President Christina Paxson recently announced she was starting an Environmental Change Taskforce. Now, I am not sure if this taskforce will advocate for anything more than local measures like asking people to take shorter showers, shut their windows, turn down their radiators and not divest coal, but I am willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt.
As Brown Divest Coal so eloquently argued, not only should our school encourage energy efficiency measures, but we should also begin to use our position as an Ivy League university to advocate and lead the war against climate change. In that vein, the single biggest thing our school could do is advocate, loudly, for a carbon tax. All of us, including our administration, should push and publish and shout for a carbon tax until other schools and other students and then other citizens get on board. If we can direct Brown Divest Coal’s groundswell into a carbon tax movement, then we can do substantially more to avert climate change than any other measure.
A wizened conservative may say, “What liberal snake oil is this? How are more taxes going to save our planet?”
I would respond with several studies published by conservative economists such as Bush’s former economic advisor Gregory Mankiw or brilliant academics like Princeton’s Alan Blinder or Nobel laureates like Robert Reich that all conclude the same thing: A carbon tax is the most effective tool we have to fight global warming, and it can be instituted in such a way that it helps streamline our economy by cutting unnecessary regulations and tax loopholes. Internationally, the Office of Economic Co-operation and Development recently published a report that argued for global carbon taxes for the exact same reasons: They would be effective, and they would streamline the global economy.
Indeed, just last month our own Scott Freitag ’14 eloquently outlined his support for a carbon tax (“A tax we can agree on,” Oct. 25).
Prices are the most efficient means to guide consumers and producers. Carbon, however, is not priced correctly, so we drastically overconsume it and our planet suffers. If we were to tax the consumption of carbon, we could send the correct price signal, and we will begin to consume less carbon. Researchers have repeatedly shown that there is a direct correlation between gasoline taxes and per capita gas consumption in developed nations. The higher the taxes, the less people consume. The results say that if the United States began to raise the price of carbon across the board, our consumption would decline.
There is agreement that carbon does not cost enough. The problem is that no one agrees on what the price of carbon should be. The solution to this is easy: Let’s set an extremely low tax for the next decade that slowly rises. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that an extremely modest tax of $20 per ton of CO2, roughly 15 cents per gallon of gas, would raise $1.2 trillion in tax revenue over the next 10 years and reduce emissions by 8 percent. In one modest tax measure we begin to solve our budget crisis, and we make progress on averting a climate disaster. On top of this, the tax may even allow us to remove some of the EPA’s ineffective and loophole-riddled laws so that all industries are free from heavy handed regulation, unnecessary lobbying spending and uncertainty.
If it is so simple and so much better, why don’t we already have this tax? This answer has two parts. The first is that, just like dozens of common sense solutions, our politicians are afraid to take action. Liberals fear that the tax will be regressive and put too much of a burden on low-income families. Many conservatives fear that increasing taxes of any sort will help in the expansion of “big government” — hence their pledge never to raise them. Both groups fear that countries like China, which don’t have such a tax, will have a competitive advantage.
Luckily, brilliant people such as Adele Morris of the Brookings Institution have done their research and found that with a $16-per-ton tax our government could fund massive cuts in our corporate tax rate, provide full reimbursements for the new tax to low-income families and reduce our debt by $815 billion over 20 years. Liberals win, conservative tax hawks win, companies win, low income families win, the environment wins and our deficit declines.
We could be even bolder and slowly raise the carbon tax so that all of these positives are amplified over the years. Even if China wasn’t thinking of implementing such a tax themselves — and it is — we would still gain all of the advantages highlighted above. The concern about international competitiveness is unfounded, especially when you consider that Germany has some of the highest carbon related taxes in the world, and it had a larger surplus than China last year while enjoying a record surplus this quarter.
The second part of why a carbon tax hasn’t been implemented is because the electorate is either not informed or doesn’t think it can make a difference. This is where Brown comes into play. We can begin to inform people if we make it our goal.
Let’s start a Tax Carbon Initiative. We should start a student group or expand upon the wonderful efforts of Divest Coal to make this a central campaign issue for the next round of elections. Let’s start the lobbying groundswell that this tax needs. We clearly have the students who care and a hopefully receptive administration. Let’s start the tax party.
If you are interested in starting a movement, want more details or have experience and suggestions for making Congress listen, please contact Nico Enriquez ’16 at nenriquez3@gmail.com.
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