On Apr 23, 2007, at 2:39 AM, Patrick Bond wrote:
> I suggested you please
> *not* think of carbon taxes as market mechanisms but, ideally, as
> anti-market mechanisms:
I've never claimed they were either market or non-market mechanisms. I'd like to do something that raises the cost of hydrocarbons significantly to discourage their use.
> if done *properly* (with an intense focus on
> disincentivizing luxury consumption and, in the process, on
> cross-subsidisation of energy for basic needs), they would 'distort
> the
> markets' (get the 'prices wrong'), because they would work against the
> inexorable capitalist logic of declining short-run marginal cost
> curves.
I'd love a progressive carbon tax in principle, though, aside from something like a residential electricity bill, I can't think of how to structure it. Should an aluminum plant pay a proportionally higher tax than an ad agency, just because the production of aluminum is very energy-intensive, and the production of seductive bullshit isn't?
> So, since Chris Doss doesn't get this either, let's sum it up like
> this:
> market mechanisms commodify life; our job is decommodification. Ok?
Our first job is to prevent climate catastrophe. I can't imagine any configuration of the U.S. Congress over the next decade that would pass the kind of tax you're talking about. Right now it's either cap and trade or carbon tax, with a carbon tax - the far better option - a much more remote political possibility. I'd certainly agitate happily for a progressive carbon tax, and suggest it whenever cap and trade reveals itself to be a scam. But since we've got to get going on getting GHG emissions down seriously, it'd be dangerously sectarian to hold our breath until they pass the right tax.
Doug