Community | December 08, 2009 | 18 comments

The Story of Cap & Trade

source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA6FSy6EKrM&feature=player_embedded

asherp
Or, "Why you can't fix a problem using the thing that created it"

From Annie Leonard, creator of "The Story of Stuff"
  1. groups:
    Community,   Green,   US Politics,   Virals,   11 more
  2. tags:
    Corruption,  Wall Street,  Goldman Sachs,  cap and trade,  2 more
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18 comments // The Story of Cap & Trade // Video

  • stephenthomson
  • treewolf39
    • 0
      treewolf39  

    • Before we implement the market mechanism, we need to keep the spaceship from crashing. WE don't have to fuck the planet up in the name of money. The earth is the commons. Stop the poison, start the healing.

    • 2 years ago
  • peterzylstramoore
    • 0
      peterzylstramoore  
    • treewolf39:

      I agree that we have to act radically on climate change. But I also believe if tomorrow we stop using fossil fuels it would lead to mass devastation of human life. Many intelligent climate change scientists have supported cap and trade. We need to recognize that markets like everything else have weaknesses. One of it's most glaring weaknesses is there is no cost and no cap on carbon emissions.

      Markets have other weaknesses including their volatility which as I suggested earlier a tax relative to size of transaction (not the length of time) would dispraportionately affect and limit short term transactions, rationalizing the markets.

      Everything about the US is set up so it can't change tomorrow. For instance ineffective mass transit in cities and between cities. Dependance on semis instead of rail. As I said earlier I completely agree with the fact that these companies shouldn't be given handouts so they can emmit, nor do I think offsets are a good idea.

      Things can change incredibly quickly, but if theirs no food in the market, no heat in our homes, etc we will have no support for the plan. We need real penalties for failing to meet targets. We can act effectively if we act immediately.

    • 2 years ago
  • peterzylstramoore
    • 0
      peterzylstramoore  

    • The good thing about cap and trade is it would allow an adjustment period. Japan for instance uses about a third of the energy that the US does, and if they were both required to emit the same per capita, we just wouldn't have the US go along with it. By allowing Japan to trade it's emissions to the US, it makes the US pay for it's emissions, and provides an cost incentive for the US to improve.

      I agree that the offsets, and the handouts to emitters are problematic.

      I think market mechanisms (and believe me, I'm no apologist for capitalist markets) are necessary. If we don't want bubbles we should tax transactions based on the size of the transaction. This would incentivize long term investment because the tax would be according to the transaction size rather than profit etc. This would hugely restrict short term speculative trading while costing little to long term investors. A small tax of .5% would provide money for saving failing financial institutions during crisis and social stimuluses to save the real economy.

      However, we feel about the market, if we want the US and others to be involved we need to look at some sort of market mechanism.

    • 2 years ago
  • Wegg
    • 0
      Wegg  

    • I think the part that really upsets me are the tax credits to oil and coal companies. If we were to nix that then prices for carbon producing fuels would go back up to real world market values and alternatives could then compete in a free market.

    • 2 years ago
  • CreditFigaro
  • asherp
    • 0
      asherp  
    • Wegg:

      I agree-- this is one area where the Free Market actually works.

      Stop tax credits and subsidies to the petro-carbon industries!
      Let other emerging alternatives compete on fair ground!

    • 2 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  
    • Image
    • Wegg:

      Why do I you feel that chilly cold of a Stockholm syndrome creeping up the ecologist movement spine when confronted with reality ;)

      Question : Why da fuck would child chewing monsters wined & dined on arms, drugs & sex trade would care at all about any of us or the faith of the planet outside of the 1st rule of engagement of anything they do...

      PRIVATIZE THE PROFITS & SOCIALIZE THE COST

      Worked for the banks, will work for healthcare & climate change too :)

      PROOF OF CONCEPT
      Corpo-supremacists make their move on climate change...
      http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/9/naomi_klein_and_martin_khor_on

      The secret draft climate agreement leaked to the Guardian newspaper yesterday sets unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050. This means that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much as those in poor countries. The document also proposes a $10 billion a year fund to help developing nations cut emissions and tackle the effects of climate change. But the fund is far smaller than what many delegates

      Naomi Klein's blog from Copenhagen
      http://www.thenation.com/blogs/copenhagen

      Naomi Klein kick-starts the activism at Copenhagen with call for disobedience
      http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/08/naomi-klein-activism

      “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous“ - Carl Sagan

    • 2 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  
    • Image

    • Was about to post this ;)

      I find the debates in America are increasingly becoming impossible for people make up their own facts & science as they go along their merry agenda while the growing nation of village idiots doesn't even have the basic science education to decipher one from the other... so I want to make it absolutely clear, that "climate gate" which is so blantently but an attempt to buy time by the same corpo-supremacists from the dirty energy lobby is a but a SCAM for illiterate & obscurantist used abused & oh soooo confused by the same pricks keeping all of us down & needy...

