Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="GP-9_Man11786"]It seems to me this bill could do both a lot of good and a lot of bad for the rail industry. What do you guys think? [/quote]   I cannot see how it can do any good for the rail industry. The bill will impose carbon caps on the railroads and they will have to either reduce their CO2 output to a level beneath the caps, or purchase carbon credits to raise their caps.  It will undoubtedly be the latter because the amount of CO2 they produce will exceed the caps, and it will cost more to reduce the CO2 than to buy the credits.  They will pass the cost of the credits to their customers because this burden will fall on all railroads equally, and there will be no competitor that the customers can turn to in order to avoid the pass-on.  The burden will also fall on trucking, and they will be able to pass it on to the customers likewise because there will be no competitor that customers can turn to in order to avoid the burden.   <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> However, there may indeed be a disparity between the affect of the burden as passed through railroads compared to it as passed through trucking.  The green thinking is that railroads are more fuel efficient than trucking, and the whole point of cap and trade is to financially punish consumers into becoming more efficient and reducing their consumption of everything. <o:p></o:p> It will probably take a team of czars to design the cap and trade system itself.  It is bound to be an incomprehensible challenge to come up with an equitable system of measuring everyone’s impact on the climate and billing them for it.  This measure has to include not only how much energy is produced from various fuels for the purposes of transportation, heating, cooling, and lighting, but also how much energy it takes to manufacture things.  So the overall cost of all material goods will not only be raised by its transportation caps, but also it will be raised by its manufacturing caps.  Manufactured goods must be rated for carbon impact arising from all phases of their life cycle, from digging up ore to recycling at the end. <o:p></o:p> While the railroads will be able to pass on the cost of caps, there will be direct financial burden that they must bear from loss of business.  The philosophy behind this bill sees coal as public enemy number one, so railroads will be affected by the severe reduction of coal use and transportation.  But the main impact on railroads and other transportation businesses will be a substantial reduction in demand from consumers who will have to make sacrifices in their standard of living in order to reduce their lifestyles to a level of “sustainability” as they say.    There is one little ray of hope though.  This has not passed the Senate yet, and the public is just now beginning to get wind of it, although this has been coming our way since the failed Kyoto Treaty.  During the last week, nearly everyone heard about cap and trade, and they are asking what it is.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag