As the Waxman Markey Carbon Cap and Trade bill winds its way through Congress, our government is finally about to take action on our unsustainable addiction to fossil fuels …….. Or so it would seem.
But we should be paying attention not to the rhetoric, but rather the realities of the legislation. What matters is not the pretty sound bites or the presumed good intentions of the supporters behind legislation, but rather the actual legislation itself. As always in the legislative sausage making process, “the devil is in the details”.
The current Waxman Markey legislation is another truly audacious handout to the Wall Street traders and speculators, and to the nation’s largest carbon emitters, the two groups who stand to benefit most from this legislation. And unfortunately, the political compromises that evolved to give carbon free offsets to refineries, utilities and other major polluters along with all the other give aways will render the overall cap and trade effort effectively useless in actually reducing carbon emissions, as the European system has already proven to be.
What is being proposed in this legislation is one of the world’s largest derivatives markets, with complex rules being made up in a mad rush and Wall Street lobbyists very heavily engaged in the rule making. US Commodities Future Trading Commissioner Bart Chilton is quoted by the Financial Times as predicting carbon markets would become ” the biggest of any derivatives product in the next four to five years.”
One would have hoped Congress learned something from the fiasco created by the derivatives market for subprime mortgages. Unfortunately it seems they haven’t. There is a very good reason that environmentalist organization Friends of the Earth titled their report on Cap & Trade “Subprime Carbon”. In a CNBC video on “The Carbon Challenge”, former Governor and DNC Chairman Howard Dean declares “I am terrified of a Bernie Madoff in the Cap and Trade business who is selling stuff that doesn’t exist”.
This legislation is evolving to be even worse than the Washington solutions for the economic crisis, a record of terrible public policy that I thought would be impossible to challenge. After looting our children’s future handing trillions of tax-payer dollars to the Wall Street firms most responsible for the worlds worst economic problems since the Great Depression, our leaders in Washington are now about to hand additional hundreds of billions of dollars in direct subsidies to the companies most responsible for carbon emissions.
President Obama’s proposal for Cap and Trade was for all allowances to be auctioned to the highest bidder and proceeds largely used to offset the impacts of higher energy costs to citizens, an inevitable near term reality of effective emissions policy. Though not as effective as a straight carbon tax, that would be decent policy. However instead of following the President’s guidance, Congress is now deciding to hand carbon allowances out for free to the industries that currently emit the most carbon.
The Wall Street Journal quotes the President saying just in March “If you’re giving away carbon permits for free, then basically you’re not really pricing the thing and it doesn’t work — or people can game the system in so many ways that it’s not creating the incentive structures that we’re looking for.” White House Budget Director Peter Orszag was even more clear in his March testimony to Congress: “If you didn’t auction the permit, it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States”.
Under Waxman Markey, eighty five percent of initial carbon allowances would be simply given away. Estimates are that those initial allowances could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually. This is a massive handout. Effectively, instead of rewarding utility companies and independent power producers who have led the utility industry in developing wind and other clean energy projects over the last decade, Congress is proposing to hand a large portion of these huge subsidies to their competitors who stuck with the dirtiest possible technology. In a report on Cap and Trade, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that some of these companies could see their market capitalization double and triple almost instantly on the receipt of these free handouts. That’s not a bad reward for companies that maintained the worst emissions policies absolutely as long as possible.
As a real solution, rather than Cap and Trade, a straightforward carbon tax is favored by the vast majority of economists, as well as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, NDN, Tom Friedman, James Hansen, Paul Volker, Joseph Stiglitz, William Ruckelshaus, Al Gore, Ralph Nader and a huge majority of knowledgeable people on all sides of the political spectrum who have actually explored the issue. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu also favored a carbon tax up until his political appointment. A straightforward carbon tax is also favored by almost all business groups other than utilities and other polluters angling for massive free carbon credit handouts.
So the fundamental question is the one the New York Times asked: “How did cap and trade……. become the policy of choice in the debate over how to slow the heating of the planet? And how did it come to eclipse the idea of simply slapping a tax on energy consumption that befouls the public square or leaves the nation hostage to foreign oil producers?”
“The answer is not to be found in the study of economics or environmental science, but in the realm where most policy debates are ultimately settled: politics.”…………….
