Friday, June 6, 2008

To Cut CO2 in Half , You're Looking at $200 per Tonne Cost (and maybe $500/T)

This stuff isn't hard to figure out. If a part-time blogger can do it, rest assured that the spinmeisters and liars who talk about $35-50/T know what the actual numbers are. For some reason they don't want to tell us. Why? Who knows.
I do know this; If you aren't straight with people they tend to stop listening to you. See post on Trina, below.
(I'll leave the knaves and varlets for another post)

On April 11, in a post about San Francisco's carbon tax, we said:
This is worse than useless. A review of the literature shows that a price of $100 to $200 per ton is required to change behavior. This is just a targeted fund raiser, gussied up in green. As such it could have the effect of reinforcing cynicism toward politician's venality.
(disclosure: I am not a cynic, I am jaded*)...


Today, Reuters reports:

...The IEA said halving emissions by 2050 would require "all options up to a cost of $200 per ton of CO2" -- and in the worst case $500 a ton -- giving a rare long-term forecast that suggests a sharp rise from the 27 euro ($42) a ton price for carbon emissions rights trading in Europe.

"You would have to see one of the biggest rises in a commodity price in history to get $500 a ton," said Tom Luckock, a lawyer with international law firm Norton Rose. Continued...

From their story "IEA urges $45 trln "energy revolution" to halve CO2"

*In honor of Earth Day, here's Green Day's Brain Stew/Jaded.