Friday, July 27, 2007
Effect of Carbon Tax on the Poor
A simple reason why a carbon tax should not be dismissed because of concerns about whether the poor will be shielded from the costs of the tax is the following: Any carbon tax is, at most, comparable to the increase and fluctuations that have already occurred in the price of energy from fossil fuels in the last few years. Whether or not there is a carbon tax, we already have the need to protect the poor from escalating energy costs. Let's go ahead and set up such a shield (such as a per head income where any leftover amount could be retained if a person figured out how not to spend the whole amount on fossil fuel energy), and not let it be a show-stopper for an important tool to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
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Carbon taxes as the individual level may be counterproductive unless introduced in conjunction with carbon rationing. See Gwynne Dyer's item on carbon rationing at gwynnedyer.net. Radical as this sounds, it may be inevitable.
Hi mound,
I see the post you made on your own blog about carbon rationing. Do you have a reference to an article that would discuss how to implement such rationing? A straight carbon tax has the advantage that you can implement it pretty simply and cheaply using the existing tax infrastructure. I wonder if the UK pilot project that Mr. Dyer mentioned is going to have a report on cost estimates and implementation recommendations.
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