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Best Articles, Videos & Books

This page features a selection of articles, video clips and books from a variety of perspectives making the case for taxing climate pollution.

Articles

Let this be the year when we put a proper price on carbon

Lawrence Summers, who has served as Treasury Secretary, President of Harvard University and Chief Economist of the World Bank, trenchantly articulated the compelling reasons and auspicious timing for a carbon tax in an op-ed in both the Financial Times and the Washington Post (January 5, 2015). We offer some excerpts:

The case for carbon taxes has long been compelling. With the recent steep fall in oil prices and associated declines in other energy prices it is overwhelming. There is room for debate about the size of the tax and about how the proceeds should be deployed. But there should be no doubt that starting from the current zero tax rate on carbon, increased taxation would be desirable.

[T]hose who use carbon-based fuels or products do not bear all the costs of their actions. When we drive our cars, heat our homes or use fossil fuels in more indirect ways, all of us create these costs without paying for them. It follows that we overuse these fuels. While the recent decline in energy prices is a good thing in that it has, on balance, raised the incomes of Americans, it has also exacerbated the problem of energy overuse. The benefit of imposing carbon taxes is therefore enhanced.

[A] well-designed tax would be levied on the carbon content of all imports coming from countries that did not impose their own carbon levies. The United States can make the case that such a tax is compatible with World Trade Organization rules. Such an approach would have the virtue of encouraging countries who wished to avoid the U.S. tax to impose carbon taxes of their own, thereby further supporting efforts to reduce global climate change.

A U.S. carbon tax would… be a hugely important symbolic step ahead of the global climate summit in Paris late this year. It would shift the debate toward harmonized measures to raise the price of carbon use and away from the complex cap-and-trade-type systems that have proved more difficult to operate than expected in the European Union and elsewhere.

My preference would be for the funds to be split between investments in infrastructure and pro-work tax credits. An additional $50 billion a year in infrastructure spending would be a significant contribution to closing America’s investment gap in that area. The same sum devoted to pro-work tax credits could finance a huge increase in the earned-income tax credit, a meaningful reduction in the payroll tax or some combination of the two.

Progressives who are most concerned about climate change should rally to a carbon tax. Conservatives who believe in the power of markets should favor carbon taxes on market principles. And Americans who want to see their country lead on the energy and climate issues that are crucial to the world this century should want to be in the vanguard on carbon taxes. Now is the time.

Bigger, Cleaner, and More Efficient: A Carbon-Corporate Tax Swap

Donald Marron served as economic adviser to President G.W. Bush, acting director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and executive director of the Joint Committee on Taxation. Marron now co-directs the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. In a 2013 paper, he and Eric Toder analyzed the climate and macro-economic benefits of a carbon tax “shift” to reduce top corporate income tax rates. In the Cato Online Forum (November 2014) Marron outlined the conservative principles behind his proposal to combine effective climate policy with pro-growth economic policy:

Four recurring lessons from tax and environmental policy…

First, taxing bads is better than taxing goods. When the government levies a tax, people and businesses are less likely to do the taxed activity…

Second, putting a price on carbon is the most efficient way to reduce carbon emissions. In the absence of a national carbon price, as from a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, policymakers will likely continue to pursue piecemeal regulations and subsidies. Indeed, we see that today in heightened fuel economy standards and state-by-state electric power plant regulations. These regulatory efforts can reduce emissions, but at greater cost per ton than a national carbon price.

Third, the corporate income tax is especially distortionary… it discourages business investment and weakens economic growth… [T]he Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development identified corporate income taxes as having “a particularly negative impact on GDP per capita,” especially through their effect on “dynamic and innovative” businesses.

Fourth, America’s corporate income tax is especially problematic. The statutory tax rate is the highest in the world at more than 39 percent (including federal and state taxes) and the U.S. is one of only a few nations that taxes resident corporations on their worldwide income. At the same time, our corporate system includes many tax breaks that dramatically lower the effective rate some businesses really pay. This toxic mix benefits lawyers and accountants but has made the United States an unattractive place for many firms to maintain their legal residence. One symptom has been the recent increase in tax-driven inversions.

[A] carbon-corporate tax swap, paired with appropriate relief for low-income families, would make our economy bigger, cleaner, and more efficient.

A Carbon Tax Is Our Only Hope

In the edgy “Gawker” magazine (May 27, 2014), Hamilton Nolan trenchantly explained why, if we’re serious about tackling global warming, we need a stiff carbon tax to climate polluters:

Why does a pack of cigarettes cost fifteen… dollars in New York City? Because New York City uses taxes to add the future costs of smoking to the cost of smoking today. We know that smokers end up costing society a lot of money for health care years down the road; with cigarette taxes, smokers in the city pay those costs up front. The realization of the true cost of a negative behavior is quite an effective way to not only pay those costs, but also to change the behavior.

This is the basic rationale for a carbon tax. We know that carbon emissions are causing global warming, which will impose a disastrous cost on all of humanity in the years to come. So make those who emit carbon pay those costs up front, by taxing them…

There is no other tactic that will have as big an impact on carbon emissions within our 15-year window of opportunity for action. Forces that operate solely out of self interest will continue to oppose any and all sacrifices right up until the sea swallows their vacation homes. Forget them. The activists and political leaders who have genuine concern about this issue must all unite around some form of carbon tax as a solution. Fighting polluters on a piecemeal basis will not be enough. Public education campaigns will not be enough. Global warming must be made too expensive to be viable. Tax the hell out of it. It’s not unfair pricing. On the contrary, it is the only way to make carbon emissions exactly as expensive as they deserve to.

Science Is Unequivocal, Policy Is Obvious: Tax CO2 Pollution

New Yorker science writer and author of “Field Notes From a Catastrophe,” Elizabeth Kolbert linked the overwhelming climate science consensus to ith the equally robust climate economics consensus (April 14, 2014):

[T]he Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest update on the looming crisis that is global warming. Only this time it isn’t just looming. The signs are that “both coral reef and Arctic systems are already experiencing irreversible regime shifts,” the panel noted… The I.P.C.C.’s list of potential warming-induced disasters—from ecological collapse to famine, flooding, and pestilence—reads like a riff on the ten plagues. Matching the terror is the collective shame of it. “Why should the world pay attention to this report?” the chairman of the I.P.C.C., Rajendra Pachauri, asked the day the update was released. Because “nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.”

