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Having a revenue-neutral carbon tax (or cap-and-trade) has been the environmentalist left’s primary goal this whole time. When Washington state tried to do tha
by orangecat 9y ago
Having a revenue-neutral carbon tax (or cap-and-trade) has been the environmentalist left’s primary goal this whole time.
When Washington state tried to do that, most environmentalist groups opposed it because it returned the revenue to taxpayers rather than spending it on their pet projects: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09112016/washington-state-carbon-tax-i-732-ballot-measure https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09112016/washington-state.... (Yes, most Republicans also opposed it, and they're wrong).
If you were going to criticize the left for rejecting basic science, the whole “nature vs. nurture” controversy would be a much better example.
Totally agreed. I only didn't mention that because it has more of a tendency to derail the conversation.
- philwelch 9y agoI live in Washington; our state’s schools are woefully underfunded and a series of ballot initiatives over the past two decades has crippled our ability to fund basic services, so “revenue neutral” isn’t going to cut it, especially when our state tax burden is extremely regressive to begin with, and especially when the tax is inherently Pigouvian and is designed to produce declining revenue in the long run. It also makes virtually no sense to tax carbon on the state level anyway.