I find myself like Jesse with MY - "98% agreeing!"
I tend to disagree on your categorization that a price on carbon is (primarily) supply side rather than demand side. other than changing the input costs to fossil fuel supply (steel, cement, on and on) most of the effect - and, as far as I understand, assumed so by economics - is on the demand side and switching at the margin there (which does have knock-on effects on investment decisions for supply).
that still leaves the political economy of carbon pricing as an open question - as you do a good job of highlighting!
positioning it as a backstop may be a best-possible approach at some point... the case remains that it is still likely the most "efficient" mitigation tool in the theoretical toolkit. whether we ever reach for it, who knows? need to press on the levers that are working now, unless and until that day comes.🤷
I agree that carbon taxes are a bit ambiguous here in terms of classification. I was broadly going by where costs land: directly on the consumers or on the government via spending. The latter is more politically palatable even if it might be less efficient.
How about adding a military cost surcharge to every gallon of gas (e.g., the US spending $80B/year to guard the shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, the trillions for the Iraq war debacle, etc.)? We've been subsidizing fossil fuels for way too long, putting the cost on our federal credit card for future generations to pay.
Great piece ZH. I especially like that you address the potential harms of unachievable targetism in the 1.5C trap section.
Just a note that Canada still has carbon pricing and perhaps our re-emphasis on the industrial side will be a model for others (analyses have shown that it resulted in much more decarbonization than the consumer-facing fuel charge).
"most of the general public in the US does not prioritize climate change above economic issues"
And of course this is always the case. Priorities depend on time scales, and it is the long time scales, beyond that of those living, but pertinent to the future generations, that matter wrt climate change. Until or unless politicians recognize this and build for a longer term future, it seems likely that the kinds of things in this article will always be secondary.
The role of politicians, even if many do not recognize it, is to weigh all factors and time scales. Most are focussed on the next 2 or 6 years: the election cycle. So there is good reason to be skeptical of progress unless the climate issues can be framed in economic or health reasons. A carbon tax that is appropriately framed, not solely based on climate change, seems more likely to survive long enough to make a difference. [Although the current administration makes even that unlikely]. Certainly removing subsidies for fossil fuel, including opening up new areas, and using the defence budget to appropriate new lands in places like Venezuela, so that the real cost of fossil fuels is never even seen by the public, seems essential.
Only a carbon tax fully meets the economics of addressing climate change. I would like to see how it could be made more palatable to the public by creative offsets in other trade, income and excise taxes. Not enough creativity has gone into making a carbon tax attractive....
We've been trying to make it palatable for three decades now. To date we've successfully passed a lot of subsidy policies for clean energy at the federal level but no taxes (and not much in the way of cap and trade systems outside SO2).
Couldn't a revenue-neutral tax and dividend scheme be politically palatable? If done right, it can be a net positive for the finances of working people (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092180091831084X). "Polluters pay, you get an energy cashback" seems like it could actually be really good politics.
I started a local chapter of CCL and lobbied congress for a few years on CF and D with BAT. Like trying to teach French to a baboon. Wonderful idea. Fallow ground. Greatly increased my admiration for Bill McKibben et al who are still pushing that damn rock after so many years. Will be even harder now that we live in dictatorship. We’ll have to pray for one with an IQ that exceeds his shoe size.
I, for one, support national revenue-neutral, non-regressive carbon pricing per kWh on domestic producers, that leave them free to raise their prices as much as they dare with carbon-neutral alternatives now competitive in many sectors. If it was only on domestic carbon producers, however, there'd be a "giant sucking sound" as capital and jobs moved offshore. That's the rationale for a border-adjustment tariff per kWh of embodied carbon in imported goods, as part of the federal legislation.
Simply collecting a fee per kWh from domestic carbon production, requiring producers to account for their increased cost in their pricing to consumers, is the most basic form of collective intervention in the otherwise-"free" market. The tragedy of the climate commons can only be mitigated by mutual coercion, mutually agreed on in some way. In the US, that's by winning elections. Nobody likes paying more for everything, and the intrinsically income-regressive impacts of letting the market pass some of the currently-socialized cost of carbon on to consumers makes a compensatory, income-progressive benefit to a majority of US voters politically necessary.