“[Cap and trade] is almost perfectly designed for the buying and selling of political support through the granting of valuable emissions permits to favor specific industries and even specific Congressional districts. That is precisely what is taking place now in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has used such concessions to patch together a Democratic majority to pass a far-reaching bill to regulate carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade plan.”
Bottom line, as Greg Mankiw, Harvard economist and author of the economics text book used in the majority of university economics courses points out: “Cap-and-trade = Carbon tax + Corporate welfare.”
We should also recognize that as part of the Waxman Markey deal, Congress will require state and regional emissions programs like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), that were carefully designed and negotiated over years, will be put on hold for at least five years. It is truly unfortunate that just as the RGGI program is getting off the ground, it will be derailed in order to enable corrupt political shenanigans like this.
It is hard to imagine how congress can pretend to justify enriching the worst polluters in the country and entrenching their market positions with the massive handout now working its way through Congress.
As I argued here, it seems to me a far better response is to endorse the alternative bipartisan bill: H.R. 2380 The Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act of 2009 which was recently introduced by Representatives Inglis, Flake and Lipinski.
The Miami Herald reports that that H.R. 2380 “would initially impose a tax of $15 a ton of carbon dioxide on the producers and distributors of gasoline, natural gas and coal, with the tax rising to $100 a ton over three decades. The tax increases would be offset by equivalent cuts in payroll taxes, with employers and employees sharing the reductions equally.”
Inglis, Flake and Lipinski calculate that under their bill, customers of coal fired utilities would see cost increases of 83.5 percent in the first year. They address that direct impact to consumers with an offset to the regressive payroll taxes that impact people and jobs most directly.
Unlike Waxman Markey, The Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act is both rational and real market oriented legislation. The fundamental premise of the Inglis, Flake and Lipinski bill is to dependably and significantly reduce carbon emissions and realistically stimulate the economy and job growth – all with no net increase in taxes. Perhaps the details around the specific numbers should be debated more. But unlike Waxman Markey, the fundamental principle is sound environmental policy and sound economic policy. And at the very outset it is far more serious than Waxman Market in actually putting a real and very predictable price on carbon emission.
A meaningful carbon tax at the federal level coupled with encouraging ongoing experiments in Cap and Trade at the state and regional effort, like RGGI, would be a far more rational approach to these issues than the original Waxman Markey bill and certainly far more rational than the cynical counterproductive corruption that it has evolved into.
I find it disheartening when very knowledgeable leaders that I usually respect seem eager to accept an ineffective policy based on political expediency. My own idealism suggests that we should hold out for real solutions, less subject to manipulation and corruption. That idealism is born from very real experience of a project developer trying to build good projects in the face of the morass of unintended consequences coming out of the traditional cynical process of political horse trading.
Over the years, the environmental and clean energy communities have been comprised of very practical idealists. If we are to settle for lousy solutions merely because they are politically expedient when they in fact have no practical value, then we well on our way down the slippery slope and are just another part of the problem rather than part of any solution.
In “Is Cap and Trade a Dead Policy Walking?”, Robert Shapiro of the progressive think tank NDN suggests that “after Wall Street’s meltdown, the proposition for another round of the financial merry-go-round that produced the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes seems either very naive or very cynical”. He also suggests that “for years, many politicians and environmental leaders have believed that any kind of tax to deal with climate change would be dead on arrival. That may be changing, especially if the tax is paired up with rebates to take away much of its political sting. More importantly, the costs and lessons of the financial crisis may effectively swamp the prospects for cap-and-trade. If cap-and-trade has become a dead policy walking, those who care deeply about climate change will find that a carbon tax system has become the last, reasonable policy standing”.
In an article entitled “Coal, Electric Industries Big Winners in Climate Bill Deal” , the Washington Independent points out that organizations who signed on to support Waxman Markey just weeks ago are already pulling away as they see the problems with the emerging legislation: “Janet Keating, executive director of the West Virginia-based Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said in a statement Friday. “There are some costs that are too high to pay when it comes to the environment, clean air and clean water. We urge Congress to either fix the Waxman-Markey bill or dump it and start over.”"
In “Subprime Carbon: Environmentalists Warn About the Next Big Bubble” the Wall Street Journal suggests that “one possible side effect of the financial-market fallout and concerns about more toxic assets” is “growing support for a straight carbon tax, rather than a complicated cap-and-trade plan.”
