Drizzle’s Policy Musings

I don’t want to talk about health care, I find it depressing. Thanks to Stupak and the No-Girls Allowed club, we’re at the point where the debate is whether or not the bill is better than nothing. That’s not where you really want to be.

So I’m going to talk about meat. Meat is delicious as evidenced here and here. However, I eat too much of it. Mainly, I’m aware that meat is sooooo bad for the environment, the carbon emissions per calorie basically means a nice steak is a kick to the face for the planet (by the way, I can’t really find good and consistent numbers on carbon emissions per calorie, if a loyal reader can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it).

The problem with my meat eating ways and the environment is that I’m lazy. It is hard to change one’s ways, especially when that change involves fewer burgers in my life. What would make it easier would be if someone could somehow build in the environmental impact into something I already consider when making life decisions, something like price perhaps. And bam!, we could have a carbon tax and I would reapportion my consumption to reflect the new pricing structure and then I could be green and smug about it and get to eat a substantial but not unreasonable amount of meat.

Now, we won’t see a carbon tax in our political future. When the dude or dudette who invented it decided the second word should be tax, he or she basically guaranteed that it is politically dead. That’s sad, not only for me but even for conservative economists like Greg Mankiw, who see a carbon tax as a great way to raise needed revenue in a way that reduces economic distortion (the bane of economists). But we do have Waxman-Markey, (Kerry-Boxer in the Senate), a delicious little cap and trade bill that will hopefully also get me to eating my greens.

The downside of cap and trade is that it is complex to run, what with all the capping and the trading. Carbon tax would ideally be simple, like the sales tax. However, a cap and trade approach actually lets you ensure you get the amount of emissions you want. If you have a carbon tax and set it too low, you’ll discover that a bunch of people really really like driving their hummers to the grocery store to buy delicious meat to burn on their charcoal grill while having a million lights on. That means too much carbon in the atmosphere and we’ll all get to experience what a post-apocalyptic setting looks like (I predict biker leather). Of course, cap and trade is basically great stimulus for lobbyists, they are going to have a great time meeting over steaks to figure out whose caps are set where. Still, the eventual winners will still be those who don’t want Ohio to be beach front property (I could do more research to give a more realistic outcome of what would happen in a catastrophic global warming scenario but every time I read climate change research I end up scared and depressed). And, while I may have to buy less meat, I still won’t actually have to think about the environmental consequences of my actions. Everybody wins. Hope that clarifies a bit why I’m excited about the prospects of climate change legislation. I’m sure some jackass centrist will muck it up (I’m looking at you Ben Nelson, this is your time to shine) but in the meantime we can let some glimmer of hope shine down, like a ray of Earth heating sunlight through our carbon filled skies.