What we can learn from British Columbia’s carbon tax
David Roberts, Grist
For seven years, the Canadian province of British Columbia has had a carbon tax. It is, on its own terms, a resounding success — carbon emissions are falling even as the economy continues to grow.
Not only is it effective, but it is, from a policy standpoint, incredibly elegant:
- It is predictable, rising according to a set schedule (though it topped out in 2012 — more on that later).
- It is broad, covering 70 percent of the province’s emissions.
- It is simple, levied on a relatively small number of fossil fuel extractors and importers, piggybacking on an existing tax, thus requiring almost no additional administration or enforcement resources.
- It is revenue-neutral, offset entirely by cuts to other taxes, mainly corporate and personal income. (In fact, each year the B.C. government publishes a table showing what tax cuts were enabled by the carbon tax.)
It all sounds like an economist’s wet dream. The one substantial flaw is that the tax remains far too low to achieve the radical reductions that will be required from B.C. (and all of the developed world) by 2050. But then, that’s true of all extant climate policies…
B.C.’s carbon tax reveals lessons not yet learned about carbon pricing
Bill Henderson, Straight,com
Climate change is no longer deniable and there has been a bloom of op-eds and editorials advocating for carbon pricing action. B.C.’s carbon tax is often cited as an example of carbon pricing that reduces emissions without negatively effecting the economy. B.C. has cut emissions by around 20 percent since 2008 and still has managed to have one of the strongest growing economies in Canada…
Grist’s top climate columnist Dave Roberts has written a long, admiring column on how the Gordon Campbell government formulated and implemented an actual carbon tax that worked and was accepted and is now lauded as an example for carbon pricing. But Roberts was wasting a lot of paragraphs and readers’ time if he was scoping out what would make this form of carbon pricing acceptable in the U.S. and globally.
Why? Well, in Roberts’s third paragraph we get a hint about the basic problem with B.C.’s carbon tax:
The one substantial flaw is that the tax remains far too low to achieve the radical reductions that will be required from B.C. (and all of the developed world) by 2050. But then, that’s true of all extant climate policies.
A pretty substantial flaw. In fact, Roberts underplays just how far too low are the emission reductions achieved and he doesn’t mention how B.C.’s carbon tax wasted a precious half decade of ebbing opportunity to stay under 2°C…
The myth of the dark side of the Energiewende
Conrad Kunze and Paul Lehmann , Energypost
Critics of renewable energy have mocked the Energiewende, claiming that it has led to an increase in coal power and related CO2 emissions in Germany. But Conrad Kunze and Paul Lehmann of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ show that this is a myth. German coal generation and CO2 emissions rose not because of but in spite of the Energiewende. They would have been even higher if Germany had not phased out its nuclear power and embarked on its remarkable renewable energy path. “There is no dark side to the Energiewende”…
China’s Surprising Reaction To An Online Video Exposing The Country’s Extreme Pollution Problem
Ari Phillips, Think Progress
Over the weekend in China, 175 million people — more than the entire population of Bangladesh — watched a newly released in-depth and well-produced documentary about the country’s debilitating smog problem. Produced by former Chinese news anchor and environmental reporter, Chai Jing, the 104-minute “Under the Dome” has caught the Chinese public at a moment of intense focus on the wide-ranging impacts of air pollution from coal-fired power plants and vehicle emissions.
In a country known for spiking any media that paints the government in a bad light, the documentary has not been firewalled. China’s new environment minister, Chen Jining, even praised it on Sunday, saying it reflected “growing public concern over environmental protection and threats to human health.” He also compared it to the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which is often credited with inciting the environmental movement in the U.S., especially when it comes to the use of pesticides…
Paul Stamets patents “universal biopesticide” that Big Ag calls “the most disruptive technology that we have ever witnessed.”
