Earth Equity News

Ruckelshaus Calls for Carbon Tax. Commentary by William Ruckelshaus, WSJournal, April 17, 2010. "In so many ways, the problems of the 1970s seem almost quaint now -- simpler problems of a simpler time. Our biggest challenge now is to make sure we don't succumb to our inevitable tendency to fight the last war. Or to put it more bluntly: Yesterday's solutions worked well on yesterday's problems, but the solutions we devised back in the 1970s aren't likely to make much of a dent in the environmental problems we face today...

"I believe that if we are going to address climate change successfully, the top-down, standard-setting enforcement process of the 1970s has to be rethought. It worked just fine when the goal was clear: cutting the amount of specific pollutants from a finite number of industrial and municipal entities. But climate change -- which involves the behavior of all of us who heat our homes and drive our cars, not just business and industry -- is too big and too complicated for something as blunt as this approach. Instead, I believe we are going to have to make the substances that cause the problem (for example, carbon or methane) cost more. In other words, if you want people to use less of something, tax it, and then give society flexibility in achieving the desired reductions. If we ever get serious about climate change, that's what we will do." Mr. Ruckelshaus was the first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency upon its creation in 1970, and served as EPA administrator again during the 1980s. He is now the strategic director of Madrona Venture Group and chairman of the Leadership Council of Puget Sound Partnership.