碳红利优于碳税

May 15, 2019 Mark Paul , Anthony Underwood

萨拉索塔—气候变化是世界最紧迫的问题，而在美国，至少左派是认真对待这个问题的。今年早些时候，同为民主党人的纽约州众议员亚历山德里亚·奥卡西奥-克尔特兹（Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez）和马萨诸塞州参议员爱德华·马尔基（Edward Markey）提出了绿色新政（GND）方案，为美国提供了经济去碳化蓝图。但是，尽管越来越多的民主党总统竞争者支持他们的方案，中间派民主党和共和党仍然坚持不同的气候政策方针。

关键的中间派方案符合流行的新自由主义思路，即碳税。其思维很简单：如果你对化石燃料进入经济的入口征税——不管是在井口、矿中还是港口——就能充分捕获污染的社会成本。用经济学的术语，这被称为庇谷税，因为它是为了纠正市场的不良结果，即英国经学家亚瑟·庇谷（Arthur Pigou）所谓的负外部性——在这个例子中，就是要为全球变暖负责的温室气体排放。

作为气候变化的应对之道，碳税立即在横跨整个政治谱系的经济学家中大受欢迎，它也确实有着重要的作用。但它还远远不够。经济想要以经济平等、政治可行的方式实现迅速去碳化，需要绿色新政级别的全面方案。这意味着结合某些基于市场的政策和大规模私人和公共部门投资，并仔细地起草环境监管。

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Mark Paul

5 Commentaries

Mark Paul is an assistant professor of economics at New College of Florida.

Anthony Underwood

1 Commentary

Anthony Underwood is an assistant professor of economics at Dickinson College.

Overcoming the Ideology of Climate Inaction
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Overcoming the Ideology of Climate Inaction

Anders Fremstad & Mark Paul argue that neoliberal policymaking continues to fuel global warming and stand in the way of solutions.

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Nick Beglinger Jun 6, 2019

#Kudos, a good case for redistributing income from GHG emissions. Note that the approach must yield net-zero by 2050 and thus must involve all types of emissions. So, you many want to call this a 'Climate Dividend', and read our white paper ;-) http://cleantech21.org/fileadmin/content/NBE/C21_WP_ClimateDividend_032019f.pdf
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Alexandre Garcia May 29, 2019

My struggle with this rationale is that you are assuming that overall consumption of carbon would not increase. This doesn't sound right, because if your assumptions are correct, rich don't care and consume the same,poor will consume same petrol (just as much as they need) but increase discretionary spending - this is highly likely to increase carbon emissions, as pretty much all consumption does, like new running shows that otherwise poorer would not buy or dinner with friends, that otherwise would not happen.
Therefore overall carbon consumption will increase, not decrease, defying the purpose of the tax
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Claudio Migliore May 20, 2019

The authors make the case that distribution of carbon tax proceeds might make it more palatable to voters. Sounds reasonable, like the sugar with the medicine. But ever wonder why toothpaste contains no sugar?
A carbon dividend works against the tax. Without micro and macro analysis and some econometrics of which none is offered, I will not, unlike the authors, argue one way or the other, but I have no doubt that a much larger carbon tax will be needed to attain the same level of CO2 savings if it comes back to users as additional purchasing power.
Other heroic assumptions like ‘the rich use wasteful sports cars and fly around a lot’ are stupid, if not necessarily always wrong. Poor people cars spit far more CO2 than high end vehicles and air travel if far from a luxury these days.
Talking about “prevailing neoliberal dispensation” sounds weird when the prevailing noise today comes from the frenzied plethora of neo-collectivists attaching false promises of all kinds of nice giveaways to environmental measures, as if to mask the fact that protecting the environment by definition means more effort and less stuff for everyone, no matter how necessary those tradeoffs (and yes, austerity) may be.
I wonder if PS makes any attempt at reviewing the articles before they are published. Opinions can be high on emotion and low on facts, because that’s what the respect for free speech entails.
Nevertheless, one should not be compelled to waste his or her time in reading garbage. The service of a platform like Project Syndicate should include a reasonable filter against random rants, so that I can confidently read free from extreme nonsense. Not filtering reduces PS’s usefulness.
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Antonio Vives May 19, 2019

The idea is theoretically sound, but the change in behaviors will depend on what is taxed and how much, and more to the point, how is the dividend determined, on what basis, to whom, when, how. These aspects are critical for the economic, political and behavioral feasibility. Authors: Please answer these questions. Get out of the economists frame of mind of"let's assume"!! That would be your contribution, as another commentator has pointed your idea has already been in effect of tried in Canadian provinces and in Australia.
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John Alexander May 19, 2019

We are surrounded by a fiscal culture within which the small consumer is castigated by a rich diversity of indirect taxes. In a more rational world he would be rewarded, not penalized, for leading a moderately ascetic life. Where gas is concerned, the supremely serious fact of climate change would justify a progressive purchase tax. This particular fluid would be available only to people with a credit card administered by the State, and tax per gallon would increase with the amount consumed to date within a fiscal period. The little guy would be given a break, and the heavy consumer would be discouraged. There would be complications, certainly, but tax departments are not known for a strong opposition to complexity.
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Douglas Leyendecker May 19, 2019

Humanity has been using carbon for fuel since it learned to make fire. It's a fools errand to try and destroy that infrastructure as quickly as possible. The mania to change tomorrow will surely only create greater problems.

Who is going to pay the trillions of dollars it will take to dismantle the current hydrocarbon infrastructure? It certainly won't be the coal, oil and gas companies since the goal is to destroy their business model. Destroy their business model and tax payers are on the hook to dismantle that infrastructure. And where is the know how to dismantle this infrastructure going to come from if you destroy all the hydrocarbon jobs?

Where are the trillions of dollars going to come from to overnight create a brand new renewable infrastructure for the world as well as to quickly dismantle the existing carbon infrastructure? What environmental issues surface if you don't dismantle the legacy infrastructure?

The best policy is conservation and innovation focused on the carbon infrastructure combined with economically productive pursuits of renewables. Any change of our fuel and power infrastructure that started when man discovered fire must be measured, not pushed by hysteria.

The Climate Change hysteria today reminds me of Y2K. Humans are so susceptible to manias. And like Y2K it seems the most educated have fallen hardest for this newest version of end of the world.
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Rohit Nagraj May 16, 2019

Very good thought, implementation is the Key though
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Paul Friesen May 15, 2019

Not sure if you are aware of it, but exactly this policy is being tried in some Canadian provinces. In provinces where the provincial governments have refused to put effective carbon emissions controls in place (which unfortunately includes my own province, Ontario), the federal government has imposed a carbon tax, about 90% of which is returned to the taxpayers of that province through an income tax deduction. Actually, because the tax is paid by businesses too, the average taxpayer will gain more from the tax deduction than they pay in carbon taxes on fuel etc. (Of course, they still will theoretically pay for that portion too through price increases by the taxed businesses). Both tax and rebate are small, a few hundred per person per year, but are supposed to grow.

"Conservatives" are, of course, opposing this. I can still not figure out why it is a "conservative" thing to take all the carbon-based combustibles that have been stored in the earth over the past few billion years and burn them over a few decades, but it seems to be the case. These politicians sell their position using advertising which talks about the tax and ignores the rebate. It will be interesting to see if people actually fall for that.
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