carbon tax | Comprehending the Climate Crisis: Everything You Need to Know about Global Warming and How to Stop It

Last week I posted a blog about former congressman Bob Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina, and his efforts at promoting a carbon tax to deal with the issues of climate change. He wants to create solutions to the problem of global warming that fit with the ideologies of conservative voters. In his efforts to make the carbon tax a revenue-neutral effort, he even proposed a reduction in personal income tax. Although I have my doubts that a price on carbon will be a major contributor toward solving the problems of global warming—especially the way he proposes it—I very much applaud Inglis’s efforts to find solutions to the problems while looking at it from the Republican point of view. As Inglis was quoted as saying, “there are a lot of Republicans in foxholes on this hill, ducking as the fire gets intense.”

Soon after his proposal received attention, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) which is also a right-wing think tank hosted a bipartisan meeting looking into just how to put a price on carbon that might help to reduce emissions. Well, it didn’t take long for a number of Republicans to come out with their gloves on and attack Inglis’s efforts and that of the AEI.

One of the best criticisms of the whole thing (and when I say best, I mean dumbest) came from Joseph Bast, the president of the Heartland Institute, a think tank dedicated to denying that global warming is real or that it has anything to do with human activities such as the combustion of fossil fuels. I have to give you his quote in its entirety because it’s so ludicrous that all I can do is laugh when I read it.

Bast said that “Carbon dioxide is not a negative externality, it is a measure of energy use, and energy—as Julian Simon and others have pointed out—is the ‘master resource,’ the single most important input into our economy, the source of prosperity, innovation, and opportunity. The emerging consensus of scientists and economists is that CO2’s effects are either too small to be noticeable or will produce net benefits, not harms.”

I seriously can’t believe that anyone with any reasonable education would listen to this guy. Carbon dioxide is not a negative externality? It’s a measure of energy use? And energy is the source of prosperity, innovation, and economy? That carbon dioxide might produce net benefits? He’s trying to make it sound like those who spew out carbon dioxide are the good guys, and those who spew out the most are the real heroes in today’s society.

So using that rationale, I came up with my own Bastism. (Or maybe Bastardism is more correct?) “Toxic waste is a marker of manufacture, and manufacturing is good for the economy. It creates products we want and jobs to make those products. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with toxic waste when it’s a measure of something that our economy needs.”

Unlike the absolutely incorrect viewpoint of Joseph Bast, the negative byproducts of energy use from the combustion of fossil fuels are precisely the problem. As you can see from his quote, Bast completely misleads or even downright lies by suggesting that the growing opinion among scientists is carbon dioxide isn’t that big a deal.

Perhaps that’s the case among the scientists he manages to round up for his annual “Global Warming Isn’t Real” conferences, but I challenge him to find any national academy of science anywhere around the world that has made such a claim that carbon dioxide isn’t a big deal. He won’t find such a group because they’ve all made claims that are exactly the opposite: global warming is real and that our human activities are the main culprit.

You can find outliers in any profession so of course Bast can round up a few who support his distorted perception of reality. Perhaps he found more this year than last year, explaining “the emerging consensus” he refers to. But he’s sticking his head in the sand, just like the Republicans who feel that Inglis and his efforts are ridiculous.

It’s funny how even the concept of a bipartisan effort is so distasteful to so many in this day and age. I would hope that for the issues that really matter—and I would put the fate of the planet’s future health at the top of the list—that both Democrats and Republicans could try to find some common ground. But so many staunch ideologues refuse to even give the idea merit.

When the Founding Fathers came up with the concept of the United States of America, I don’t believe this was what they had in mind.

“All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

You don’t have to look too hard in the press to realize that Republicans are more likely to deny global warming or climate change compared with Democrats or undecided voters. As I had posted in a previous blog, they’re also the least likely to start to believe the evidence. As has been witnessed over the last decade, while Democrats and Independent voters have shown steadily increasing percentages who believe the evidence for global warming, the Republican believers have decreased over that same time period, from 49 to 29 percent.

However, perhaps there’s some hint that even Republicans are becoming tired of fighting the truth. Former congressman Bob Inglis is urging his fellow conservatives “to stop denying that humans are contributing to global warming.” Inglis, who was defeated in 2010 by the Tea Party, has launched an initiative through George Mason University. Entitled the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, its purpose is to push “conservative solutions to America’s energy and climate challenges.”How will it do this exactly? It plans to push for a carbon tax. By creating higher taxes on gasoline and carbon pollution, it’s hoped this will be part of the solution.

Here’s a video with Bob Inglis and Art Laffer, a former economic advisor for Ronald Reagan, explaining the concept further.

A tax on carbon has often been suggested as one way to deal with our addiction to fossil fuels, but it’s not necessarily a good way. One criticism (and one that usually comes from those on the right wing of the political spectrum) against a carbon tax is that it’s simply another way to tax the rich. Since the wealthiest people consume the most fossil fuels generally, conservatives (who don’t tend to like taxes in general) tend to be critical of a carbon tax. Bob Inglis deals with this by planning to cut income tax so that overall it’s revenue-neutral.

Another problem with a carbon tax is that the funds generated by the tax aren’t necessarily earmarked for use toward the solutions needed to combat the problem of increasing emissions. If the funds generated were put directly into the research and development of renewable sources of energy say, or toward the planting of green spaces to help replace the forests around the globe that we’re destroying, that might actually help. But the funds usually aren’t destined for such projects but rather are put into the large pot known as the global budget.

In other words, the only possible solution to be gained from a carbon tax if the revenue generated isn’t going into green solutions directly is to serve as a deterrant to using fossil fuels because of the higher costs associated as a direct result of that tax. And if income tax is going to be cut to compensate for it as Inglis advocates, I’m really not sure his idea is going to create any revolutionary solutions.

But what’s more important to me than his proposal at this point is that here’s a Republican urging his fellow Republicans to take their heads out of the sand with respect to global warming, accept the evidence and look toward solutions that can fit within their conservative ideologies. And he’s not even the only one. He has the support of Gregory Mankiw who is Mitt Romney’s economic advisor for his current presidential campaign, and had previously served as the chief economist for President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.

I believe finding climate solutions that will fit well with conservative ideologies is easier said then done, but I still consider this a step in the right direction. Now to move onto bipartisan cooperation.