"Carbon Tax" More Popular than "Cap-and-Trade" with US Voters

It’s time to change the economic and political paradigm of energy supply, and for USA Citizens to take back control of our energy future.

The coal and other carbon-based energy supply industries benefit from numerous subsidies & tax breaks which result in higher rates paid by other taxpayers. In my opinion, if these industries cannot produce clean fuels, then dirty fuels should be taxed wherever it is delivered.

The coal industry has posted many billboards along West Virginia Highways touting “clean coal”. Well guys, let’s see you deliver! If “clean coal” isn’t available, then the coal industry should “shut up and tear down those billboards”.

Without a leveled economic playing field, the USA will never achieve sustainable power supply, and create new, clean energy jobs. Subsidies (such as those for hybrid vehicles and solar panels) are given & taken at political whim, and do little in the long term to reset the economic and political paradigm.

Instead of allowing the carbon-based energy supply industries to dig in their heels at every opportunity for intelligent change, we should think about the opportunities to economically phase in beneficial clean energy technologies over the next 15 – 20 years by using phased tax policy to progressively discourage use of dirty fuels, and to convert most of the revenues into TAX REBATES for USA citizens who file income tax returns or receive social security benefits, and use the remainder of these revenues to nibble at repaying the National Debt.

Ben’s comment is a nice way of describing part of this approach.

Bravo and Amen!

Not so. The tax simply needs to be high enough to make coal more expensive than [insert your favorite clean tech here]. Or at least, more expensive than gas.

all good points, Ike

Good idea – but keep in mind that a carbon tax that doesn’t feed revenue into renewable replacements for fossil energy sources won’t do much to limit emissions. However, a carbon tax plus a renewable portfolio standard for utilities would likely result in the major banks finally deciding to put money into solar and wind projects, instead of just coal, oil and gas deals.

Otherwise, the increase in costs will just be passed on to the consumer, with no change in utility or bank behavior.

Of course, investing in renewable energy could have been a condition of the bailout…

i think that’s a great idea. no matter what the amount even, if people see that they are getting money back from it, they will think it is a true win (and it would be, i think).

I would like to see the “Carbon tax” system implemented with a payback system.

So that big polluters are taxed and that money comes back to the people in the form of a cheque at the end of the year. People would be happy about that kind of “tax”. That would be an easy sell. The tax amount should go up by a certain percentage each year.

While I realize that system is not perfect, its good enough for me.

Should be “Future 500″, not “Fortune 500.”

I think that an idea like the one Ben suggests makes a tremendous amount of sense. It’s really an awesome idea. It would require a very focused effort from the president to get something like that enacted, but I think that if such an effort were made, it could be done.

The reason it would be so hard, of course, is that the point made in the article is exactly right — a “carbon tax” sounds ok to people right now because the right wing insanity brigades haven’t started attacking it yet. As soon as that happens, the “tax” label will make it very unpopular. But still, I do think that if the president made a very focused, concerted effort to sell the idea, he could succeed (I seriously doubt he’ll do that, though — he seems to give up on things too easily).