This page presents links to positions or statements on carbon taxes by 2008 presidential candidates. Obviously, not all candidates support carbon taxes, or carbon pricing, or even strong measures to address the climate crisis. The leader of the pack is Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who has made a "corporate carbon tax" a centerpiece of his campaign.

Many of our links are to a series of interviews with Democratic presidential candidates produced jointly by Grist and Outside magazine, conducted by Amanda Griscom Little in July and August 2007, which we excerpt below in alphabetical order. We will link to interviews for Republican candidates, provided Ms. Little is able to gain access.

The passages here focus on carbon pricing. The full interviews and material from the candidates' Web sites should also be combed to gauge their understanding of and commitment to tackling the climate crisis along with other aspects of America's dysfunctional energy stance.

Updates: The New York Times' guide, The Presidential Candidates on Climate Change, published Sept. 28, covers both parties. NYT political correspondent Marc Santora published a useful piece, Global Warming Starts to Divide G.O.P. Contenders, on Oct. 17.

Democratic Party Candidates

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware)

The Grist/Outside interview has this heartening exchange:

Q. Sometimes the goals of achieving energy independence and reducing climate change are at odds. Would you --

A. Exactly right. You're the first one who's ever asked me a question that way.

Q. Would you, as president, oppose subsidizing technologies that would
worsen global warming, even if they would reduce our reliance on
foreign oil?

A. Yes, I would, because at the end of the day it's a net loser for us.

Biden is less scintillating in the remainder of the interview, which, unfortunately, did not include a question on carbon pricing.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-New York)

From the Grist/Outside interview

Q. Do you believe we need a carbon tax in addition to a cap-and-trade system?

A. There is a lot of interest now in figuring out what the most efficient and effective means of controlling and decreasing greenhouse gases would be. I'm looking for what will work and produce results. A cap-and-trade [program] can be designed and implemented in a number of ways. I would strongly favor using an auction for the allocation of the permits -- an auction that would [sell] as close to 100 percent of the permits as possible [rather than giving a percentage of them away for free]. But I think that there are a number of other serious proposals. I will entertain what I think are the best proposals that are politically viable. We still face tremendous opposition from the Republicans.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut)

From the Grist/Outside interview

Q. You are the only candidate calling for a carbon tax -- a proposal that some consider political suicide, because you can't make taxes appeal to voters. What are you hearing on the campaign trail about this?

A. The American people handle the truth very, very well. What they don't handle well is people in public life promising results without talking about what has to be done to get those results.

We're talking about a corporate carbon tax that would generate $50 billion a year, with the likely cost passed on to consumers being about 10 cents per gallon of gasoline. My argument is, yeah, this is not inexpensive, but look what's happening to prices today, under the status quo. Gasoline is about $3 a gallon on average across the country. Many think it's going to go to $4 or $4.50 a gallon later this summer. So prices are going up a lot more than the 10 cents a gallon we're talking about.

Even if your prices were not going up that high, we spend about $300 billion a year to purchase fossil fuels offshore. About $100 billion goes to countries who are very hostile to our interests. So the status quo is both dangerous and costly.

Q. Do you have any anecdotes from the campaign trail where you talk to voters about this and they say, "Hey, I get it"?

A. Yeah, they do. It takes you more than a bumper sticker to say it, so if you're looking for bumper stickers I don't have one yet for you. But I'm finding a very strong reaction to it. People are recognizing that this makes sense from a health standpoint, an environmental standpoint, a national-security standpoint, a job-creation standpoint.

Q. How will the revenues of your proposed carbon tax be spent?

A. They'll be placed into a Corporate Carbon Tax Trust Fund to fund fast-tracked research, development, and deployment of renewable technologies such as wind, solar, ethanol, and other biofuels. It will also expedite the process for bringing energy-efficient technologies to market and ensure energy-efficient products such as bulbs and household appliances are price competitive, and it will offer tax credits on hybrids and other clean and efficient automobiles to make these cars affordable for all Americans. Being wealthy should not be a prerequisite to living green.

Click here for links to Sen. Dodd's statements, including his TV commercial touting a carbon tax.

In a Sept. 20 Iowa debate sponsored by AARP, Bloomberg.com reported:

While all of the candidates warned about the dangers of global warming, Dodd said he was the only candidate on the stage who supports a corporate carbon tax. "As long as it's cheaper to use fossil fuels, we're not going to move to these alternative technologies and fuels," he said.

Former Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina)

From the Grist/Outside interview:

Q. Do you think we need a carbon tax?

A. Well, I think I accomplished the same thing in a different way. What I have proposed is capping carbon emissions in America, ratcheting the cap down each year to eventually achieve the goal of 80 percent reductions by 2050, and then auctioning off the right to emit greenhouse gases and using that money to change the way we use and produce energy in this country. I think it is just another mechanism for doing the same thing.

Former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska)

As Amanda Griscom notes in introducing her Gravel interview, "As a senator from Alaska during the '70s, Gravel was best-known for fighting nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and the Vietnam War. In his current campaign, to the extent that he's known at all, it's for playing gadfly at Democratic candidate debates. In the environmental arena, he's got some big ideas -- an international carbon-tax scheme, a hydrogen-powered energy system, a notion that society needs to end its obsession with growth -- but little in the way of practical plans."

