Tim Worstall

Carbon Labelling

What an excellent idea.

Products will display labels showing the greenhouse gas emissions
created by their production, transport and eventual disposal, similar
to the calorie or salt content figures on food packaging.

It’s voluntary, as such schemes should be and, as they point out:

But vegetables grown in Africa and imported by air may have a lower
carbon footprint than those grown in heated greenhouses in the UK, said
experts developing the scheme.

How different from our friends at the Soil Association, who wish to ban air freighted food from being described as organic!

In

9 responses

  1. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    In all this debate between carbon taxes, and cap & trade schemes (incidentally there’s lots of good links over at Felix Salmon’s blog – http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/)
    the issue of how much carbon is used by various processes seems very hard for the government (taxes) or the individual (cap&trade).
    So why don’t we do what seems the easiest option, which is to tax the fossil fuels at source by their carbon content? ie British Coal (or whatever it is called) get taxed amount of coal times carbon content and BP get taxed amount of oil times carbon content, etc. Is the risk that the oil companies stop supplying Britain, or smuggling or something like that?
    Tim adds: A carbon tax is indeed both simple and effective. Quite probably the best solution. However, there’s more to it than just carbon. How do we tax methane from ruminants? (A serious problem BTW). CO2 from land use changes (18% or so of total emissions I think). So it’s still not as simple as you make out, but that’s almost certainly the right path to go down.
    Also need to make sure that it’s revenue neutral of course.
    There’s another paradox here as well: if we taxed petrol on the basis of CO2 emissions alone, we’d pay 10 p or so per litre. As we already pay 50 p a litre, pure carbon taxation implies rather more change than some seem to realize.

    Reply
  2. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    Or better still, why don’t we just do nothing.
    According to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin:
    I have no doubt that global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings – where and when – are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.

    Reply
  3. Kay Tie Avatar
    Kay Tie

    I like this idea because it goes a long way towards exposing bunk from politicians and neo-communist ecomentalists.
    When the Soil Association says “no”, and the label says “yes” you know what to do.

    Reply
  4. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    I think both taxes and cap&trade are the best solution, but I was more concerned with at what stage the tax is levied. It seems much easier to do it at source, rather than at the end consumer point.
    DocBud – that might be a good point if future generations were shouting at us ‘We want a different climate’ – but there’s no reason to believe they are, and of course given natural risk aversion, even if the global warming’s potential outcomes are neutral (or evenly mildly positive) there’s a reason to prefer the climate we know.

    Reply
  5. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    “There’s another paradox here as well: if we taxed petrol on the basis of CO2 emissions alone, we’d pay 10 p or so per litre. As we already pay 50 p a litre, pure carbon taxation implies rather more change than some seem to realize.”
    Also, we’ve been through this a million times before, but there are other objectives to taxation than being a Pigovian C02 payer, and one is funding of the State. Income is also taxed too highly for its CO2 emissions, I would have thought, and I’d rather lower income tax than petrol duty.

    Reply
  6. Kay Tie Avatar
    Kay Tie

    “The trust, as part of its research, discovered that farmers were hydrating potatoes to make them weigh more because they were being paid per tonne. Potatoes were stored in humidified sheds to increase their water content. Humidifiers use large amounts of energy and generate significant emissions.
    Walkers was then frying the sliced potatoes to remove the moisture, increasing overall frying time and emissions.”
    Duh. A proper carbon tax (or carbon trading scheme) would highlight this. In Walker’s case, when they changed the contracts to low-water potatoes they saved £1.2m in hard cash.

    Reply
  7. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    Matthew: there’s a reason to prefer the climate we know.
    That may or not be so, but humans have had to adapt to climate change before and will have to again. What everyone seems hell bent on doing is putting the global economy into reverse so that the technological and financial means required to best deal with whatever nature throws at us will be wanting.

    Reply
  8. Mark Wadsworth Avatar
    Mark Wadsworth

    How come you’re all being so measured and sensible this morning? Although I have to say I agree *sigh*

    Reply
  9. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    Will they consider how the employees of the manufacturer get to work? The carbon footprint will be different for Wonka bars where all the Oompalumpas live on site compared to Cadburys where the workers will use various forms of transport to get to work.

    Reply

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