Is There a Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax In Our Future?

Here’s an article on various proposed “carbon taxes” that I offer to stimulate conversation.  It really has some nasty holes in it, which I’ll point out in advance:

• The tables are useless, as they represent the grossest of double-counting.  They list energy end-users as: consumers, commercial businesses, industrial enterprises, transportation, and power.  The first three are end-users; the last two are ways that the first three use energy.  It’s like counting fruit and apples; you’d be double-counting the apples. 

• The central problem with a carbon tax is that it’s regressive; it disproportionately taxes the poor at the expense of the rich, as the poor spend a larger percentage of their income/worth on energy than the rich.  The real trick is to work around this, which is the point of rebates.

Having said all this, a revenue-neutral carbon tax is most definitely the way to go.  It’s not about punishing people for using energy; it’s about forcing the world to pay the real and comprehensive cost of that energy, instead of passing those costs on to future generations.  Of course, such an approach would have a terrifically positive effect: it would cause us to see the true bargain that renewable energy represents.   Virtually overnight, the level of investment in clean energy – and migration away from fossil fuels – would go from a drip to a waterfall.