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Obama Should Implement Carbon Tax, Eminent Climatologist Says
Though proponents of carbon cap-and-trade programs are in the ascendancy over advocates of straight carbon taxes at the moment, that hasn't stopped some eminent scientists and thinkers from coming out in favor of the latter.
Most recently, climatologist James Hansen (the first scientist to state before Congress that greenhouse gases were causing climate change, some 20 years ago, and director of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies) has come out in favor a carbon tax and has urged president-elect Obama to adopt one.
Carbon Tax & 100% Dividend
Calling it a Carbon Tax and 100% Dividend approach, Hansen said that,
The entire carbon tax should be returned to the public, with a monthly deposit to their bank accounts, an equal share to each person (if no bank account provided, an annual check - social security number must be provided). No bureaucracy is needed to figure this out. If the initial carbon tax averages $1200 per person per year, $100 is deposited in each account each month (Detail: perhaps limit to four shares per family, with child shares being half-size, i.e., no marriage penalty but do not encourage population growth).A carbon tax will raise energy prices, but lower and middle income people, especially, will find ways to reduce carbon emissions so as to come out ahead. Product demand will spur economic activity and innovation. The rate of infrastructure replacement, thus economic activity, can be modulated by how fast the carbon tax rate increases. Effects will permeate society. Food requiring lots of carbon emissions to produce and transport will become more expensive and vice versa - it is likely, e.g., that the UK will stop importing and exporting 15,000 tons of waffles each year. There will be a growing price incentive for life style changes needed for sustainable living.
To Gain Public Support Carbon Taxes Need Re-Branding Worldwatch Institute points out that carbon taxes of one sort or another are currently in place in Scandinavia, the UK, British Columbia and in some cities in the United States. In general they have little public support-mention ‘new tax' and the average person's knee jerks reflexively-and if this sort of program is to win the public relations battle it has to be renamed to downplay the tax aspect of it and emphasize the climate change solution/environmental sustainability angle.
I'd add, it also has to be emphasized that implementing a tax on carbon isn't a tax in the sense of generating revenue for the state, but is really correcting a market imbalance caused by failing to incorporate externalized environmental damage into the price of goods and services.
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Show AllCarbon tax ??? How about getting rid of the internal combustion engine and changing the engines altogether to use plant oil? Never mind, can't profit out of it ! Sigh. :(
Jennifer ~ You're on the right path; but there has to be a macro-view of the situation. ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) still uses fuel, regardless of where the fuel source comes from. If we could come up with an abundant element or compound that was readily available or convertable and easily delivered that burns cleanly and produces sufficient explosive compressive power ~ then what you're saying works!
But follow the fuel cycle through; where do the plants come from? Who raises them? What water source to they use? How are they processed into fuel and how much energy does that conversion take? How do you deliver the final product to the consumer?
It gets pretty convoluted pretty quickly. If it was easy, it would have already been done.
It's not the ICE that's the problem--it's allowing--no SUBSIDIZING the archaic and destructive idea that everyone who goes to work every day needs to drive his/her own vehicle to get there. The vehicle they choose, typically weights anywhere from 20 to 40 times the weight of the passenger. A 5000 pound vehicle should be able to carry 7-9 passengers comfortably and easily, representing at least a 70% reduction (assuming some empty seats) in the vehicle/passenger weight ratio. A vehicles efficiency is well correlated with weight.
If that MINIBUS were also a HYBRID--SIGNIFICANT additional fuel savings would result.
To see what this might look like, see http://www.greeneconomypost.com --Driving to Destruction..."
I hereby dub the three-wheeled minibus: Model CWN (Chevron's Worst Nightmare)
This article contains more lies and half truths than most. The energy tax bill can only be favored by the unintelligent or those that want to do irreprable harm to America and her people.
Next time one of these nuts favoring this bill comes around, ask them exactly what this bill would achieve in terms of lessening carbon emissions. Anything over .02 per cent after many, many years is a lie.
I noticed that this idiot referred to Europe, he forgot to mention that its bnbeen a dismal failure and that the only results are from England changing from coal to gas and possibly the reunification of Germany which cleaned up East Germany a bit.
