Today’s Charlotte Observer features a poorly-reasoned editorial praising NC Attorney General Roy Cooper for his continuing efforts to undermine market-based controls on sulfur dioxide emissions in favor of… well, the Observer doesn’t really offer an alternative, but they know they don’t like the cap and trade system established by the Clean Air Interstate Rule. The argument is that the cap and trade program allows cleaner North Carolina companies to sell emissions credits to out-of-state utilities, who then blow their dirty air back across the border to NC.
This complaint was addressed by the John Locke Foundation’s own Paul Chesser last March. Chesser revealed that harmful emissions have fallen under the cap and trade regime, despite NC Justice Department claims to the contrary.
The funny thing is, the Observer recognizes that, but then complains anyway:
This cap-and-trade scheme means overall air emissions will go down. But it also means that for utilities that purchase pollution credits so they can keep emitting pollutants, the air will stay bad. If you’ve got a pre-existing respiratory problem and live near one of those plants, that’s outrageous. It could also be fatal.
So overall air emissions go down, but this is bad because some pollution will still exist? So it would be better, instead of cap and trade, to have overall emissions that are higher, but at least we could feel good that our command-and-control regulations intend to get rid of the problem? Chesser’s article shows that that scenario really is the case under the New Source Review requirements that are defended by the NC Department of Justice:
“New Source Review has made air pollution worse than it would otherwise be by making it more economical to keep old plants running as they are, rather than upgrading them or building new ones,” Schwartz said.
The Observer should stop listening to Captain Planet and realize that attempting to take “pollution down to zero” through anti-market-based regulations makes little sense, environmentally or economically.
