Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bill Christian, a licensed professional engineer in the energy conservation field. He has volunteered with local energy committees and on weatherization projects in his Bennington community.
[I]n a recent VTDigger commentary, Rob Roper, of the Ethan Allen Institute, presented his case that a carbon tax is bad, that it would hurt Vermont’s economy. But he said nothing whatsoever about the two very powerful and undeniably effective purposes of that tax (which I’ll note later). Any school tax of any size could also be shown to be bad for the economy, if you don’t mention that education may also be a rather fine thing for the economy, in the long term. And we need to think long term. So, while I think that it is deceptive to present the bad without the good, I acknowledge Rob’s right to freedom of speech.
However, when I hear someone, in the newspaper or online, I want to know who is really speaking, and why. I want to know if I am listening to someone who has studied an issue and is telling me his honest and educated opinion, as an ethical journalist or scientist, or if I am just listening to a paid commercial. I believe that Rob is simply a lobbyist, which is “someone hired by a business or a cause to persuade legislators to support that business or cause”, according to vocabulary.com. The Ethan Allen Institute is the Vermont chapter of the State Policy Network. Every state has one, and bigger states have two. In Kentucky they’re the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy, and in New Hampshire, they’re the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. (And if Ethan and Josiah were alive today, they’d be turning over in their graves …) The State Policy Network is an $83 million enterprise, and a large part of those dollars come from the Koch brothers, who own enormous coal-oil-and-gas companies and who are deadly opposed to renewable energy. How could a person employed by the Koch brothers be saying anything but what the Koch brothers want said? You need to know the source of your information, and that’s difficult today. You can agree or disagree with me, but for the record, alas, I am not being paid to write about energy.
You need to know the source of your information, and that’s difficult today. You can agree or disagree with me, but for the record, alas, I am not being paid to write about energy.
And now, back to the two powerful and effective purposes of the carbon tax.
The core principle of economics is that if something is cheap, people will buy a lot, and if it’s expensive, they’ll buy less, and the price and quantity sold naturally reaches a balance point where it’s cheap enough for people to buy, yet expensive enough that some people will produce and sell it. There is no denying this, the principle of supply and demand.
Without a carbon tax, the cost of oil, gas and coal will stay relatively low, and we will continue using it at a high rate, until it becomes scarce, and then the cost will leap. By then it’s unlikely that we’ll find a solution in time to avoid very serious problems. With a carbon tax, the cost can be increased gradually, pushing people in a very natural way to make their own decisions about how to use less, to find a lower balance point. To illustrate my point, when gasoline stayed at $1 through the 1990s, usage climbed steadily. When it jumped to around $3.50, national usage fell by 33 million gallons a day. Now that it’s fallen to $2, usage is up again by 14 million gallons a day and miles per gallon numbers have disappeared from car ads.
If you are certain that we’ll never run out of cheap oil, and that doubling and tripling the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will not cause serious problems, then there’s no need for a carbon tax. But if there’s any reasonable doubt about either issue, I believe that a carbon tax is the only tool to deal with this while there’s time for some hope of success. Because this is the only planet we know of where you can grow chocolate. So when you look into these two problems, do not listen too seriously to a spokesman for the people who are selling you gasoline. For 40 years, we listened to “science” from the people that sold us cigarettes. But fortunately, another generation comes along with clean lungs and we get another chance. We won’t get another chance with our only atmosphere.
