disappearing, may have passed "the point of no return." But the series also said there's still time to avert catastrophic consequences, like the melting of the Greenland ice cap.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's staunch and patient friend, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, has once again - this time in The Observer - appealed to the president to join in a global effort to limit greenhouse gases. Without American participation, Mr. Blair suggests, there's little hope of securing the cooperation of the Chinese, who are building coal-fired power plants at a rapid clip and whose future emissions could overwhelm Western efforts to get a grip on the problem.
Add in the fact that 2005 is almost certain to be the hottest year on record (continuing a 25-year trend of rising global temperatures); add also what Mr. Blair calls "vicious climate disasters," including stronger hurricanes, and the stage would seem to be set for serious debate.
bob - and in the admittedly highly remote off chance that anyone is left wondering which side won this round consider...
Some members of Congress appeared to be shocked to learn that oil companies would have record-setting profits this year, some $100 billion, collectively, for Exxon Mobil, BP Amoco, Royal Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco. Soon they began thinking aloud about a windfall profit tax, with Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, saying that the oil companies had "taken advantage of the trust of the American people."
A windfall tax is a good idea. But justifying it by demonizing the oil companies only perpetuates Americans' false belief that high energy prices are primarily the fault of Big (Bad) Oil. They're mainly due to supply and demand, so consumers' insatiable oil thirst plays a major role. The oil companies are indeed reaping profits from hurricanes and other events, and a strong case can be made for taxing those windfalls. But outsized consumer demand made those external events so profitable.
To be effective, a windfall tax should be part of a strategy to reduce oil dependence. Such a strategy would depend on reducing consumption.
Top executives of the world's biggest oil companies will appear today at a Senate hearing. Lawmakers would be wise to stress why a windfall tax is both fair and necessary. In brief, for consumers, oil price increases are like a tax with no public benefit. Americans have deep national interests in reducing oil demand, but oil companies have little incentive to invest their windfall profits in ways that would advance those interests.
Properly structured, a windfall tax would generate money for mass transit and alternative fuels, for helping carmakers move from sport utility vehicles to energy-efficient models, and for other ways to cut demand. It would bring in so much money - more than $24 billion this year, if it was set at 50 percent of the profits on oil sales above $40 a barrel in 2005 - that some could also be used to help consumers cope with the current high prices, including providing a few billion dollars for home heating aid for the poor.
But using all of the revenue to provide consumer rebates - as some lawmakers propose - would be counterproductive because that would foster only more consumption.
The windfall tax would also make it easier for Congress to take the more difficult but necessary step of raising the federal gasoline tax.
Money from the windfall tax could pay for the initial investments encouraging conservation. Then, as higher gasoline taxes took effect, some consumers would have alternatives to long commutes in gas guzzlers. When the windfall taxes dried up, the gasoline tax money would be available to continue investments in an oil-independent future.
OutofChaos - It’s a shame some folks think discussion is all about winning and losing, they completely miss the value of learning. Then again, falsely claiming a win when you have already lost is a safe, albeit counterfeit, refuge when you can’t produce any valid counter arguments.
Since the misguided and inept NY Times is flashed about with such bravado and naivety, I will post a reasoned and intelligent response from Christopher Helman commenting in Forbes. I will, however, adhere to the rules of the forum and post only brief excerpts of his completely insightful and educated prose, as opposed to the voluminous and vacuous meanderings of the NY Times.
Christopher Helman, Commentary, Forbes
Quote:
In a sense, America should be happy to see those profits; they imply that America's energy supply system is efficient. If Big Oil wasn't making money in a time of record energy prices, then we'd really have a problem.
Quote:
It's not as if Big Oil is squandering its cash. In the third quarter, Exxon Mobil (nyse: XOM - news - people ) invested $4.4 billion in capital and exploration projects--to ensure that it can maintain a steady supply of fuel to the world. The company also spent $6.8 billion on dividends and share buybacks--in effect giving profits back to shareholders so they can reinvest it wherever they see fit.
Quote:
A windfall profits tax on the oil industry would be a disaster to America's long-term energy health. It would give companies big incentive to simply reduce investment in gas-guzzling America and instead focus on getting oil and gas to the fast growing populations of China and India. And what happens if and when the oil patch goes bust? Will taxpayers then subsidize Chevron's (nyse: CVX - news - people ) losses?
It's simply un-American to penalize a person or a company for acting on a bright idea. It's no secret that oil and gas are commodities vital to the continued operation of modern society. Oil companies just had the foresight to go out and look for the stuff.
Quote:
Therein lies the perfect hedge for gas-guzzling Americans: Start investing in big oil stocks now, then over the next couple decades use the gains to outfit your roof with solar panels or make the payments on a hybrid car.
bob - Certainly a debate is about "learning" but it is possible that at some point you have "learned" so much that there are only two options left: 1) Admit that at the outset you were wrong, or 2) Give every appearance of being someone who can't admit they were wrong even when the truth is staring them and everyone else right in the face. Oil companies made one hundred billion dollars in profits last year. That's a one and twelve zeros, or USD100, 000, 000, 000, a hard number to really comprehend. I explained it to my wife this way - imagine a pile of hundreds totalling one million dollars. Now, imagine one hundred thousand of those piles. Wow that's a lot of money you have to admit.
CO2 levels are rising. Global warming is happening. There is a link between the two. New York Times columnists are neither misguided nor inept. Companies investing a portion of their profits (in this case a small portion) back into their own operations to ensure future profits is standard procedure. The oil patch won't go bust because they already know where a lot of the oil is and they know how much is there. Oil company executives are not being dragged through the muck on this one for nothing.
The following I admit is a valid argument:
Quote:
A windfall profits tax on the oil industry would be a disaster to America's long-term energy health. It would give companies big incentive to simply reduce investment in gas-guzzling America and instead focus on getting oil and gas to the fast growing populations of China and India.
There is, I suspect, no limit to big oil's disdain for this planet we call home, and a good percentage of consumers the world over aren't much different. There is also however a growing voice for change, that voice will grow louder and more persistant, and it will be saying that the two cars in the garage suburban Wallmart model of development was wrong , is wrong, and for the future is absolutely wrong.
boozle the New York Times?
Comrade Stalin - What can you say about a trusted professional who makes stuff up and publishes it as fact?
Last week, New York Times reporter Jayson Blair joined Janet Cooke, formerly of the Washington Post, the New Republic's Stephen Glass, the Boston Globe's Patricia Smith, and Jay Forman in Slate as journalists who got caught embellishing, exaggerating, and outright lying in print. The will to fabricate cuts across disciplines, with academics and scientists inventing data, too.
Embattled reporter Miller quits the Times
After Miller decided to testify, a Times article depicted her as a rogue reporter; and a staff memo from Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said Miller appeared to have misled editors about her “entanglement” with Libby.
bob - Thanks Comrade. I especially liked this part: Quote: She (Miller) spent 85 days in jail over the summer for refusing to testify about her conversations with a confidential source. But after her release, Miller was criticized harshly and publicly by Times editors and writers for her actions in the CIA leak case and for her reporting during the run-up to the Iraq war, later discredited, indicating that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Reading those links reaffirmed my belief that the New York Times is commited to journalistic integrity and in the event of the occasional slip up we can rest assured that they will come under intense scrutiny from other news organizations.
Thanks again.
posted by david at 6:33 AM
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