Gar Lipow wrote: >But I > do want to point out one false premise: Yes Klein supports a carbon tax, > but not as a prime or only solution. She also supports massive public > investment and regulation - in short all three legs of a solution. There > is a huge difference between *focusing* on a carbon tax, and supporting it > as one piece of a larger solution. Klein's book takes the latter position, > not the former.
Hi Gar, I agree that the carbon tax is only one thing that Klein supports, and I thought I had written that in my short review. I favorably characterized her as raising that dealing with the environmental crisis "will involve not just minor tinkering with some items in government budgets, but major social, economic, and political changes. It will require the end of market fundamentalism and unregulated capitalism, a turn towards regulation and planning, a reorientation of agriculture, changes in the social and economic position of the masses, and different relations between the developed and developing countries", and other things as well. This broad view is one of the strongest features of the book. There are also many things she is vague on -- because she reflects a movement that is itself vague on these things -- but she certainly does not reduce the solution to the crisis to just one measure. Indeed, while the carbon tax is mentioned in her book, it is barely mentioned; this may even be a shortcoming, because the issue deserves more serious attention. However, I think you overdo the distinction between those who focus on the carbon tax, and those who support it as one piece of the solution. I don't think there are many advocates of the carbon tax who say they want *only* a carbon tax. Even that ever-zealous campaigner for the carbon tax, the Carbon Tax Center, writes "A carbon tax won't stop global climate disruption by itself". Moreover, the multitude problems with the carbon tax, problems I have written about previously in articles, appear with any carbon tax that is severe enough to make a real difference. I appreciate the care taken in your technical writings, Gar; and I think that Elizabeth Kolbert should have read "Cooling It! No Hair-Shirt Solutions to Global Warming" before reviewing Klein's book. But I disagree with your view of the carbon tax, and I think the experience with the carbon tax -- so far, relatively limited as it is -- verifies various of these problems. > I do have some criticism that is somewhat different from > any other I have seen. But I think much of the existing critques I've seen > both from Big Green and from the left are wrong. (Bias alter: Klein was > influence by my own book "Solving the Climate Crisis Prager(2012), cites it > in her own, and has given me a blurb.) I hope you finish your review of Klein's book, and I look forward to seeing it! -- Joseph Green _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
