Cap and Trade Debate At The University of Charleston

On the same day that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that carbon dioxide endangers the health and safety of current and future generations of Americans, and Robert Kennedy Jr. led a mountaintop mining protest at the Department of Environmental Protection the Rotary Club of Charleston sponsored a debate on cap and trade legislation at the University of Charleston between David Hawkins of the NRDC and Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute.

Unlike the Kennedy rally, the debate involved thoughtful exchanges between Hawkins, a proponent of cap and trade, and Michaels, an opponent. I won't try to summarize the debate - go to the Daily Mail article linked above for a report on that. However, it was interesting that Michaels is willing to concede that there could be some anthropogenic effects on the climate caused by greenhouse gas emissions, although he believes that all the data show that the effects are negligible, while the cost of cap and trade will be huge. He thinks the best way to deal with carbon dioxide emissions is to allow the market to direct investment toward low carbon energy sources. Hawkins makes a good case that cap and trade is the engine that drives investment toward greener energy. If you believe that climate change is endangering the earth (I don't) then cap and trade is the way to go.

So it really comes down to this - how real, and how dangerous, is climate change? The climate changes have not been siginificant so far, and if a fair accounting is made, there are some advantages to a warmer world. But if you believe in a tipping point beyond which environmental ruin occurs, then we need to drastically reduce CO2 immediately.

Here's something on the endangerment finding from the University of Pittsburgh law school website.