Nobody has to start supporting a carbon tax or "wearing hemp shoes," but any rational person with a brain in his or her head ought to "if not fully believe that human beings are warming the planet by releasing greenhouse gases, at least recognize that this is what the data seem to suggest and that it...
Category: carbon tax
Nobody has to start supporting a carbon tax or "wearing hemp shoes," but any rational person with a brain in his or her head ought to "if not fully believe that human beings are warming the planet by releasing greenhouse gases, at least recognize that this is what the data seem to suggest and that it is what the vast majority of scientists who study weather believe is the case."
That's the conclusion of an evidently exasperated Matthew Herper at Forbes, who doesn't expect this to put an end to the political fighting, but does allow us "to start aiming our fiery furnace of a political system at actually solving our problems." Fight over a carbon tax, a pipeline, or composting, but at least admit the facts, he argues.
He then lists some of the main objections he...
Former Congressman Bob Inglis of South Carolina is 'former' at least in part because he told his red-state constituents he accepts global warming as real, and important. So today he heads a private enterprise-oriented outfit called the Energy & Enterprise Initiative that tries to convince...
Former Congressman Bob Inglis of South Carolina is 'former' at least in part because he told his red-state constituents he accepts global warming as real, and important. So today he heads a private enterprise-oriented outfit called the Energy & Enterprise Initiative that tries to convince conservatives that they ought to be leading the fight against climate change. It's an idea that could use a little boost via probing by conservation-minded journalists dismayed over the curiously rigid partisan divide over global warming in US politics and in other nations as well.
At the climate-focusssed non-profit Yale e360, a magazine and a website, its executive editor Roger Cohn this month has a probing Q&A with Inglis, covering his...
image source Grist ;
For years the very idea of a carbon tax has been toxic in the US - a sure way to ignite the full fury of the far-right, Tea Party, weirdos who equate such a thing with socialism and a UN plot to take our sovereignty, and...
image source Grist ;
For years the very idea of a carbon tax has been toxic in the US - a sure way to ignite the full fury of the far-right, Tea Party, weirdos who equate such a thing with socialism and a UN plot to take our sovereignty, and almost every elected Republican in the land. That is deader'n dead on arrival in our present super-majority governmental setup. A cap and trade market for carbon credits, since it had a Republican lineage dating back to the fix for acid rain, has been the limit of the politically possible. Lately, and we'll get to a media roundup in a bit, policy makers and policy wonks of many stripes are talking up the carbon tax almost as though it is a shiny new idea, as a way to transform society and energy consumption via the market pressure auto-pilot but without the fiendish complexity and easy-sabotage (ie gaming) of cap and trade systems.The warming mood toward it is even...
15Nov 2012
The idea of taxing carbon emissions to address climate change is once again in the air in Washington. But it could prove no more popular this time than it did in 2009 when President Obama tried to get a climate-change bill through Congress, and failed.
Seth Borenstein at The AP...
The idea of taxing carbon emissions to address climate change is once again in the air in Washington. But it could prove no more popular this time than it did in 2009 when President Obama tried to get a climate-change bill through Congress, and failed.
Seth Borenstein at The AP has written a nice scene-setter, which refers to recent reports on the subject (but doesn't link to them!) and surveys the political landscape. (Ouch; the mixed metaphors are mine, not Borenstein's.) To get a sense of the depth of feeling on this issue, note that Borenstein reports that the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking access to Treasury Department emails on the subject.
Before you place your bets for or against a carbon tax, read Borenstein.
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A couple of stories got to this tracker over the weekend:
1) The Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed page on...
For many years wonky economic language has...
For many years wonky economic language has helped to hobble, one surmises from the perspective of this resident of the US, efforts to make industries pay for damage their activities cause even if they are diffuse and don't have any built-in impact on their bills for production or delivery of whatever it is they sell. For example, the oil industry and coal industry that do not internalize the longterm costs to future economic growth imposed by the climatic side effects of their products.
In Australia today, amid a flood of reporting on a vote by slim margin to tax carbon at the rate of $23 (Australian, very close to $US) per ton of emission - higher than Europe's carbon markets are running at now - along...
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