Filed under: Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Carbon Tax, Co2, George Bush, Global Warming, Michael Bloomberg, carbon dioxide, environmental taxation, gas prices, global tax, tax
Bloomberg Calls for Tax on Carbon Emissions
Sewell Chan
New York Times
November 2, 2007
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg plans today to announce his support for a national carbon tax. In what his aides are calling one of the most significant policy addresses of his second and final term, the mayor will argue that directly taxing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change will slow global warming, promote economic growth and stimulate technological innovation — even if it results in higher gasoline prices in the short term.
Mr. Bloomberg is scheduled to present his carbon tax proposal in a speech this afternoon at a two-day climate protection summit in Seattle organized by the United States Conference of Mayors. (A copy of the speech was provided to The New York Times by aides to the mayor; the full text is below.) The summit’s other keynote speaker, former President Bill Clinton, on Thursday announced an effort by his private foundation and the mayors’ conference to help 1,100 American cities buy energy-efficient products as groups and qualify for volume discounts.
In calling for a carbon tax, Mr. Bloomberg is again speaking out on national issues, as he has on gun control and public health matters like smoking and obesity. The mayor, who was elected in 2001, left the Republican Party in June of this year and declared himself a political independent, fueling speculation that he might run for president. While the presidential talk has simmered down lately, today’s environmental address could revive it.
At the least, the tone and scope of Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal suggest that he is eager to maintain a national profile on major issues and determined not to be seen as a lame duck for the remaining two years of his term. (He is barred by term limits from seeking re-election in 2009.) Mr. Bloomberg’s speech accuses the federal government of failing to develop a meaningful response to global warming and asserts that both major political parties have dodged the issue.
In 1993, President Clinton persuaded the House to adopt a B.T.U. tax (a tax on the heat content of fuels), but the effort died in the Senate. Many American politicians have considered endorsing a carbon tax politically suicidal; among the few who publicly support the concept are Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat and presidential candidate who has called for a corporate carbon tax, and former Vice President Al Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last month for his work on climate change.
The idea of a carbon tax has slowly been gaining support, not only among scholars and environmentalists, but also in an unlikely quarter: business groups and even the companies that emit carbon dioxide and would be the most directly affected. Earlier this year, several businessmen formed the Carbon Tax Center to argue for a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Under that proposal, the revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce the deficit or to finance cuts in income taxes or the alternative minimum tax.
Most economists consider a carbon tax a more effective instrument for reducing greenhouse gas emissions than the other major policy alternative, a cap-and-trade system that would require plant-by-plant emission measurements and could prompt companies to cheat. Mr. Bloomberg’s staff cited research by Gilbert E. Metcalf, a Tufts University economist who is on leave to work with the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Kenneth P. Green, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, in support of that argument.
Mr. Bloomberg’s speech calls on political leaders to make necessary if unpopular choices — citing, as an example, his call for a congestion pricing plan that would tax vehicular traffic in Manhattan during the busiest weekday periods. Despite the support of the Bush administration, which has offered to help finance the effort as a model for traffic mitigation, the plan has been controversial, and it is being studied by a commission made up of state and city lawmakers.
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Mayor Bloomberg is right on target. A revenue-neutral carbon tax will reduce global warming gases, with the carbon tax revenues returned to all Americans through a rebate or reductions to the payroll tax. Even if you aren’t totally convinced about the threat of global warming, it still makes senses to take action now to tax pollution rather than work. And, this is very important, one way or another, Congress is going to take action to “put a price on carbon” so businesses and households no longer treat the atmosphere as a free dumping ground. The alternative, cap-and-trade, is being pushed by the large corporations who would likely receive huge windfalls (with the costs passed on to all of us) and the financial community, which sees the opportunity to make huge sums of money (again, with the costs passed on to all of us). A carbon tax is more effective and the money is returned to all of us.
Comment by Dan November 4, 2007 @ 2:26 pm