I noticed you used a goal of 450 ppm. Isn’t that too high? Hasn’t Dr. Hansen published research that suggests that 380 ppm is the limit?

*The 2007 diesel rule requiring particulate filters on new on-road vehicles
*As cited above the Clean Air Act tailpipe emissions standards which brought catalytic converters into widespread use
* Banning lead from gasoline
* Ozone and PM air quality standards
* Landill methane capture
* Incinerator air quality standards

All of these policies have massive public health benefits which benefit many at a cost to a more limited set of industrial players (and dispersed financial cost to society as a whole). The CO example above is quite foolish- nobody wants to trade CO2 for CO or particulate and end up killing more people. For now the idea is to combust cleanly and find ways to combust less through efficiency.

If you want to read about Feebates, do a google or google scholar search- it’s been studied for years.

Also, can’t anyone point me to a few cost-effective, good for the environment, federal actions that have been done?

Carbon Monoxide eventually turns into CO2 in the atmosphere. Catalytic converters speed the process to prevent the damage CO would do before this conversion would have happened without the converter. CO is also an “indirect” greenhouse gas: “Carbon monoxide has an indirect radiative forcing effect by elevating concentrations of CH4 and tropospheric ozone through chemical reactions with other atmospheric constituents (e.g., the hydroxyl radical, OH) that would otherwise assist in destroying CH4 and tropospheric ozone.”

The CNW report does not prove that a feebate program would “almost surely” be wrong. Indeed, even most partially wrong (in the sense of not perfectly reflecting the underlying externalities) feebates would be better than none at all, since they would help shift the U.S. vehicle fleet toward vehicles that use less gasoline. Voltaire’s good vs. perfect observation is appropriate here.

Please trouble me with a few examples in which federal government intervention did good things for the environment.

Earl,

My point in mentioning the CNW study was to show how little we actually know about the subject; that a ‘feebate’ program would almost surely get it wrong.

I’m not a numbers cruncher like some of you guys, nor would I have access to the pertinent numbers, but consider this: Catalytic converters turn carbon monoxide into [what used to be called 'harmless'] carbon dioxide. Correct? How much carbon could we save if we banned the things? What would be the trade-off in pollution vs. reducing GHG? Anybody care to wrap their head around that problem?