Wednesday, June 13, 2007
A Tax to Support - Global Warming Approach’s without Government Control
National Review (yes, its conservative, but it is intellectually serious) has many blogs, the Corner being the best. But they have one devoted to the topic of global warming. Its called, yes, Planet Gore.
Well today there is a post referring to an article that should be read.
It deals with the idea of a carbon tax. As I have stated before, I do think it is to everyone’s benefit to begin to reduce our carbon useage - even though I believe it has very little effect on climate change. Hey - they are going to run out soon enough. But of course, you need to incentivize people’s choice. Well, Tim Worstall points us to a tax that begins that incentive process:
A Tax I Support [Tim Worstall]
Now no, I’m not usually in favor of new taxes, preferring rather to think up ways of abolishing some of those we already have. However, Ross McKitrick has come up with a plan that I fully support :
Now put those two ideas together. Suppose each country implements something called the T3 tax, whose U.S. dollar rate is set equal to 20 times the three-year moving average of the RSS and UAH estimates of the mean tropical tropospheric temperature anomaly, assessed per tonne of carbon dioxide, updated annually. Based on current data, the tax would be US$4.70 per ton, which is about the median mainstream carbon-dioxide-damage estimate from a major survey published in 2005 by economist Richard Tol. The tax would be implemented on all domestic carbon-dioxide emissions, all the revenues would be recycled into domestic income tax cuts to maintain fiscal neutrality, and there would be no cap on total emissions.
Once you get past the technical matters his proposal is really quite simple. Impose a carbon tax, one that’s revenue neutral, but tie it to the actual amount of warming observed: the higher temperatures rise, the higher the tax. If temperatures don’t rise then nor does the tax.
This should of course please everybody. Those who believe that temperatures will rise get the higher taxes they desire: those who don’t can simply wait to say I told you so.
Of course, the true delight of this proposal is that it not only won’t please everyone, it will enrage just about everyone. I for one look forward to the great spectator sport of watching those who want the higher taxation explaining why this form of accountable higher taxation won’t work.
06/13 06:33 AM
Here is the link if you want to investigate more.
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGE1NmU4ZTBiMDAwNjNhMDllYjI2NTUxODQxMzBmNzg=
It is a complex issue - economy, fuels, climate, government et al. History shows us though that incentives always get more compliance then we would get with things other than absolute force. Besides, it leaves in place the important element of choice and provides both moral and economic support to the decision making process - therefore no revolt, only a small and slow process of perspective change.
