Carbon Tax: Political Nightmare, Economic and Environmental Necessity.
With all the bickering in Congress about debt ceilings and cuts in spending, one clear necessity that has been ousted from negotiations is taxes. Lets face it, taxes are unpopular on Capitol Hill. Republican leadership is fervently opposed to raising taxes of any kind, and is pushing for cutting funding for social programs that will hit the poor hardest, further increasing our wealth gap and employment woes in the United States. Increased revenue is necessary if our nation is to move forward and with enormous consequences from climate change already present, a Carbon tax is a surefire method to help solve our pressing environmental and economic problems.
Here in the United States, we are used to cheap energy. However, many don’t know the true cost of the electrons that power their homes or the gasoline that their cars run on. One gallon of gasoline produces 19.4 pounds of CO2. This means that for approximately every 100 gallons of gasoline that one burns, (assuming a 14 gallon tank, 7 visits to the gas station), one is producing one ton of CO2 gas. The Stockholm Environment Institute estimated that there is $893 in economic damage for every ton of CO2 released into the atmosphere. Essentially, even if these estimates are slightly off, we are severely underpaying for our electricity and gasoline.
It is relatively simple, almost everyone pollutes. There are 779 cars per every 1000 people in the United States. In Europe they have implemented a carbon tax for years, and gasoline there is wildly expensive compared to the United States, but just about on par when the social and environmental costs are weighed in. A bill shot down by congress in 2009 proposed taxing carbon at $15 per ton CO2. The Carbon Tax Center predicts that setting an initial $12.50 per ton of CO2 could reduce fossil fuel usage 40% by 2025. This would also bring in $600 billion dollars of new revenue over the next 10 years, money that our government desperately needs. In other countries, money from their Carbon taxes are used in a variety of ways. In the United States it could be used to save Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, reduce income taxes, and all the while subsidizing public transportation to make sure the costs of the tax don’t hit those in need hardest.
A carbon tax would also start to cut back on our dependance on foreign energy. Not only would it bring in money to the government and make polluters pay, it would also provide incentives for people to use and support renewable sources of energy (since carbon emitting sources would be more expensive), which would reduce our dependance on foreign oil.
The problem is simple. Our Congress will not make a carbon tax simply because private interests will not allow it. As Ralph Nader once said, “the use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun,” and it could not be more true today. The only way to create a political opportunity that will save our economy and planet is to make renewable energy a big enough industry that it can lobby on K street with the Coal and Oil industries. We are a long way from that point, but it is a fight that we have to continue, not just for us, but for our children.
Read more at:
http://www.grist.org/politics/2011-07-28-could-a-carbon-tax-help-solve-our-budget-woes
http://sei-international.org/publications?pid=1911
