Comment Log Display

Public Comment to California EPA Air Resources Board 12/14/2010:

"Cap and trade" has been demonstrated to work in the Montreal
Protocol to reduce upper atmosphere ozone destruction, thus
becoming our only model for an effective international agreement
that can reliably reduce a dangerous global pollutant.  However, I
want you to think outside the box because the future imposed by
unbridled global heating is too terrible to properly imagine and
our ability to control it is rapidly dissipating.  

Please consider implementing an assured carbon tax, perhaps along
with the nation of China or the entire Pacific Rim, on all carbon
emissions to the atmosphere.  The United States of America and
Canada will have no choice but to go along, which is what they want
and need.  To be sure there are no loopholes in responsibility,
call it a carbon fee or assessment across the board.  James
Hansen's private communications urging a carbon fee to be fully
returned to the public are particularly compelling, at
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2010/.   I’ve attached a
zipped file of the most pertinent examples to this comment.

If you experience further principled opposition to cap and trade
without giveaways as a mechanism to control future climate change,
please consider this surer way to establish a price on carbon
emissions:  an actual carbon fee imposed at the port of entry or
domestic mine/wellhead on all anthropogenic sources of atmospheric
greenhouse gases rising to commensurate with very real future
social costs.  

This fee can start out small but effective, and grow according to
an entirely predictable schedule over the next few decades. 
Thereafter a carbon fee can adaptively regulate carbon emissions
and perhaps even incentivize atmospheric carbon reduction over the
next two centuries.  We should establish some control over the
destiny of life as we know it, just as the Fed helps to regulate
the gyrations of our expansionist economy.  

Popular opinion shifted by 2007 to support real, systemic action
against climate change.  Business has been asking for stable
expectations for the future, with of all companies Royal Dutch
Shell requesting government action since their shareholder
statement of 2006.  Even the Houston Area Survey
(http://has.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=2452,
http://has.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/2009_Findings/HAS_Highlights_2010.pdf)
has shown majority support, right here in the Oil capital of the
planet.  Any failure to act to conserve a livable climate after
2007 is the policy maker’s alone.  Clearly, going forward we cannot
expect initiative from our U.S. Congress, and certainly not without
your solid supporting performance in California.

Act in the best way possible by implementing a steadily rising
carbon fee sufficient to ratchet down atmospheric carbon emissions
to zero and below… and return all the revenue collected per capita
directly to the people, so that their enlightened consumer actions
in the free market can guide us to a better future than the one we
veer toward today. 

Respectfully,

Paul M. Suckow
Senior Planner, Harris County CSD, Texas