Carbon: Tax Not Cap-and-Trade

52 T I K K U N W W W. T I K K U N . O R G J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 A May headline in the Chicago Tribune says it all: “The First Refugees of Global Warming: Bangladesh Watches in Horror as Much of the Nation Gives Way to Sea.” Each day’s news brings more reminders of the harms that global warming is already causing to people, communities, and nature throughout the world. From Hurricane Katrina and the inundation of island nations to heat waves in Europe and drought in Australia, climate change is wreaking horrific damage. It’s going to get worse, perhaps much worse, before it gets better. According to James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies www.giss.nasa.gov and the preeminent scientist warning the world about global warming, the Earth has already warmed one degree Fahrenheit over the past thirty years. Another degree is in the pipeline because of gases that are already in the atmosphere, and still another degree is in store because of carbon dioxide emissions that will spew for decades from our growing energy infrastructure of fossil fuel-powered electricity generating plants—largely coal-fired—along with refineries processing petroleum and natural gas to fuel our cars and trucks, planes and homes, factories and shopping malls. We can’t take carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases out of the atmosphere, except to a limited extent by leaving forests intact and planting new ones, so some, and perhaps considerable, climate change is inevitable. Melting glaciers and disappearing arctic ice are visible manifestations of what we can expect, but the likely consequences to humans, particularly the poorest people in the poorest countries, are even more horrendous. As Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu noted recently, “Rain or drought, the result is the same: more hunger and misery for millions of people living on the margins of global society.” Flooding of low-lying areas, increasingly volatile storms, desertification, spreading famine, disease, and of course, war, as human misery proliferates and intensifies, are the seemingly inevitable consequences of global warming due to humankind’s excessive use of fossil fuels. TikkunOlam—canwe“repairtheworld?”Isitalreadytoolate?ThebadnewsisthatEarth’s atmosphere has already been burdened with so much carbon dioxide—the principal heattrapping gas that stays aloft, intact, for roughly a century—that temperatures will continue to riseforsometimeevenifwedramaticallyreduceouruseofcarbonfuels.Americansbearmajor responsibility. On average we use as much energy in a day as people in the rest of the world use in a five or six-day workweek. The good news (yes, there is good news) is that we can limit the damage by taking concerted action to reduce the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting A Carbon:Tax NotCap-and-Trade by Dan Rosenblum & Charles Komanoff 7Politics_final.qxd 6/5/07 11:55 AM Page 52 carbon dioxide emissions. But we must start immediately . What is needed are two parallel, mutually supporting transformations: first, we need an energy supply-side shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy such as wind, solar, and biofuels. Second, we need a demand-side shift to far lower levels of energy use accomplished by making our homes, businesses, cars, appliances, manufacturing processes, and our very desires less energy-intensive and more energy-efficient. Some steps to save energy are simple. Riding a bike to work, to school or the store avoids the carbon dioxide emissions from driving and is good for your physical and mental health besides . It adds up—eliminate twenty miles of driving a week and the associated gallon or so of gas, and you’ve cut twenty pounds of CO2 from your climate diet; that’s half-a-ton per year. Exchange half-a-dozen traditional, energy-hogging incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) that provide equivalent light with two-thirds less energy, and you’ve cut out another half-ton. Want another easy step? How about using the sun to dry your clothes? With a clothesline and a sunny day you can dispense with running your gas or electric dryer. Taking these kinds of steps will save large amounts of energy. But...