While emissions have skyrocketed in much of the world, Denmark had a 14% reduction in emissions since 1992, and Sweden 9% since 1991. But it's been pointed out that more than the tax is needed. It's one part of an array of policies, including strong investment in green energy polices. Both economies have been robust as a result and are doing better in this downturn than most countries. Something to think about.
We had better do some thinking and fast. This cap and trade boondoggle will be an environmental and financial disaster - except for Goldman Sachs of course, who will make out like bandits. But that's what they are anyway.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Agreed, a carbon tax is hardly a good solution, its just better than cap and trade combined with an unregulated commodities market. That combination will be deadly...to the environment and the economy.
If Goldman Sachs can't make money from it, it won't fly.
We have the answers to our problems, but if the corporations can't maximize profits from those answers, they won't let them be applied. After all, they own the place.
We don't have to let them own it, we can take it back with the Main Street Party. They have the money and own the politicians, but we still have the vote. It's up to us to use it.
And all you Greens out there, if you can't get more than 1% of the vote (2% if Ralph is at the top of the ticket) after all these years, you might realize it's not working. You can stick with your party, but we need a party that attracts a majority of people. You're not it. Under ordinary circumstances I'd be supporting the Greens, but these are extraordinary circumstances.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
A carbon tax is far superior to the convoluted cap and trade now being pushed through Congress. In order to reduce CO2 emissions, there needs to be powerful economic disincentives to using carbon emitting fuels. A carbon tax will do just that. It's simple and effective. It will force us to change our behavior in positive ways and pave the way toward a post carbon energy future.
Instead, the pusillanimous members of Congress (Dennis Kucinich excepted) are pushing through a BS cap and trade regime that will do little to lower CO2 emissions and will primarily serve to enrich certain powerful constituents.
a carbon tax is taxing the life cycle.
everything is carbon based on this planet, and politicized science is what is pushing for this tax.
if a carbon tax is implemented say hello to post industrial society and many other brave new world scenarios
A carbon tax would be taxing the extraction, distribution and use of fossil fuels.
Its rare for scientists to get involved in politics. These guys know what is going to happen because of fossil fuel GHG emissions, and they are patriots.
Get ready for some sort of Waterworld, Soylent Green, Desert Planet, Dead Oceans... die back world if we conduct business as usual.
I'm sorry ~ but I couldn't let that comment just lie there...
You don't think scientists get involved with politics? Funding is a HIGHLY political process, my friend. I say this not from feelings but from experience. I am a senior scientist myself and I can state with 100% certainty that politics makes or breaks every scientific research dollar from the US Gov't.
At the lab level, I would tend to mostly agree with your statement, and the guys handling the test tubes are apolitical about their data ~ except when they see their funding sources in jeopardy. Date can and does get massaged to emphasis whatever draws the coins. I'd have to say that when it comes to the managerial ranks, or those who handle the dollars; they are very, VERY politically aware.
Just something to consider.
Gilgamesh,
Are you playing dumb?
The carbon tax will not tax every molecule of carbon in the economy, or in your compost pile, your cat, or in you.
The carbon tax will tax carbon that gets pumped into the atmosphere, mainly through burning fossil fuels. It is a tax on fossil fuels based on their atmospheric carbon emissions, to raise the cost of that form of energy, to push us to invest in and switch to other forms of energy that do NOT pump carbon into the atmosphere. (Notice the headline on the other article today - "French panel to recommend carbon tax on fuel" - the tax is on the carbon in the fossil fuel.)
Because - not sure if you have heard of this - humans have increased atmospheric carbon levels by about 50% since we started burning fossil fuels. There is now more carbon in the atmosphere than since long, long before there were humans on the planet, and carbon-based molecules increase atmospheric heat-retention. After decades of lies and phony "arguments" we are at the point where there is no more "denying" the fact of human destabilization of the Earth's climate...
The phony argument today is about whether the steps we take to stop destabilization of the climate should be designed by financial profiteers, or by scientists.
