The Pollution Tax
Al Gore proposed that we institute a carbon tax on the carbon emitted by any company. This is a good idea so long as it applies to every company that sells anything in the US. I also believe that, while carbon is important to Mr. Gore, the US should be concerned with global pollution and the tax should be based on pollution.
The US imposes expensive regulations on its manufacturers while China and other countries do not. Regulations and taxes should be designed not to impose unequal burdens, but to level the playing field. There is no incentive to improve pollution performance if your competitor will not do the same. We now compete in a global marketplace, but we can only control what occurs within our borders.
The pollution tax should be an amount high enough so that it is cheaper to comply with anti-pollution regulations.
It should be applied to all US companies and to all importers of goods into this country. There should be two levels or considerations, one on the plant itself and the second on the products sold in the US. It is not terribly helpful if a clean facility produces polluting products.
The pollution tax would be a set percentage of the value of the goods produced in the facility no matter where they end up. Each company, foreign and domestic, would have the EPA investigate its facilities and product, and then grade them as to how well they meet US standards. Foreign companies that import into the US would be required to pay the EPA to perform this service.
If the company passes, then the tax is waived. If it fails, then a tax is imposed based on the level of non-conformance. Each year the standards should be increased and the tax increased for non-conformance. This should be clearly set forth so that everyone understands what is coming.
If a foreign company refuses to pay to have the EPA inspect the facility, then the tax is imposed and imports are prohibited from that manufacturer. Imports will be allowed once the outstanding tax is paid and the EPA is permitted to inspect and grade the facility. Once graded, the new and adjusted tax, if any, is due going forward. So long as it is paid, imports are permitted. It will be the requirement of importers to make sure that all imports include a seal of approval from the EPA.
Pollution Correction Rebate: The entire pollution tax will be used exclusively to help US companies comply with the required standards. US violators pay the tax, but once they prove they have corrected the problem, the costs of making the corrections will be reimbursed by the government from the taxes from all companies, foreign and domestic. Any costs incurred to meet new standards would come from the Pollution Tax fund.
Since this applies equally to foreign and domestic companies, it would go a long way toward balancing one of the inherent inequities between US and foreign manufacturing. Since the proceeds go toward helping US companies comply, it benefits US industry and cleans the world at the same time.
International standards applicable to all companies would likely be developed. The US will likely develop arrangements with certain countries to perform the review on the EPA’s behalf. In the end the US is a leader in environmentally clean industry and US manufacturing gains a modest advantage over competitors from polluting countries, at least until the world is a clean place to live.
5 Responses to “The Pollution Tax”
Um, ick.
First of all, we'd need to hire thousands of EPA investigators who could easily be lured (i.e. bribed) into reducing estimates, or they could become economic gorillas throwing out punishments left and right.
In my opinion, a [i]better[/i] idea is to simply add taxes onto the bad fuels themselves in their raw form. This would be easier because there are fewer places that produce them (vs. places that use them, all the factories in the world). The revenues could go into “greening” the country, and, because businesses will do [i]anything[/i] to avoid taxes, they will work hard to reduce their use of such bad fuel.
This same “taxing at the source” theory could also be applied to other dangerous materials such as mercury and arsenic. This would, again, encourage businesses to find other sources.
Look at what cigarette taxes have done to smoking for an example of what can be accomplished. Tax what's bad and people will wean themselves off it.
But an EPA police agency would be a horrible, unworkable idea.
1. Any pollution tax should be based on real pollution, not on “greenhouse gases” or other political nonsense. An intellectually and morally honest tax scheme would thus tax natural gas (methane) far, far less than the much dirtier fuel coal (while nuclear fuels would be taxed the same as rivers and tides for hydropower, i.e., nothing at all for air pollution).
2. Taxing “at the source” based on the actual costs of pollution (the externalities included!) is a good idea — taxing the raw fuels, as Barky Bree has already mentioned here.
3. A tax on fuels to recover the costs of the pollution from using them (or even higher, to discourage their use, which isn't right or proper in our society, but which is sought by many nevertheless) is obviously better than emissions trading. One critic of emissions trading and other related global warming scams, in fact, has discussed this using the same analogy as with cigarettes. A tax on fuels is like a tax on cigarettes, to cover the costs of or to discourage their use, whereas emissions trading is like government monopolies and the issuance of Soviet-style production quotas to permit various parties to make and cell cigarettes. Which is the more corrupt and gamed?
4. Governments should obviously not repeat the error they routinely make of coming to rely on and to expect revenues from taxes that are intended as well as frequently result in less consumption of the objects being taxed, and thus leading to less revenue from such taxes.
I'm worried something could happen to all of American like what has happened here in New England. Factories here were forced to install expensive “scrubbers” to clean the pollution that they were supposedly putting into New England's air. Truth was that Midwestern factories were dirtying our air. They were not made to put scrubbers on their stacks. Could China become the new Midwest in this equation? Yes!
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Anti-pollution…
Al Gore proposed that we institute a carbon tax on the carbon emitted by any company. This is a good [...]…