Thomas Friedman notes that while former Secretary of State George Shultz supports a revenue-neutral carbon tax to deal with climate change, "Another option, the one I'd prefer, would devote half the carbon-tax revenues to individual and corporate tax cuts, use a quarter for new investments in infrastructure, preschool education, community colleges and research — which would create jobs now and tomorrow — and then use a quarter on deficit reduction." This approach is similar to the Climate Protection Act of 2013 recently introduced by Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Barbara Boxer of California.
The problem, of course, is that Republicans are unlikely to support such a bill unless it is 100 percent revenue-neutral.
Acclaimed climate scientist James Hansen suggested as much in an April 15 paper, "Making things clearer: Exaggeration, jumping the gun, and The Venus Syndrome," in which he observed: "There is also a Democratic (Boxer/Sanders) bill in Congress, but as usual they cannot keep their hands off our wallets, proposing to take 40 percent of the money to make government bigger, including congressional specification of how 15 percent of the money is to be spent...
"This is an area where [President Obama] could reach across the aisle, suggesting that he is open to the idea of a revenue-neutral carbon fee, which would save much more carbon than the Keystone pipeline would carry, but he would have to give up the Democratic penchant for telling us how to spend our money."
I think Mr. Hansen is right on the political merits.
Devone R. Tucker
member, Boston chapter, Citizens Climate Lobby
Brockton, Mass.