Cap and dividend is a simple, market-based way to reduce CO2 emissions without reducing household incomes. It caps fossil fuel supplies, makes polluters pay, and returns the revenue to everyone equally.
1. It gets the job done.
2. It’s simple.
3. It’s fair.
4. It’s progressive.
5. It’s market-based.
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Carbon Capping:
Cap and Dividend
By Peter Barnes
Fighting climate change is going to cost all of us money. That’s because the price of dumping carbon into the atmosphere must, necessarily, rise. Whether the price rise is prompted by a tax or a cap makes no difference — we will all pay more.
This politically inconvenient truth has long been trumpeted by the coal industry. Environmentalists, for just as long, have glossed over it. But numbers are now coming in from reputable quarters, and they’re big enough to send a message to policy makers: don’t deny the problem, solve it.
Recently, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, told Congress that the average American household would pay $1,160 a year in higher prices when carbon dioxide emissions are cut 15 percent.