You want post-industrial? Let's just do nothing different, keep burning fossil fuels as fast as we can rip them out of the Earth, keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere as fast as we can burn coal. Soon we'll have post-civilization scenarios...
Are you a paleo-denier, still mouthing Rush Limbaugh jokes from the 1990s? Or do you have something constructive to offer?
according to a growing number of very alarmed scientists -
THIS VERY YEAR -- 2009 -- is the lynch point for our planet.
they say - due to the very alarming acceleration of harm to the biosphere which even THEY did not anticipate to be THIS severe THIS fast -
if 2009 does NOT show the RADICAL changes we need
it is over for us ALL. there is NO turning back - no matter what we do because it will be too late to catch up..and that the "end-time" scenario indeed will destroy civilization - leaving - according to the article i read from them
"only a REMNANT of the human race will reach the ARCTIC region to survive".
and that ACCELERATION can be laid flat on the Pillars of Wall Street and its sister Capitalist exploitation no end - as fast as possible without thought and respect for the planet.
SQUARELY on capitalism.
I heard that Peak Oil was to start in 2010. But as Sioux Rose pointed out in an earlier post sometime back, it's too unpredictable. But if Peak Oil does kick in, oh boy, Peak Coal and Peak Uranium will come crashing in like BOOM ! Perhaps that will offset the carbon consumption and then for once, we can jump and rejoice that Mother Nature gave the profiteers a big boot kick . :)
humanity has so disrespected Mother Nature...and we are and will all pay for it...
Somehow we have to make the survival of our species profitable.
It's all a matter of how we book profit and loss, and how we keep our balance sheet.
Money is not the only thing that goes on the balance sheet, things like buildings and machinery are valued when we measure our stewardship of the "bottom line".
We need to book the value of a living planet, the value a healthy biosphere brings in "environmental services", and measure our stewardship of that expanded "bottom line".
That by any measure is priceless, so it kind of blows the concept of entrepreneurial initiative, financial markets, or capitalism, at least until we get a market in habitable planets...
How about an after-market in habitable planet-based derivatives? A planetary futures exchange? How do you hedge your investment in being alive?
Maybe it's NOT just a matter of putting the living Earth on a mega-balance sheet...
Maybe financial profiteers should NOT design our approach to climate destabilization!
When are they going to TAX us for just being alive?
Why don't they just stop paying us all together, we can go to work for a tax check.
I mean what was the purpose of the American Revolution? Wasn't it against all these Taxes and to be a FREE Nation.
We are practically bowing down to England again (aka the federal reserve, the federal government) except now we are actually sticking our heads inside the guillotine.
I am sick of all these taxes, they tax us for everything and anything these days and then they stick it under the guise of the environment and that is supposed to make it okay?!
Well it doesn't it is just more control and more b*llshit!
we need less taxes. STOP the wars, stop sending money to Israel to kill the people of Gaza with, use that money in place of all these taxes.
Wake Up You STUPID Sheep - They Are TAXing Our lives Away!
Yeah, they won't tax the biggest spoilers of our Earth Mother, but no doubt have a plan to tax the air that fills our lungs.
actually - if you carefully look at the american revolution - they revolted against taxation by a King to whom they no longer felt any allegiance.
they did not necessarily go against taxation ITSELF - nor taxing THEMSELVES . they were against taxation by what they eventually concluded was a tyranny from "abroad" and was not "their country".
afterwards you can see that they imposed TAXES on themselves and particularly on IMPORTS in order to protect domestic industries.
this "let's not have taxes" is an exaggeration based on incomplete understanding of what the rebels were against in terms of "taxation". ..which is:
that they did not like that the king of england TAXED AMERICANS in order to enrich the coffers of ENGLAND but NOT america.
fast forward:
when americans glue themselves to "less taxes" they are being fooled because:
when "taxes are cut" - the ordinary people MIGHT see an IMMEDIATE benefit - enough to buy a baby troller, have an extra day expenses for vacation, put down a downpayment for something. etc....
so they THINK they are having an advantage.
