I read the headlines last week and didn't get towards the bottom of this article, but the second half is the most interesting (after the "..." below):
President Xi Jinping of China will make a landmark commitment on Friday to start a national program in 2017 that will limit and put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, Obama administration officials said Thursday.
The move to create a so-called cap-and-trade system would be a substantial step by the world’s largest polluter to reduce emissions from major industries, including steel, cement, paper and electric power. ...
Under a cap-and-trade system, a concept created by American economists, governments place a cap on the amount of carbon pollution that may be emitted annually. Companies can then buy and sell permits to pollute. Western economists have long backed the idea as a market-driven way to push industry to cleaner forms of energy, by making polluting energy more expensive.
Mr. Xi will pledge to put in place a “green dispatch” program intended to create a price incentive for generating power from low-carbon sources, officials said. He will agree to help provide financing to poorer countries to help them pay for projects that reduce harmful emissions. And China, one of the world’s largest financiers of infrastructure projects, will agree to “strictly limit” the amount of public financing that goes toward high-carbon projects, another official said, in line with a 2013 commitment by the United States Treasury Department to cease public financing for new coal-fired power plants.
In his first term, Mr. Obama tried to push a similar cap-and-trade program through Congress. But the measure died in the Senate, in part because lawmakers from both parties feared that a serious climate change policy could threaten economic competition with China. Now, however, China appears poised to enact the same climate change policy that Mr. Obama failed to move through Congress.
China has been developing and carrying out smaller cap-and-trade programs for at least three years. In 2012, it started pilot programs in seven provinces, intended to serve as tests for a national program.
Last week, Chinese officials met in Los Angeles with top environmental officials from California, which has enacted an aggressive cap-and-trade program. People who attended the talks said they were meant to pave the way for a possible linkage of the Chinese and California cap-and-trade systems.
The Chinese announcement comes less than two months after Mr. Obama unveiled his signature climate change policy, a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations that would force power plants to curb carbon emissions. The rules could shut down hundreds of heavily polluting coal-fired plants. They have drawn fire from Republicans and coal-state lawmakers, but international negotiators say Mr. Obama’s regulations have helped break a long deadlock between the United States and China on climate change.
via www.nytimes.com
I think this is good news for a goal of efficient climate policy that could actually lead to something positive about global carbon emissions. But, it is a rainy Monday morning and I'm grumpy. I won't get these thoughts (all a bit extreme) out of my head until I write them down:
- Will the "carbon tax or bust" folks be against cap-and-trade in China because a linkage with California might lead to national cap-and-trade in the U.S. and not achieve the maximum amount of efficiency (while achieving more efficiency than the status quo)?
- Will the naysayers suggest that this announcement is worthless because China doesn't even accurately report their GDP? Yes. Here it is already at Marginal Revolution. I can't help but also note that MR has recently apologized for Volkswagon (the everybody does it defense) and fawned over Good Profit by Charles Koch. I was a little surprised at each of these last three posts since I've always assumed that MR was fairly objective. Now I'm thinking that blog might need a conflict of interest disclaimer, especially for any posts involving energy and the environment.
- I've been searching for an "I told you so" post from the old days, but 10+ years of archives is getting difficult to navigate. I'm fairly sure that in the face of "China and India aren't doing it so we shouldn't do it" contrariness, I've advocated that the U.S. unilaterally pursue climate policy and China and India might follow. Are we getting close to a point where I can say "I told you so?"
