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Carbon Tax and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Here’s an article that discusses the concept of a carbon tax.  What most people don’t understand about this is that it must apply to all countries equally, or it will have disastrous unintended consequences.  Imagine the immediate result of a carbon tax in the U.S.: higher costs to American manufacturers, meaning higher prices for our goods, and thus more goods bought from China, where the carbon footprint associated with manufacturing is far worse than it is here.

This is why my colleague Glenn Doty recommends incentive-based emissions reductions.

This is also what makes the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change both critically important and monstrously difficult.  I’m rooting hard for IPCC chairperson Dr. Raj Pachauri (pictured) to succeed.   What a fabulous person.  I have more hair, but he has far more brains.

My interview with him can be found in “Renewable Energy – Following the Money.”

 

 

 

 

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2 comments on “Carbon Tax and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”
  1. Glenn Doty says:
    October 2, 2014 at 12:54 pm

    Craig,

    There’s no active link to an article here… I think you forgot to hyperlink it.

    Thanks for highlighting the threat that a significant carbon tax would pose to our manufacturing base if we enacted that tax unilaterally.

    I hope you’re right on the international community coming together on this… but I fear China, SE Asia, and India will not play ball. It’s just in their greater interest to continue to modernize as quickly as possible and accept the damage from global warming, and they know it…

    Consider if someone came to you and said “we want you to make a choice, you can have air conditioning, heat, and a refrigerator… or you can give those up for years to come for the sake of an international treaty on climate change…” You wouldn’t give up your climate control and your refrigerator. It’s just asking too much. But by asking them to reduce their emissions profile without offering them something, we’re asking them to make those sacrifices that we would not make…. I don’t see a viable path to get this done… I hope Dr. Raj Pachauri is a whole lot smarter than I am.