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Gray whales are skinnier, and scientists suspect Arctic warming is the reason why
Kenneth R. Weiss, Times
...Scientists from Mexico to the Pacific Northwest are reporting an unusually high number of scrawny whales this year for the first time since malnourishment and disease claimed a third of the gray whale population in 1999 and 2000.

So far this year, scientists haven't seen a decline in numbers, and they are not sure what's causing the whales to be so thin. But they suspect it may be the same thing that triggered the die-off eight years ago: rapid warming of Arctic waters where the whales feed. Whales depend on cocktail-shrimp-size crustaceans to bulk up for their long southerly migration. As Arctic ice recedes, fat-rich crustaceans that flourished on the Bering Sea floor are becoming scarce.
(6 July 2007)

Al Gore's inconvenient tax
Editorial, Christian Science Monitor
What you probably won't hear at the Live Earth concert: a call for higher taxes on gasoline and fuel.
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The current crop of US presidential candidates can only wish for the spotlight that will shine on Al Gore Saturday. He's the luminary for a globe-spanning, rock-star-studded, anti-global-warming concert called Live Earth. Most likely, though, his most radical idea won't get a mention.

The former vice president (and almost president) wants to replace the current payroll tax with a consumer tax on fossil-fuel use.

This "carbon tax" would, of course, raise the price of gasoline and home heating/cooling. And it would put the burden of generating the same level of federal revenues on consumers while reducing the tax burden on labor and capital (workers and employers). Unless the poor get a break on this consumption tax, it will hit them harder than wealthier folks.

No wonder then that Mr. Gore waited until March to really push this extreme makeover of the US tax system aimed at achieving a rapid reduction in oil and coal use with a fee on greenhouse-gas emissions.

No wonder that no presidential candidate endorses it, especially with gas prices hovering around $3 a gallon. (Polls show that two-thirds of Americans don't want to pay more at the pump, just as they don't prefer [to drive?] more slowly.)

And no wonder a carbon tax is not even suggested in the seven-point pledge that everyone who watches the Live Earth broadcast will be asked to sign.

If Gore does run again for president, as some hope, his taxing idea will likely become the hottest topic on the stump. (Hillary Clinton says a gas tax is "hardly politically palatable at this moment.")

...Putting a crimp on global warming can't be done solely by promoting new energy technologies and voluntary conservation. Consumers of oil and coal need a direct tax shock.

But the last time Congress raised the gasoline tax was in 1993. In the Senate, Gore cast the deciding vote. At the next election in 1994, the GOP won big on Capitol Hill. Politicians took note.

It may take more than one Live Earth concert to warm up the public and politicians to a carbon tax.
(5 July 2007)
It's too bad that the Christian Science Monitor doesn't take a stronger stand, and instead labels a carbon tax "extreme" and "radical." In comparison to what is really needed, a carbon tax is just a small beginning. It's also a mistake to identify a carbon tax exclusively with Al Gore. Such a tax has the support of many economists, both left and right. ALL politicians should be talking about it, not just Gore. -BA

Global Warming and Your Wallet
Editorial, New York times
...for all the talk about warming, leading politicians have yet to educate their constituents (and their colleagues) about an unpleasant and inescapable truth: any serious effort to fight warming will require everyone to pay more for energy. According to most scientists, the long-term costs of doing nothing — flooding, famine, drought — would be even higher than the costs of acting now. But unless Americans understand and accept the trade-off — higher prices today to avoid calamity later — the requisite public support for real change is unlikely to build.

Energy is currently underpriced in part because its cost does not reflect the damage inflicted by fossil fuels. Underpricing leads to overconsumption. Worse, it leads to underinvestment in alternatives. As long as today's energy is relatively cheap, there is little incentive for private firms to develop new fuels and technologies.

When the market, on its own, fails to arrive at the proper price for goods and services, it's the job of government to correct the failure. There are two ways to do so: higher taxes and new regulation.

Over a decade ago, the Clinton administration floated the sound idea of a tax on the carbon content of various fuels, like coal and oil. A tax on carbon, the main greenhouse gas, would cause energy prices to rise, thereby curbing consumption and providing a powerful incentive to invest in alternatives. The revenue from the tax could be used, in part, to subsidize the higher energy costs for low-income Americans. But the idea went nowhere, and new taxes remain a political nonstarter, at least for now.

The approach preferred by influential senators — including Joseph Lieberman, John Warner and Jeff Bingaman — as well as many businesses and environmental groups, is to develop a cap-and-trade system. The government would impose a cap on the overall amount of carbon that could be emitted and at the same time allow regulated firms, like utilities and oil refiners, to buy and sell the right to those limited emissions. Firms that could easily reduce their emissions could sell their allowances to firms that could not.

The big plus is that the nation would set an enforceable ceiling on carbon emissions, which would be lowered over time. Such a system has worked well to lower emissions of sulfur dioxide and other power plant pollutants and its proponents believe it can do the same for greenhouse gases.

Because a trading system would not impose new taxes, some in Congress might try to portray it as a free ride. But it would work the same way higher taxes would work — by raising the cost of fossil fuels. The higher prices would encourage efficiency and spur investment in a range of clean-energy technologies, without which major reductions would be almost impossible to achieve.

As the year rolls on, Congress will entertain several cap-and-trade bills: some more aggressive and costly, others offering various escape mechanisms should prices get too high. But one fundamental point must be kept in mind. We are now using the atmosphere as a free dumping ground for carbon emissions. Unless we — industry and consumers — are made to pay a significant price for doing so, we will never get anywhere.
(6 July 2007)
Not mentioned is the opportunity for special interests to manipulate cap-and-trade systems. Otherwise a good editioral from The Grey Lady. -BA