My only criticism of Martin Feldstein, Ted Halstead, and Greg Mankiw’s plan for reducing carbon emissions, laid out in the New York Times:
Our plan is built on four pillars.
First, the federal government would impose a gradually increasing tax on carbon dioxide emissions. It might begin at $40 per ton and increase steadily. This tax would send a powerful signal to businesses and consumers to reduce their carbon footprints.
Second, the proceeds would be returned to the American people on an equal basis via quarterly dividend checks. With a carbon tax of $40 per ton, a family of four would receive about $2,000 in the first year. As the tax rate rose over time to further reduce emissions, so would the dividend payments.
Third, American companies exporting to countries without comparable carbon pricing would receive rebates on the carbon taxes they’ve paid on those products, while imports from such countries would face fees on the carbon content of their products. This would protect American competitiveness and punish free-riding by other nations, encouraging them to adopt their own carbon pricing.
Finally, regulations made unnecessary by the carbon tax would be eliminated, including an outright repeal of the Clean Power Plan.
is that I believe that they and we will be disappointed with its effectiveness in actually reducing emissions. I believe that everyone, from poor to rich, will just pay the tax. The bottom 70% of people will have their tax increases cancelled out by their $2,000 stipends and the rich, whose behavior is most in need of change to reduce carbon emissions, will just ignore them. It might even have the perverse effect of increasing the carbon emissions of the poor, depending on how they spend their stipends.
What it will be highly effective in doing is raising revenue which will make it increasingly attractive to anyone with a pet project. And who in the House or Senate does not have a pet project?
I don’t believe that any neo-liberal scheme to reduce carbon emissions will be effective for the reasons outlined above and efforts should be concentrated at remediation rather than wasting time and energy on pseudo-market based schemes that can’t work.
“This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right.†~~ Michael Crichton.
I built an analog computer for a science fair in 1959. I have taught classes in computer modelling. I have also read (and understood) a large portion of the works of both Crighton and Feynman.
I have not heard of or read anything about the coming ice age or global warming that has ever tempted me to believe that they were anything but a raid on the treasury.
a family of four would receive about $2,000
Nutty. It is exactlly that family of four that has many times the carbon footprint of the childfree single. If we were to charge more for kids, who are the chief beneficiaries of a carbon-tax policy, the family of four might well have to keep on paying into the subsidy program.
Otherwise, the policy would serve to subsidize current and future polluters at the expense of those who have already contributed to the solution by not breeding.
My experience has been that pseudo-mathematical models hold the same attraction for economists and other social scientists that warm fires hold for cats.