Economists on both sides of the political spectrum agree that the most efficient way to reduce emissions is to impose a carbon tax. “If you want less of something, every economist will tell you to do the same thing: make it more expensive,” former Mayor Michael Bloomberg observed, in a speech announcing his support for such a tax. In the United States, a carbon tax could replace other levies—for example, the payroll tax—or, alternatively, the money could be used to reduce the deficit. Within a decade, according to a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, a relatively modest tax of twenty-five dollars per metric ton of carbon would reduce affected emissions by about ten per cent, while increasing federal revenues by a trillion dollars. If other countries failed to follow suit, the U.S. could, in effect, extend its own tax by levying it on goods imported from those countries.

All You Need to Know About British Columbia’s Carbon Tax Shift in Five Charts

Alan Durning and Yoram Bauman, of the Seattle-based Sightline Institute, graphically illustrated the economic and climate success of their northern neighbor British Columbia’s simple, revenue-neutral carbon tax (March 11, 2014):

BC’s carbon pricing system is the best in North America and probably the world. The province has finished the nitty-gritty work of drafting statutes and regulations to implement the system. Oregon and Washington could do worse than to copy them, word for word, into their tax codes, then make adjustments needed to match circumstances.

Economists Have A One-Page Solution to Climate Change

National Public Radio reporter David Kestenbaum neatly distilled why economists are virtually unanimous in concluding that well-designed carbon taxes offer a win-win for the climate and the economy that no other policy can beat (June 28, 2013):

This is why economists love a carbon tax: One change to the tax code and the entire economy shifts to reduce carbon emissions. No complicated regulations. No rules for what kind of gas mileage cars have to get or what specific fraction of electricity has to come from wind or solar or renewables. That’s by and large the way we do it now.

[MIT economist John] Reilly says the current web of rules is a more complicated and more expensive way of getting the same outcome as a carbon tax. The current system “pretty much is one of the worst ways we could do it,” he says.

… Reilly brings up what is perhaps the most surprising thing about a carbon tax: If you do it right, he says, carbon tax can be nearly painless for the economy as a whole.

Besides reducing carbon emissions, a carbon tax brings in a bunch of money — it’s a tax after all. So, Reilly says, you can reduce, say, income tax to balance out the new taxes people are paying for carbon emissions. People pay more for gas, but they get to keep more of their income.

Laura D’Andrea Tyson: The Myriad Benefits of a Carbon Tax

A Bill Clinton Council of Economic Advisers chair urged carbon taxes as more cost- and climate-effective than regulations and subsidies (New York Times, June 28, 2013)

Without a [carbon] tax, the government has to rely on second-best regulations to limit carbon emissions. Facing Congressional inaction and staunch opposition to a carbon tax, this week President Obama proposed regulations on carbon pollution standards for new and existing power plants using his executive authority under the Clean Air Act.

A carbon tax is also a cheaper and often more efficient way to reduce carbon emissions than subsidies for alternative fuels. Generous subsidies for biofuels have cost billions of dollars; by reducing the price of gasoline they may have perversely increased rather than decreased carbon emissions.

Other subsidies, like the production tax credit, have been successful at ramping up research, development and deployment of alternative energy technologies in recent years. Such subsidies would be even more effective in combination with a carbon tax that would make fossil fuels less price-competitive and would stimulate research on renewable and energy-saving technologies.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that even a modest carbon tax could reduce both greenhouse emissions and the federal budget deficit. A tax of $20 per ton of carbon dioxide, which would translate to about 15 cents per gallon of gasoline, would reduce emissions by 8 percent and generate up to $1.2 trillion in tax revenues over 10 years.

“[A] Carbon tax…would make polluters pay for their own pollution”

As EPA began rolling out its proposed regulations on power plants, the Washington Post Editorial Board suggested a better way (May 7, 2013):

[A] carbon tax, an elegant policy Congress could immediately take off the shelf… would make polluters pay for their own pollution, which is the best way to encourage greener thinking. It would cut emissions without overspending national wealth on grandiose central planning or command-and-control regulation. And it would raise revenue, which lawmakers could use for debt reduction, lowering other taxes, improving the social safety net or some combination. The carbon tax is one of the best ideas in Washington almost no one in Congress will talk about.

Conservative icons George Schultz and Gary Becker on why they support a Carbon Tax

Nobel-winning economist Gary Becker and Reagan-Nixon cabinet secretary George Shultz proposed to replace costly clean energy subsidies  with a far more effective revenue-neutral carbon tax. (Wall St. Journal, April 7, 2013):

[W]e should seek out the many forms of subsidy that run through the entire energy enterprise and eliminate them. In their place we propose a measure that could go a long way toward leveling the playing field: a revenue-neutral tax on carbon, a major pollutant. A carbon tax would encourage producers and consumers to shift toward energy sources that emit less carbon—such as toward gas-fired power plants and away from coal-fired plants—and generate greater demand for electric and flex-fuel cars and lesser demand for conventional gasoline-powered cars.

We argue for revenue neutrality on the grounds that this tax should be exclusively for the purpose of leveling the playing field, not for financing some other government programs or for expanding the government sector. And revenue neutrality means that it will not have fiscal drag on economic growth.

I am struck by how many liberals insist on reducing carbon emissions immediately, but, on the deficit, say there is no urgency because no interest rates rises are in sight. And I am struck by how many conservatives insist we must reduce the deficit immediately, but, on climate, say there is no urgency because, so far, temperature rise has been slight…  A carbon tax would reinforce and make both strategies easier.

In Defense of a Carbon Tax

Responding to Dave Roberts’ lament that a carbon tax can’t tackle the climate menace, the Carbon Tax Center’s James Handley and Charles Komanoff articulated the importance of an aggressively-rising tax on carbon pollution to meet the challenge. (Grist, Dec. 4, 2012; also presented as a side-by-side rebuttal of Roberts’ 10 points on CTC’s blog):

Assuming 3 percent annual inflation, a [carbon] tax rising 4 percent a year faster than inflation would take a decade to double in nominal terms, and almost two decades to double in real terms. That’s way too slow a ramp-up, considering that a carbon price of $40/ton of CO2 would add a mere 36 cents to a gallon of gasoline and 1.5 cents/kWh to the average U.S. retail electricity price.

We need a carbon tax that quickly gets to much higher rates than that. It doesn’t have to start like gangbusters; indeed, it shouldn’t, since families, businesses, and institutions all need (and deserve) time to adapt to the new reality of higher fuel and energy prices. A steady and steep ramp-up rate is far more important and beneficial than a high starting point.

These considerations make the ideal carbon tax close to that embodied in legislation introduced in 2009 by Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.). Larson’s carbon tax starts at $15/ton and rises each year by $10-$15, with the actual increment depending on whether emissions are being driven down fast enough. In the 10th year of a carbon tax, the CO2 price would be between $100 and $145 per ton of CO2 under the Larson bill…  the market pull (including long-term price expectations) should suffice to elicit cleantech innovation and revolution.