Once we get the “economic externalities” of fossil fuels somewhat accounted for in the marketplace that everyone participates in, we will start making real progress. Rather than supporting Waxman Markey’s politically created markets in which only specialized elites can play, truly effective policy would be simple, understandable and implemented in a manner that is very direct and clear in the normal economy that everyone makes transactions within. A straight forward carbon tax is the most effective and efficient way to do that.
Waxman Markey will massively increase costs of electricity and other major carbon emitting processes, but instead of providing a mechanism for average people to cover those costs, the benefits are all being handed to the worst carbon polluters for free. What single policy could more effectively turn citizens and voters away from trusting anything labeled with an environmental agenda in the future? It is insanity.
Despite the rhetoric, Cap and trade is not market driven policy, won’t reduce carbon emission and will never create what any real alternative solutions to carbon emission actually need to be successful – predictability in the market place.
Unfortunately, it seems that Simon Johnson, the former Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund may be right in his Atlantic article, “The Quite Coup”, regarding who is really running both political parties of our government these days. But Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill is exaggerating when he is widely quoted saying “The banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place”. Clearly the banks don’t own Congress outright. The utilities and oil companies also still have significant ownership and control of our government.
In a recent blog post entitled Then and Now, Harvard’s Greg Mankiw points out very conflicting realities:
“From a Obama-Biden campaign position paper:
Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s cap-and-trade system will require all pollution credits to be auctioned. A 100 percent auction ensures that all large corporate polluters pay for every ton of emissions they release, rather than giving these emission rights away for free to coal and oil companies.
From the Wall Street Journal: “Pollution Politics and the Climate-Bill Giveaway:
Under the House bill, only 15% of the emission permits will be auctioned initially. The rest of the permits will be given away — 2% to oil refiners, 5% to free-standing “merchant” coal plants, 9% to regulated natural-gas distributors, and so on.
Mankiw asks: “So, Mr President, the bill now being considered in Congress is in direct contradiction to your campaign pledge. Will you now please stand up for principle and issue a veto threat?”
Instead of defending their very clear and sensible positions of only a couple months ago, President Obama and Vice President Biden both praised the passage of Waxman Markey by the House Energy and Environment Committee.
If Congress and the President are not willing to stand up for principle and real solutions, then the rest of us have to demand they do.
Perhaps the main reason we should all support solutions that actually make sense is because citizens nationwide are becoming increasingly skeptical and cynical about government as a solution to anything at all. Anyone with doubts about that should just look at the results of the recent ballot initiatives in California. If we allow completely ineffective carbon legislation like the Waxman Markey bill to pass, that is really just another massive handout to Wall Street and other corporate political campaign contributors, it could be decades before voters allow Congress to attempt to do anything useful about all the problems associated with our fossil fuel addiction.
These issues are too important to settle for a feel good, green wash, ineffective pretense of a solution. Now is the time for the environmental and clean energy communities to unite with the general business community around a real solution far less subject to corruption.
Let’s find the courage to regain both our practicality and our idealism. Lets support something that not only makes environmental sense but also makes economic sense. Let’s demand Congress provide a real solution rather than selling out to the oligarchs that Simon Johnson describes. Their lobbyists are being very well served. Its time we all call our congressional representatives and senators and demand our voices be heard.
Lets demand very predictable and dependable higher levels of carbon taxes on those that should be taxed more instead of giving them massive corporate welfare. And lets demand real reductions in employment taxes to help put regular people back to work and help them pay for the increased costs of living that any meaningful carbon solution must inevitably entail.
Anyone actually paying attention knows it is past time to dump Waxman Markey and demand a real solution. Let’s join a very broad politically and economically sensible consensus and unite behind demanding passage of H.R. 2380 “The Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act of 2009”.
Hey Fred: Thanks for the great post. I’m new to this subject and have a couple of questions.
I completely agree with you that the biggest problem with the Waxman/Markey bill is the handouts of credits to the biggest polluters.
But I have questions about your overall dismissal of Cap and Trade as a viable means of reducing GHGs.
