Friday, February 28, 2014

President Obama, why don't you use your powers?

President Obama, why don't you use your powers to more effectively reduce the danger of catastrophic climate change?

As an example, you could direct the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to impose fees on sales of gasoline. The revenues of such fees could then be earmarked to fund ways to make the use of genuinely clean energy more attractive.





Delegation

The duty to act on climate change can delegated to states, provided that sufficient progress is made to combat climate change. States can thus to a large extent decide what action and what mix of policies they feel will work best where. Where such progress is lacking, federal authority can resume control, impose fees in the respective state and decide to direct (part of) revenues to federal programs, such as construction of high speed rail tracks that cross state borders, waste management in national parks, federal research grants into ways to combat climate change, etc.

State administrators can similarly decide to delegate their authority to local levels, allowing each local council to implement feebates believed to work best in the respective area. And similarly, state administrators can resume control in case of a lack of progress in a specific area, and direct the revenues to state programs.

Further action

Further action will be needed to reduce the danger of catastrophic climate change, which calls for a comprehensive climate plan such as described at http://climateplan.blogspot.com



1 comment:

  1. Sam,
    As you know the indications are Earth is in grip of acceleration of Abrupt Climate destabilization on collision course this year to maybe full blown methane gun initiation and full extinction within 50 yrs.
    The Obama acted like Methane Man in the State of the Union speech and actually believes it is OK.
    So while I greatly appreciate your political view I can't agree Earth can be saved by anything short of systemic change to the basis of monetary. -Here in the US the finger of Corporate is literally on everything.
    The high court gives greater preamble to property rights than to life, Ecosystem Earth that holds HZ.
    This affects my right to be happy. It affects my religion and it mean spiritedly sentences kids to Hell. So the need to change -if it can't drive change in this country My US where is it possible to happen?

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