Howard Shaffer makes many excellent points in his “My Turn” column on a tax on carbon (Monitor Forum, Dec. 3). However, traditional carbon tax schemes have three potential issues:
One, revenue collected can be diverted to other perceived important but non-environmental issues, which for example has happened with some U.S. state tobacco taxes.
Two, corporations oppose perceived business harm induced by downstream tariffs/taxes.
Three, cap and trade provides further incentives for great minds to be drawn to finance to write software to shuffle deck chairs.
A more American solution that leapfrogs a simple penalization approach would be an “Alternative to Carbon Taxes,” or ACT, where hydrocarbon producers directly invest a fixed amount per unit produced into renewable energy systems (for example, wind and solar farms, batteries, pumped hydro plants on mountaintop coal mine sites).
Producers would be motivated to do this because instead of giving money to the government they maintain ownership of the renewable energy assets into which they invest. This will help producers evolve from hydrocarbon to renewable energy companies – avoiding the job losses associated with sudden industry shifts while at the same time more rapidly reducing CO2 than can be regulated.
As Shaffer points out, the Saudi Aramco CEO observed that the U.S. has a significant lead over countries like China and India in efficient energy production, and in that respect the Paris climate agreement is a gift to the United States: Under the terms of the Paris agreement, the carbon content of goods, from raw materials to shipping, can be taxed without fear of retaliation.
If the U.S. stuck with the Paris agreement and simply imposed a carbon tariff, U.S. producers would enjoy a huge competitive advantage. This would encourage other countries to quickly follow our ACT and the world would become more prosperous and CO2 emissions would plunge.
The time for an ACT is ripe as technologies for renewables are at a tipping point, where they are more economical than burning gas in some cases and coal in most cases.
It is clearly time to start putting the World First, and with popular culture we the people can send a clear message to our leaders to save our jobs and our planet.
For an example, listen to this: untoldrecords.com/marcgrahamphd/worldfirst3.mp3.
(Alexander Slocum lives in Bow.)