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Don’t Worry, It’s not a Carbon Tax, It’s a “100 Percent Returnable Emissions Tax”
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On October 17, 2014 @ 2:11 pm In The Point | 9 Comments
Whew. Doesn’t that sound so much better?
Every now and then we get a conservative case for a carbon tax, an idea so terrible that even Australian labor has given up on it. The idea mainly involves finding other names for it.
Carbon tax sounds so taxing. How about Carbon net tax benefit? Carbon earned income tax credit? Now we’re going with 100 Percent Returnable Emissions Tax.
If you don’t know what it means you can’t hate it. Right?
You founded the Energy and Enterprise Initiative in 2010 to push for what you call a “100 percent returnable emissions tax.” What is that?
Having been tossed out of Congress for the heresy of saying that climate change is real—along with some other heresies—I decided to just go for broke and to try to advance this idea. Economists would call it a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The problem with that is that “revenue neutral” sounds like you’ve got marbles in your mouth and it also sounds like government-speak. And when you get to “carbon,” a lot of my fellow conservatives break out in hives, and then go into anaphylactic shock when you say the word “tax.” So it’s better to call it what it more palatably could be known as.
It could be known as highway robbery, but let’s go with things it could be palatably known as. Like Al Gore’s retirement fund. Or a surefire job killer.
It means that if we impose a price on carbon dioxide, it would be matched dollar for dollar with corresponding cuts of existing taxes. So it might be corporate income tax reduction, it might be individual income tax reduction, it might be FICA [social security] tax reduction. Any of those accomplishes the purpose of returning 100 percent of the money raised through a price on carbon dioxide to the taxpayers. Because it’s essential for us as conservatives that action on climate change does not result in the growth of government.
We’re just going to apply a price to everything, then we’re going to “give 100 percent of it back to you” and none of this will result in the expansion of government because the entire thing will be run by the tooth fairy.
I’ve seen more credible schemes peddled to me by the guy who sells Rolex watches without the X.
This doesn’t require some grand international agreement that takes forever to negotiate. It involves bold leadership … and also the certainty that we’re not going to expose ourselves needlessly. It becomes a system of global pricing, but it happens that way because one key actor is big enough to pull that off by their leadership in the marketplace. The United States steps in and says, “We just priced carbon dioxide and if you’re shipping stuff in here, we’re collecting on entry. But if you do the same thing in your country, great, you won’t pay any landing fees here.
Oh great. A trade war. That’s certainly bold. Also illegal. But is there a risk here?
We must find a way to get our trading partners in on this solution, because otherwise America could be the double loser. Any country that acts first and without others participating becomes a double loser. You lose employment because companies may pick up and move to lower energy cost locations. But you also lose the race to reduce global emissions, because when that productive capacity picks up and moves, say from the United States to a greater emitting country, we just went downhill.
Or we could just put the money into Roles watches. I’m told that not only do they increase in value every second, but they also cut carbon.
Just ask the tooth fairy.
In the Great Recession, it became the fashion among conservatives to dismiss action on climate because it seems like it’s an issue that’s a decade or two or three away and we had more pressing challenges of jobs and economic growth. As the recession lets up and we get a few more minutes to explain why this is a danger but also an incredible opportunity, then we think conservatives will respond positively.
Absolutely. I hear Chris Christie is already on board and with a little more work Huntsman will be making the conservative case for it. If only we can get Ross Douhat and David Brooks to pen New York Times articles in favor, the conservatives will be all locked up.
We’re trying to change the question. If the question is, “Is climate change real?” the unfortunate answer starts with the words, “Well, I’m not a scientist”—and then it goes downhill from there. We want to change the question to, “Is there a free-enterprise answer to climate change?” That’s a very different question.
Stop asking whether the sky is falling. The question is there a free enterprise solution to the sky falling? And can it bankrupt us?
But just think about it. If Trey Gowdy hadn’t won, we would still have this guy in Congress.
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