Neither Trump nor Clinton is pushing a carbon tax

I've devoted many words through the years to arguing that a carbon tax is not some magical climate cure-all (most recently, here and here). It is not the only real, effective, or cost-effective climate coverage. It is not necessarily a reliable way to distinguish that is Significant from who is Unserious about climate change.

2 weeks. good policy, not the sine qua no, a complement to other policies, not a substitute. We still need technology innovation and deployment, main grid investments, emission regulations, and all the rest. There is simple answer, no Archimedes' lever.



Occasionally, I'm arrested of caricaturing carbon taxes proponents. Surely they're quite a bit less Manichean as all that!

Ahem. I give you this piece from Jordan Reilly, editor of VIA Technology Review:

We are familiar with Donald Trump's stance on climate change: it's a "con job" perpetrated by the Oriental. His views on energy policy are strongly pro-coal, but also contradict themselves. The Republican Party's 2016 platform also describes fossil fuel as a "clean" source of energy.

But the Democratic platform might not be meaningfully better.

Whaaa?

Trump's energy plan is explicitly and enthusiastically pro-fossil fuels. He would stymy or reverse all of Obama's climate and energy regulations, accelerate fracking, and somehow (presumably by making good deals) revive the coal mining industry. Also, and he'd pull away of the Paris environment treaty.

Hillary Clinton's energy plan would expand photo voltaic and other clean alternatives. It promises to increase US energy efficiency by a third and reduce US oil consumption by a third within twelve years of her taking office. It should meet or exceed the carbon dioxide reduction target Obama guaranteed in Paris: 28 percent under 2005 levels by 2025. And it will strengthen international climate promises.

What rationale could there be for characterizing the latter as "not significantly better" than the ex -?

You guessed it. Clinton's plan, writes Reilly, "leaves out one big thing: a carbon tax. inches Thus, "meaningful action on climate change" is "unlikely to come anywhere around conversation throughout the 2016 election cycle. "

Gah.

It is not clear what "meaningful action" means, or how Reilly expects us to measure it. If it is assessed in carbon reductions, well, Clinton reports exactly how much carbon her plan would reduce. Would a carbon tax reduce more?

It obviously depends! An increased carbon tax would. A decreased carbon tax wouldn't. A revenue-neutral carbon tax that reduces the income taxes would be different from a carbon tax that funds clean energy application. A static tax set in place to sunset within a few years would be different from one started rise year to season, automatically, through midcentury.

The effects of a co2 tax depend completely on its size and setup details. The words "carbon tax" do not, in along with themselves, bestow righteousness on the climate plan.

In any case, as Reilly acknowledges, one way states can abide with Obama's Clean Ability Plan is to participate local carbon markets that put a price on co2. It's not like discover no room for co2 pricing by any means in Clinton's plan; it's just not a headline.

Even greater, a serious carbon tax is effectively impossible in any Congress Clinton is likely to face. No person -- not Clinton, not Sanders, not the risen Erlöser -- could pass a carbon tax by using a Republican House of Representatives.

So it's not even an actual co2 tax that is proposed to separate meaningful environment policy from mere Trumpism. It can be rhetorical support for a carbon tax that is, for all intents and purposes, impossible. That is a purely emblematic gesture.

Maybe Clinton should to make that remarkable gesture, promise a carbon dioxide tax, and lead a fruitless effort to purchase one at the beginning of her first term, even though she knows in the end she'll conclude using the same acting branch tools Obama used. You may argue that is actually important enough to waste materials time and political capital on. I don't acknowledge, but there's a circumstance to be made.

Although the idea that notional support for a condemned carbon tax is significant while everything else -- all Clinton's actual programs to adopt actual action that actually reduces carbon exhausts -- can be waved away as insignificant... that is just carbon tax fetishism at its worst.