Cap-and-Dividend: An Elegant Solution
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Tags: cap-and-dividend, global climate change, global warming, Peter Barnes
Tags: cap-and-dividend, global climate change, global warming, Peter Barnes
When Peter Barnes co-founded the Working Assets long distance company, he bridged socially responsible values with a wildly successful business model. Barnes is back at it again, turning seemingly disconnected objectives into elegant solutions.
Barnes is the leading proponent for something called "cap-and-dividend," which just may become the solution we need for the dual-headed hydra of the climate crisis and rising energy costs.
Cap-and-dividend is brutally simple. Industries that choose to output carbon into the air would be charged for that right. With consensus among most scientists that we need a drastic reduction in carbon if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the planet, the "supply" of carbon credits would diminish, forcing carbon polluters to pay more for carbon emissions.
Then all this money - estimated by many to reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year - would go back to the very people that are harmed by carbon emissions - you. Just as Alaska provides a regular dividend to each of its citizens, the Barnes proposal would do the same for all Americans, to help offset the cost of higher fossil fuel energy prices. (Of course, this dividend is critical because we fully expect carbon-emitting industries to pass the costs on to us, rather than eat into their record-breaking profits.)
A nice little addendum that Barnes argues for is to make better use of the massive subsidies currently given to fossil fuel industries. For example, right now, there's $120 billion in subsidies just sitting and waiting for new coal burning plants. Let's take these subsidies and give them to renewable energy technology and investments, and maybe even green jobs proposals.
Barnes has a history of innovative, elegant solutions. I think he's struck gold with cap-and-dividend.
Barnes is the leading proponent for something called "cap-and-dividend," which just may become the solution we need for the dual-headed hydra of the climate crisis and rising energy costs.
Cap-and-dividend is brutally simple. Industries that choose to output carbon into the air would be charged for that right. With consensus among most scientists that we need a drastic reduction in carbon if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the planet, the "supply" of carbon credits would diminish, forcing carbon polluters to pay more for carbon emissions.
Then all this money - estimated by many to reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year - would go back to the very people that are harmed by carbon emissions - you. Just as Alaska provides a regular dividend to each of its citizens, the Barnes proposal would do the same for all Americans, to help offset the cost of higher fossil fuel energy prices. (Of course, this dividend is critical because we fully expect carbon-emitting industries to pass the costs on to us, rather than eat into their record-breaking profits.)
A nice little addendum that Barnes argues for is to make better use of the massive subsidies currently given to fossil fuel industries. For example, right now, there's $120 billion in subsidies just sitting and waiting for new coal burning plants. Let's take these subsidies and give them to renewable energy technology and investments, and maybe even green jobs proposals.
Barnes has a history of innovative, elegant solutions. I think he's struck gold with cap-and-dividend.
