Daniel Hall, drawing in part on the excellent reporting of Peter Spotts in the Christian Science Monitor, had a nice post today about pressure on the developed world to adapt to climate change, and on the mechanisms to pay for it:
U.S. CO2 emissions are around 6 billion metric tons per year. If permit prices were around $20 per metric ton — a not unreasonable guess based on modeling work of other similar bills by the EIA — and all permits were auctioned the government would raise more than $100 billion a year. I think the bill actually auctions around one-quarter of permits initially, so this might be more like $25 or $30 billion a year early on in the program. Either way, there is certainly a ready and sufficient source for adaption funding; the question then is whether wealthy countries are truly willing to write the checks.
Is this adaptation, or something leading to mitigation. Seriously.
It’s a way to use the mitigation mechanism to generate money to contribute to adaptation.
I think that was a theme to emerge from Bali and increasingly is part of any mitigation levy/tax, esp with transfer of money to the third world where the effects will be greatest.