Oil Companies: let's have a carbon tax

I've written extensively about the carbon tax (or "fee", or "dividend") as the necessary solution to global warming.  There is support among Republicans, conservatives, Young Republicans, the IMF and the World Bank, even oil companies.   And, of course, Democrats, and everyone concerned about global warming.

A carbon tax is an economic method to constrain the effects of carbon dioxide.  It is simply not going to be possible to achieve what is needed by just talking to people. 

As reported in the New York Times, the oil companies have just now come out with a proposal,

Recently, the lobbyists and former Senators Trent Lott and John Breaux, backed by companies like Exxon Mobil and Shell, have been campaigning for a federal tax on carbon dioxide emissions. This would increase energy costs, but all revenue from the tax would be returned to the public. A family of four might receive a $2,000 check from the government every year. And we would all have an incentive to reduce our use of carbon-based fossil fuels in favor of clean energy.

In The New York Times, Lee Wasserman and David Kaiser (Mr. Wasserman is the director and Mr. Kaiser is the president of the Rockefeller Family Fund), however, are not in favor because of what the oil companies ask for in return,

Well, Mr. Lott and Mr. Breaux aren’t simply proposing a tax, but a deal: a carbon tax in exchange for two other things. First, they want “an outright repeal of the Clean Power Plan,” which allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions and which the Trump administration is moving to cancel. Second — and most consequentially — they want to give fossil fuel companies immunity from lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable for damage they have done to the climate. As their proposal puts it, “Robust carbon taxes would also make possible an end to federal and state tort liability for emitters.”

I disagree with the Wasserman and Kaiser.  I feel that it is far more important to get the carbon tax, and with the oil companies behind it, it would happen.  In my opinion, there is no other solution to global warming, and it is not clear at all at this time that the lawsuits now in courts are going actually to make it, especially with a Supreme Court consistently making decisions in favor of corporations.

We must make a carbon tax happen, and it looks like we now have that opportunity to make it happen when we make that deal with the oil companies.  It may take years, if ever, for the carbon tax to happen.  A delay of even five years will mean dire consequences to the planet.