Exxon Mobile's chief executive, Rex Tillerson has endorsed carbon taxes as the best way to fight global warming. From The Guardian:
In a significant shift in stance, Exxon's chief executive, Rex Tillerson, told an audience in Washington that he considered a tax to be a fairer route to curbing emissions than a cap-and-trade system of pollution allocations.
"As a businessman it is hard to speak favourably about any new tax," said Tillerson. "But a carbon tax strikes me as a more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach."
"A carbon tax is also the most efficient means of reflecting the cost of carbon in all economic decisions - from investments made by companies to fuel their requirements to the product choices made by consumers," he said."
Carbon taxes are, of course, the proposal raised by Stephane Dion and mocked by the NDP and the Conservatives. So far Michael Ignatieff seems intent on gaming Liberal policy to maximize political advantage and has steered clear of the green shift initiative.
The head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, has written to Barack and Michelle Obama pleading for them to embrace carbon taxes and to reject cap and tax schemes. From ENN:
Hansen advocates a three-pronged attack on the climate problem. First, he wants a phasing out of coal-fired power stations - which he calls "factories of death" - that do not incorporate carbon capture. "Nobody realistically expects that the large readily available pools of oil and gas will be left in the ground. Caps will not cause that to happen - caps only slow the rate at which the oil and gas are used. The only solution is to cut off the coal source," the Hansens wrote.
Second, he proposes a "carbon tax and 100% dividend". This is a mechanism for putting a price on carbon without raising money for government coffers. The idea is to tax carbon at source, then redistribute the revenue equally among taxpayers, so that high carbon users are penalised while low carbon users are rewarded."
Gee Steve, gee Jack, gee Mikey - he's talking about a "green shift." It's not that Hansen is a radical. It's that he, like the head of Exxon Mobile and like Stephane Dion know it's the only effective way of curbing greenhouse gas emissions in modern, Western economies.
2 comments:
It is interesting to see the support for carbon taxes growing in the US. It seems unlikely that Obama will move from his cap and trade position, but, if he did, I think that would have a huge effect on Canada.
Ignatieff was an early supporter of carbon taxes and I suspect he would develop policy for a carbon tax if it was at all politically feasible. With the Conservatives and NDP vigorously attacking carbon taxes, I think the only way they will be feasible here is if support for them in the US grows sufficiently large to spill over into Canada - to neutralize both the Conservative and the NDP attacks. I'm hoping that will happen because we need action on climate change and carbon taxes are an effective tool which is simpler, quicker and cheaper to implement than cap and trade.
I watched a clip of a Toronto local station's recent interview with Ignatieff. Iggy winced like a vampire tossed out into the noonday sun when carbon tax was mentioned.
Unfortunately I believe you're right. If we're going to look for progressive policies and initiatives, we'll have to look to Obama, not Ignatieff, for them.
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