BUT the REAL BILL - the REAL TAX ON THEM comes LATER.
in the form of even HIGHER taxes - cuts to public necessities - cuts to education, health , etc....
and BEHIND the "tax cuts" - the VERY RICH RIDE ON TOP OF THAT - who actually are the ones that have HUGE tax cuts (behind the COVER of tax cuts for 'everyone').
and the result is - society LOSES REVENUE to fund public necessities....
and WHO GETS to foot the bill - the ordinary people - through OTHER FORMS of taxation:
Higher prices, more "on your own" programs that replace socially funded programs and more and more fall into the cracks because their wages are simply not enough to keep up...
and of course bills that protect the rich even MORE..which ITSELF as ANOTHER form of taxation on ordinary people.
the "tax cuts" paranoia especially by conservatives is really a TROJAN HORSE...
it is designed to BAIT ordinary people into thinking "we are getting our money BACK"
but in reality is a COVER for the BIG WELFARE INDUSTRY given to the upper class and other interests.
always at the expense of ordinary people who THINK they are being given "back our money".
you can say then . that in reality -- the VERY RICH (basically in any nation that makes tax cuts for the very rich more than for ordinary people) - but especially in america
are actually like people who "live in a foreign country"....
and do so by TAXING , in many clever, indirect ways, the people in the country to gather wealth into their "foreign countries' coffers"
JUST LIKE the king of england did to american "natives" or nationalists.
Unpopular "taxation" is easier for polluters to spin than popular "limits".
I am a little confused by this carbon tax. If goods are produced in China and a great deal of carbon dioxide is created in their manufacture, will the United States government levy a tariff on the imports? So little is made here anymore--I don't understand how this carbon tax can be enforced outside the USA.
Which brings me to the main point. National solutions will not do anything to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Only a worldwide agreement to tax carbon will gain any traction and its enforcement presents enormous difficulties.
Rather than a carbon tax, how about having goods certified by an international agency as having a low carbon footprint. Standards will have to be set and evaluators will have to be sent out to check out claims. Hopefully, people will choose products with 'green' certification.
I know there are problems with this scheme, but fewer than with a carbon tax. I live in despair that humans cannot act proactively to head off climate disaster. From the perspective of evolutionary biology, such behavior has never paid off in terms of genetic success for those that practice it. Even so, we must try to make things better.
Cap-`n-Trade ,,, where does congress get off giving industry the 'right' to pollute our envirnment and poison our children? This is just another toxic Wall Street scam.
"Only a worldwide agreement to tax carbon will gain any traction and its enforcement presents enormous difficulties." True, but change has got to start somewhere, so let it start right here. As noted above, if the likes of Goldman Sachs cannot profit from replacing fossil fuels with alternatives, then their adaption is highly doubtful, because as also noted, they "own the place"! It is a horror that this planet has been mortgaged to big capital.
I've bought up a couple of copies of The Eleventh Hour( very inexpensive) been loaning them to friends and friendly acquaintances--flying out of my backpack. Planning on giving one to my Congressman.
I've bought up a couple of copies of The Eleventh Hour( very inexpensive) been loaning them to friends and friendly acquaintances--flying out of my backpack. Planning on giving one to my Congressman.
I've bought up a couple of copies of The Eleventh Hour( very inexpensive) been loaning them to friends and friendly acquaintances--flying out of my backpack. Planning on giving one to my Congressman.
I've bought up a couple of copies of The Eleventh Hour( very inexpensive) been loaning them to friends and friendly acquaintances--flying out of my backpack. Planning on giving one to my Congressman.
I've bought up a couple of copies of The Eleventh Hour( very inexpensive) been loaning them to friends and friendly acquaintances--flying out of my backpack. Planning on giving one to my Congressman.
Cap & trade's a dodge: all the standard dodges for capital-based manipulation pertain.
0 won't sign a carbon tax, not without being forced.
He is escalating wars in 3 countries to get fuel to spend fuel to control fuel to maintain power for fuel-vendors.
Carbon tax?
Maybe if he can make it a way to charge for gasoline.