A Convenient Truth?
There is a very thought provoking article about responding to Climate Change at the Libertarian site, Reason Magazine. It really lays out a very cogent and clear path of, believe it or not, regulation (yes, government intervention. Imagine that!) that would, if carefully crafted, steadily reduce sources of carbon emission:
This argues not for passivity, and not for delay, but for _gradualism_: setting up policies that will tighten the screws on greenhouse-gas emissions over the next few decades. The convenient truth about global warming, then, is that radicalism is as pointless as it is impractical. Slow-but-steady is not only the easiest approach; it is also the most effective.Just as conveniently, the most efficient way to get started is also the simplest, albeit not the easiest politically: tax carbon emissions. “At around $30 per ton of CO2 over a 25-year horizon, experts seem to think this is the kind of price that will encourage the kind of technologies that are necessary,” says Billy Pizer, an environmental economist at Resources for the Future, a Washington think tank. That would translate into an additional 27 cents or so on a gallon of gasoline and about a 20 percent increase in residential electricity bills (more like 34 percent for industrial users). Unpleasant, but hardly radical. Perfectly do-able, in fact.
Fortuitously, a carbon tax could also reduce the U.S. budget deficit and the geopolitical leverage of sinister “petrocracies” such as Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. Policy prescriptions don’t come any more convenient than that.
The whole article is worth a read, it really debunks a lot of the hype coming from both sides of this argument. But I think the most incredible thing about it is that Libertarians are recognizing that there is a problem and owning up to a need to DO something, even if it goes against the grain of the usual Libertarian push for less government intervention and more of a free market remedy. I also think the remedies laid out in the article are worth serious consideration.
Technorati Tags: Carbon Tax, Greenhouse Gases, Global Warming, Alternative Energy