For example, as you may recall, pre-Clinton, regulating markets was the norm. Granted, markets are far more complex today but couldn’t we address a number of your concerns regarding the potential for increased market volatility and an asset bubble through rigorous regulation and verification of offset credits?
I wonder what kind of regulation is in place for the European Cap & Trade market or RGGI?
Like you, I would prefer a carbon tax. I’d also prefer a single payer health care system. But, both do seem unrealizable in today’s political environment despite public opinion.
If second best is what we have to work with, isn’t rigorous regulation what we should be fighting for?
Hi Fred,
You make some excellent arguments on a carbon tax versus a cap and trade regime and have supported it very well. And like Jo, I would rather have a carbon tax as well since it seems that it could be initiated far more quickly than a cap and trade program and would probably be less subject to any sort of gaming — – and I am even one who is suspicious of the REC market doing what it was first intended to do.
Unfortunately, politics is the art of the possible and too many times in order to get any type of forward motion you have to sort of swallow hard, hold your nose and take what you can get rather than what you would precisely desire. I have, unfortunately, had to experience that and it is probably one reason why I had a very short political career. But by being an active participant in the process rather than standing on the sidelines where it’s pretty easy to criticize and throw stones, I learned a great deal.
I guess part of the thing on climate change is that we are being told by some of the top scientists like Jim Hansen that this is a pretty time sensitive issue and if we don’t begin to act on it within just a very few years we may have some irreversible results. So under those circumstances, do we let the perfect (let’s say a carbon tax) become the enemy of the good (cap and trade– and I know you would say it was not so good) and then half the battle is on to come to agreement on that cap and trade over the next five years? It’s sort of like on Star Trek where you have the Kobayashi Maru simulation that you lose either way. In this case I suppose political shenanigans as we have experienced for millennium may be the more acceptable in the near term than no action at all.
I think your best point, however, is that the cap and trade in the way it is being formulated may actually do very little and as a compromise I might suggest that if certain reductions are not met by certain dates by that method, the legislation should contain a trigger point that would automatically go into effect to enact a carbon tax. In this way you would get the best (or worst) of both worlds. The danger in this is you may lose valuable time in reducing the emissions to where you need to have them in the 2050 era but at least you have built something into it that if one mechanism is not working all parties know that another one is waiting in the wings to immediately spring to action when those parties fall short.
I will also agree that to put some of the same people in charge of carbon emissions who had previously been involved in financial markets does scare the hell out of me but this time let’s make sure we have regulators who regulate and send people to jail without passing GO. Remember there was someone (Marakopoulis –badly spelled here) who blew the whistle on Bernie Madoff but under eight years of the Bush regime we hardly had what one would call real regulators. I guess that is sort of the nice thing about a carbon tax, it is direct and it does not depend upon the whims of free-market regulators who may see the world in a different way.
Thanks for making us all think Fred, I think these are issues that need to be brought up and debated both in this forum and maybe even at BE10.
Best,
Joel
Joel and Jo,
You raise good points in suggesting we not allow striving for ideal prevent us from making progress. Is it reasonable to insist on something at least modestly useful instead of allowing demonstrably counterproductive legislation to pass due to the pretty rhetoric disguising it?
Raising James Hansen’s concerns suggests we might want to actually follow his advice. Please note that in a recent presentation at Dartmouth College, James Hansen was unambiguous in declaring “Cap and Trade is not going to work……in Europe it has been completely ineffective.” He instead advocates a major carbon tax sufficient to give every American a several thousand dollar a year direct cash rebate, making his proposal the most progressive form of taxation.
And if we are to follow our leaders on this stuff, I will again relay what the President and his budget director had to say before deciding to cave in to the mounting pressure to support a corporate welfare bill masquerading as an environmental solution.
The Wall Street Journal quotes the President saying just in March “If you’re giving away carbon permits for free, then basically you’re not really pricing the thing and it doesn’t work — or people can game the system in so many ways that it’s not creating the incentive structures that we’re looking for.” White House Budget Director Peter Orszag was even more clear in his March testimony to Congress: “If you didn’t auction the permit, it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States”.
As for Jo’s question on why a carbon tax is better.
1) Of all the things governments throughout history have tried, the only thing they have all been universally successful at is taxing people.
