World Affairs Board - View Single Post - For Those Who Fear Global Warming, Please Read...

**Shek** · 02-11-2008, 22:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zraver

more like at what profit. If America is the one to develop efficient and affordable carbon scrubbers for coal plants, new reactor technology, new automotive technologies etc we can sell them to other nations.

Is Robert Byrd, Senator, West Virginia going to sponsor the scrubber bill, again?

Quote:

Russell Roberts, Pigs Don't Fly, The Economic Way of Thinking about Politics: Library of Economics and Liberty

In the 1970s, sulfur dioxide released by the smokestacks of American midwestern utility companies created acid rain in the American northeast. A clamor arose to clean up the air—environmentalists and everyday citizens demanded legislation. That should have been relatively easy. We know how to get less of something—make it more costly. So the cheapest solution to the sulfur dioxide problem would have been to tax smokestack emissions. That would give utilities the incentive to find the cheapest way to reduce emissions. Over time, better and better technologies would be developed as a way to reduce the burden of the tax.

But Congress didn't impose a tax. Congress imposed a technology. The 1977 amendments to the Clean Air Act required every utility to put a scrubber on its smokestacks. These were incredibly expensive—about $100 million each. They made the air cleaner. They also made the makers of smokestacks richer. The makers of scrubbers were the bootleggers. They joined environmental groups in lobbying for the legislation. That's not so bad. Maybe scrubbers were the best technology and even if a tax had been put in place, the scrubber makers would have profited.

But the real bootleggers were the West Virginia coal companies. If a tax had been used to reduce sulfur dioxide emission, there would have been an incentive to clean up the air. One way to clean up the air is to use technology like a scrubber. A second way is to burn cleaner coal. Cleaner coal (low in sulfur) comes from out West. Dirty coal (high in sulfur) comes from West Virginia. Senator Byrd is from West Virginia. He made sure that scrubbers were mandated. For the environment of course. For cleaner air, of course. For the children, no doubt. But also for his friends in the coal business. We got cleaner air, but we achieved it at a much higher price than was necessary.