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"Pay Your Air Share" – Libertarian think tank advocates carbon taxes!

February 13th, 2008 10 comments

1.  Check out the San Diego-based The Prometheus Institute, http://www.prometheusinstitute.net/, which has just launched a new website calling for carbon taxes: http://www.payyourairshare.org/.


They propose that:




  • A tax be levied on all major emitters of greenhouse gases, set so that fossil fuel prices will reflect their true social cost, which will create a seamless market-based incentive for the development of alternative energy.


  • Most of the revenue raised should be returned to the people in the form of an across-the-board income tax cut, but as the climate system has great inertia, a portion of the carbon tax revenues should support private sector and community-based projects to adapt to effects of climate change.

The site contains a number of articles to explain just how in the heck The Prometheus Institute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_Institute) could convince itself to come up with this Pigouvian scheme. 


(h/t Greg Mankiw: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/02/pi-joins-club.html)


2.  Another recent piece that I highly recommend is Edwin G. Dolan‘s “Global Warming: Rethinking the Market Liberal Position”, from the Fall 2006 issue of The Cato Journalwww.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj26n3/cj26n3-3.pdf.  Dolan argues that a Lockean position does not permit an easy dismissal of calls for policy changes relating to climate change.


FWIW, Dolan was the editor of the Austrian classic, The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1976).


(h/t Donny with an A: http://mises.org/Community/members/Donny-with-an-A.aspx)