One reason the idea of a cap-and-trade scheme for carbon dioxide emissions wins support from otherwise clear-thinking people is the fact that cap and trade has worked in the past to reduce the threat of acid rain, primarily sulfur dioxide.
But Fred Schwarz explains in the latest National Review why the analogy fails:
The key point to understand is that sulfur is an impurity, present in fossil fuels in small amounts (usually less than 1 percent). But carbon is fossil fuels; it’s what they’re made of (usually 75 to 90 percent).
In other words, you can use an expensive scrubber to remove sulfur; the same idea does not work for carbon.
Basically, cap-and-trade for sulfur dioxide creates an expense item in a company’s budget; cap-and-trade for carbon dioxide creates an entirely new, very expensive business model. Acid-rain reduction has turned out to cost American industry only $1 [billion] to $2 billion per year, much less than predicted, but according to a Heritage Foundation study, the cost of Waxman-Markey would be easily 100 times as great.
Schwarz goes on to note the difference between a localized acid-rain problem and the worldwide dimension of carbon-dioxide emissions. Unlike the case of acid rain, local action ? even nationwide action ? on carbon dioxide would do nothing to counteract increases from “rapidly industrializing Third World nations.”
