Okay, I was thinking about this on the way home on the train, as to what is wrong with the conservative argument for carbon taxation, which is: essentially it's an economic argument, not a scientific one or moral one (the cost of global warming is one that could potentially be paid in human lives).

Obviously, their tax emphasis would be somewhat different to a progressive tax. Perhaps it's like Lourens says, it's not that carbon trade and carbon tax are necessarily opposed, but dependant on the quality of their proposed implementation.

I'm still not comfortable with taxation being used primarily to influence behaviour.

big_dave wrote:I'm still not comfortable with taxation being used primarily to influence behaviour.

But there are reams of studies demonstrating that voluntary conservation is a non-starter in terms of meaningful carbon output reductions. The individual consumer (whether corporate or an actual breathing human) will always tend to use energy as a convenience until that convenience is placed or priced out of reach. Either cap and trade or carbon taxation is designed to influence the decision made by the individual to consume. The only alternative I see to this is nationalization and/or regulation of the amount of energy available to the individual, and I can't see that as a realistic option for solving the problem.

This tax and 100% dividend is an interesting idea. I don't think it is possible to do it w/out some form of bureaucracy. Just basing it on bank accounts and/or SS# leaves a lot of people to slip under the radar. And then the illegal immigration debate rears its ugly head again...

It would spur a reduction in carbon use, sure, but how many people might have to find different jobs in the process? Also can the government guarantee a 100% dividend? Not likely.

Its a better idea than cap-and-trade though.

Whoever said it before, this is an informative thread. I like it.

unarmedman wrote:This tax and 100% dividend is an interesting idea.

Problem with this is that it ignores the damage visited upon the commons until the tax was implemented. Carbon reductions are not "stop now and everything will be alright." Rather, "Stop now and let's start evaluating just how fucked the next several hundred years (if not longer) will be." Returning 100% of the income from carbon taxation to the individual will do zip to address this; meanwhile cities will be underwater and species will be blinking out minute by minute. An appropriate use of part of this income is to fix the massive problems pending as a result of climate change, and this will require a bureaucracy. The money doesn't have to come from the carbon price/tax, but it will have to come from somewhere.

That is why there needs to be very specific print that funnels the tax money into something related and useful. It is one thing to slow down emissions by creating a tax as a deterrent, but if all the revenue can increase the speed of innovation or implementation of new green tech. things could move along quicker.

But I am not a lawyer or a Poli. Sci. major I have no idea how this would look on paper, and how you could get a politician or a populous to go for it.

joelb wrote:

big_dave wrote:I'm still not comfortable with taxation being used primarily to influence behaviour.

The only alternative I see to this is nationalization and/or regulation of the amount of energy available to the individual, and I can't see that as a realistic option for solving the problem.

I agree, but we are at a point where we have to make such options realistic. Regulate business now, because a future nationalisation or regulation would be difficult for the majority of people.

I hope taxation works, but I doubt that it will. Why tax to prohibit? Why not just prohibit? It is not like we can use the money to buy a machine to undo the damage.

big_dave, being interrupted by me in a slightly misleading way, wrote:I hope taxation works, but I doubt that it will. Why tax to prohibit? Why not just prohibit? It is not like we can use the money

Considering the deficits the U.S. government is running and the fact that so little of that deficit spending goes to alternative-fuel research, I think the problem of how to use the money might be a nice problem to have.

Tax to prohibit what exactly? All use of fossil fuels? All use by each individual over a specific amount? How would we track fossil fuel consumption (industry, mass transit) that isn't done directly by a single individual, and what to do about the loopholes every lobbyist would build in for his own favored industry? I think the prohibition you refer to would probably be an impossible idea, but I'm not sure because I can't make heads or tails of what plan you envision.

The reason I'm not sure about funneling the money into specific programs is the same reason I'm not vehemently in favor of a carbon tax over cap-and-trade: because a really ambitious plan that is too easily categorized as tax-and-spend might result in no clean-air incentives getting passed at all.

I think that ideally, a pollution tax that is publicly and clearly tied to a reduction in other taxes might actually pass. It'd be difficult to use it to offset sales taxes, since those are mostly levied by states and this would have to be federally administered.