Bravo! for your overview of recent national carbon pricing legislation. “Carbon pricing” is a little slippery; it includes cap & trade with offsets as well as straight carbon taxes. On the day of the Waxman-Markey vote (in June 2009), Stanford Law Prof. Michael Wara briefed House members, showing that the bill’s offsets were so generous that they would overwhelm its emissions “cap,” belying proponents’ claims that the bill offered “emissions certainty” that they asserted could not be assured by a simple carbon tax.

Bogus offsets and loose caps have plagued cap/trade/offset systems. Neither the European Union’s emissions trading scheme nor California’s AB-32 are actually putting enough of a price on carbon pollution to drive renewable energy, innovation and efficiency. If you cut the gimmicks out, “carbon pricing” ends up being an explicit carbon tax.

Thanks for “going to bat” for carbon taxes in the Democratic Platform. It is indeed an historic document. Too bad the final draft dodged explicit carbon taxes, again leaving room for emissions trading games. We have our work cut out to keep gimmicks like offsets out.

-James Handley
CarbonTaxNetwork.org