2) In general the more complex government solutions are, the less effective they have proven to be. Any bill such as Waxman Markey, which is longer than Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and which has more confusing acronyms than “War and Peace” has confusing Russian names, is an invitation for abuse and corruption. Good legislation shouldn’t require more than five or ten pages. For comparison, WikiAnswers.com states that the Constitution of the United States “is printed on 6 pages: pages 1-4 are the base text of the constitution, page 5 is the letter of transmittal and page 6 contains the Bill of Rights.”
3) Unlike the SOx and NOx markets, the wide open possibilities for defining “carbon offsets” is an invitation for abuse and unverifiable nonsense being counted instead of actual emissions reduction.
4) Most importantly, establishing highly specialized specialized government controlled programs trading attributes with definitions always changing and in which only specialized experts with inside connections can trade, is not a market solution just because some legislator labels these bureaucratic constructions as such. Simple carbon taxes are a true market based solution. Real market based solutions provide clear direct feedback signals to the real economy where we all transact business. All of the environmental attribute markets confuse rather than clarify the real costs of the solutions we favor in the real marketplace. All of them are at best a very poor substitute for real market based solutions like putting a real price on the “economic externalities” of fossil fuel use. The best example of this is what happened last summer when the price of oil went to $150 a barrel and the price of gasoline followed. The demise of stupid services and products in the marketplace, like the GM Hummer, and the success of real solutions, like fuel efficient cars will be brought about not by hidden side “markets”, but by real prices for carbon emission for everyone. The same will apply for clean electricity generation solutions and everything else we favor. Let’s put the price signals directly into the real economy and allow the free market to work.
5) Suggesting that passing a tax can only happen if you disguise it and call it something else is a cop out. British Columbia, a major center of fossil fuel production, passed a straight carbon tax last year and just a couple weeks ago, with that carbon tax at the center of election debates, the supporters of that tax were re-elected. Most of Europe has had high gas taxes for decades. Across all political perspectives, opinion leaders almost universally favor a carbon tax over cap and trade. Only the politicians refuse to go along, because carbon taxes don’t easily allow for the handouts of credits to their political supporters the way cap and trade does.
6) Under the Inglis bill, 100% of carbon tax revenues would be returned to people impacted in the real world through a reduction of payroll taxes so the inevitable economic pain of an effective carbon policy will be offset by a reduction of the most regressive taxes in the US economy. Under Waxman Markey, those revenues are being handed to political supporters, so the added cost of reducing carbon emissions will inevitably create a backlash against environmental advocates and future effective means of addressing these issues.
7) Effective legislation addresses complex interactions in our economy through simple easily communicated solutions. The “Freedom Tax” proposal that several of us from NESEA have been debating for years, and which is described in my earlier post “Actually Mr. President, There Is A Solution”, has all the benefits of the Inglis bill plus an added benefit of a ratchet mechanism that would very effectively reduce speculation and volatility on world petroleum markets, thus stabilizing many of the economic impacts of energy price volatility in the economy.
8.) Effective legislation would put a firm bottom on the price of carbon emissions so that competing solutions like solar, wind etc, have a predictable market to sell into. Cap and Trade has proven in Europe to be a complete failure in that regard. This is precisely the role a simple carbon tax would play very simply and very well.
Bottom line: a good legislative solution would have a variety of definitive positive impacts. Knowledgeable observers of Waxman Markey see its primary impact as further weakening the economy to provide a massive derivatives market for speculators to play in, handing out corporate welfare to the politically connected, and doing little or nothing at all effective to reduce carbon emissions. It will drive up the cost of living for everyone, thus driving grass roots political support away from real solutions to environmental problems while achieving no useful benefits. If that is the best we can get out of Congress, we should not only reject the bill itself but also reject the re-election bids of everyone in Congress supporting such foolishness.
Just a whimsical aside, Fred, but you above all should know when you say “Any bill such as Waxman Markey, which is longer than Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and which has more confusing acronyms than “War and Peace” has confusing Russian names, is an invitation for abuse and corruption.” that I do not find Russian names confusing but I get your point. One good thing I DID hear about Waxman-Markey was they did “protect vulnerable households’ budgets while still achieving the benefits of reduced emissions. It would fully offset low-income families’ average loss of purchasing power due to higher energy-related costs under an emissions cap. The protection would reach some moderate-income households, as well.”
