A simple idea for a complex issue
To the editor:
I believe we need to restructure our economic system to encourage renewable energy systems and reduce our use of carbon-dioxide producing fuels. Carbon fuels have been essential in developing our current civilization, but we are discovering many harms from continuing their use.
Here’s one interesting idea for us all to think about and discuss, a Carbon Fee and Dividend program.
• Impose a very significant public-ownership fee onto each unit of carbon fuel (coal, oil, natural gas, etc) produced, to be paid by the producer at the time of production;
• Pass this entire fee income back to each citizen of the country per capita (i.e., not to local, state, or federal governments), to be used as we see fit.
Producers of carbon fuels will pass the cost of this fee on to consumers by raising the price of those fuels.
Consumers will have the option to buy any fuel they want with their new source of income, including renewables such as solar, geothermal, wind and biomass. The price of renewables will become more attractive because they will not have the carbon fee included.
Gasoline, diesel, heating oil and LP gas will still be available, but their new price will actually reflect what it costs us to use them (right now we taxpayers pay for many hidden costs of these fuels through other governmental programs, such as environmental cleanups, health care, military support, and other government subsidies put in place over the past century to encourage carbon fuels production).
Does this sound far-fetched? Ask an Alaskan. Decades ago, when the state sold drilling rights to its publicly-owned lands, it annually passed most of that income on to each Alaskan citizen as fair distribution and compensation for that mineral wealth as it came out of the ground.
This is a simple idea which will have, I’m sure, lots of complexities when implemented and does not solve every vexing taxation problem, but I think we must continue to consider changes to the current economic system to encourage those things which help us and discourage those things which hurt us.
Sam Brown
Cambridge
