The carbon tax shell game
By Duggan Flanakin |March 11th, 2021
The oft-spoken premise that there is a “social cost of carbon†(SCC) has led to a myriad of proposals for taxing calculated carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles. The idea is to tax (and legislate) “carbon†out of existence by using those taxes to subsidize electric vehicles.
The latest of these proposals has come, surprisingly, from a well-funded group of college Republicans who call themselves Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends (YCCD).
But is the goal of carbon taxation a conservative idea?
The oft-stated primary purpose of taxing carbon dioxide emissions is to hasten the “inevitable†transition to an all-electric vehicle fleet and a total phaseout, perhaps within a decade, of the nation’s 275 million gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. That’s 27.5 million junked vehicles a year and 27.5 million more “replacement†vehicles.
https://www.cfact.org/2021/03/11/the-carbon-tax-shell-game-conservative-carbon-taxes-in-the-era-of-decarbonization/
