Earth Equity News

Could Palin Pick Spotlight ‘Alaska Dividend’ Solution to Climate Crisis? By Charles Komanoff, Carbon Tax Center, August 31, 2008. “John McCain's pick for vice-president isn't shaping up as a win for Teddy Roosevelt-style conservation. A list of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's positions on key environmental issues posted by the folks at Grist includes [significant] anti-green stances... But the Grist list also includes this: ‘Got the state legislature to pass a bill to provide each Alaskan $1,200 to help with energy costs,’ which naturally brings to mind the Alaska Permanent Fund, the 49th State's long-established program that annually sends every Alaska resident an identical check drawn from the state’s North Slope oil royalties. The $1,200 per capita ‘resource rebate,’ was proposed by Palin in July and enacted by the legislature on Aug. 7 ‘as a way for the state to share some of its multibillion-dollar oil revenue surplus with Alaska residents,’ according to the Anchorage Daily News, effectively making it a hybrid of the Alaska Permanent Fund and the federal economic stimulus package that distributed checks to U.S. families earlier this year. As we have long pointed out, the Alaska Permanent Fund offers a proven, straightforward model for distributing federal (or state) carbon tax revenues in revenue-neutral and progressive fashion: returning those revenues equally to all U.S. residents. With carbon tax revenues distributed through pro rata dividends, the vast majority of poorer households, and a majority of middle-income families as well, would get back more in the dividends than they would pay in the tax... This Labor Day weekend and beyond, the media will doubtless focus on Gov. Palin's impact on McCain's election chances. Let's hope that a few enterprising reporters will use the selection of a candidate from the Last Frontier State as an occasion to focus on the ‘Alaska Dividend’ as an equitable and politically palatable way of packaging a revenue-neutral national carbon tax.”