An Emissions Plan Conservatives Could Warm To

Former Representative Bob Inglis and former economic adviser to President Reagan, Arthur Laffer framed the conservative values supporting a carbon tax (New York Times, December 27, 2008):

We need to impose a tax on the thing we want less of (carbon dioxide) and reduce taxes on the things we want more of (income and jobs). A carbon tax would attach the national security and environmental costs to carbon-based fuels like oil, causing the market to recognize the price of these negative externalities.

The market-driven innovation that brought us the Internet and the personal computer could quickly bring us new, cleaner fuels. A carbon tax that was fully offset (with payroll or income taxes cut by a dollar amount equal to the revenues generated by the new tax) would be as bold as the threat that we face.

Conservatives do not have to agree that humans are causing climate change to recognize a sensible energy solution. All we need to assume is that burning less fossil fuels would be a good thing. Based on the current scientific consensus and the potential environmental benefits, it’s prudent to do what we can to reduce global carbon emissions. When you add the national security concerns, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels becomes a no-brainer.

Presentations, Videos, etc

From the Price Carbon Campaign – Carbon Tax Center “Pricing Carbon Conference” at Wesleyan Univ., Nov. 2010

Books

Implementing a U.S. Carbon Tax — Challenges and Debates, Ian Parry, Adele Morris, Roberton C. Williams III,  (IMF, Routledge Explorations in Environmental Economics, 2015)

The Case for a Carbon Tax, Shi-Ling Hsu (law professor & economist), 2011.  Reviewed here.

Fuel Taxes and the Poor  (The Distributional Effects of Gasoline Taxation and Their Implications for Climate Policy), Thomas Sterner, (economist, editor), 2012

Global Carbon Pricing: We Will If You Will (2015). E-book compiling eight papers by David J. C. MacKay, Richard Cooper, Joseph Stiglitz, William Nordhaus, Martin L. Weitzman, Christian Gollier & Jean Tirole, Stéphane Dion & Éloi Laurent, Peter Cramton, Axel Ockenfels & Steven Stoft. The authors, from a variety of viewpoints and disciplines, conclude that negotiating an explicit global price on carbon pollution would unlock global climate negotiations by aligning national self-interest with the global goal of rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Fiscal Policy to Mitigate Climate Change, Ian Parry, Ruud de Mootj, Michale Keen (economists, editors, IMF, 2012)

Plan B 4.0 (A realistic path to a sustainable future), Lester Brown, 2009

The Reality of Carbon Taxes in the 21st Century, Janet Milne (law professor), 2008

Storms of My Grandchildren, James Hansen (climate scientist), 2010

Opinion Polls

September 2021 poll: Record share of Americans are “alarmed” or “concerned” on climate change.

A record one-third of Americans now say they’re “alarmed” about climate change, while another one-quarter call themselves “concerned,” according to Sept 2021 polling by the Yale Program on Climate Communications.

“Today, the Alarmed (33%) outnumber the Dismissive (9%) by more than 3 to 1,” the Yale researchers declared in their latest climate polling report, Global Warming’s Six Americas, September 2021. “About six in ten Americans (59%) are either Alarmed or Concerned, while only about 2 in 10 (19%) are Doubtful or Dismissive,” the researchers noted in their summary of polling conducted last September and released on Jan. 15, 2022.

Chart from Yale-George Mason report, “Global Warming’s Six Americas, September 2021.” Link in text.

The Yale team, with their partners at George Mason University, noted that the “Alarmed” segment had replaced “Concerned” as the dominant opinion group., though “Concerned” is now firmly in second place:

When our surveys began in 2008, the Concerned were the single largest group. By 2010, they were slightly smaller, while the Cautious grew and became about equally as large. By contrast, the Alarmed were the second smallest group as recently as early 2015 (only the Disengaged were smaller), but have grown rapidly to become the largest segment of the U.S. population today. Meanwhile, the Cautious, Doubtful, and Dismissive groups have all gotten smaller in recent years.

The latest Yale-George Mason findings were first reported by Inside Climate News on Jan. 15.

December 2020 poll finds 2/3 of American voters support carbon tax.

Two-thirds of registered voters support making fossil fuel companies pay a carbon tax, according to December 2020 polling released in January 2021.

The poll, part of the roughly-annual survey compiled by the Yale Program on Climate Communications, was published on Jan. 14, 2021 under the rubric, Politics & Global Warming and reported on Jan. 15 in a New York Times story, Survey Finds Majority of Voters Support Initiatives to Fight Climate Change.

The Times story focused on the strong support expressed for solar power, efficient automobiles and clean-energy research. But the 67 percent positive score for “Requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a tax on the carbon pollution they produce, and using that revenue to reduce other taxes (such as the federal income tax) by an equal amount (i.e., a revenue-neutral carbon tax)” was notable as well.

Polling graphic may be viewed on this Yale Climate Communications page.

February 2020: Protecting the environment and tackling climate change have climbed up the list of Americans’ political priorities as economic concerns have faded, according to a new report from Pew Research Center, reports The New York Times.

For the first time in the Pew Research Center survey’s two-decade history, a majority of Americans said dealing with climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress. That’s a 14 percentage point rise from four years ago. But the surge in climate concern is mostly driven by Democrats. Fewer than 25% of Republicans view climate as a top policy priority.

Graphs and most of caption above are from Feb. 20, 2020 New York Times story, Climate Change Rises as a Public Priority. But It’s More Partisan Than Ever. Here’s more:

Addressing climate change has become more urgent for Democrats in recent years, with 78 percent calling it a top policy priority in 2020. But Republicans have, by and large, remained unmoved. The partisan gap over climate change was the widest to date in 2020 and the most yawning among 18 issues covered by the survey. Protecting the environment, including air and water quality, was the second most divisive issue.

(Note: A more useful characterization than “divisive” or “partisan” may be that on climate, as on virtually all salient issues of the day, Republicans are backward and obstructionist.)

January 2020: Yale Poll reports nearly six in ten (58%) Americans are either “Alarmed” or “Concerned” about global warming. From 2014 to 2019, the proportion of “Alarmed” nearly tripled, making them (31%) the largest of the six opinion blocs.

The graph above and the following text are from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication:

Our prior research has categorized Americans into six groups, based on their climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. The “Alarmed” are the most worried about global warming and the most supportive of strong action to reduce carbon pollution. In contrast, the “Dismissive” do not think global warming is happening or human-caused and strongly oppose climate action.

Our latest survey (November 2019) finds that the Alarmed segment is at an all-time high (31%). The Alarmed segment has nearly tripled in size since October 2014. Conversely, the Dismissive (10%) and Doubtful (10%) segments have each decreased over the past five years. The proportion of Americans in these two segments combined has decreased by about five percentage points since 2014.

