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    burnahhh1111Hamilton Nolan
    12/01/15 9:55am

    A carbon tax would be a regressive tax that middle and lower class would bear the weight of, you know through higher prices on utilities, food, and necessities. So I find it ironic that someone who rails against income inequalitiy would push for a carbon tax.

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      Hamilton Nolanburnahhh1111
      12/01/15 9:58am

      From the letter found here: http://www.carbontax.org/wp-content/upl…

      1.Carbon emissions should be taxed across fossil fuels in proportion to carbon content, with the tax imposed “upstream” in the distribution chain.

      2.Carbon taxes should start low so individuals and institutions have time to adjust, but then rise substantially and briskly on a pre-set trajectory that imparts stable expectations to investors, consumers and governments.

      3.Some carbon tax revenue should be used to offset unfair burdens to lower-income households.

      4.Subsidies that reward extraction and use of carbon-intensive energy sources should be eliminated.

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      ReburnsABurningReturnsburnahhh1111
      12/01/15 10:02am

      A problem easily solved by using some portion of the proceeds to provide tax relief to lower/middle income individuals. You still get the benefit of discouraging climate change inducing consumption, because prices will still be higher and consumers will adjust their choices, without the regressive taxation it represents.

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    WerleibrHamilton Nolan
    12/01/15 9:52am

    Taxing Carbon is just BS. Instead, how about we create more strict air pollution laws and actually enforce them? This carbon tax will just be a way for insiders to do Carbon trading to be “neutral” and the tax will be useless.

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      toothpetardWerleibr
      12/01/15 9:55am

      It’s almost as though this tax could be coupled to the enforcement of clean air laws and fund the regulations/improvements.

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      ReburnsABurningReturnsWerleibr
      12/01/15 9:58am

      No, it won’t, because a carbon tax is a fundamentally different system from a carbon trading system.

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    OutsiderHamilton Nolan
    12/01/15 10:01am

    A non-global carbon tax will encourage business to move manufacturing to countries without the tax. Countries that probably have less efficient energy production and globally we will thus produce MORE carbon to make the same amount of stuff we do now. This, in addition to the carbon produced by shipping products back here to be

    Perhaps this could be avoided by placing a carbon tariff on all imports to taxed countries from non-taxed countries. But this will become extremely ripe for abuse, avoidance, fraud, and accusations of protectionism.

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      Free Market Party CompanyOutsider
      12/01/15 10:20am

      Another reason why cap-and-trade is better. It’s easier to establish a transnational market than it is to coordinate global taxes.

      California is already participating an in international carbon market with the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.

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      ARP2Outsider
      12/01/15 10:23am

      I’ve always advocated for a tariff system based on adherence to environment, labor, human rights, etc. standards and lower subsidies. So, if you have strong environmental, labor, and human rights, laws, your tariffs are low to nothing. If you don’t have these laws in place, the tariffs are higher. It essentially creates a (more) level playing field.

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    ma--vie--en--roseHamilton Nolan
    12/01/15 9:54am

    Hamilton, I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to read Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein, but I think you’d really dig it. It talks a lot about how the whole ecological mess is tied to our money system, and interest specifically. He calls for backing our money with healthy ecosystems instead of gold or other commodities, and would sell carbon/pollution credits against it, up to a certain number. It’s hard to describe in a paragraph, but it’s really compelling when you read the book.

    I really appreciate all the eco/carbon tax posts you do. Please keep it up!

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      Jerry-NetherlandHamilton Nolan
      12/01/15 9:54am

      In a word, No. Not as long as the US Congress is a division of...

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        burnahhh1111Jerry-Netherland
        12/01/15 9:57am

        Clearly you failed to read the article which states big oil is behind a carbon tax, as it will be more harmful to coal. But hey you tried....

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        Jerry-Netherlandburnahhh1111
        12/01/15 10:04am

        I had read it, and found it hard to believe, but you have a point, so... Fixed that.

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      ReburnsABurningReturnsHamilton Nolan
      12/01/15 9:54am

      A global carbon tax is unlikely to emerge from the U.N. climate summit.

      Well of course it is. And it has nothing to do with a carbon tax not being a viable political possibility at some point, even here in the States. The issue is that global tax regimes are the stuff of fantasy.

