Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff, along with Daniel Rosenblum, today announce the foundation of their new organization, the Carbon Tax Center. The Center's mission is "to educate and inform policymakers, opinion leaders and the public, including grassroots organizations, about the benefits of and critical need for significant, rising and equitable taxes on carbon emissions from fossil fuels." My favorite part so far? The title of their e-newsletter, "An Inconvenient Tax." Check out their presentation above.
Why carbon taxes? Why a Carbon Tax Center?Charging American businesses and individuals a price to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential to reduce U.S. emissions quickly and steeply enough to prevent atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from reaching an irreversible tipping point. It's a basic economic principle that prices of goods and services should reflect ("internalize" as the economists say) all of the societal costs (such as pollution) that production of the goods or services imposes on society. Yet the prices of gasoline, electricity and other fossil fuels don't include many of these societal costs, particularly their impact on global warming. The necessary transformation of our fossil fuels-based energy system to reliance on energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable fuels simply won't happen without carbon taxes sending accurate and powerful price signals into every corner of the economy and every aspect of life.
