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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday November 26 2016, @10:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the people-voting-for-more-taxes dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The defeat of carbon pricing in Washington State contrasts with its northern neighbor, where carbon taxes are now the rule.

The victory of climate change-denying Republican candidate Donald Trump was one of two big setbacks for U.S. climate policy earlier this month. The other was the resounding defeat of Washington State's Initiative 732, which sought to prove that using fees on carbon emissions to cut existing taxes could provide bipartisan appeal for what economists consider to be the most efficient mechanism to cut greenhouse gas emissions: carbon taxes.

Washington State rejected the idea of a carbon tax by 59 percent to 41. In sharp contrast, just across the world's longest border, carbon taxes are attracting politically diverse support. Four-fifths of Canadians will live in provinces with such taxes in 2017, and in 2018 all Canadians could be paying a carbon tax.

Both Washington State's defeated initiative and Canada's growing comfort with carbon pricing have their origins in North America's first carbon tax, which British Columbia's provincial government launched in 2008. The British Columbia tax started at C$10 (U.S.$7.40) per metric ton of carbon dioxide on fossil fuels consumed in the province, and it ratcheted up to C$30 per metric ton by 2012. The tax is revenue-neutral, with proceeds used to cut corporate and personal income taxes.

[Continues...]

Most academic studies find that British Columbia's tax is reducing carbon emissions by 5 to 15 percent without hurting economic growth, and that a special tax break to offset its impact on low-income families has succeeded. "The tax appears to be highly progressive," says Nicholas Rivers, an expert in energy and economic modeling at the University of Ottawa.

Likewise, the Washington tax was to start next year at $15 per metric ton (adding, for example, about 15 cents to every gallon of gasoline), then rise to $25 in 2018 and grow annually thereafter by a further 3.5 percent plus inflation until it reached $100 per ton. Revenues were to cut existing taxes and provide tax benefits for low-income families.

The initiative garnered strong grassroots support as well as endorsements from Democratic and Republican legislators, including former Republican Senator Slade Gorton and Joe Fitzgibbon, who chairs the state legislature's environment committee. But the Washington initiative was opposed by both fossil fuel interests as well as advocacy groups that favored spending carbon revenues on development projects to ensure a "just" transition to a low-carbon economy.

In Canada, meanwhile, politicians from all major parties are pushing carbon taxes nationwide. Last month Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his Liberal Party government will institute a national carbon tax plan in 2018. And last week a contender for leader of the official opposition in Parliament, Canada's Conservative Party, unveiled a more ambitious carbon tax.


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  • (Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Saturday November 26 2016, @11:51AM

    by aiwarrior (1812) on Saturday November 26 2016, @11:51AM (#433180) Journal

    I think the idea of a carbon trade is that there is a quota per capita with a total budget according to a set global emission reduction. So while in theory you could locally produce more carbon and be allowed to do so because you bought yourself a carbon license, the license came from a party that had this resource to trade. This resource was 'obtained' already taking into account the carbon cap.

    Actually the carbon trade is the other edge of the carbon tax: It creates a market where there is economical value in capturing carbon. On the other edge the tax alone only tries to tapper the value of producing carbon.

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  • (Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Saturday November 26 2016, @02:13PM

    by BsAtHome (889) on Saturday November 26 2016, @02:13PM (#433208)

    The goal is to rely less and less (until we reach zero) on fossil carbon globally. However, creating a market to trade carbon emissions is an excuse not to reduce the emissions, but to pay (a tax) and export it somewhere else.

    Our net carbon budget is negative (per capita) if we want to steer clear of future major problems. Trading emissions make more people addicts to the status quo. That is a bad thing.