Look, over there, shiny!

Should the Republican carbon tax bill be taken seriously? 6

Well look at this! Just as a compromise was announced on the Waxman-Markey bill and it looks set to move out of committee, along come a couple of Republicans with a carbon tax bill (Bob Inglis [SC] and Jeff Flake [Ariz], co-sponsored by Dem Dan Lipinski of Illinois—none of whom are on the House Energy Committee).

I’ve had people ask me whether this is a good-faith effort, whether Dems might be wise to “call their bluff” and support the bill.

Um. No. And No.

This bit right here should tell you all you need to know about a) the bill’s chances of passing, and b) the sponsor’s effort to garner support for it:

The impact of such a direct carbon tax, however, would vary widely in different regions of the country.

Businesses and homeowners who rely heavily on coal for electric power — such as those in Kentucky and Missouri — would face significantly steeper price increases because coal produces much more carbon dioxide.

Such disparities, Flake said, would be an unavoidable outcome of trying to reduce global warming and wean the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, some of it from unfriendly governments.

“There’s no way you can compensate or have a perfect outcome in which everyone pays the same rates,” Flake said. “If you try to do that, then you take away the incentive to change.”

Of course, there are ways to help the people and industries likely to be hardest hit. Waxman-Markey contains some. And of course it’s perfectly possible to offset some of the impact while preserving “incentive to change.”

But why bother engaging with this substantively? It’s not a substantive proposal. It’s got no chance in hell of going anywhere. It’s meant to confuse, divide, and derail.

If Republicans were serious about pricing carbon—the core of any long-term climate strategy—they’d say, “we’d prefer to do it this way, but we’ll work with you to tweak your bill. We can find a compromise.” But they don’t. They say, we want this exact thing with these exact features, and if you don’t support us we’ll walk. Watch: whatever bill makes it to the floor will get not a single Republican vote. Mark my words.

It’s not serious, and it’s not worth wasting time on.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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  1. josullivan58 Posted 2:56 pm
    14 May 2009

    The right has picked an issue that they are going to fight tooth and nail against and its global warming legislation. They are playing the good cop bad cop routine with "if its not a fact we must not act" Inhofe and smokin' Joe Barton as the bad cops and the patsy republican who are offering poison pill bills as the supposedly good cops.

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  2. davefordemocracy Posted 3:15 pm
    14 May 2009

    Of course Democrats could play along by coming out railing against tax-and-spend Republicans and claim the mantle of market solutions. Dare Jeff Flake to defend his tax hike in a way that can be used against him in 2010.

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  3. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 12:59 am
    15 May 2009

    We all talk about taxing CO2 producers...but not much is said about what those taxes will be used for. A sustainable CO2 tax should recycle back to the problem areas. If for instance, you tax a community that is coal reliant based on CO2 output, all that tax money could be kept locally and recycled into business innovation to help wean them to hydrogen production. The worst scenario would be for distant entities to be able to tax an area that has no alternatives and then siphon off their money to Washington leaving them further in the hole!! 

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  4. F James Handley Posted 10:05 am
    15 May 2009

    Anyone who doesn't think Inglis is serious should read this:http://theenergycollective.com/TheEnergyCollective/37475.He's gone to Antartica, he gets the science and the economics. Either a carbon tax or cap/trade raise fossil fuel prices-- that's the point -- to encourge conservation and alternatives.  But two recent economic analyses concluded that cost differences between regions are slight primarily because about half of the carbon price would be indirect-- the energy cost of making things we buy on a relatively uniform national market.  See http://www.carbontax.org/issues/regional-disparities/. Of course, the coal industry would be hard-hit.  Efficiently phasing out coal or requiring carbon capture (if feasible) is a key purpose of climate legislation.  Rep. Larson's carbon tax bill offers transition assistance to those regions.  See New Larson Bill Raises the Bar for Congressional Climate Action.  Places like Montana and West Virginia can go from coal to renewables like wind and end up with more jobs and a cleaner environment.  

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  5. dbaker Posted 1:48 pm
    15 May 2009

    yes you should take it seriously , very seriously!carbon taxes have been used as a side issue to take ones attention away from solutions that threaten the fossil fuel industry.carbon tax revenue is used to offset income taxes, not finance solutions.smoke and mirrors...................Dennis Baker
    103-66 duncan ave west
    penticton bc canada V2A6Z3
    cell 250-462-2771
    fax 250-493-3463
    (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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  6. F James Handley Posted 7:29 am
    16 May 2009

    Rgional Disparities in the incidence (impact on household income) of a carbon tax or cap with auction were studied by economists Hasset, et al. (AEI) at and Burtraw, et al. (RFF).  Both concluded these differences are small -- primarily because roughly half of our carbon footprint is indirect-- it's the fossil fuels used in the production of goods.  Indirect incidence tends to be uniform because so many goods are marketed nationally.      See http://www.carbontax.org/issues/regional-disparities/Hassett et al. concluded:"Carbon taxes are… thought to have uneven regional
    effects. We … find that the regional variation is at best modest. By
    2003 variation across regions is sufficiently small that one could
    argue that a carbon tax is distributionally neutral across regions    ."Differences in effects on industry and employment are certain to be larger.  Rep. Larson's (D-Conn) carbon tax measure addresses this by temporily devoting some revenue to "transistion assistance" for impacted workers. A state like Montana, with both coal and wind resources, might be a net
    employment gainer under a carbon tax as construction and operation of
    wind generation facilities increased; but its coal workers would still
    need transition assistance.Inglis and Flake's measure could easily be modified to include transition assistance. Otherwise, it's remarkable how similar it is to Larson's bill. Rep. Inglis prefers that a carbon tax be revenue-neutral -- every dollar in carbon tax would be used to cut payroll taxes; he hopes this will appeal to other Republicans concerned about global warming who don't want to create a larger federal government.    

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