[Vision2020] carbon tax

[Joe Campbell]

How will your tax be less of a burden on the poor than a general
carbon tax? Have you done the math?

Also, you seem to think that inefficient vehicles are worth penalizing
but if the goal is to reduce carbon, why not cast a wider net? If it
is OK to penalize the poor for their choice of automobiles, why not
other choices that increase rather than decrease carbon?

I agree with your point that money should go toward public
transportation. But I think public transportation is something that
would pay for itself: fewer cars on the road = fewer accidents, road
wear, etc. = fewer tax dollars spent. We should develop better forms
of mass transportation and encourage folks to use mass transportation
more often, regardless of issues about a carbon tax. If more folks
used it, it would pay for itself. Of course, that is true of almost
anything!

On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 12:46 AM, Donovan Arnold
<donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am against a carbon tax as the solution. It will be punishing everyone,
> including the poor and middle class that have no other alternative but to
> pay it, and it is essentially a tax that will be regressive and cause
> massive inflation on every good and service.
>
> Instead, I would be for a consumer or sales tax on less fuel
> efficient vehicles and equipment. Require a 50% tax on the purchase of all
> machines that are not fuel inefficient. Then use the tax revenues for public
> transportation and alternative energy sources.
>
> This would reduce the number gas guzzling vehicles on the road, more buses,
> and cleaner sources of energy without a heavy tax on the poor that cannot
> afford it. With reduced demand for fuel inefficient equipment and vehicles,
> private enterprise will be forced to produce more cars that have better fuel
> efficiency. This will also reduce demand for fuel causing gas prices to go
> down, not up.
>
> Donovan J. Arnold
>
>
>
> From: Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>
> To: Vision 2020 <Vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Sent: Saturday, June 2, 2012 10:56 AM
> Subject: [Vision2020] carbon tax
>
> The following article has gone a long way to convince me that we might need
> a small carbon tax as a hedge against the uncertainty of our climate change
> projections.  We would need to keep it small, because a carbon tax will
> affect everything from the price of gas to the price of milk.  If we care
> about the underprivileged in our society, we'd want to phase it in slowly
> and give our society time to make more fuel-efficient cars and whatnot.  I
> would set it up so that the taxes fund more research into alternative energy
> solutions, power grid updates, and energy storage solutions.  I would also
> suggest setting up potential adjustments to this tax so that as the
> uncertainty goes away we use raise or lower it as appropriate.
>
> The reason I could get behind a small carbon tax and not carbon credits is
> basically a look at where the money goes.  Money from a tax can be tracked
> and re-purposed as needed with accountability.  Carbon credits will only
> make the richest of us richer, and more work will go into ways to screw the
> system than will go into research into possible alternative energy sources.
>
> I wish more people would look towards the center of this debate.  You have
> the Far Right kooks (of which I'm not one) and you have the Far Left kooks
> (of which I'm also not one).  A complete lack of concern on one side and a
> desire to return us to the Middle Ages on the other.
>
> Anyway, here is the article:
> http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/timworstall/100017600/yes-climate-change-is-a-problem-and-yes-we-do-have-to-do-something-but-in-britain-weve-done-it-already/
>
> Yes, climate change is a problem and yes, we do have to do something: but in
> Britain, we've done it already
>
>
> By Tim Worstall Economics Last updated: June 1st, 2012
>
> Perhaps we can sit down and discuss this climate change thing like the
> adults we are? Put the Delingpoles over here, the vilenesses that are
> Greenpeace, FoE and the rest of the forward-to-the-Middle-Ages crowd over
> there, and in that vast howling wasteland between the two positions discuss
> what we really know and what we ought to do about it?
> Start with the simple fact that there are really only two important things
> we know about the entire idea. The first of these is that the direct effect
> of a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is trivial, something simply not to get
> worried about. Yes, we convert all the methane, NOx and all the rest into
> their CO2 equivalents, giving us not CO2 but CO2-e. And we know very well
> what the effect, directly, of a doubling of this from pre-industrial levels
> will be. A 0.7 degree rise in average temperature. This is simply straight
> physics and it is indeed highlighted in all of the IPCC reports. Less than
> the difference between Yorkshire and Cornwall, possibly than Somerset and
> Cornwall. At this level, quite frankly, who gives a damn?
> The second thing we know absolutely is that this is not the end of the
> story, for there are feedbacks, and the really important thing is that we
> don't know where they will lead. Feedbacks are all of the processes started
> by that 0.7 degree warming, and which then amplify (positive feedbacks) or
> dampen (negative feedbacks) that initial direct effect of the CO2. You can
> take your pick from an improbably long list: sea ice melting reduces
> reflection of light back out into space, allows the ocean underneath to be
> warmed: a positive feedback. More CO2 increases plant growth (which is why
> commercial greenhouses pump the stuff in) which leads to more humus
> formation and thus more carbon locked up in the soil: a negative feedback.
