Roy Cordato’s newsletter discusses the issue of taxing carbon dioxide, which to me sounds as dumb as wanting mandatory labels warning of foods that contain DNA, but which has become the new obsession of a handful of self-impressed conservatives who apparently like the challenge of trying to find a clever way to do a very foolish thing.
Roy finds, in sum,
The bottom line with any carbon tax is that it will enhance the wealth of big energy companies, decrease economic growth, and negatively impact the wellbeing of all energy consumers while particularly harming the poor. And all this while having no impact on global temperatures. Other than that, it’s a great idea.
Benefitting big energy companies at the expense of ratepayers/taxpayers, especially the poor — what is it about those effects that are so attractive to progressives, call-us-smart conservatives, and media alike?
Given that this notion is supposedly to address the “social cost of carbon” problem, so tidily characterized as a “problem” because it never takes into account social benefits, I’d remind readers that panelists at the NC WARN/John Locke Foundation forum on energy all agreed (see the end) that trying to generate a “social cost” measure of carbon dioxide emissions was futile.
I’d also remind them that the Brookings worked to account for costs and benefits of differing energy sources beyond levelized costs, and even using a rather generous measure of avoided emissions found that solar and wind were the most expensive sources for reducing carbon emissions (click the image for a larger version):
