We are going to burn it.
I don't believe that actually. Look at what's happening with coal. Oil is next. Look at what happened with wood. Sure, the Amazon is being stripped, but not for fuel. We value forests for things other than fuel. Fossil fuels may continue to be used for plastics and many other things, but as for wood, we will have other things that are cheaper to burn and oil will be used elsewhere.
Did you know that the critical energy crisis in classical Athens was for heating wood, which encouraged some early passive solar designs? Did you know that in 16th-century France, people put winter coats on when the *entered* a house because wood was scarce so the houses were often as cold as the outdoors and yet people had stopped moving, so they needed more layers (French travelers to Eastern Europe would remark on how people would *remove* their coats when they entered a house).
Did you know that Vermont has more forest now than it did in 1900 even though many people still burn wood?
By your logic, though, there should not be a tree standing in Vermont, Greece or France.
I think paying a carbon tax just moves the money about
Well yes, that is the sort of the point. I could say the same of any tax. Gasoline is taxed. That's just moving money about, but moving that money about is what pays for the state highway system in most places. For that matter, I could say the same thing of the entire global finance industry and investment industry. It's just moving money about. But it has real impacts, good and bad, on the world.
I have no faith that it will end in the right hands.
Now there's the thorny part.
I think it's a question of how you structure it. They messed up in British Columbia by creating exceptions and letting it get jerrymandered and by not having any import adjustment. That was just folly.
There are several possible models
- The Norwegian model, where it goes into a trust. *Never* going to fly in the US and probably not in the UK even.
- The Alaska model, where the revenue is simply returned to citizens every year to spend as they like
- The Big Government model where the money is funneled to mitigation and solutions. This probably wouldn't even fly in Norway.
So option 2 is the only one on the table. Basically, what that does is it makes carbon-based fuel more expensive for people, but gives them pocket money to either just pony up for that fuel, or put those dollars toward other fuel. As it stands now, the vast, vast majority of subsidies worldwide do go fossil fuels. Orders of magnitude greater than non-fossil fuels, without even counting the indirect subsidies (i.e. healthcare costs driven by fossil fuels, to say nothing of military costs).
So the carbon fee and dividend is a way of leveling that playing field and making up for decades of fossil fuel subsidy. It will
- save lives
- save healthcare costs
- come out as a wash for most people
There are two keys that must happen to make it work
- import adjustments so that local concrete manufacturers don't compete against someone who is not paying a carbon tax (concrete is super carbon-intensive, roughly 7% of the global total output).
- no exceptions, it just works like in Alaska. Revenue comes in and out without picking winners and losers and without making moral decisions (aside from, depending on how you view it, the initial decision to have the fee and dividend*).
The latter is a tough one to sell in the lobby-intensive US.
Right now the sticking point is that the right won't vote for the fee and the left won't vote for the dividend, but there is a lot of movement. Will it be in time? The clock is ticking. I think if one huge market goes for it (US, China or EU), others will be forced to follow to avoid the import adjustments. When it starts to happen, it will cascade quickly.
To me, the carbon/climate problem is exactly like the debt/deficit problem. We continue to kick the can down the road and saddle future generations with the cleanup, and that's immoral. It's like registering under your kid's name and then trashing your hotel room. So though I think there are many straight up practical considerations, in the sense of making future generations pay for our flagrance, it is a moral issue.