The new opinion data are from surveys conducted during November 2019, before the onset of the apocalyptic Australia climate-driven fires that have drawn widespread attention in the U.S. and elsewhere.

For those who prefer the opinion results in snapshot form rather than time series, the Yale people included this unmistakable chart:

August 2018: Yale Maps of Public Opinion on Climate Change and Policy

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication is out with a remarkable series of maps summarizing Americans’ opinions on climate change. By county, metro area, state, congressional district or the U.S. as a whole, the Yale Climate Opinion Maps present views on a broad spectrum of climate questions and issues.

The map above is just one of several hundred that may be viewed and downloaded from the Yale web site.

Note that the link in the prior paragraphs goes to a different map than the one at right. The interactive menu lets you move among more than two dozen survey questions collated at five different geographical levels and showing either absolute percentages or deviations from the national norm.

We’re still digesting the survey methodology and findings. Come back to this page soon for more commentary, but be sure to go to the Yale site and take your own tour.

June 2017 Poll: Climate Change Now “Extremely or Very Important” to Majority of Americans

Graphic from NORC-AP poll released 6-16-2017 (annotation by CTC).

The widely respected National Opinion Research Center – Associated Press polling collaborative issued its latest poll results late Friday, June 16. While the NORC-AP press release led with Pres. Trump’s abysmal (64%) disapproval rating, a potentially more significant result was the one highlighted in the graph at left.

Fifty-three percent of people polled called climate change “extremely or very important.” This may be the first time a majority of U.S. respondents assigned climate change such a high level of concern. Indeed, climate is often viewed in political circles as a “low-salience” issue, one that people profess to care about but don’t act on via political channels. That may be changing, though it may also be that the rating was pushed up in this poll by asking respondents to specifically rate climate change (and other issues) rather than elicit, say, “the three most critical issues to you and your family.”

If this result indicates genuine public sentiment, it could translate into repudiation of climate-denying and climate-ignoring candidates in the 2018 Congressional primaries and elections. It may also portend and provoke more members of Congress to endorse the Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s Republican Climate Resolution or take similar steps diverging from G.O.P. anti-climate orthodoxy.

The full NORC-AP poll may be downloaded here. Go to p. 4 for a breakout of the climate change responses.

Earlier Polls (March 2017)

“Global Warming Concern at Three-Decade High in US,” the Gallup Organization pronounced in a March 2017 news release. “Americans are increasingly warming to the idea of a carbon tax,” reported the National Survey on Energy and Environment (NSEE) from the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College, one day later.

Support for carbon taxes registered 14 points higher than in prior surveys, with strong support now at 25%, more than double its prior high. Source: NEES poll, Fall 2016 (see text).

The findings from NSEE are especially significant. First, their poll, from Fall 2016, just before the elections, concerned carbon taxing specifically rather than climate change generally. Second, this was their fifth survey with that question, going back to 2009, allowing comparisons over time. The graph at left makes the rising support crystal clear.

Here’s how the NSEE researchers summarized the poll results:

The results from the latest round of the NSEE, fielded in the weeks just prior to the November 2016 elections, show that support for carbon taxes appears to have increased significantly compared to earlier iterations of the survey. Respondents were asked four previous times over the last seven years whether they would support “a tax to reduce greenhouse gases by taxing fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas.” On each of these earlier rounds, support never registered above 36%. In the Fall 2016 survey, however, half (50%) of Americans expressed support for a carbon tax, and strong support for the tax is more than twice as high as any previous round of the survey. (emphasis added)

The survey [found that] support for a carbon tax has substantially increased across the political spectrum from when the question was last asked in Spring 2014. Support this fall was 66% among Democrats (a 29 percentage point increase from Spring 2014), 30% among Republicans (a 15 percentage point increase), and 47% among Independents (a 9 percentage point increase).

The NSEE opinion researchers also found that support for a revenue-neutral carbon tax exceeded that for a generic carbon tax for which revenue use was unspecified. While this may not reflect a preference for revenue-neutrality as much as revenue salience (since the question may have tipped off the interviewees that revenues are part of the carbon tax equation), it suggests that proponents of revenue-neutral approaches such as Citizens Climate Lobby and the Climate Leadership Council have their fingers closer to the public pulse than do economists who prefer tax swaps as the means to a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

Support for a revenue-neutral carbon tax (with revenues returned as income-tax cuts) exceeds that for a carbon tax with no revenue use details, especially among independents and Republicans. Source: NSEE poll (see text).

Even newer is the poll conducted in March 2017, by Gallup, with results shown at right. Most significant, perhaps is the rise to 45% in the number of respondents who “worry a great deal about global warming.” The 45% figure is up from 37% a year ago and well above the recent low point of 25% in 2011. Worry — anxiety, fear, upset — is more easily translated into political preference and action than is mere belief.

These findings led Gallup to proclaim “global warming concern at three-decade high.”

According to Gallup, the 45% figure for “worry a great deal” about global warming is the highest ever, besting the previous top figure of 41%, recorded in 2007 — a couple of years before the hydra-headed Koch Brothers-funded front groups unleashed their “the science isn’t settled” assault on the broad scientific consensus that climate change is real, human-caused and dangerous. The lost decade will haunt humanity and Earth’s other living beings for centuries, perhaps forever; but it appears that American public opinion may have climbed back from the denialist-made abyss.

Self-declared Independents showed the biggest rise when Gallup asked, “Do you worry a great deal about global warming.”

Unfortunately, this rebound in polling has not occurred across the political spectrum, according to a companion post from Gallup, Democrats Drive Rise in Concern About Global Warming. Actually, that headline appears to be misdirected; as the Gallup graphic at left shows, the striking rise in concern (as measured in responses to the worry a great deal” question) is most evident in independents, who registered 45% on that score in March, up from 30% several years ago. Democrats who say they worry a great deal also increased, to 66% from 56%, but Republicans hardly budged, polling at just 18%, barely up from 16% a few years back.

Polls from 2016 or earlier

Three polls from early 2015 and much of 2016 heralded the very strong poll findings reported above.

In January 2015, political scientists at Stanford University and Resources for the Future who for years have been polling Americans on climate concern and policy commissioned the polling firm SSRS to interview 1,023 U.S. adults on climate-related issues. Perhaps because CTC had been beseeching the lead Stanford researcher (Jon Krosnick), or maybe because the time was finally ripe, SSRS included questions designed to take Americans’ temperature on revenue-neutral carbon taxes. (We had explained the need for carbon-tax polling to incorporate the option of returning revenues to households; otherwise, the tax would appear as all stick and no carrot.)

The most carbon-tax-positive datapoint yet.

