A proposal for a global warming tax that everyone can enjoy

June 16th, 2007

Ross McKitrick has a really fascinating proposal about carbon taxes over at www.canada.com. He proposes that we

make the carbon tax dependent on the volume of warming we see.
I’m one of the climate sceptics and this tax works for me. The proposal is that climate change models all agree that man made global warming will result in an warming of the troposphere. If the warming is not man made or doesn’t happen, the troposphere won’t heat up.
So the proposed carbon tax is 20 times the increase in troposphere temperature (in US$ times by degrees Celsius). That put’s it at about $4.50 a carbon ton today rising to $24 a carbon ton in pretty short order if global warming is real.
It’s neat – everyone wins as the tax is low to start but will rise rapidly if global warming alarmists turn out to be right. If they’re wrong, the tax stays low or goes away which you can hardly argue with.
My prediction is that this won’t fly with the alarmists but will be supported by the sceptics – in my head the sceptics of global warming are worried about the facts and our reaction to them in a rational sense. Alarmists are more concerned with the moral issue of man altering the environment – if we showed that warming is unrelated to carbon emissions and the extra carbon protects us from skin cancer, the alarmist would still want cuts as they’re mostly against mankind changing things in general.

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