I am not expecting any government to collect the charge on the carbon in fuel or to dish it out as a subsidy. To quote from my website "Fossil fuel producers and importers would contract for the capture and sequestration of a quantity of carbon dioxide equal to a proportion of that produced from the fuel they supply......The contracts would be traded and recorded centrally, mostly placed and paid for by the international energy companies." seehttp://jemsavestheplanet.blogspot.com/2009/11/cli...

Energy companies have shown themselves to be efficient and effective at collecting both production and sales taxes with little fraud or smuggling.

My proposal will also drive energy saving, renewables and nuclear because it raises the price of fossil fuel exactly like the Cantwell plan but however many windmills we build if we are still burning fossil fuel we need to capture the CO2 produced to stop atmospheric concentration rising.

My point about industry and jobs being exported to unregulated countries would apply to energy intensive manufacturing industries such as metals and chemicals which could relocate overseas. Many of these industries already choose to locate where low cost gas or electricity are available.

I’m not sure I’m the one who misses the point. All the schemes being discussed here (cap and trade, cap and dividend, carbon tax and my proposal) are identical in that they add to the cost of burning fossil fuel in proportion to the carbon content. I mentioned that in my comment (“This will drive energy saving, renewables etc. in exactly the same way as Cantwell’s proposal”) but did not labour the point because I assumed it was obvious to all.

The difference between the schemes is in what they do with the revenue from the charge on burning carbon.

With carbon tax it goes to the national government to allow taxes to be reduced or expenditure increased.

With cap and trade revenue from permit auctions again goes to the government, but of course the value of free allowances given to polluters goes to their shareholders, if free allowances are included in the scheme as they are in both the EU and the US plan. Basic microeconomics tells us that the market price of a good is the marginal cost of its production. In this case since a generator will either have to buy an extra permit or not sell one that he could have sold in order to increase his output, the marginal cost includes the permit value. So in a free market his prices go up across the board even though his total actual costs are hardly changed.

With cap and dividend the revenue is divided equally between the nation’s inhabitants although I notice illegal immigrants are for some reason excluded from this bounty. In total of course the bounty is identically equal to the extra cost of fossil fuel so on average it pays for none of the cost of using more expensive lower carbon energy sources or making energy savings.

My proposal uses the revenue to pay for capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide by whoever can provide this service at the lowest cost. Safeguards are included to ensure that those selling this service sequester carbon dioxide securely and in the agreed quantity.

We are accustomed to paying for services from suppliers in other nations so paying for sequestration around the globe is likely to be acceptable. We are accustomed to income redistribution within a country so a national dividend scheme may also be acceptable, although I see no logic in tying it to a carbon tax other than as an attempt to bribe the electorate with their own money. But we are not accustomed to giving money to foreigners or their governments with nothing to show for it. The international extension of the dividend to provide handouts to all citizens of the world (or in many cases their corrupt rulers) will not therefore be acceptable. And none of these schemes will stop global warming unless they are extended internationally; they will simply result in the export of energy intensive industries and jobs to unregulated countries.

A conglomeration of national cap and dividend, cap and trade or carbon tax schemes will also be unworkable because the sovereign nations of the world will never be able to agree how to share the massive emission reductions required. My proposal requires no such share out, only a global target and that is already tightly constrained by the agreement at Copenhagen to limit warming to 2C.

The cost of switching from fossil fuel or capturing carbon are real and substantial, so on average the dividend Cantwell proposes would not cover the cost to consumers of cutting emissions even if 100% were paid back. The problem is that money only goes into the kitty when people carry on burning fossil fuel. If people switch to expensive renewables or nuclear or adopt costly energy saving measures, which is the intention, the money has to be found elsewhere.

The income redistribution part of the plan will nonetheless appeal to all socialists, but why dress it up as a dividend related to global warming? Why not just tax the rich and divide the take equally between everyone.

If we want to stop global warming we need an international arrangement. When the Cantwell plan is extended internationally, will the whole population of the globe will be entitled to equal handouts? How popular would that be in the US or Europe?

My plan to stop global warming has none of this socialist claptrap. The people who should pay to stop carbon emissions are the ones who make them by burning fossil fuel. My plan puts a price on carbon in a similar way as Cantwell, by obliging fossil fuel producers to pay for the capture and sequestration of an increasing proportion of the carbon dioxide produced when their product is burned. This will drive energy saving, renewables etc. in exactly the same way as Cantwell’s proposal but there are no extra charges to provide handouts for everyone to try and grab.

For details see my article at http://www.ngoilgas.com/article/sorting-climate-c...

and my website at http://jemsavestheplanet.blogspot.com/2009/11/cli...