We all just, as individuals, try to make personal choices to reduce our ecological footprint. We apply peer pressure to tell those who fail to do so and tell them that they are bad people, and try to guilt and shame them into compliance.

This approach is very popular with eco-hippies. At a typical hippie environmental meeting, there is a lot of talk about personal sacrifices that people are making as individuals to save the planet.

This can be effective for modest efforts. For example, in the early 1960's, everybody littered and thought nothing of it. Then, around 1970, we decided that that was socially unacceptable. But there were also laws passed against littering around that time. And part of the effort was making litter baskets available everywhere.

There are a number of problems with trying to solve global warming through this means:

American society is much worse fractured into warring tribes than it was in 1970. If one group applies peer pressure to do something, other groups will automatically react against it. For example, we couldn't even get everybody to wear masks on airplanes during the pandemic.

The amount of sacrifice needed for someone to bring their carbon emissions to zero right now, with current technology, is mind-boggling. It's basically unachievable. Faced with a challenge like that, many people will conclude that it's not feasible to lead an ethical life, give up completely, and utter depravity will result.

Impose a fee on carbon, and have the government return all the money to the public in tax cuts, thus avoiding growth of the public sector.  Revenue Neutral.

Drawbacks:

• Ideally, it should be a federal carbon fee, and there is no federal sales tax, so it can't be returned in a sales tax cut.  The cuts would have to be to corporate or income taxes.
  


• The bottom 50% of the population pay almost no income tax, so they would get practically no tax relief, yet they would face higher energy costs without any help meeting those costs.  So this effort would be a massive redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, which the left would never cooperate with.  And it is just generally politically infeasible to impose a scheme which would result in such a major hardship for such a large share of the voters.

Issue "carbon credits" to factories, or to countries, or auction them off to the highest bidder, where a carbon credit is permission to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases. This has been tried many times with varying success. Over time, the total amount of credits is reduced as emitters clean up their act.

Sometimes the carbon credits are issued to polluters (be they factories, or countries) according to how much they were emitting before the scheme began.

If an emitter is able to reduce emissions, they may have a surplus of carbon credits that they can sell to make money. If an emitter increases emissions, they need to find someone that they can buy credits from. So everyone has an incentive to reduce emissions.

There have been cases where companies go bankrupt and shut their doors, but keep alive a shell company to receive their carbon credits, which they then sell.

John McCain had cap and trade as part of his campaign platform when he ran for president in 2008.

If the carbon credits are just arbitrarily given to companies, they become an arbitrary windfall and reward for past bad behavior. If they are auctioned off by the government, that can just amount to an awkward carbon tax funding the growth of the public sector.

Most observers today agree that a carbon fee or tax is a better approach than cap and trade.

Drawbacks:

• It is hard to predict the future demand for carbon credits, and thus hard to predict their future price, which makes it difficult for emitters to make plans.


• The scheme is hard to tweak right, and can completely fail. Europe has a cap and trade scheme which basically failed -- emissions turned out to be lower than expected, and the price of a carbon credit dropped so low that it failed to provide the desired incentive. And a scheme can fail in the opposite direction, where the price of a carbon credit rises so high that it strangles the economy.

Asserts that global warming is a serious problem warranting action.

Text of Resolution

Speaks about encouraging investment, but utterly vague about exactly how the desired investment is to be encouraged.

Advocates nuclear energy and carbon capture & sequestration, which the AOC/Sunrise Green New Deal does not.

Most of the actions advocated are in the form of deregulation and tax cuts.

In contrast to the Green New Deal, it is actually entirely focused on climate change.

Drawback:

• Lacks credibility in that it fails to mention any means whatsoever of discouraging people from burning as much fossil fuel as they want.

Less detail than Jay Inslee's plan. No mention of a carbon tax.

• Aim for a 100% carbon-free economy by 2050 via "an enforcement mechanism" whatever that means.
• Invest in energy & climate research.
• "If Congress falls short of its duty to act, Biden will hold them accountable.". He really said that. Like, what's he going to do -- spank them?
• Aggressive limits on methane leakage from oil & gas operations.
• Enhance fuel economy standards to get 100% of new light and medium vehicles electric.
• Biofuels
• Enhance building & appliance energy efficiency standards.
• Requiring public companies to disclose GHG emissions.
• Ban drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
• Some reduce the carbon footprint of existing buildings by 50%. It will take a lot of work and a lot of money to do that, he's not clear who's going to pay for it.
• Restore tax credits for electric cars, subsidize the creation of more charging stations for them.
• Somehow mitigate urban sprawl so that people will have shorter commutes.
• Somehow subsidize manufacturing
• Subsidize more development of railroads, both passenger and freight
• Rejoin the Paris Agreement and seek to organize more agreements
• "Name and shame" high emissions countries (cough, cough -- right now, that's us!)
• Organize a worldwide ban on fossil fuel subsidies
• Help the former coal mining communities.

Biden will invest in research to develop:

• small modular nuclear reactors and other new nuclear technlogies
• eliminate GHG's from refrigerators and air conditioners
• "zero net energy buildings at zero cost" -- I have no idea what that means
• use renewables to make hydrogen more cheaply than by producing it from fossil fuels
• decarbonize the process of making steel and concrete
• decarbonize agriculture
• develop agricultural techniques to sequester carbon
• develop carbon capture & sequestration technology
• low-carbon aviation

Joe Biden's climate website

Overall, this is well-focused on climate change without getting sidetracked like the "Green New Deal" or Jay Inslee's plan. I would have liked to see a carbon tax and less focus on doing everything through the public sector. It's good that nuclear is included.

Climate change is the top priority of Democratic candidate Jay Inslee.

Lots and lots of details:

A publicly funded "Green Bank" (why?) -- increasing tax incentives for renewable energy (why not just penalize carbon?) -- goals for use of renewable energy by federal agencies -- involve the government in building up charging stations for electric cars (why?) -- federal investment in public transport -- federal investment in transitioning to a smart electrical grid -- "clean cars for clunkers" program -- federal "Buy Clean" program where the government somehow assesses GHG emissions involved in everything it buys -- crack down on "super-pollutants": HFC's & CH4 -- make industry lower emissions -- work through international trade, financial organization to promote emissions reductions abroad -- somehow penalize other countries that aren't making an effort -- fund research into climate-relevant technologies -- fund research into agricultural carbon capture -- fund climate research

Federal assistance to suffering former coal mining communities.

Website doesn't mention nuclear either way, but Inslee told Bill Maher that he wasn't ruling it out.

Website doesn't mention a carbon tax.

Jay Inslee's climate website

• Lots and lots of talk about labor:
  • banning "right to work" laws
  • eliminating the secret ballot when organizing unions, leaving workers who don't want unions vulnerable to physical intimidation by union organizers, who are often members of organized crime
  • requirements that all the "green jobs" be done by union labor
  • enhancing labor laws to give all workers, not just union ones, more rights
  • A "federal clean energy wage" that "averages" $25 an hour. (how?)
  • A federal minimum wage of $15 an hour by 2024, pegged to the median wage after that. (Why track median wage??? Why not inflation?)
• Clean water.
• Housing.
• Federal support for vocational training programs.
• STEM education.

Drawbacks:

• 29 states have passed right-to-work laws. What makes Inslee think the people in those states will like being federally forced to repeal them? What makes him think workers will like giving up the right to a secret ballot in union drives?
• Mandates many decisions to be made by the federal government that would be more rationally and efficiently made in the market. Has many, many actions being done by the public sector that don't need to be.