Earth Equity News

Stop Talking and Start Taxing. Commentary by Anne Applebaum, Slate, July 13, 2009. "Two headlines caught my eye last week... the leaders of the G8 plus China and India... had failed, once again, to halt climate change by decree. The group could not agree on short-term emissions targets, could not agree on how developing countries would be compensated for meeting the targets, and, indeed, could not decide from what base line any targets would be calculated... Oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens decided to postpone, until further notice, an investment in a big Texas wind farm. Natural gas prices have fallen so low, it seems, that once-promising investments in alternative energy no longer make sense... The truth is that carbon emissions will not be reduced by international bureaucrats, however well-meaning, sitting in a room and signing a piece of paper. Nor will they be reduced by public relations campaigns or by Oscar-winning documentaries. Above all, they will not be reduced by a complex treaty that neither the United Nations nor anyone else can possibly supervise, particularly not a treaty that effectively punishes those countries that abide by it and ignores everyone else. They can be reduced, however, by the efforts of entrepreneurs like Pickens. If he and others can find economically viable ways to produce clean energy, the problem will solve itself without the aid of a single international conference. To put it differently, the first solar-power billionaire will have many, many imitators... The price of fossil fuels has never reflected their true cost, either environmental or political. It doesn't reflect the cost of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. It doesn't reflect the cost of treating asthma. And, of course, it doesn't reflect the cost of rescuing bits of the Florida coast that will be submerged by rising sea levels. Raise the taxes on fossil fuels to reflect those costs, and Pickens' project -- along with many others -- will once again be viable."