      On the domestic front, a carbon tax is hard because many on the right reflexively refuse climate policy and tax increases. It is also hard because there are some segments of the left who would prefer to more precisely control emissions.

      The thing about a carbon tax is that it can provide fairly precise control. It just requires that you be willing to fine tune and adjust the tax on a go forward basis.

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        Aaron-MorrowReburnsABurningReturns
        12/01/15 10:11am

        “It is also hard because there are some segments of the left who would prefer to more precisely control emissions.”

        On the one hand, those segments are correct to note that regulation would be faster and easier to explain and understand, and more effective as it would be faster to fine-tune and adjust with executive action in the future (thanks to the inability to get environmentalists voting more than one year out of four).

        On the one other hand, those segments tend to ignore that a carbon tax at least gives you some buy in from those corporations and capitalists who will stand to profit under such a system. As a result of getting some, if not currently sufficient support, a carbon tax will be faster and easier to implement and more effective than the vaporware that is regulation of carbon in the world in which we live.

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        ReburnsABurningReturnsAaron-Morrow
        12/01/15 10:23am

        On the one hand, those segments are correct to note that regulation would be faster and easier to explain and understand

        Wut? Do you have any experience at all with dealing with the kinds of regulatory rules this would generate?

        I do. I work in an industry that was deeply impacted by Dodd-Frank and the Volcker Rule. The process of the regulators attempting to draft the literally millions of pages of documents necessary to create the rules put in placer by them has been anything but fast and easy. That isn’t to say they aren’t necessary, because they are, but the notion that a tax would be more complicated than attempting to try and explicitly regulate carbon emissions is just ... so, so, so wrong.

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      toothpetardHamilton Nolan
      12/01/15 9:49am

      Leading while avoiding accountability is hard.

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        Snail-Mail-Bridetoothpetard
        12/01/15 9:52am

        It takes up most of the leading. You gotta think about the little people — it’s tough out there for world leaders.

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        Reinventedtoothpetard
        12/01/15 9:53am

        Actually, it’s sort of logically impossible, just based on the dictionary meaning of ‘leading.’

        But, yeah, it’s also really hard.

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      MiniatureamericanflagsforothersHamilton Nolan
      12/01/15 9:51am

      Externalities complicate the economic justification for laissez-faire libertarian worldviews.

      As a result, externalities do not exist.

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        ReburnsABurningReturnsMiniatureamericanflagsforothers
        12/01/15 9:56am

        True, but externalities also complicate the economic justification for global tax regimes, and people who call for global tax regimes also tend to pretend that those externalities do not exist.

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        TheDataMiniatureamericanflagsforothers
        12/01/15 9:58am

        Boom.

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      Free Market Party CompanyHamilton Nolan
      12/01/15 9:58am

      Cap-and-trade is better, and that’s growing, too.

      The main difference: with a Carbon Tax, government takes ALL the money and makes its own judgements on where to invest it, where as cap-and-trade is more market-driven and money goes directly to innovators.

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        facwFree Market Party Company
        12/01/15 10:21am

        It depends on how you issue the credits. If you just sell them at auction, it is not significantly different than a tax. If you issue them to industry, then yes, you allow people to profit directly from being more efficient, but you get into a whole other mess regarding how you divide the cap for issuing (if you just do it based on current usage, you are rewarding dirty businesses, and punishing clean ones).

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        Free Market Party Companyfacw
        12/01/15 10:26am

        Well that’s where the “cap” part comes in, sure, but I’m pretty sure there are ways of working that out.

        It’s already working in California. The state has a requirement for all automakers selling there that a certain percentage of all of the cars they sell must be zero emissions. Tesla, of course, sells 100% zero emission vehicles, and they sell offsets to automakers who aren’t ready (or are too small) to build their own. That’s actually the bulk of Tesla’s revenue right now.

        To me, that’s the market working. If the state extorted those credits as a tax from the automakers and then awarded them to Tesla itself then people would be screaming. May seem to be the same end, but the optics are MUCH better.

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      A House In VirginiaHamilton Nolan
      12/01/15 10:55am

      last night Rachel Maddow asked Kris Jansing if there are any “hold out” nations.

      ...didn’t mention the beast of a bear of a time the good ol’ US of A is gonna have.

      Do we honestly see this happening? I don’t understand the political capital supply Obama thinks he’s got left (full disclosure: we should have started this years ago).

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