> The cumulative effect of all of these feedbacks is something we simply do
> not know. We don't even know what all the feedbacks are; and of those we do
> know about, we're not sure in which direction they move. While there are
> some reasonable guesses about what the total number and direction of them
> all added together, we're not certain whether that total effect is positive
> or negative.
> The general answer from the IPCC and the like is that climate sensitivity,
> the total effect adding in all the feedbacks positive and negative, is in
> the 2 degree to 4.5 degree range, most likely at about 3 degrees. But there
> are entirely honest and reasonable scientists (meaning those not bought by
> either Big Oil or Big Environment) out there arguing that this range is
> either too high or too low: that climate senstivity is such that possible
> outcomes range from "who the hell cares" to "whoops, there boils Flipper!"
> It is this "we don't know" that leads to needing to do something. Economists
> call this uncertainty, and the correct and reasonable reaction to
> uncertainty is insurance. It can sound a little odd: the idea is that the
> less we know about the effects of climate change, the more we ought to do
> about it. But consider insurance against your house burning down. If you
> know the chance is 1 in a million then you'll not be willing to pay (much)
> more than one millionth of its worth to insure it. If the risk is 1 in
> 10,000, then perhaps one ten-thousandth of the value. But if you are
> uncertain what the risk is then you are willing to pay much more of the
> value in order to gain insurance.
> At our current state of knowledge about climate change, we do not face risk.
> We face uncertainty: the greater that uncertainty about climate sensitivity,
> the more we should be willing to expend to insure ourselves.
> So this is what we know about climate change. We know there will be some
> effect from emissions, and we also are uncertain about what that effect will
> be. The uncertainty itself means that we should do something. But what?
> I've already explained this here. Don't listen to the ignorant hippies to
> our Left, or to those shouting that there's nothing to it from the Right.
> The answer is, quite simply, a revenue-neutral carbon tax.
> The outcome of all of this climate science is that we face an economic
> problem. How much will it cost us to reduce this uncertainty, against the
> benefit we will receive from reducing it? The answer is not going to come
> from those who are ignorant of economics, nor from those who deny the
> uncertainty. It's an economic problem, so we need to use the tools of
> economics to study it.
> Which is what a number of people have done. Amazingly, over on the
> hysteria-about-Flipper side, Nasa's James Hansen manages to get the point: a
> tax on fossil fuels as they come out of the ground, rebated to households.
> It's worth noting that this would add $1 to a gallon of gas in the US: in
> Europe we're already paying this, so we're done on that score. There's also
> William Nordhaus, the granddaddy of researchers into the economics of
> climate change. Start with a small tax now and commit to raising it in the
> future. This enables us to work with the technological and capital cycle,
> reducing the total cost. Or there's the Stern Review, which essentially
> states that throw a bit of money at R&D and a carbon tax of $80 per tonne
> CO2-e and she'll be right. Gaia that is, or at least our relationship to
> her.
> Which brings us to our final question: is this expense worth the reduction
> in uncertainty? Entirely arguable, that one. The argument revolves around
> how much you value what happens now against how much you value what happens
> in the future.
> Except for one little point: we in the UK are already paying that carbon
> tax. With emissions around the 500-million-ton mark, that $80 per tonne tax
> works out at about £25 billion or so that should be paid in tax to solve the
> problem, entirely and absolutely. And in the UK, when you add up fuel duty,
> Air Passenger Duty and all the rest, we already pay that and more in carbon
> or greenhouse taxes. We're not paying it in all the right places, this is
> true: fuel duty and APD are too high, while diesel for farmers and trains is
> too low. But given that the total amount is already being levied, all we
> need to do is shift around what is already being charged to solve the
> climate change problem.
> We've then got to go and convince everyone else: but think how much easier
> that will be once we show quite how cheap and simple the solution is. No
> more of the mantra that we've got to end industrial civilisation: three
> squares a day has become something of a habit for many of us. And no more of
> the shouts that nothing needs to be done.
> There really is a Climate Change Conspiracy, of course, something we'll come
> to next time. But it isn't about the science. The science tells us that
> there is uncertainty; uncertainty is an economic problem to be solved
> through economic methods. And given that we're all already being forced to
> cough up enough green taxes to provide that economic solution, why don't we
> just get on with the tinkering around the edges of the current system to
> enforce that solution?
> Rather than, say, either version of howling at the Moon that is the current
> Left and Right of the debate?
>
>
>
> =======================================================
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>               http://www.fsr.net
>           mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
>
>
> =======================================================
>  List services made available by First Step Internet,
>  serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>               http://www.fsr.net
>          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================