In 2015 we called this the most carbon-tax-positive datapoint yet.

The results, released in April 2015 (pdf), showed that two-thirds of Americans support making corporations pay a price for carbon pollution, provided the revenues are redistributed, i.e., made revenue-neutral. At the time, we called the finding the most powerful indication yet that the public is warming to carbon taxation as the premier policy for combating climate change.

Those findings were buttressed by a poll of more than 1,000 voters conducted close after the 2016 elections, between Nov. 18 and Dec. 1. The “Politics and Global Warming” poll performed by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that:

“Two in three registered voters (66%) support requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax and using the money to reduce other taxes (such as income tax) by an equal amount – a plan often referred to as a ‘revenue neutral carbon tax.’ 81% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 49% of Republicans support this policy.”

Full Yale poll here, Yale summary here, CNBC article here (“Nearly half of Republicans favor this kind of carbon tax, contrary to GOP platform”). A related publication, Climate Change in the American Mind, contains revealing details on the evolution of climate concern (but not on  carbon taxes or other possible policy responses) among Americans since 2008.

SimilarlyGallup _ U.S. Concern About Global Warming at Eight-Year High _ annotated _ 18 March 2016, in March 2016, nearly two-thirds (64%) of American adults told Gallup’s annual environmental poll that they were worried a “great deal” or a “fair amount” about global warming. That figure was up from 55% in March 2015 and was the highest reading since 2008, according to Gallup. (See graphic at right.)

Other results from the 2016 Gallup poll were equally striking. They showed a record-high share of Americans stating that climate change poses a threat to them and their way of life; a record number agreeing that climate change is caused primarily by human activity; and climate concern climbing across the political spectrum: on the left, center and right.

Other Opinion Polling

  • Support for action to combat global warming is growing among younger Republican-leaning voters. (Washington Post poll, November 2014.)
  • Three fourths of Republicans support expanded support for renewable energy; only about 1/3 would support a candidate who says climate science is “too unclear” for government to take action. (“Republicans, Clean Energy and Climate Change,” Clear Path Survey, 2015.)
  • 70% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans would support a carbon tax to fund research and development of renewable energy.  Slightly less, 65% of Democrats and 43% of Republicans, would support a carbon tax whose revenue was returned via a “dividend” check. (“Public Views on a Carbon Tax Depend on the Proposed Use of Revenue,” NSEE Survey, 2014.)
  • One in five respondents to a 2016 Guardian solicitation to readers named climate change as the “one issue that affects your life you wish the presidential candidates were discussing more.” While this sample was explicitly non-random, climate change’s #1 standing in the poll belies the prevailing notion that it doesn’t resonate strongly with U.S. voters. (Climate change: the missing issue of the 2016 campaign, July 5, 2016.)
  • Alas, some pollsters have yet to figure out how to pose unbiased questions about carbon taxes. In a Sept 2016 poll promoted by the Associated Press, the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the U-Chicago Energy Policy Institute asked whether people were willing to pay more for electricity to combat change (Poll: Americans Favor Slightly Higher Bills to Fight Warming). Because the question didn’t mention dividends or other ways in which the proceeds could benefit households, the results were tepid: “If the cost of fighting climate change is only an additional $1 a month, 57 percent of Americans said they would support that. But as that fee goes up, support for it plummets. At $10 a month, 39 percent were in favor and 61 percent opposed.”

Older Surveys

Polling the American Public on Climate Change (April 2013), by the Environmental & Energy Study Institute offers comprehensive data on U.S. public opinion on climate change. It deftly graphs the ups-and-downs of public opinion since 2006 as registered in half-a-dozen leading surveys, and summarizes (with links) 20 different climate polls from 2012 and 2013 — all in just four pages.

Yale Project on Climate Change Communication (Public Support for Climate and Energy Policies, Nov. 2013) reported that:

      • 83% of Americans say the U.S. should make an effort to reduce global warming, even if it has economic costs.
      • 65% say that corporations and industry, 61% say that citizens themselves, and 52% say the U.S. Congress should be doing more to address global warming.
      • 71% say global warming should be a “very high”, “high”, or “medium” priority for the president and Congress.
      • 67% of Democrats and 52% of Republicans support eliminating all subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry.

National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change (Brookings, April 2011) polled and compared the perceptions and preferences of 916 residents of the United States with those of 1214 Canadians. Brookings found that 56% of Americans supported national cap-and-trade while 46% supported higher fossil fuel taxes. In Canada, the figures were 63% for cap-and-trade and 58% for fossil fuel taxes, respectively.

Hart – U.S. Climate Task Force (December 2009) survey of 1,002 adults found that of those who supported action to address global warming, 58% supported a tax on carbon emissions that created incentives to reduce emissions and increase efficiency and provided tax refunds to individuals and households to offset the overall impact of the carbon tax. This compared to 27% who preferred a cap-and-trade option setting an overall limit on emissions, allowing companies to buy and sell permits.

The difference between the Hart results and those of the Brookings and Yale surveys may be explained in part by the more detailed explanations of the policies offered in the Hart poll. This suggests that clear articulation of the benefits of a carbon tax (and the options for revenue return) could result in majority support, at least among those willing to support action to mitigate global warming.

Our Archives

This page contains archival material bearing on efforts to advance carbon taxing or other carbon pricing at the U.S. national (federal) level.

It begins with federal legislative proposals from roughly 2008 to 2015, in reverse chronological order. Further below is material from Democratic presidential-nomination campaigning from 2019.

Unfortunately, CTC hasn’t been able to keep up with more recent (post-2015) carbon tax legislation — not that there’s been much to report in this arena. We recommend Mike Aucott’s July 2022 post , A Novel Way to Price Industrial Carbon Emissions, along with our new page about the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Although in many ways the IRA is the antithesis of carbon pricing — it aims to make clean energy cheaper rather than to make dirty (fossil) energy costlier — it was a landmark legislative achievement and may eventually open the door to federal legislation to price carbon emissions.

Federal Legislation (through 2015)

Climate Protection and Justice Act

On December 10, 2015, a day before the close of the UN climate summit in Paris, Senator (and presidential candidate) Bernie Sanders introduced the “Climate Protection and Justice Act.” His bill would impose a charge of $15 per metric ton (“tonne”) of CO2 emitted from fossil fuel combustion, with the fee taking effect in 2017. It would then rise at an average annual rate of $3.22/tonne, reaching $73 by 2035. At that point the tax trajectory would change to a percentage basis, growing by 5% annually until attaining a level of $150/tonne in 2050. Proceeds from Sanders’ proposed carbon tax would be returned to households making less than $100,000/year, a rebate of roughly $900 in 2017, rising to $1,900 in 2030. Revenue would also fund investments in energy efficiency and low-carbon energy.