While I know you think a tax probably should be absolute without such social tinkering, let’s be real and understand that as a percentage of income this will hurt the poor more than most and unless you can find some way to make it somewhat progressive, this may be the largest political factor against it and just watch the coal companies play to us liberals on this. Thoughts???
Best,
Joel
Joel,
No disrespect at all intended regarding Tolstoy or Russian names. My analogy to War and Peace is just to suggest that wading into a sea of acronyms and regulatory details can be quite intimidating and confusing for those of us that aren’t very experienced in it.
Instead of being a level playing field for everyone in the economy, the Cap and Trade solution will inevitably be an insiders game where very specialized experts have the best rewards. In my opinion, we already have more than enough special interest groups gaming the economy.
As for your question – today we raise massive levels of taxation with all sorts of arcane rules so that the social engineers in Washington can buy political patronage allocating resources to folks they determine to be deserving.
You personally first taught me the most important economic impact of taxation and the fundamental principal of Pigouvian taxes – Taxes work extremely effectively in discouraging exactly what is being taxed.
According to the April 2009 Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays for The United States Government for Fiscal Year 2009 Through April 2009, issued by the US Treasury Department, over 88% of all federal revenues were derived from directly taxing either payroll or personal income. In other words, what our government most effectively discourages through our tax policy is work and job creation.
Call me old fashioned, but I believe that if we are serious about helping low income people, the best way to do so is to have a thriving economy with jobs available. And the best way to encourage a job creating economy is to stop taxing work so ridiculously heavily.
If the government really wants to eliminate the economic impacts of environmental policies on low income people, they should focus on policies that encourage rather than actively discourage economic activity and job creation. Unlike the social engineering in Waxman Markey, H.R. 2380, “The Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act of 2009″ takes a much simpler approach by offsetting all revenues gained through carbon taxes with an equivalent cut in payroll taxes, which are by far the most regressive and irrational form of taxation in this country. So the real solution to carbon emissions is also a very effective job creating solution to the economic slump we are in.
Perhaps the party labels aren’t right on the sponsors, or the rhetoric might not be quite as pleasing, but as a self proclaimed liberal, I would think you would want to focus on a solution that actually creates jobs and economic opportunity rather than one that is so focused on corporate welfare and financial derivatives and only throws bones at social justice as an after thought, while actively depressing economic activity through effectively increasing tax burdens on everyone.
As you suggest yourself, it seems to me that your tender heart strings are being played quite beautifully by some powerful special interests that are laughing all the way to the bank.
Fred
Hi All,
Taxes or cap and trade makes no difference. What must be included in any calculus on emissions is Life Cycle Assessments of chemicals and materials. The lack of credible and verifiable databases and models for these metrics is a disgrace! The knowledge on embedded emissions could drive innovation in manufacturing and inform consumer behaviour throughout supply chains and on retail level. Caps or tax on smokestack emissions is like playing with half the deck of cards. Its just stuipid.
It’s interesting that the Feds will supercede RGGI, which in NH seems to be a good working program where the funds will be put toward energy efficiency projects and programs. The Federal program seems to have little to do with putting the money back into energy efficiency and/or renewables and actually reducing Carbon. Regardless, we ratepayers and taxpayers will bare the brundt of the cost. Fred, I feel your pain.
Tom,
Its not my pain, its our collective pain.
Check out this analysis of Waxman Markey from the Breakthrough Institute:
https://www.yousendit.com/download/cmczeW44Q1BqV0FLSkE9PQ
The details on the actual cost imposed on carbon emissions from slide #36 are especially interesting:
Price floor: $10/ton at outset, rises 5% each year
EPA estimate: $12-15 per ton 2015; $15-20 per ton in 2020
CBO estimate: $15 per ton 2011; $26 per ton 2019
Those numbers should be compared to H.R. 2380 The Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act of 2009, which immediately imposes a strict tax of $15/ton on carbon dioxide producers at the mine, well or point of import; guarantees to have the tax at $26 by 2019; requires that tax rises to $100/ton over three decades; and which allows for no breaks, offsets, gimmicks or subsidies for polluters. See summary at: http://inglis.house.gov/sections/issues/current/rnct/The%20Triple%20Win%20(2).pdf
One has to wonder.