John Kerry kicked off the conference at a panel
on the politics of global climate change. The panel was a study in contrast:
five cap-and-trade wonks talking about the niceties of auction versus allocation,
and John Kerry, who knows all those niceties as well as anybody, insisting on
bringing the conversation back to the effects of climate change on species and
cities and people.
In his opening remarks, indeed, Kerry said that he wanted to ban TXU (you know,
the energy company in the process of being bought by Blackstone KKR and Texas Pacific) from building
any coal-fired plants in the United States which don’t capture or sequester
carbon. "Why? Because China is about to build one or two plants a week,
and that means Katie bar the door on this issue."
Of course, that kind of thinking flies directly in the face of the kind of
thinking behind cap-and-trade (and Kerry himself has a cap-and-trade bill in
Congress). Under a cap-and-trade system, TXU should be allowed to build as many
coal-fired plants as it likes, assuming it buys the right to build those plants
in the open market. And it should, essentially, be able to capture and sequester
carbon in China to offset its own emissions in Texas.
But Kerry is a realist, and he knows that for the time being, no cap-and-trade
system will exist in the US. So he’s regulating for the time being.