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Post by huon on Jan 17, 2019 12:33:58 GMT 9.5
A tax shift pairing a carbon tax with a cut in the corporate income tax would be cost-effective and, with a few tweaks, progressive.* That's a recipe for bipartisan appeal. *"(v) Welfare costs (ignoring the benefits from reduced emissions) strongly depend on how the revenue is recycled, but are modest overall: between 0.2 and 0.4% in the least efficient recycling scheme, close to zero or even net gains [my emphasis] with efficient recycling." "(vii) Using the carbon tax revenue to reduce corporate income taxes seems to be most efficient, but doing so primarily benefits richer households. This regressivity can be altered by additional transfers to lower-income households, which require only a small percentage of the overall revenue." "(viii) ...Full progressively of impacts can be insured with only 7% to 10% of revenue." "Exploring the Impacts of a U.S. National CO2 Tax..." (2018) J. Caron, et al. ( link) pp. 28 and 29. For an excellent summary of this study, see "Carbon taxes could make significant dent in climate change, study finds" (link). |
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Post by huon on Jan 21, 2019 14:45:05 GMT 9.5
Each $5 per ton (CO2) of carbon tax could likely fund a 3 percentage point cut in the corporate income tax.* A $5 carbon tax, for example, could reduce the corporate tax from the present 21% to 18%; $10 could cut the corporate rate to 15%, and so on. *See Options for Reforming America's Tax Code (2016) The Tax Foundation; Options 51 and 84. Note that the corporate rate at the time was 35%; to be conservative I have used half-dynamic scoring. |
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Post by huon on Jan 23, 2019 7:52:15 GMT 9.5
Because of co-benefits, such as fewer pollution-related deaths, this tax shift would likely make sense even apart from it's effect on the climate. It's likely a no-regrets policy. How Much Carbon Pricing is in Countries' Own Interests? (2014) Ian Parry, et al. IMF Working Paper. The maximum no-regrets carbon price is given as $36 for the US and $11.5 for Australia (p. 18 and following). |
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Post by huon on Jan 26, 2019 7:47:57 GMT 9.5
For the first year, a tax shift of $10/15% would appear reasonable--British Columbia's successful shift also started at around the $10 level.
But in the US we might add an additional $5 per ton for clean-energy R&D and extra dividends. This addition would bring the total to $15/15%, probably phased in over two years rather than one.
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Post by David B. Benson on Sept 5, 2019 3:33:08 GMT 9.5
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Post by engineerpoet on Sept 5, 2019 21:20:42 GMT 9.5
Putting a price on carbon pollution alone unlikely to help reach climate goals If you use the tax money to pay for removals, you've got a symmetrical situation. You only have a problem paying for it if you require net removals. And then do what with them? Trees burn, succumb to insects and fungi, and get old and die; that carbon won't stay sequestered long-term. Some of the engineered-lumber ideas have possibilities. Accoya pretty much fixes the rot issue and the Chinese appear to be taking factory-built structural panels seriously for wooden skyscrapers. If you have some solution for end-of-life materials such as gasifying and burning the gas in Allam-cycle plants to produce a high-quality CO2 stream, you may be able to keep that carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries if not longer. |
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Post by David B. Benson on Sept 6, 2019 1:22:49 GMT 9.5
engineerpoet --- As pointed out on the Trillions of trees thread, pyrolysis applied to the wood results in biochar. Just bury it but for very long term removal, first compress the biochar into artificial anthracite; tens of millions of years.
In any case there is no hurry as trees can live for several centuries.
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Post by huon on Jan 12, 2020 13:19:44 GMT 9.5
The surprisingly smart solution to climate change--coming from conservatives James B. Meigs Jan 11, 2020 New York Post nypost.com/2020/01/11/meet-the-conservatives-with-surprisingly-smart-solutions-to-climate-change/An encouraging article. "Instead of talking about the things people need to give up, conservatives should stress the opportunities that will come with developing green technology. 'We can sell this tech around the world,' he [Bob Inglis] says, 'We're going to have more energy, more mobility, more freedom.'" |
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