Comments on: A Carbon Tax Would Be Cleaner

By: Bob Arning

Bob Arning — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 18:23:58 +0000

#2: To be fair, I’m not sure there is a “consensus” yet, at least in the democratic sense. While many of us paying close attention have formed an opinion, I suspect many, many more are still unclear about a lot of details. An an anecdote, I was recently called by someone polling about issues in the upcoming presidential campaign. When asked what I thought was the number 1 issue, I said “Iraq”. When asked for number 2, I paused and then said, “global warming”. His response was a puzzled, “really?”. If someone asking this question a lot is surprised that global warming might appear at number 2, then consensus is still off in the distance somewhere.

By: David Collins

David Collins — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:49:21 +0000

The last paragraph — the last two sentences – appear to me as perhaps the snazziest sample of global warming denial I have seen recently. At odds with the well-reasoned, well-written essay itself. "Concensus" is denied because nobody is going the Carbon Tax way. Entirely untouched and unacknowledged are other motivations, like people morally and intellectually acknowledging global warming and the need to spectacularly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while feeling ambivalent about dedicating themselves to what seems a not-so-fun lifestyle. It makes me wonder whether we should consider adapting the famous prayer of Saint Augustine: "God, grant me chastity and continence, but not yet" — by substituting carbon sins for carnal sins.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:57:10 +0000

The op-ed concludes:

At the end of the day, a strict cap-and-trade program would have the
same effect as a carbon tax, one that’s high enough, eventually, to
encourage switching to cleaner generation, but that’s gradually imposed
over a decade so that companies have plenty of time to plan.

Such a tax would make emissions more expensive; discourage carbon-intensive
power generation; and it would allow the market to decide which environmentally
more-friendly technologies would be competitive enough to take its place.
A tax per ton of carbon would mean higher power prices, too, but without
direct subsidies to developing nations by paying for their power-plant
upgrades.

Nor would a carbon tax create a new multibillion-dollar global commodity
whose value would depend on political manipulation. The feds could use
the revenues from such a levy to reduce other taxes—including dividend
and capital-gains taxes further to spur the massive private investment
needed to build the next generation of power generators—while ensuring
that they’re also creating a political and regulatory climate to encourage
such mass-scale construction.

If it’s true that a global warming consensus really exists—and not
just in press releases and speeches—politicians and business leaders
wouldn’t be afraid to suggest such a tax. They would insist on it.