{"id":4967,"date":"2013-07-31T10:57:29","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T14:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=4967"},"modified":"2013-07-31T11:01:53","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T15:01:53","slug":"the-economist-answers-paul-bowers-about-carbon-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/the-economist-answers-paul-bowers-about-carbon-tax.html","title":{"rendered":"The Economist answers Paul Bowers about carbon tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nBack in May someone asked Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers what\r\nhe thought about a carbon tax,\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nand he answered<\/a>, “Why would anyone\r\nwant that?”\r\nThe Economist answered his question,\r\n29 June 2013,\r\n\r\nTepid, timid:\r\nThe world will one day adopt a carbon tax\u2014but only after exhausting all the alternatives<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\nWinston Churchill famously said America would always do the right\r\nthing after exhausting the alternatives. The right thing in climate\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\n\"You<\/a>\r\n\r\npolicy for all the big countries is a carbon tax, which is simpler\r\nand less vulnerable to fluctuations in emissions than cap-and-trade\r\nschemes. For years, such a tax has been a non-starter politically.\r\nBut as the alternatives are tested to destruction, it deserves to be\r\nlooked at again. Current environmental policies will not keep the\r\nrise in global temperatures to below 2\u00b0C—the maximum that\r\nmost climate scientists think safe. A carbon tax, if stiff enough,\r\ncould. Big polluters should assume that such a tax will one day\r\narrive, and start planning for it now.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nDear Paul Bowers,\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nStop being tepid and timid.\r\nGo beyond\r\n\r\nclosing the dozen coal plants<\/a>\r\nyour company just proposed and GA PSC accepted,\r\ngo beyond\r\n\r\nthe additional 525 megawatts of solar power GA PSC just required\r\nGeorgia Power to do<\/a>,\r\ngo beyond\r\n\r\njust capping Plant Vogtle cost overruns like Mississippi PSC required for Kemper Coal<\/a>,\r\ngo beyond\r\n\r\nmisinformation about wind<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nYou know better than the rest of us that\r\n\r\ndistributed solar power is already disrupting the century-old baseload business model<\/a>\r\nand you can’t put that off but for a few years.\r\nStop trying to\r\nstick to just copper circuit switching\r\nin a mobile smartphone Internet<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\nIt’s time to get on with \r\nwind off the Georgia coast<\/a>\r\nand\r\n\r\nenough solar power to bring Georgia up from an F<\/a>\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nto an A among solar states.\r\nYou can make Georgia a net exporter of power from sun and wind,\r\n\r\nleading the southeast<\/a>, the country, and the world.\r\n

\r\nYou, sir, can make the sun rise on Georgia.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in May someone asked Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers what he thought about a carbon tax, and he answered, “Why would anyone want that?” The Economist answered his question, 29 June 2013, Tepid, timid: The world will one day adopt a carbon tax\u2014but only after exhausting all the alternatives, Winston Churchill famously said America […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47,141,216,14,18,2,20,104,23,24,36],"tags":[554,8719,8745,8753,8704,8701,8708,8699,171,8702,8710,12,7,217,8737,1024,8713,8714,6754,6753,6755,6,8716,6752],"class_list":["post-4967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-co2","category-coal","category-economy","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-law","category-nuclear","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-carbon-tax","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-coal","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-government","tag-kemper-coal","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mississippi","tag-nuclear","tag-paul-bowers","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-tepid","tag-the-economist","tag-timid","tag-valdosta","tag-wind","tag-winston-churchill"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1i7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4967"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4973,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4967\/revisions\/4973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}