Oops!
Four decades ago graudate student Thomas Crocker cooked up the
idea of cap-and-trade. Now retired economist Thomas Crocker
disses the idea as House Democrats would apply it.
Reports
the Wall Street Journal:
In the 1960s, a University of Wisconsin graduate student named
Thomas Crocker came up with a novel solution for environmental
problems: cap emissions of pollutants and then let firms trade
permits that allow them to pollute within those limits.
When he was a graduate student in the 1960s working to reduce
pollutants, Thomas Crocker devised a cap-and-trade system
similar to one being considered in Congress.
Now legislation using cap-and-trade to limit greenhouse gases
is working its way through Congress and could become the law of
the land. But Mr. Crocker and other pioneers of the concept are
doubtful about its chances of success. They aren't abandoning
efforts to curb emissions. But they are tiptoeing away from an
idea they devised decades ago, doubting it can work on the
grand scale now envisioned.
"I'm skeptical that cap-and-trade is the most effective way to
go about regulating carbon," says Mr. Crocker, 73 years old, a
retired economist in Centennial, Wyo. He says he prefers an
outright tax on emissions because it would be easier to enforce
and provide needed flexibility to deal with the problem.
The House has passed cap-and-trade legislation. The Senate
could take up a measure in September. But Republicans strongly
oppose the idea -- arguing that it is a tax that will hurt the
economy -- and Democrats are struggling to come up with an
approach that apportions the inevitable cost of a cap-and-trade
system among different interests, from consumers to utilities
to coal plants.
Mr. Crocker, who went on to become a professor at the
University of Wyoming, is one of two economists who dreamed up
cap-and-trade in the 1960s. The other, John Dales, who died in
2007, was also a skeptic of using the idea to tame global
warning.
Of course, the bigger question is whether global warming is
actually a crisis requiring drastic action to cut energy
consumption and limit if not end economic growth. But if
Congress plans on adopting hugely expensive measures to reduce
pollution, shouldn't it at least use the most cost-effective
approach?
