While most of you reading this will already know how much of a policy nerd I am, if you needed any further proof it would be my reason for supporting Barack Obama in the 2008 US Presidential election against John McCain. While I wasn’t decisively swayed one way or another by the broad policy positions on foreign affairs, economics, etc., I decided to take a closer look at the specifics of their environmental policies (which were very similar on the surface). They both proposed a cap-and-trade system of reducing emissions, but Obama promised that 100% of the emissions credits would be auctioned off, whereas McCain had in mind a system where some of the credits would be auctioned, and others allocated by Congress. As similar as they were on the surface, Obama was proposing a cap-and-trade system that works, and McCain was proposing one that doesn’t, so I shifted my support to Obama.
Fast forward to 2010, though, and the climate change bill that’s moving from Congress to the Senate is far removed from Obama’s system, with a whopping 85% of credits being allocated by Congress and only 15% to be auctioned. This doesn’t just defeat the purpose of a cap-and-trade system, but is actually worse than no bill at all. By giving congressmen the power to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars worth of credits, the bill would create a volume of pork that even the most cynical of Washington-watchers would never have thought possible. The system would be a goldmine for lobbyists, and the credits would end up mainly in the hands of the most highly polluting industries, leaving lower-polluting companies to buy them via auction, and ironically shouldering the higher costs.
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