      Yep da same crowd defending this dossier ;)
      ROPE A DOPE : GOP SUPPORT DOWN TO 20 %
      http://current.com/items/91258251_rope-a-dope-gop-support-down-to-20.htm

      The key words here is "climate change" that is induced by the ice caps & permafrost disappearing... or is this visual clue easily seen from space to hard to notice & understand ?

      “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” – Daniel Patrick Moynihan

      Shades of the tobacco industry indeed ;)

      “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous“ - Carl Sagan

      Melting Ice: Glaciers and Ice Shelves
      http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/04/

    • 2 years ago
  • bushama
    • 0
      bushama  
    • WhiteNoise:

      forgive me I am not the smartest but I was just curious if you support cap n trade or not and also who you think is being bamboozled, the warmers or skeptics? Thanks I see you like quotes; here is one I just came across.

      "Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong."
      Richard Armour

    • 2 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  
    • Image
    • WhiteNoise:

      Because of the way cap & trade is being set up and judging strictly by the way the principal incumbents have previously conducted operations… It’s a NO !
      I don't believe it will work or be correctly implemented.

      "warmers or skeptics?"

      "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." - Noam Chomsky

      Again...Melting Ice: Glaciers and Ice Shelves = climate change
      http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/04/

      WE ARE ALL BAMBOOZLED because we have collectively lost our references as homo sapiens… mostly reason & logic ;)

      We are bamboozled when science (the best tool humanity has given itself yet) is being co-opted for $$$$$ & violence.

      We are bamboozled for this debate being done within a media co-opted by advertisers is bias. The infamous : “Facts have a liberal bias” – Steven Colbert

      We are being bamboozled when faith replaces facts.

      We are being bamboozled when the will of corporations replaces the will of the people.

      We are being bamboozled when we privatize the profits & socialize the cost.

      We are being bamboozled by bible thumping & gun toting obscurantist terrorized by corpo-supremacists & alien terrorists.

      Copenhagen is mostly a political PR smoke screen to hide the empire’s wars in the name of corpo-supremacist has its been going on for the last 200 years ;)

      Killing with one hand & saving humanity with the other ?
      MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR HYPOCRISY
      http://www.mtwsfh.blogspot.com/

      "How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It's the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It's been 200 years at it. It's superb." - Gore Vidal

      Again... Reason & logic ;)

      Addicted to Nonsense
      http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/addicted_to_nonsense_20091129/

      TARIQ ALI IS SPOT ON !
      http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2009/12/7/tariq_ali_obamas_afghan_pak_syndrome

      We are bamboozled since we’ve acquired the ability to auto-destruct our selves a 1000X fold…something snapped ;)

      "We are watching a poorly staged rendition of Wag the Dog , interpreted for the morbidly stupid and performed by the criminally insane." - Jules Carlysle

    • 2 years ago
  • bushama
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  
    • Image
    • WhiteNoise:

      The previous administration has been the worst in American history just on par with Woodrow Wilson's for vileness & treachery...

      I have often voiced my utter revulsion with them but can again ;)

      They stole 2 elections… the first by perverting the supreme court…nothing happened…Then 9-11 and a war based on a 1000 lies + the treacherous hoisting of a CIA agent… nothing happened… ENRON…zzzzzzzzz….they proceeded to shred the constitution, kidnapped imprisoned & tortured the world over…nothing…spied on one & all, fired top US attorneys, destroyed evidence… nada… conducted Katrina’s thinly veiled ethic cleansing …zilch…seeing how compliant we all where…then they took us to the cleaners…

      Is there a limit to the damage this executive branch inflicted to the USA ?

      It seems not for we will pay for generations to come…

      TOTALLY OFF COURSE
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTv7cSBNGXI

      Fear & Greed Corp still reigns under the guise of Mindfuck Inc. !

      If Americans still had a vestige of dignity Rove & Cheney (at least) should be in fuckin' jail but they are still parading their smug sick sad fuck faces on TV ... BRAVO !

      "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not traitor, he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared." - Cicero, 42 B.C.

    • 2 years ago
  • bushama
    • 0
      bushama  
    • WhiteNoise:

      you dont have to tell me about the bush crimes , i am aware but where were most of the democrats when this happened, and what about now where is the justice, we have a dem pres and a congress and yet they do nothing to bring justice against bush and his cronies, so in my eyes they are just as guilty for covering up and sitting by and doing nothing.

    • 2 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  
    • WhiteNoise:

      Absolutely ;)
      Been saying it all along & it keeps on being the case... Dems looking for their spine !

      "It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people" - Gore Vidal

    • 2 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  
    • WhiteNoise:

      & MORE TO THE POINT...

      Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. 'We have a single system,' he wrote, and 'in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses.'" : Gore Vidal - The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

    • 2 years ago
  • artemis6
  • nkeg87
    • 0
      nkeg87  

    • It's all about the money. With the whole climategate stuff hardly a thing of a the past, it makes me wonder if the entire situation was created just so they could create cap and trade as a means to get richer. I really wouldnt put it past them. Whether climate change is true or false, I don't think it will hurt to decrease carbon emissions as much as it would to do nothing.

    • 2 years ago
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