Jefferey Jaxen, Expopermaculture
Humanity is facing a problem. Our immediate environment is riddled with pesticides. They are making us unhealthy faster than we can study the effects. In addition, these pesticides play large roles in the massive bee deaths and decline of soil health. The companies that profit from making these pesticides have made it clear they won’t stop. Our petitions to the EPA and FDA are mostly ignored due to revolving door leadership between pesticide makers and government regulators. Is there an answer? Yes there is!
SMART Pesticides
Paul Stamets, the world’s leading mycologist, filed a patent in 2001 that was purposely given little attention. In the words of pesticide industry executives, this patent represents “The most disruptive technology that we have ever witnessed.” The biopesticides described in the patent reveals a near permanent, safe solution for over 200,000 species of insects and it all comes from a mushroom. After what is called ‘sporulation’ of a select entomopathogenic fungi (fungi that kill insects) the area becomes no longer suitable for any insect(s) the fungi are coded for. In addition, extracts of the entomopathogenic fungi can also steer insects in different directions.
Interesting, but can’t help but beware of anything that looks too good to be true – it usually is. – Ed
Modi budget sends mixed messages on India’s climate commitment
Sanjay Pandey, RTCC
Environmentalists in India have dubbed the Narendra Modi-government’s maiden budget “destruction-oriented” after it slashed funding for environmental protection…
More welcome for green groups was news that the government would double the coal tax to Rs 200 ($ 3.25) per metric tonne…
Lifespan of consumer electronics is getting shorter, study finds
Susanna Ala-Kurikka, The Guardian
Electronic product life spans are getting shorter, an investigation of built-in obsolescence for the German environment agency has indicated.
But consumers’ desire to replace products such as flat-screen TVs with newer model is also a major factor in what the research identified as increasingly wasteful consumption of electronic goods…
Bicimaquinas: The bicycle machines of Guatemala
Matt Peters, Makeshift
A Review of "Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA"
Carol Van Strum, Truthout
…The EPA, created with much fanfare by Richard Nixon in 1970, was an agency crippled at birth by inadequate funding, political hypocrisy, and laws protecting industry profits above all. Vallianatos points out that one of the fledgling agency’s greatest handicaps was its initial staffing with personnel from USDA, steeped in the religion of corporate agriculture and lethal technologies. With USDA staff came also USDA’s outdated pesticide registrations, which were to be reviewed and reregistered by EPA. In addition, hundreds of new pesticide applications accumulated every year, each supported by industry-produced safety studies to meet new federal requirements. Hired as scientists, EPA staffers spent their time cutting and pasting industry studies and conclusions into rubber-stamped registration approvals. Under industry-crafted laws, once a pesticide was registered, it could never be unregistered without massive, unequivocal evidence of harm…
How correct were Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère when they published “The End of Cheap Oil” in 1998?
Kjell Aleklett, Aleklett’s Energy Mix
17 years ago, in March 1998, Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère published their now classic article, “The End of Cheap Oil” in the journal Scientific American. The figure above is copied from the 1998 article and shows curves fitted to oil production with the source of this information given as Jean Laherrère.
It has been quite a long time since I read Colin and Jean’s article but after a comment by Desmond Smith below my blog, “The crash in the price of oil may change the oil market – a look at the IEA’s “Oil Medium-Term Market Report 2015”, I have now re-read it.
Desmond objected to my statement that, “We can see now that Colin and Jean’s 1998 predictions have proven completely correct.” He commented:
“No, definitely not. I have the 1998 predictions in front of me now. On page 81 there is a chart showing all oil (including unconventional) beginning a terminal decline around 2004-2005. By now, the supply of all oil (including unconventional) was supposed to have declined absolutely by about 14% relative to 2004, and still declining. That has not happened.”…
View the original article here
Book Review: The Powerhouse by Steve LeVine
David Biello, Scientific American
Why didn’t electric cars win the race for vehicular dominance at the beginning of the 20th century? After all, they were cleaner and easier to use than cars burning gasoline. The answer, in a word, is batteries. Now, in the early years of the 21st century, the electric car is making a comeback of sorts, but the challenge remains the same—how to get more juice out of battery chemistry…
