We Need a Carbon Tariff, Not a New Kyoto

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Posted by Jeff Rubin on November 18th, 2009 under SmallerWorldTags: carbon emissions, carbon policy, carbon tariff, china, copenhagen climate treaty, india • 4 Comments

With meetings on an international climate-change deal in Copenhagen just around the corner, it’s time to get real about carbon emissions.

While it was emissions from the old carbon reprobates like North America and Europe that took us from 280 to 390 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere, it will be the smokestacks of China and India that threaten to drive us to an environmental tipping point.

China already has more coal plants than the US, UK and Japan combined, and over the next twenty years that country and India will account for almost eighty per cent of the expected doubling in global coal consumption.

If these guys aren’t playing by the same carbon rules that we are, it’s game over.

But to the ears of the energy-hungry Chinese and Indian economies, carbon rules sound a lot more like eco-imperialism than environmental sustainability. With per capita energy consumption at a tenth of Western levels, those countries aren’t about to make any voluntary concessions to the environment, and we can’t expect them to.

But what we can do is ensure that when they export products to our markets, they have to play by the same carbon rules that we do.

Otherwise, we can’t expect our own manufacturers and resource producers to pay a double premium to do the right thing: once by writing a check to cover their own emissions, and then a second time by giving up competitiveness to trade rivals that under price them by doing the wrong thing. That’s not environmentalism—just national economic suicide.

A carbon tariff is an indispensable component of any economically viable carbon policy that Western economies must ultimately adopt.

China and India can build all the coal plants they want, but when their manufacturing plants use dirty power to produce goods that are then exported to our market, the emissions embodied in those goods must be taxed at the same rate our domestic producers would pay for their own carbon emissions.

Not only would a leveled playing field ensure popular voter support for putting a price on carbon emission prices in our economy, but it would also start collaring runaway emissions growth in places that really count in the global picture. (Emissions from China’s export sector, for example, comprise a third of that country’s world-leading emissions.)

We don’t need another Kyoto-type protocol in Copenhagen. What we need is to put a price on our own carbon emissions and a carbon tariff on everyone else’s.

I’m Jeff Rubin, and I believe your world is about to get a whole lot smaller.

dehoffsp

Mr. Rubin,

I had read a number of your reports from CIBC and am now in the middle of your book. I finished the chapter discussing carbon tariffs last night. I found the fact that an economist advocated a carbon tariff surprising, enlightening, and positive.

I am a consultant in plastics and a member of the U.S. Society of the Plastics Industry Global Business Committee that advises the SPI on international trade lobbying positions. At a meeting of that group in Washington last September, we heard a presentation by the Peterson Institute folks regarding the expected upcoming trade difficulties from attempts to manage climate change. They described it as the next big thing in trade and went so far in the meeting as to suggest it having enough difficulty to potentially cause a failure of the WTO. That was the first time I heard or thought about this topic.

I find myself in agreement with you. My own work has included assessment of peak oil and other energy issues on the plastics industry. If we collectively believe there is a climate change issue to go with energy scarcity, it is rapidly becoming clear that voluntary behavior will not be sufficient to address the issues. Allowing yet another vacuum source on North American industry and jobs in the form of carbon taxes here but not elsewhere would simply be criminal.

Finally, I agree with your writings (and others) that suggest the energy cost problems had more to do with the recession than they are given credit for and that rising energy costs, all else being equal, has to reduce globalization trends by some measure that is probably meaningful. This only makes sense. Given that historically we are a labor scarce society, this does suggest tightening labor markets from increased local manufacturing would eventually offset the rising energy costs to some degree. It will be interesting to see how it balances out.
http://www3.telus.net/gwmitigationmethod Jim Baird

An international report this week warned sea level rises of a half metre would cost up to $28 trillion in losses in 136 port megacities around the world.

The water the would cause this damage could be leveraged instead to irrigate the world’s hot deserts which in turn have the capacity to sequester as much as 15 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually.

One terawatt (TW) worth of ocean heat converted to productive energy through the process of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) would negate the potential for thermal expansion of the world’s oceans, which is the principal driver for sea level rise over the coming century.
The currently most viable approach to getting water into a desert environment, the only terrestrial locations capable of taking up the water that would otherwise cause sea level rise and the resultant damage, is to convey power to desalination plants adjacent the desert.

Existing technology can desalinate water at a cost of about 1.5KWh/m3 using Reverse Osmosis. One TW could therefore produce 5840 km3 of the missing photosynthesis ingredient annually, which is enough to cover the world’s hot deserts with .375 metres of water. Enough to reclaim between 12 and 20 percent of the deserts to productive agricultural use, which in turn would sequester between 2 and 3 gigatons of CO2 annually.

Another source of water for desert irrigation and sea level rise is melt water from the icecaps and the runoff of the major rivers as they empty into the oceans. Some of this can be captured and transported to the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East as ballast in oil tankers deadheading to their home ports.

The global capacity of the world’s tanker fleet could carry about the same amount of fresh water as Saudi Arabia is currently desalinating at significant cost.

The capital cost to produce 1TW of OTEC power is estimated at $(U.S.) 8.5 trillion, which is offset by the generation of $1.16 trillion dollars worth of power annually, based on Germany’s average cost of 13.23 cents/kwh.

We don’t need to address the carbon problem through taxation, we need to implement solutions.
http://www3.telus.net/gwmitigationmethod Jim Baird

An international report this week warned sea level rises of a half metre would cost up to $28 trillion in losses in 136 port megacities around the world.

The water the would cause this damage could be leveraged instead to irrigate the world’s hot deserts which in turn have the capacity to sequester as much as 15 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually.

One terawatt (TW) worth of ocean heat converted to productive energy through the process of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) would negate the potential for thermal expansion of the world’s oceans, which is the principal driver for sea level rise over the coming century.
The currently most viable approach to getting water into a desert environment, the only terrestrial locations capable of taking up the water that would otherwise cause sea level rise and the resultant damage, is to convey power to desalination plants adjacent the desert.

Existing technology can desalinate water at a cost of about 1.5KWh/m3 using Reverse Osmosis. One TW could therefore produce 5840 km3 of the missing photosynthesis ingredient annually, which is enough to cover the world’s hot deserts with .375 metres of water. Enough to reclaim between 12 and 20 percent of the deserts to productive agricultural use, which in turn would sequester between 2 and 3 gigatons of CO2 annually.

Another source of water for desert irrigation and sea level rise is melt water from the icecaps and the runoff of the major rivers as they empty into the oceans. Some of this can be captured and transported to the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East as ballast in oil tankers deadheading to their home ports.

The global capacity of the world’s tanker fleet could carry about the same amount of fresh water as Saudi Arabia is currently desalinating at significant cost.

The capital cost to produce 1TW of OTEC power is estimated at $(U.S.) 8.5 trillion, which is offset by the generation of $1.16 trillion dollars worth of power annually, based on Germany’s average cost of 13.23 cents/kwh.

We don’t need to address the carbon problem through taxation, we need to implement solutions.
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What the leaders need to understand about Canada’s shifting economy

We Need a Carbon Tariff, Not a New Kyoto