Sanders’ press release claims his measure would reduce U.S. CO2 emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The results of seven major integrated assessment models reported by the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum suggest that a more aggressive carbon price trajectory, rising to roughly $440/ton, would be needed to accomplish this ambitious 80% reduction target by 2050, in the absence of major technological breakthroughs. Nevertheless, model results become increasingly murky as time horizons grow more distant. In any event, Senator Sanders is the first (and, as of January 2016, the sole) candidate in the 2016 presidential race to endorse an explicit and rising tax on carbon pollution.

On April 22, 2015, Earth Day, Rep. John Delaney introduced a discussion draft of his “Tax Pollution, Not Profits Act” that would establish a tax $30 per metric ton of carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide equivalent, increasing each subsequent year at 4% above inflation. Delaney’s proposal would apply revenues to reduce the corporate tax rate to 28%, provide monthly payments to low-income and middle-class households and fund job training, early retirement and health care benefits to coal workers. At an Earth Day AEI event discussing his bill, Rep. Delaney took the bold step of suggesting his proposal for a simple economy-wide carbon tax could replace the EPA Clean Power Plan.

American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act of 2014

On November 19, 2014, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), renowned for his weekly “Time To Wake Up” speeches on the Senate floor, introduced the “American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act.” This bill would impose fees on both CO2 and non-CO2 greenhouse gases, including fugitive methane from shale gas wells and coal mines, at their CO2-equivalent rates. AOCFA includes a border tax adjustment to impose equivalent climate pollution fees on imported goods from nations that have not enacted their own.

AOCFA pegs its pollution fee to U.S. EPA’s estimate of the “social cost of carbon” currently, $42/ton CO2, and would rise by only 2% annually in real terms. The Carbon Tax Center’s 7-sector price-elasticity spreadsheet model projects that the proposed starting price of $42 per ton of CO2 would quickly reduce US emissions by about 15%. But the bill’s subsequent 2% annual real price increases would barely stem the rising emission tide due to increased affluence, resulting in essentially flat emissions rather than a declining curve.

Our blog post, New Senate Bill Would Build Polluter Pays Principle into Climate Action, has more on Sen. Whitehouse’s bill.  Sen. Whitehouse and co-sponsor Brian Schatz (D-HI) re-introduced an updated version in June 2015.

Managed Carbon Price Act of 2014 

On May 28, 2014, Rep. McDermott (D-WA) introduced H.R. 4754, a direct and transparent measure to phase out free dumping of climate pollution into our atmosphere. The 21-page bill would steadily raise the cost of climate pollution, enabling investments in renewable energy and efficiency to compete effectively with continued extraction and burning of dirty fossil fuels.

McDermott’s pollution tax would start modestly at $12.50/tonne (metric ton) of CO2 and rise annually by the same amount ($12.50/tonne), reaching $125/tonne CO2 within a decade. The result, according to CTC’s carbon tax spreadsheet model, would be a one-third reduction in U.S. carbon pollution in the tax’s tenth year, vis-a-vis actual U.S. emissions in 2005. By 2030, the target year for the heralded new EPA-White House Clean Power Plan, the McDermott pollution tax would be reducing U.S. CO2 emissions by an estimated 2,051 million metric tons per year, or nearly 6 times the 355 million tonne reduction we have estimated for that year from the Clean Power Plan.

McDermott Graph

Rep. McDermott’s Managed Carbon Price Act of 2014 compared to June 2014 EPA “Clean Power” proposal

Obviously, a carbon tax like that in the McDermott bill requires an act of Congress — a far more difficult process (though administratively simpler) than the EPA plan. Nevertheless, the nearly 6-fold difference between their respective CO2 reductions is instructive, illustrating both the narrow scope of the EPA plan and the vast reach of carbon taxing.

Other Key Features of McDermott’s Managed Carbon Price Act:

  • Dividend: Returns 100% of revenue to individuals as equal (pro rata) “dividends.”
  • Other greenhouse gases: The five other major GHG’s, including methane, are taxed at their CO2 climate-damage equivalence.
  • Border Tax Adjustments: HR 4754 would tax the climate pollution of imported goods at the same rate as domestic goods, creating strong and growing incentives for other nations to tax climate pollution while protecting U.S. manufacturers from unfair competition by countries that do not tax climate pollution.

Sanders-Boxer “Climate Protection Act”

On February 14, 2013, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced the Climate Protection Act. Sanders-Boxer would  impose an economy-wide tax on CO2 pollution, starting at $20/T CO2 and rising over a decade to $33/T CO2. We estimate that this price signal and trajectory would induce a 12% reduction in CO2 emissions over the course of a decade. The measure includes border tax adjustments to protect domestic industry and encourage other nations to enact their own carbon taxes. Sen. Sanders posted a rousing op-ed in the Huffington Post in July 2014 in support of his and Sen. Boxer’s bill.

The Progressive “Back to Work” Budget

The House Progressive Caucus has also included a carbon tax in its 2014 Better Off Budget proposal. The tax would start at $25/T CO2 and rise 5.6% annually, raising $1.1 trillion in revenue between 2014-2023.


Earlier Carbon Pricing Proposals

Carbon Tax Proposals:

Rep. Stark (D-CA) introduced H.R. 594 “Save Our Climate Act of 2009″ (1/15/09):

  • A carbon-content tax on fossil fuels starting at $10/ton CO2
  • Increasing by $10 every year.
  • Upstream:  Fossil fuels taxed they enter the U.S. economy (i.e., at the production or importation level).
  • Revenue use: not specified.
  • Exports credited for carbon tax.

Rep. Larson (D-CT) introduced H.R. 1337 “America’s Energy Security Trust Fund Act of 2009″ (3/5/09):

  • A carbon-content tax on fossil fuels starting at $15/T CO2.
  • Increasing by $10 each year, but in any year that EPA-identified emission targets (based on reaching 80% below 2005 emissions by 2050) are not met, the tax would increase by $15.
  • We have estimated the carbon-reducing impact of the Larson bill, using CTC’s 4-Sector Carbon Tax Impact Model. Projected emissions reduction trajectory would meet 80% by 2050.
  • Upstream (at production or importation).
  • Revenue use:
    • 1/6 of first year’s revenue for clean energy technology research (funding amount remains fixed at tax rate increases),
    • 1/12 (declining to zero over 10 years) for affected industry transition assistance,
    • All remaining revenue distributed to individuals. Returns payroll taxes via a federal income tax credit. In the first year, payroll taxes on the first $3,800 of earnings returned; amount of returned revenue rising with the tax rate. Social Security recipients receive a 10% supplement.
  • Border Adjustments: carbon equivalency fee on carbon-intensive goods imported from non-carbon taxing nations.  Exported goods credited for carbon tax.

