The Carbon Dividend

I've posted extensively about the carbon tax, or fee, and now dividend.  As I've tried to emphasize, this is the best, and possibly only way for our planet to survive.  It is an economic solution.  You can tell people not to use gasoline in their cars, or not to eat beef, but no one is going to pay attention until the true value of using gasoline or eating beef is imposed on them.  

As I've posted, conservative groups like the Cato Institute, and bipartisan groups like the World Bank, partisan groups like the Young Republicans, and even oil companies, have come out for a carbon tax.

Now a new group that includes conservatives is coming out for a "carbon dividend"

Proponents of a market-oriented plan to fight climate change by taxing greenhouse gas emissions and giving the revenue to American taxpayers are starting a campaign to run advertisements as early as this fall and introduce legislation in Congress as early as next year. 

The plan’s supporters have formed a group called Americans for Carbon Dividends that will lobby for the proposal. The group plans its first event on Wednesday and includes a number of well-known members, including Trent Lott, the former Senate Republican leader from Mississippi, and Janet L. Yellen, who led the Federal Reserve under President Barack Obama. 

The initiative has already won endorsements from some environmental groups, like Conservation International; fossil fuel giants like Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP; and major companies in renewable and nuclear energy and consumer goods. 

“It’s something that may command bipartisan consensus,” Ms. Yellen said in an interview, calling the proposal “a very exciting prospect.” Taxing carbon dioxide emissions to reduce energy use, she added, is “absolutely standard textbook economics.”

Actually they aren't proposing anything new, but calling it a "dividend" emphasizes a feature that should reduce the resistance to something called a "tax".  By dividend they mean that the money raised from the tax on oil will be returned to the people.  This is how it is being done in British Columbia.  In this way people who avoid the expenditure of carbon, are going to profit from the "dividend. 

The proposal would set an initial tax of $40 per ton of carbon dioxide produced and would increase the price over time. That would raise the cost of a gallon of gas by approximately 38 cents, the group says, with similar effects on household heating and other energy use. That could, in turn, encourage people and businesses to become more energy efficient and curb their use of fossil fuels. 

To offset the higher prices, the tax revenue would be returned to consumers as a “carbon dividend.” The group estimates that the dividend would give a family of four about $2,000 in the first year.

So let us all hope for the success of the new Americans for Carbon Dividends.