Here's an interview with Gilbert Metcalf, a Tufts University economics professor who's been circulating a carbon tax proposal (PDF) that's revenue neutral -- it uses the carbon tax revenue to reduce other taxes. It's called the "Green Tax Swap." Good stuff.
Here's one good bit :
SM: Rep. John Dingell said he plans to propose a carbon tax, knowing Congress and voters won't go for it. Why would your approach be different?
GM: Dingell's raising the old canard that Americans won't stand for a new energy tax. What the debate over the [Bill] Clinton BTU tax taught us was that Americans won't stand for an unfocused and poorly motivated tax with lots of loopholes for special interests.
I think the lesson from the BTU tax is that first you need to motivate the tax with a clear and simple rationale. The need to do something about global warming is no longer under debate in the U.S. and provides that rationale. Second, you need to create a package that is revenue neutral. My GETS proposal is both distributionally and revenue neutral. There's no reason Congress can't dedicate the carbon tax revenue to a special fund that is earmarked for income or payroll tax reductions.
Read the whole thing.
Here's Al Gore trying to sell it:
(thanks LL!)
Annie Leonard misses the mark in her new video, “The Story of Cap-and-Trade”
New nukes? A fair shot, not a free ride
Comments
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naturescene Posted 2:47 am
17 Jul 2007
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:06 am
17 Jul 2007
So unless you make the carbon tax higher than the previous tax, then there won't be enough money left to pay for dealing with climate stuff.
That said, this might merely be a solution to get around Jevon's paradox. i.e. Where it doesn't matter where the money goes, just so long as the commodity price goes up to prevent using too much "Fuel".
Jevon's paradox for instance, is that you open up more lanes on a freeway to reduce congestion. Only to find that more people take advantage of the freeway, and you once again have congestion.
In that same way. If oil suddenly became cheap on a per mile basis because our cars got 1000mpg. Then we would end up using more Oil than we did previously. Unless of course there was added incentive to conserve the fuel.
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GRLCowan Posted 3:40 am
17 Jul 2007
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes --
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html
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DogsCatsAndStrays Posted 4:59 am
17 Jul 2007
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ac5p Posted 6:03 am
17 Jul 2007
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:06 am
17 Jul 2007
Who this primarily hurts are people who don't get a majoriety of their money from payroll. (i.e. Stocks and Bonds)
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:09 am
17 Jul 2007
Racheting up the cost of carbon wouldn't be such a political football in the future
Since if everyone is minimizing their carbon output, that means that eventually whatever payroll tax does pay for now, the carbon tax will need to be increased to cover it.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:17 am
17 Jul 2007
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JMG Posted 1:15 am
18 Jul 2007
So the fact that revenues from carbon taxes will go down when usage goes down is not a special weakness of carbon taxes.
In fact, the one thing you can say about carbon taxes (as opposed to income taxes) is that the certainty that people who have to use carbon fuels will not have many options other than to pay the tax is much stronger than the hope that there will be any great deal of profits or income to tax.
Indeed, to the extent we DO tax carbon and thereby propel people to shift away from carbon fuels, we not only promote a better environment but also a more economically resilient one. Right now our economic overshoot is all carbon fueled--which means we are very far out on a very weak limb.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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