Okay, fellow Dems, listen up! Don't support a "carbon tax" but do put a "price on carbon." What's the difference? Both a "tax" and a "price" would make fossil fuels more expensive and thus make renewable energy sources more attractive (and reduce overall energy use and increase energy efficiency). Both would affect the amount consumers would pay for fossil fuel-based energy sources and products produced with fossil fuels. Thus, from the view of an economist, she might say that a "tax" and a "price" are the same. But increasing the cost of carbon to users is only the half of what we should be doing. Citizens Climate Lobby (of which I'm a member) supports that EICDA: The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. This act would return the money collected as a "price" (or "tax" if you insist) to the people. In other words, unlike almost any other tax that I can think of (with perhaps the exception of social security taxes), the funds collected will be paid back to the people in short order (quarterly, most likely). In other words, taxes as we normally think of them go to fund government operations and programs. This is not what a "carbon price" via the EICDA would do. If any Dems in Congress think that they should fund their programs by the imposition of a "carbon tax," they're way wrong as a matter of economics, fairness, and electoral politics. Under the EICDA, funds collected would be paid as a "dividend" to the American people on an equal individual basis. In short, about 2/3 of American individuals and households would come out ahead. The wealthiest, who tend to have larger carbon footprints,: more travel (often by air), bigger houses, bigger cars, bigger everything. In short, this plan would help close the growing inequality in American society that contributes to the divisions that we're experiencing.
Of course, this means that all of us would face greater costs and that we'd be wise to make some changes. In short, we'd have to put on big-kids pants. We are in dire straits because of the unabated dumping of carbon in our atmosphere. Mother Nature can't handle all of this carbon, and she's sick, very, very sick. Her prognosis, and consequently ours as her children, is very dire. Not hopeless, but the longer we put off "treatment," the more drastic the steps we'll eventually have to take to try to save her. (Well, really to save us humans; Mother Nature will survive, even without humans and other species that are caught in the sixth extinction.) We need to pay to play. Next time we take a trip, we should weigh the costs across the various means based on an accurate comparison of the carbon cost involved. Car, plane, train, walk, bike, mass transit? We need a price to compare the cost we impose on Mother Nature by assessing a price (cost) on ourselves now that we know that we can no longer afford the free ride that we've granted ourselves in freely dumping our waste into our environment.
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