1. Tying climate action to social provisioning like a job guarantee results in inefficient, costly, and less effective carbon reductions than the CP

(https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KVvvcBgETGQJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-a-green-new-deal-heres-a-better-one/2019/02/24/2d7e491c-36d2-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html&cd=43&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us , 2-24)

WE FAVOR a Green New Deal to save the planet. We believe such a plan can be efficient, effective, focused and achievable. The Green New Deal proposed by congressional Democrats does not meet that test. Its proponents, led by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), are right to call for ambition and bold action. They are right that the entire energy sector must be reshaped. But the goal is so fundamental that policymakers should focus above all else on quickly and efficiently decarbonizing. They should not muddle this aspiration with other social policy, such as creating a federal jobs guarantee, no matter how desirable that policy might be. And the goal is so monumental that the country cannot afford to waste dollars in its pursuit. If the market can redirect spending most efficiently, money should not be misallocated on vast new government spending or mandates. In this series of editorials, we propose our own Green New Deal. It relies both on smart government intervention — and on transforming the relentless power of the market from an obstacle to a centerpiece of the solution. To glimpse what we mean, take a brief trip with us to Dominion Energy’s Cove Point plant on the Chesapeake Bay’s western shore. Giant natural-gas storage tanks offer a warning of how the U.S. government must step up its efforts to combat global warming — but also of how environmentalists and politicians who claim to know how to do that are generally unable to predict how technology and practice will develop. The plant is a reminder that big change is far easier when you get the market to work with you, rather than against you. Huge ships used to bring liquefied natural gas from overseas, weigh anchor a mile offshore and pipe their cargo into the tanks at Cove Point. Then fracking unlocked vast amounts of cheap U.S. gas, turning the country from net importer to net exporter. Now ships wait offshore to receive U.S. liquefied natural gas for export to Asia. As he celebrated the facility’s shipments to Japan in Yokohama last June, Dominion Chief Executive Officer Thomas Farrell boasted that the United States has perhaps 200 years’ worth of obtainable natural gas that “we will be exporting toward our allies across the world for decades and decades.” To some, Cove Point is evidence that unhindered economic growth enables environmental stewardship. U.S. natural gas is far less damaging to the environment than coal. It has become so cheap that it is displacing coal in electricity generation, driving down emissions. To others, Cove Point is an environmental catastrophe. Natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and burning it releases lots of greenhouse-gas emissions, which cause climate change. Both arguments are right. Natural gas’s displacement of carbon-rich, toxic coal as the country’s top electric fuel source would have seemed a preposterous dream just a decade ago. It has come about with no government mandate and while saving consumers money. When the market demands an outcome, things change fast. But even substantial reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions in the long term will not be enough to head off catastrophic climate change. The transition from coal to natural gas has been beneficial. But society must eliminate its carbon dependency. It cannot burn vast amounts of any fossil fuel for “decades and decades,” as Mr. Farrell hopes, unless there is a revolution in emissions capture technology. Even in the short term, U.S. emissions are rising, despite the restraint that stepped-up natural-gas burning has provided. The government must demand more change, more quickly. Putting the planet first requires accepting both insights. The government should insist on cutting emissions but, to the largest extent possible, decline to dictate how, instead setting incentives and standards that unleash public and private effort. Carbon pricing can do a lot — but not everything ASK PRACTICALLY any climate scientist whether humanity must cut greenhouse-gas emissions, and you get an emphatic yes. Ask practically any economist how to do that as cheaply as possible, and the answer is equally emphatic: put a price on carbon dioxide emissions with a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program. Pollution pricing is not untested theory. It is the policy that ended acid rain, ahead of schedule and more cheaply than projected. Following that success, it was long assumed that pricing carbon dioxide would be the centerpiece of any ambitious plan to slash emissions. Yet Republicans never embraced the market-based idea, even though conservative economists admit its appeal, because they never accepted the need to act at all. Some environmentalists, meanwhile, are increasingly wary of carbon pricing. The Democrats’ Green New Deal, which is noncommittal on the policy, reflects the accelerating drift from the obvious. Yet neither the science nor the economics has changed. It is still imperative to act. And carbon pricing is still the best first-line policy. Theory and practice confirm this unassailable point: If it costs more to pollute, there will be less pollution. Taxing all fuels according to their carbon content would send a price signal to every business and every consumer. Habits that pollute would become more costly. Changes that reduced pollution — generating cleaner electricity, buying more efficient appliances, weatherizing homes, investing in smart thermostats — would become more desirable. A high-enough carbon price would shape millions of choices, small and large, about what to buy, how to invest and how to live that would result in substantial emissions cuts. People would prioritize the easiest changes, minimizing the costs of the energy transition. With a price that steadily rose, market forces would steadily wring carbon dioxide out of the economy — without the government trying to dictate exactly how, wasting money on special-interest boondoggles. Here’s an example. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found last year that an average carbon price between 2030 and the end of the century of $100, $200 or even $300 per ton of carbon dioxide would result in huge greenhouse-gas emissions cuts, could restrain warming to the lowest safety threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius and would almost certainly prevent the world from breaching the traditional warming limit of 2 degrees Celsius. In contrast, U.S. biofuels policy, a sad example of nanny-state inefficiency, costs $556 to $618 in 2010 dollars to abate one ton of carbon dioxide, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2013. With its array of green subsidies and mandates, the government is overpaying for too few emissions cuts in too few sectors of the economy. One objection is that carbon pricing is not powerful enough. The European Union’s carbon pricing program has not worked well. But that is a failure of design and political will. A carbon price equal to the challenge would start high and rise higher, sending a much stronger price signal.