On Nov 4, 2013, at 5:01 PM, Robert Naiman wrote:
http://newpol.org/content/open-letter-climate-justice-movement
An Open Letter to the Climate Justice Movement
by Robin Hahnel
November
4, 2013
Dear fellow fighters in the Climate Justice Movement:
I am a long-time advocate of both climate justice and fundamental
system change. I am writing to you with whom I share these central
political commitments because I believe you are making a serious
strategic mistake by categorically rejecting international carbon
trading....
The gravest fallacy in this screed is to call for "international"
action while there is no international political authority, nor in the
foreseeable will there be, to set and enforce rules. Anything the
present national governments, most if not all of them composed of
naked or genteel kleptocrats (I'm talking about you Wall Street,
Qingnanhai, Qatar, Nairobi, the Kremlin, The City et tutti quanti),
would set up is sure to be a fully gameable authoritarian technocratic
labyrinth. The proper solution is quite different and very simple,
needing only(!) popular *national* movements to implement, starting
right here in the USA. It is a substantial, annually increasing, tax
on the carbon content of all fuels imposed at the wellhead or mine
pit. It would be imposed ad valorum on all imports (based on each
county's carbon-fuel usage per dollar of GDP). It would be one
hundred percent rebated per capita to the American people. Its level
should be such as to make carbon-based fuels (first coal, then
"unconventional" oil, then ordinary petroleum, then natural gas)
conspicuously uneconomic compared to the cost of energy conservation
investments and wind and solar energy (which are dynamic technologies
with steadily falling costs) so that, as the tax-rate rises, each will
be phased out by the normal workings of the market within a span of a
mere decade for all four (for those who regard the word "market" as
the worst of obscenities, all I can suggest is earnest and continual
prayer for the second coming of Djugashvili).
Carbon taxation designed in this way will have multiple effects, all
highly desirable. It will mean a progressive redistribution of income
because the wealthy use much more energy than the poor and so they
will pay a higher share of the tax that is to be distributed equally
among the people. It will mean a progressive redistribution of wealth
because the hydrocarbon reserves that account for such a high share of
the one-percenters' ("fictitious" but nevertheless relative-power-
signifying) capital will be radically, even totally, devalued. It will
shape ("nudge") every single economic decision by every single person
or institution or business toward reducing hydrocarbon-energy
consumption in favor of conservation and renewables. It will provide
the economic basis for an investment boom in all the multiple, many
unforeseeable, areas opened up by eliminating the grip of the energy
monopolies. And internationally it will "nudge" every economy that
wants to export to the US to avoid the energy tax on US imports by
reducing its own hydrocarbon dependency through collecting its own
carbon tax. And it will bankrupt the Saudis, Qataris, and the rest of
the hydrocarbon-rent despotisms!
For any of this to happen we need a new populist third party to
overthrow the DemRep duopoly not later than the 2016 elections
(hopefully starting next year by contesting as many primary and
general election chances as possible). Since a majority of the people
strongly desire "a" Third Party, why not offer a populist choice with
carbon tax--simple, easy to understand, easily defensible--as the
centerpiece of its economic program?
Shane Mage
"scientific discovery is basically recognition of obvious realities
that self-interest or ideology have kept everybody from paying
attention to"
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