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Longtime readers know that I'm a pessimist on serious global warming action. It's hard to see how you sufficiently reduce the use of dirty energy without sharply raising its price, which is what either a serious cap-and-trade or carbon tax would do. And it's hard to see how the political system summons sufficient courage to do that given the fury that high gas prices continually generate. But if there's any hope, I think it's in policy ideas like this one by Jeff Frankels:
Take steps to raise future tax rates on fossil fuels, including gasoline. This would accomplish lots of objectives: a)raise much-needed revenue in the future (or else help finance reductions in tax rates on lower-income workers),b) enhance national security by reducing dependence on imported oilc) improve the trade balanced) reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly in the future by sending the right price signal todayreduce local air pollution, traffic congestion, and traffic accidents.In the past, such tax proposals have always been considered political suicide. But here are two ideas to reduce political resistance: (i) put a floor under domestic prices of fossil fuels at current levels, by making up any future falls in world energy prices via taxes; (ii) respond to any future major national security setback, if it were to occur (god forbid), by asking Americans to do their part toward sacrifice in the form of energy conservation.Something like a gasoline floor, in which you used taxes to effectively freeze gasoline prices, might have some political appeal, and phasing in gas taxes in the future is probably the only way you're going to pass any legislation in the present. But still, I'm pessimistic.
