Re: [Phys-L] Would a Carbon Tax Save Life on Planet Earth?

[Richard Tarara <rtarara@saintmarys.edu>]

But.....

Giving the taxes back to the citizens means giving it to the governments 
of those citizens, which brings into play all the 'bad' options already 
stated.

The other problem here is one I've stated often in these discussions.  
All (or at least most) of 'the true cost of the use of fossil fuels' is 
already being covered in various institutional ways (non-fuel taxes, 
insurance, medical costs, etc.)  I see no way that these well entrenched 
costs/taxes/fees are reduced in any quick way, hence a large effective 
'over-charging' for fossil fuel use in the near term and the economic 
problems that will most likely create.

rwt

--
Richard Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College

free Physics educational software
www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html



On 6/4/2013 1:08 AM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
> I heard Hansen speak at a recent AAPT conference. As I remember it, his
> carbon tax proposal is that the carbon taxes (or fees, or whatever you want
> to call them) would be levied at the wellhead/minehead, to represent at
> least roughly the public costs of the use fossil fuels, and that 100% of
> these taxes would be sent to citizens, who could use these payments any way
> they choose, including paying the higher prices for fossil fuels caused by
> these fees. But the key point is that citizens could choose to use the
> payments to buy something other than fossil fuels, stimulated by the higher
> (and slowly rising) prices of fossil fuels.
>
> In other words, it's an attempt to make the price of fossil fuels represent
> the real costs of fossil fuels, but done in a way that consumers would not
> in fact have to pay more for fossil fuels yet would be encouraged to avoid
> fossil fuels.
>
> I read his book on the subject and it did seem to me that this is a much
> more effective way to deal with the fossil fuel problem than the
> cap-and-trade scheme, which he argues is overly complicated and does not
> provide the right incentives for people to seek alternatives to fossil
> fuel.
>
> Bruce
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