Q. What sets your green platform apart from the other candidates'?

A. First off, I am prepared to impose a carbon tax, at the barrel of oil and at the lump of coal. [Chris] Dodd has talked about a tax on carbon, but the difference is I approach the problem as a global problem -- climate change, energy, the whole thing. By putting a tax on carbon in the United States, we can offer our leadership to the rest of the world and say, OK, you put a carbon tax on your people, and then we'll pool all this money together and we'll use it to integrate the global scientific and engineering communities to get us off of carbon within a decade. Nobody would be permitted to join this international effort unless they put a carbon tax on their people also.

Q. Some say a carbon tax would be political suicide because voters don't like to be taxed. Your thoughts?

A. I back it in any case.

Gravel provided more detail in the following response to a Cybercast News Service question to the Democratic presidential candidates: "As president, would you support enacting a national carbon tax?"

"Yes. Senator Gravel supports a carbon tax to encourage the adoption of cleaner energy solutions. Money generated from the tax would be used to fuel research into renewable and sustainable energy systems."

Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio, 10th CD)

From the Grist/Outside interview

Q. Do you believe that we need a carbon tax in addition to a cap-and-trade program, or neither, or both?

A. We need to do whatever we can do to create disincentives for the use of carbon-based energy. But that's not enough. Carbon-based taxes alone won't cut it, because some people may be willing to pay an extra tax to use something that's bad for the environment. Inevitably we need a requirement to move away from all carbon-based technologies, and to fund fully all alternative-energy research that is in harmony with the environment.

Q. So you would propose a strict cap on carbon emissions, a carbon tax, and a massive government-supported plan to promote renewable technologies?

A. Yes, but I'd want to put the emphasis first on the government supporting renewable technologies. A tax could reflect the full cost to society of certain types of energy. But the answer is not simply punishing those people who are using carbons. You have to do everything you can to move people toward renewable energy.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois)

From the Grist/Outside interview

Q. Do you believe that we need a carbon tax in addition to a cap-and-trade program?

A. I believe that, depending on how it is designed, a carbon tax accomplishes much of the same thing that a cap-and-trade program accomplishes. The danger in a cap-and-trade system is that the permits to emit greenhouse gases are given away for free as opposed to priced at auction. One of the mistakes the Europeans made in setting up a cap-and-trade system was to give too many of those permits away. So as I roll out my proposals for a cap-and-trade system, I will price permits so that it has much of the same effect as a carbon tax.

Former Gov. Bill Richardson (D-New Mexico)

The Grist/Outside interview with Richardson leads with the ex-governor and Clinton energy secretary declaring: "Right now, the most important domestic and national-security issues involve America becoming energy independent and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. I believe it's going to take an 'energy president' who will lead this country toward these goals by asking all Americans to sacrifice for the common good and be more energy-efficient and promote a green style of living." Unfortunately, neither the interviewer nor Richardson brought up carbon taxes (or the competing cap-and-trade route for putting a price on carbon), leaving us with nothing to report on that score.

Republican Party Candidates

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Arkansas)

According to an Oct. 15 report in the Washington-based newsletter E&E News, "Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee expressed support Saturday [Oct. 13, 2007] for mandatory curbs on heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the United States through a cap-and-trade program."

E&E News further reported:

Appearing at a climate-related conference in Manchester, N.H., the former Arkansas governor surprised many in the audience by signaling his support for one of the leading policy options to confront global warming.

"It goes to the moral issue," Huckabee said, according to remarks reported by the Bloomberg News.
"We have a responsibility to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, to conserve energy, to find alternative forms of energy that are renewable and sustainable and environmentally friendly."

Huckabee becomes the second Republican presidential candidate to propose cap-and-trade as a climate solution, following Arizona Sen. John McCain.

No official transcript of Huckabee's speech was available as of press time, and an e-mail to a Huckabee spokeswoman was not returned.

In an October 30, 2007 letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, at page A17,  Huckabee clarified his position:

I believe that we must be good stewards of our environment and support many paths to reducing our emission of greenhouse gases, such as more nuclear power and alternative sources of clean energy.  As part of our overall effort, I also support a cap and trade system, which has worked well for reduction of sulphur dioxide emissions.  However, I do not agree with those who want all allowances to be auctioned off because I believe that will create too great a burden on businesses.  The alternative to cap and trade is a carbon tax, which I don't support. [Emphasis added]

Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona)

Senator McCain was the first of the crop of 2008 presidential contenders to call for capping U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. With Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), McCain introduced the McCain-Lieberman Stewardship Act in Jan. 2003, calling for a cap-and-trade system on CO2 emissions from power plants. As reported by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, on Oct. 30, 2003 the two senators brought a revised version of their Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 (S. 139), covering a wider range of carbon emission sources, to a vote in the United States Senate. "While the measure failed by a vote of 43 to 55, the vote demonstrated growing bipartisan support for a genuine climate change policy," according to the Pew Center.

More recently (Oct. 2007), Sen. McCain stated his opposition to both carbon taxes and higher gasoline taxes on equity grounds while reiterating his support for carbon cap-and-trade, thereby indicating his confusion vis-a-vis the two, as economist-blogger (and Mitt Romney adviser) Greg Mankiw explains.