On Nov 17, 2013, at 2:41 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:
On Nov 16, 2013, at 1:46 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
Zhao Zhong, a former nuclear engineer at the Chinese Academy of
Sciences, is the China program coordinator at Pacific Environment,
an environmental group.
> ...
> I’d rather see our society focus on new technologies and policy
incentives that
> promote the many safer, truly clean forms of energy. But it all
starts with pricing
> fossil fuels out of the market. That’s the first step and the most
important one.
Where should a carbon tax be levied? The US currently mines coal and
ships it
to China. Should the US or China levy the carbon tax on coal.
What should be done with that carbon tax? Should it go into a
general fund or should
it be used to reduce energy consumption and/or develop renewable
forms of energy?
The carbon tax should be levied at the point of production, the mine
pit or wellhead, and apply equally to imported fuels at the point of
import. There existing no global authority with taxing (or any other)
powers, it has to be levied on a national basis. The USA is the best
starting point, because it is the biggest polluter, its domestic
policies have the most global impact, and it has the greatest
resources for quick installation of a carbon-free energy system. The
tax must fully apply also to indirect carbon imports, by taxing all
imports ad valorum at the rate implied by the country of origin's
ratio of CO2 emissions to GDP. And it should be fully rebated to the
people on an equal per capita basis, so that the working class as a
whole (especially its poorest component) will be over compensated for
the higher cost of energy
during the transition (the point is not to reduce energy consumption--
it is to increase it!) and the burden placed on the wealthy, who
already have the means to pay for switching to alternative fuels and
conservation. The rebate feature is crucial, because no tax that is
not immediately beneficial to a big majority of voters has a chance of
passage in the USA against the bitter opposition of all the energy
parasites. (Taxation, in theory--MMT--does not have the function of
financing public spending. Its function is to make sure that resources
are fully employed without inflation by running deficits when there is
unemployment and surpluses when capacity overutilization starts to
push up production costs). It is the law of value (the "market") that,
through millions of individual and business efforts to lower the cost
of energy consumption, will carry out the investment program to
install the carbon-free energy system. Corruptible, gameable,
government regulation is to be avoided as much as possible and should
concentrate on non-carbon pollution (like the chemicals and water used
in fracking). The main positive contribution of government should be
a public investment bank to fund the whole range of carbon-free
installations down to the smallest, most local, level. We are dealing
here with the most dynamic, fast-evolving technologies. 3-D printing
already adumbrates the potential impact of those technologies in
transforming the entire economic system. But, of course, none of this
can be achieved, before it's too late, without a revolutionary
political transformation!
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