Rep. Inglis (R- SC) introduced H.R. 2380, “Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act of 2009’’ (5/13/09):

  • Upstream carbon tax.
  • Starting at $15/T CO2 rising to $100 in 30 years.
  • All revenue used to reduce payroll tax rate.  (Contrast with Larson bill which would exempt first ~ $3,800 earned from payroll tax.)
  • Tax reduction split between employer and employee.
  • Border Adjustments: equivalent tax on imports, exports credited.

Managed Market” Proposal

Rep. Doggett (D-TX) introduced H.R. 1666 “Safe Markets Development Act of 2009″ (3/23/09):

  • Cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from covered sources from 6.153 billion metric tons in 2012 to 253 million in 2050.
  • Treasury to auction 100% of allowances quarterly.
  • Board (6 members, appointed by President) to set targets for allowance prices, manages quarterly auctions by changing supply of allowances to maintain a smooth price path through 2019, oversees secondary markets (not clear how).
  • Covered entities may bank up to 5% of allowances from a calendar year.
  • Revenue use: not specified.

Cap and Trade Proposal:

Reps. Waxman (D-CA) and Markey’s (D-MA) “American Clean Energy Security Act” (7/7/09):

ACESA included a cap-and-trade title, including 2 billion tons of offsets (up to 75% international) effectively delaying domestic U.S. emissions reductions by at least a decade. The bill would have given away 85% of allowances, auctioning only 15%. (Grist summary here.)

“Cap and Dividend” Proposals:

Senators Cantwell (D- WA) and Collins (R-ME) introduced the Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal (CLEAR) Act (12/11/09):

While retaining a “cap” and limited trading, CLEAR would avoid the most profound flaws of the Waxman-Markey bill (passed by the House) and the Kerry-Boxer bill (which stalled in the Senate).  CLEAR would set a floor and ceiling (“collar”) on carbon allowance prices, authorize only “covered entities” to hold allowances and would not allow offsets to be used in place of allowances.  CLEAR proposed to “recycle” 75% of revenue directly to households, contrasting sharply with the cap-and-trade bills’ give-away of carbon revenue and its equivalent in free allowances to an array of special interests and energy projects.  With Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-ME) co-sponsorship, CLEAR began as a bipartisan proposal.

CLEAR purported to preclude a secondary market (or “derivatives”) in carbon allowances.  But analysts raised doubts about whether the bill could prevent large energy users  from contracting to hedge against seasonal and cyclical price swings. Also, the low price range of bill — $7 to $21 per ton of CO2 in the initial year, 2012, rising each year at approximately 6% above inflation — is not nearly sufficient to achieve the needed emissions reductions. CTC’s Carbon Tax Model suggests that this price trajectory would only lead to a 7.5% drop in U.S. CO2 emissions from 2005 levels in 2020. Instead of a substantial price signal, the bill relied heavily on subsidies for clean-energy investment which would come from the 25% of revenue not returned to households.  CLEAR’s goal was emissions reductions of 20% from a 2005 baseline by 2020. CLEAR’s price collar would have made carbon prices more predictable, closer to a carbon tax than other cap-and-trade proposals. But its $7 – 21 range was wide enough to allow significant volatility that could discourage investment in alternatives and efficiency while generating profits for speculators. Potential volatility combined with CLEAR’s low price meant that its price signal would be “noisy” and small — not the clear upwardly trending price signal that would most strongly encourage low-carbon energy.

Finally, a volatile price would have made linkage to international carbon markets (or carbon taxes) needlessly complex or even impossible.

Rep. Van Hollen (D-MD) introduced H.R. 1862 “Cap and Dividend Act of 2009″ (1/1/09):

  • CO2 Cap. Fossil fuel producers, importers surrender permits for CO2 emissions each year. Permits decline annually, leading to an 85% reduction below 2005 CO2 emissions from covered entities by 2050.
  • 100% auction of permits
  • Permits tradeable.
  • Volatility-limiting measures: Unlimited banking. Borrowing if permit prices increase more than 100%.
  • Revenue use: Funds distributed monthly in equal amounts to those with a social security number.
  • Border Adjustments: Exporters credited, importers pay “carbon equivalency fee.”

Related CTC Blog Posts and News Items:

2020 presidential campaign

Last update: June 11, 2019

Inslee demands DNC rescind its climate-debate ban

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee used his June 11 appearance on “Democracy Now” (downloadable MP3) to demand the Democratic National Committee withdraw its threat to exclude from its forums any presidential candidate who participates in non-DNC-sanctioned debates.

Inslee addressed the DNC stance at the start of his 30-minute interview with Democracy Now hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (the segment begins at minute 13:00 of the program). The interview focuses, as does Inslee’s campaign, on climate change but it also ranges across related topics such as immigration, health care and economic development.

Biden climate plan includes a fee on carbon pollution . . . and carbon tariffs

Former V-P and current Democratic front-runner Joe Biden “proposes that Congress pass a law by 2025 to establish some form of price or tax on carbon dioxide pollution, a policy championed by most economists as the most effective way to fight climate change,” the New York Times reported on June 4.

Though Biden did not specify a dollar level for a carbon tax, and a 2025 launch date appears very far off, his climate plan, which goes far beyond a carbon price, was applauded by some activists. “He put out a comprehensive climate plan that cites the Green New Deal and names climate change as the greatest challenge facing America and the world,” Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, told the Times. “The pressure worked.”

The Biden plan also includes “carbon tariffs” on imported goods, according to the Times. Such a measure presumes a U.S. carbon tax, since carbon tariffs would be levied on the excess of domestic U.S. carbon taxes relative to other countries’ own carbon price. (For more on carbon tariffs see our Border Adjustments page.)

Dems: 8 out of 18 strongly for taxing carbon emissions

A year and a half out, the 2020 presidential campaign has already paid more attention to climate change than any previous election — perhaps even every previous election combined. (Bill McKibben surveyed the depressing history as part of an election preview for Politico.)

The best news of all is that voters are speaking up. In an April 2019 Monmouth University Poll of Iowa Democrats, climate change ranked second among issues of concern, albeit far behind health care. (Environmental concerns generally also ranked fairly high, which may also reflect climate concern.) The June 4 Times article cited above (re Biden) quoted a Democratic pollster proclaiming, “Climate change is an incredibly important issue for the Democratic base right now. It’s about the future, and it’s something that [President Trump] has made worse in the minds of the Democratic base.”

