Against a Gas Tax? You Must Be Joking? Posted by Charles Komanoff, Grist, November 13, 2008. "Arthur Pigou (progenitor of cost-internalizing Pigovian taxes must be turning over in his grave). Ditto his buddy John Maynard Keynes, who famously (and correctly) urged, 'Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.' Did you really say, in effect, that because a healthy (note my double entendre) gas tax can't wipe out practically all GHG's from ground transportation by itself, it shouldn't be part of the toolkit? And on that crucial point you're way more wrong than right, David. The National Hybrid Carbon Tax Model I developed for the Carbon Tax Center suggests that a combined $10/ton-of-CO2 carbon tax and 10-cent-a-gallon petrol tax incremented annually (that's around 20 cents a gallon a year) for a few decades would, by 2028, knock CO2 from motor vehicles down by 20% from current levels and 40% from business-as-usual levels. And that's without directly counting the high-speed rail, light rail, biking and walking, livable communities, etc. that would get a huge push from the rising (and less confoundingly volatile) gas price... I wish I had time to take on the rest of your post, David, or write my own in rebuttal. Even Koufax got shelled off the mound from time to time, so I guess you're entitled, but next time you're having an off-day, please don't pick on something as essential as fuel taxes."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment