How cap-and-trade impacts your career and planet

Part 1 in a series

By Katie Kieffer

Young professionals shouldn't let politicians decide the cap-and-trade debate. Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/ygupr8p

If you’re a young professional, you want to know, how will the current cap-and-trade bill impact you if it passes in the Senate? I’ll try to break this proposed legislation down and explain how it will impact you as a young taxpayer and a young professional so that you can decide what you think about it.

As a young person, you already know that Social Security and Medicare will likely run out in 2037 and 2017 respectively, and therefore will not be available to you. You know you need to start planning and saving now in order to have enough monetary reserves to retire in comfort and afford the additional health care you may require as you age. If you’re like me, you want to do everything you can now – while you’re young – to make sure that you will:

1.)    Live in a clean and healthy environment, and pass down the same to future generations.

2.)    Have ample opportunity to achieve the “American Dream” including home ownership, prosperity and career success – whether you choose to build your career within an existing corporation or decide to start your own company.

3.)    Retire with your desired lifestyle and comfort level.

At first glance, cap-and-trade appears to be complex legislation. Cap-and-trade is actually just one part of a larger climate bill: H.R. 2454, also known as Waxman-Markey, passed by the House of Representatives in June 2009. Now, cap-and-trade, and other environmental legislation are up before the Senate. Before cap-and-trade legislation passes, it is important for you to decide what you think about it so that you can have a say in the decisions your elected officials ultimately make.

Over the next few days, I’ll dig into cap-and-trade and help you understand it from your perspective as a young professional. Cap-and-trade is an important, hot-button issue that you’ll want and need to be on top of as your career progresses.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Economy, Sustainability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “How cap-and-trade impacts your career and planet”

1. Marie Frances says:

   November 3, 2009 at 11:46 am

   Here is a great resource from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for young professionals who want to take action and let their congressmen and congresswoman know about flawed climate change bills that could harm the business community and our economy:

   http://capwiz.com/chamber/issues/alert/?alertid=13915566
2. aguy says:

   November 2, 2009 at 6:01 pm

   Republicans in the Senate are the ones keeping Cap and Trade alive at this point (mostly, Lindsey Graham), and good for them. I know that in order for me to have a job and be a young professional… there must first be planet.

   As a young person, you already know that Social Security and Medicare will likely run out in 2037 and 2017 respectively, and therefore will not be available to you.

   SS won’t run out. Someone with political courage will raise the retirement age or fix the indexing. Medicare pays too much for hospital services, something that the health reform tries to fix (by making prices visible, which will help private insurers as well).

   Besides that quibble, I’m looking forward to your assessment. Before you rock out on cap and trade though, it’s important to note that economists favor the carbon tax approach (along with most liberals, which makes for strange bedfellows). Conservative economists know that taxing something means you do less of it while putting externalities back into the system — all while not screwing up markets. Liberals just think cap and trade creates too many holes for big corporations to run around. GOPers think … that the market will rush in to save the day w/ “private innovation” once CA has fallen into the ocean? I’m not sure what they think, but I’m looking forward to your assessment.

   Hopefully it won’t say that C&T will crash the economy. This guy seems to be on the right track when it comes to the GOP vis-à-vis C&T.

   A little background though: cap and trade was a conservative policy idea from the 1980s (hence, all this markets stuff). It was a response to the really, really dumb liberal idea of just setting carbon limits / telling businesses “no.” Since then, we’ve used cap and trade to reduce sulfur in the 90s. And it worked! Europe’s already using it, and so are states in the NE. This stuff has worked (maybe not as well as other methods) but at least it’s something.
3. peterdublin says:

   November 2, 2009 at 7:53 am

   Thanks for that Katie,
   In my view there are many reasons why Cap and Trade is wrong,
   whether or not one believes that action is needed to specifically reduce CO2 emissions
   http://www.ceolas.net/#cce5x
   Emission Trading (Cap and Trade)
   Basic Idea — Offsets — Tree Planting —
   International Trade: Manufacture Shift — Fair Trade — Surreal Market — Allowances: Auctions + Hand-Outs — Allowance Trading —
   Companies: Business Stability + Cost
   — In Conclusion

   As it happens,
   if there is to be an emission policy,
   Electricity and Transport sectors alone (80% of emissions) are sufficient to meet emission reduction targets,
   with measures advantageous in themselves (including energy renewability, and that emissions contain much else, whatever about CO2),
   long term funded for reduced consumer price impact,
   without efficiency regulation, industrial carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes
   http://www.ceolas.net/#cc1x
   .