Serious -- and less serious, but surprising -- conservatives and Republicans are beginning to suggest that a tax on carbon might be on the table next year as part of comprehensive tax reform. Carbon taxes fit conservative tax theory: they hit consumption, not savings or investments; are market-perfecting, instead of distorting; and are easy to collect.
So it might be a real chance. That makes this a learning moment for the climate movement. Can we remember that carbon taxes are a tool, not a panacea, a step towards low carbon economics and not its essence, and a part of a political strategy, not a magic elixir that substitutes for strategy?
Or, as we did with cap and trade, will we invest this modest opportunity with pixie dust-like qualities that obscure the unavoidable trade-offs and risks?
A carbon tax -- even a modest one -- would be progress. It would generate revenues, and if climate advocates can bring power to the negotiating table, those revenues in part might be devoted to other aspects of energy innovation, like paying for renewable power incentives.
It would send a market signal to investors -- meaningful in the electricity sector, where a $20 per ton levy means a significant $0.02 advantage for renewable over coal power. But $20 per ton is a trivial $0.20 on a gallon of gasoline or diesel, certainly not enough to move investor or consumer behavior. This is one reason why you can also make a case for an additional levy on oil, higher perhaps on imports, to provide a real incentive for efficient, electric or bio-fueled vehicle purchasers.
It would put in place one important piece of an eventual, global, harmonized carbon fee, as economist Jeffrey Sachs has proposed -- the best idea thus far for eventually sending the bill for climate disruption and repair to those who properly owe it: fossil fuel consumers.
But like any pricing mechanism on carbon, a tax doesn't resolve the myriad advantages which lock-in fossil fuel wastage, ranging from distribution monopolies for oil companies to lender indifference when approving mortgages -- the stuff that constitutes the left-hand, already profitable side, of the McKinsey carbon abatement cost curves.
The increased cost of jet fuel as oil rose from $40 to $100 per barrel amounted to an effective tax of $150 per ton on carbon. Studies by Brighter Planet show that a typical airline, using the same planes and fuels, can cut their fuel bills and carbon emissions at least by a third through operational and routing reforms. But the long-run up in jet fuel prices produced virtually zero in the way of such changes. Fuel price is easy to exaggerate as a force for reform. Institutional inertia, sunk costs, split incentives and infrastructure lock-in are far more important in the energy sector than economists concede -- or would like us to recognize.
It would also be an important symbol. A statement that yes, the threat of climate disruption is real, that carbon is harmful and not beneficial, and that something will need to be done. It's symbolic importance is probably the biggest barrier to having it happen -- the hard-right has come out swinging at the notion of some kind of deal being cut around a carbon tax, with denialist central, the Heartland Institute, proclaiming: "Carbon dioxide is not a negative externality, it is a measure of energy use... the source of prosperity, innovation, and opportunity. The emerging consensus of scientists and economists is that CO2's effects are either too small to be noticeable or will produce net benefits, not harms."
But while symbolic victories score very highly in the hot-house of the policy world, they have less long-term impact on the public than we tend to think. Few Americans, for example, could even tell you that every month they pay a tax on their telephone bill to guarantee universal access for all Americans -- even though that tax is prominently listed on their phone bill.
So the biggest danger for the climate movement in a carbon tax debate is that we will let the symbolism trump the substance, and instead of bringing power to the negotiating table to insist on a tax package that moves us forwards closer to a low-carbon future, we will roll-over as we did on cap-and-trade and say "any carbon tax means our support for a tax package."
It's the strategy we craft and the negotiating power we wield that will make the carbon tax debate a meaningful step forward -- or a serious setback -- in our quest to cool our warming world.
This blog first appeared on Take Part.
Innovators in Action: Carl Pope on Energy
A veteran leader in the environmental movement, Carl Pope is the former executive director and chairman of the Sierra Club. Mr. Pope is co-author -- along with Paul Rauber -- of Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress, which the New York Review of Books called "a splendidly fierce book."
Follow Carl Pope on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarlPope
http://i.imgur.com/hpZ2H.jpg
What is fossil carbon? Coal, oil, and gas, and the exhaust from burning it. Fossil carbon is humanity's seminal contribution to climate change. Fossil carbon is bad carbon. The stuff you breathe out, or that comes from wood burning, cow fart burning, sewage and landfill gas burning, is all OK carbon. We release thousands of times more fossil carbon than other types, and the other types are renewable and sequestered on human time scales.
Wake up! Free energy tech is out there!
As for global warming, the Earth's core is heating up as I mentioned in my blog. The magnetic pole is shifting. There is increasing volcanic activity around the world and 80% of it is under water. Every planet in our solar system is warming. This warming may not be caused by our variable star. It may very well be caused by something NASA hasn't confirmed or will not acknowledge. We may very well live in a binary star system shared with a brown dwarf that is influencing the Earth's core. There is nothing a carbon tax will do to fix that!
The Marxist Matrix Revolutions
http://wheelsafire18.blogspot.com/2012/05/marxist-matrix-revolutions.html
The sad thing is that TPTB have known for over 50 years, but decided that the little people didn't need to know. The military has put out a warning for all who live on coastal areas for Aug 17-Sep 26, although the effects of this orb may be undergone at any time. At any rate, the warning to employees was to be prepared to evacuate. They are watching the Canary Islands, which is undergoing constant quaking. A fall into the ocean would create a mile high tsunami travelling at the speed of sound.
So, get your spiritual lives in order. The elites have robbed us, taken our protection, our homes, our jobs, and made us suffer needlessly for these, the last few moments on the planets.
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2012/02/26/2012-sitting-on-the-dark-rift
If governments take the proceeds, they will become dependent on the income stream and take few actions that would result in reducing that money flow.
We have a reliable, safe, affordable alternative to burning fossil fuels and dumping their waste products. Nuclear energy, unlike the fossil fuel sponsored alternatives of wind and solar, does not depend on the weather. Heck, it does not even depend on access to the weather since the earliest use of controlled nuclear energy was to power ocean going vessels that spent months at a time underwater.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
No more than the laws of supply and demand say the price should be.
Believe it or not, most consumers know the reason why gasoline is a dollar cheaper, or 75 cents or 50 cents cheaper, than it was when the speculators hedged the price up to where they could make a good return on their bet.
It pisses then off to think that people who never owned a drop of oil are controlling the price they pay at the pump, and raking in their gougings for personal profit.
They would be what you call the free-market-favored group.
They are free to offshore their profits and hide their tax obligations.
No certainty that any common good is coming from that buck-a-gallon.
So, the 20 cents isn't what we want to pay, but given the options available for dealing with the problems associated with fossil energy use, the need to restructure to non-polluting renewable is worth the price.
And how does 20 cents a gallon compare to the federal subsidy to these fossil conglomerates who sit atop the profiteers of commerce?
Cause, that's about all they deserve.
This is an extremely important fork in the road ahead, and one that can move towards real protection of the environment taking achievable measures through really effective policy choices.
One obstacle remains all those fellow-enviros(as) who bought into the market mechanism of cap-and-trade as the forward-moving vehicle.
This is not to criticize.
But the direct carbon tax and a complementary public policy agenda that puts those revenues to achieving any potential climate balance is just exactly what is needed right now.
We can only hope that the broadest of environmental coalitions can gather round this flagpole in the call for raising the tax on carbon - from whatever source in the chain of use.
My hat is off to Carl Pope.
I look forward to feeling the same about the NRDCs and others in being in on this effort.
Ever upwatd.