The candidates — well, the Democrats, anyway — are responding:

The dozen candidates shown above have pledged to campaign free of fossil fuel contributions, according to Oil Change International

Only three candidates have explicitly endorsed a carbon tax, however. Aside from Biden, Former Maryland representative John Delaney  was an original cosponsor of the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2018, which largely followed Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s fee-and-dividend template. And South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg made an articulate case for the same approach in an appearance on the Tonight Show (beginning at 6:15):

There’s also a plan called a carbon tax and dividend. Basically you set a price on things that put carbon into the atmosphere, but then you can rebate that back out to the American people so most of us would actually be better off if we did it. Meanwhile it would help change the economic incentives so that you’d see less activity that hurts the environment. Because the true cost is not reflected in the price of, for example, energy that comes from coal. If you were facing the true cost of it you’d have to set that price a lot higher.

Most of the field has been tiptoeing around the issue, perhaps fearing, in the words of New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, that carbon taxes “focus people’s attention on the short-terms costs of moving away from dirty energy” instead of on the benefits of clean energy.

But if they aren’t running on carbon pricing, at least some of the candidates aren’t running away from it, either. In April 2019, when the Times surveyed the announced Democratic candidates (18 at the time) on climate change, it found seven who “put their weight firmly behind a carbon tax”: Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, John Delaney, Kirsten Gillibrand, Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang. (Presumably, Biden has joined the ranks.)

Five others said they were “willing to consider” a carbon tax, according to the Times: Jay Inslee, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Tim Ryan, Eric Swalwell.

In  May 2019, Citizens Climate Lobby posted a more detailed survey, Which 2020 candidates support carbon pricing?, with thumbnails of eight Democratic candidates as well as two possible Republican challengers to President Trump.

Sanders is said to “demote” carbon taxing

A Climatewire story in early June examined the reticence of climate hawk and erstwhile carbon tax proponent Sen. Bernie Sanders to express support for carbon taxing in 2019. Though the story, Sanders demotes carbon taxes. Here’s what it means for Dems, leads with the Vermont senator, it finds a similar reluctance across much of the Democratic field.

First, about Sanders:

His [Sanders’] 2020 presidential campaign still focuses on global warming, but gone are the regular broadsides over carbon pricing. Missing, too, is any reference to carbon taxes in the climate section of his official campaign website. Instead, Sanders has chosen to emphasize the Green New Deal when talking about climate change — a shift that underscores how much the politics of global warming have transformed in a few short years. Part of that, perhaps, is a broader decline in enthusiasm for carbon pricing among left-leaning politicians and activists.

Climatewire also notes:

Sanders’ shift in focus is striking. During the 2016 campaign, Sanders repeatedly hammered Clinton over her unwillingness to get behind a tax on carbon emissions. “I would ask you to respond. Are you in favor of a tax on carbon?” he asked in one debate. Later — after Clinton had sewn up the Democratic nomination — Sanders pressed to include carbon taxes in the party’s 2016 platform in part by appointing longtime environmentalist Bill McKibben to the drafting committee.

(We reported those 2016 developments in two posts, What the Sanders-Clinton Clash over a Carbon Tax Says about Democrats and Climate Change, and Democratic Platform Vote Was a Win for Carbon Taxes.)

The Climatewire story concludes with a curious but revealing quote from an advisor to Congressmember and Green New Deal spearhead Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “I feel we’re very locked into what we can do when we lead with a carbon tax,” says Andrés Bernal. The operative word is “lead,” as the story implies by noting that Bernal’s statement “doesn’t mean [he] doesn’t see carbon taxes as part of the equation at some point.”

Even so, any “lock-in” would be in the realm of politics, not policy. A carbon tax was never going to be a stand-alone, but rather both a market-pulling force and a pay-for, as this site has pointed out practically since its founding in early 2007, most recently in the April post by CTC policy associate Bob Narus, Green New Dealers Should Embrace a Carbon Tax.

Beto O’Rourke

On April 29, former Texas representative Beto O’Rourke surprised everyone by being first out of the Democratic gate with a comprehensive climate policy. His four-part plan includes:

  • Immediate executive and regulatory actions ranging from controlling methane leakage and building efficiency standards to “clean” government procurement
  • $1.5 trillion in spending (paid for by taxes on the wealthy and corporations), leveraging an additional $3.5 trillion in non-government spending, on clean energy investments and R&D
  • A 2050 target date for net-zero emissions
  • Efforts to protect communities, agriculture and military installations from the impacts of climate change

O’Rourke doesn’t use the term “carbon tax,” but he does promise a “legally enforceable standard” for meeting the 2050 deadline, explaining:

This standard will send a clear price signal to the market to change the incentives for how we produce, consume, and invest in energy, while putting in place a mechanism that will ensure the environmental and socio-economic integrity of this endeavor — providing us with the confidence that we are moving at least as quickly as we need in order to meet a 2050 deadline.

That language seems to envision some form of carbon pricing.

Jay Inslee

On May 3, Washington Governor Jay Inslee released his “100% Clean Energy for America Plan” in several media (videoWeb page, 8-page pdf). Carbon pricing isn’t mentioned. Excerpts from the Inslee campaign’s Web page:

Governor Jay Inslee’s 100% Clean Energy for America Plan will achieve 100% clean electricity, 100% zero-emission new vehicles and 100% zero-carbon new buildings. This plan will empower America to make the entire electrical grid and every new car and building climate pollution-free, at the speed that science and public health demand.

The 100% Clean Energy for America Plan is the first major policy announcement in Governor Inslee’s Climate Mission agenda – a bold 10-year mobilization to defeat climate change and create millions of good-paying jobs building a just, innovative and inclusive clean energy future, with meaningful targets and plans for execution based on his experience as a governor. Governor Inslee will announce additional major planks of his detailed climate plan in the coming weeks.

Two weeks later came Phase 2 — Inslee’s Evergreen Economy Plan.  The 38-page plan defies easy summarization, but highlights include:

  • a Rebuild America Initiative to upgrade buildings
  • a $90 billion green bank to support clean energy projects
  • a $3 trillion infrastructure program
  • a clean manufacturing program, including federal procurement standards
  • greatly expanded clean-energy R&D
  • higher wages, benefits and union rights for clean-energy workers

All told, Inslee proposes spending $300 billion per year, leveraging another $600 billion in private investment , for a total of $9 trillion over a decade. No word yet on where he plans to get that $300 billion/year. “I have plans,” he told us at a Manhattan meet-and-greet the same day he released the proposal.

Not surprisingly, Inslee is winning the David Roberts Primary:

To put it bluntly, Inslee is writing a Green New Deal. . . . This isn’t just a campaign play, it’s a document the next Democratic president is going to want in-hand when the time comes to get to work.

Alexander Kaufman at Huffington Post also has a good summary of Inslee’s plan.