One of the big concerns with a cap-and-trade carbon plan is that by raising the price of carbon, it'll cut our emissions on the backs of the poor. The Congressional Budget Office was asked to study the problem, and they came back with some ideas for how a cap-and-trade plan could actually be progressive. For instance, "if all [carbon] allowances were sold and the proceeds used for an equal lump-sum rebate to each household, the rebate would be greater than the average increase in low-income households’ spending on energy-intensive goods." And that's only one way of structuring it: They go through a bunch more in the full letter. In other words, it's easy enough to define a policy where the poor do better under a cap-and-trade plan than they do under the current system. It's simply a question of political will.