By periodically dividending (i.e. everyone gets the same amount) the producer fees collected to every IRS filer, slightly more than half of dividend recipients would gain more than they lost in higher prices, and lower-income consumers recover more than their energy costs as a non-discretionary proportion of their incomes. And the less they spend on fossil carbon, the bigger their gain from the dividend: built-in incentive to consume as little fossil carbon, both directly and in goods and services made with them, as you can pencil out.
Pairing the producer fee + import tariff with a 100% consumer dividend is both revenue-neutral and moderately progressive. The market would then drive consumers and capital away from fossil carbon. No direct public investment would be needed, because the dividend leaves the revenue in private banks, available to for-profit reinvestment as normal under good ol' capitalism.
I'd vote for it CF&D with BAT, but would enough of my fellow Americans? And there are unresolved issues: what to do about increased corporate consumer costs, when only individual income-tax payers receive dividends? Reduce corporate income taxes? And, how should the BAT revenue be handled? Simply add it to the domestic producer carbon fee revenue and dividend the total? Should importers get only personal dividends? Should the tariff be revenue-neutral also, or should some be allocated to, say, subsidies for renewable energy development? I'm damned if I know.
While the basic argument for carbon fee and dividend with border adjustment tariff is common sense, it's guaranteed to face an onslaught of obstructionist disinformation, funded by the very producer profits it proposes to take away. Yet per Zeke, any US collective decarbonization policy faces political obstacles, the power of carbon capital foremost. I, for one, would prefer something similar to CF&D with BAT, and let the politicians figure out the details as long as the key features are covered. OTOH, the modest incentives for renewable electricity generation and consumer adoption in the IRA of 2022 were better than the previous 34 years of nothing. And climate realism lost that round in 2024 by a slim margin: only 1.5% more voters chose denial over collective intervention. As Zeke points out:
"Ultimately the costs of fossil fuel use need to be reflected in the costs of energy for decarbonization to succeed, and this can occur either through artificially reducing the cost of clean energy or increasing the cost of dirty energy. At the current political moment, the former seems far more likely to work."
I'd argue that the rapid encheapening* of renewable energy globally has more economic influence because it bypasses political hurdles. Who except the fossil fuel companies doesn't like cheap?
(Sadly, though, in the US the labor cost for installing heat pumps has gone way up.)
While a carbon price is not likely from the current administration, it would be wise to accept the IPCC's warning that without a strong, economy-wide, global carbon price we will fail to achieve our science-based climate goals (carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back).
The question is how to do it. The policy that benefits families and businesses, supports the highest price, holds other countries accountable for their pollution, and costs the least to administer is a good place to start. We should have that discussion now, so that the next time Congress has an opportunity to pass climate legislation, it has strong public support to pass the most effective policy possible.
A steadily rising cash-back carbon fee on fossil fuel production and a CBAM is the experts' gold standard: carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back
Lets be a bit careful what statements we attribute to the IPCC here! There is a lot to like conceptually about a carbon price (particularly a revenue neutral one), though a technologically neutral clean energy subsidy is conceptually similar (albeit less economically efficient). But at least to-date the politics of a federal carbon price have been a non-starter in the US.
Clean energy subsidies do not disincentivize the use of fossil fuels and do lower fossil fuel prices due to reduced demand, but lower prices support increased use. Also, clean energy subsidies do nothing to motivate energy efficiency. Efficiency can be subsidized too (and in many cases should be - e.g., home energy audits and efficiency work for low- and middle-income households), but how much money does the US want to spend on these things if the market can drive them through a price signal and not cost taxpayers anything? A price on pollution provides direct motivation to seek energy efficiency, as well as driving the transition to clean energy production. The cash-back rebate to people puts most people financially ahead, net, compared with where they are now: carboncashback.org/benefits. The CBAM makes US businesses more competitive in the US market against dirtier-polluting countries, and holds other countries accountable for their pollution: carboncashback.org/carbon-price-gap
Check out MIT's En-ROADS global climate policy simulator to compare the climate-solution power of subsidies with carbon pricing. I've created a three-scenario poster to show that a strong US carbon price, made possible (and popular, so more viable and durable) with a cash-back dividend to all households, and pushed around the world by enabling the US to join the EU and others in a CBAM-protected carbon club, makes CF&D "half the 1.5˚C solution" at bit.ly/cfdresources.
It's supply vs demand. Ideally, cut the supply and the prices go up and renewables take over. But, look at all those petro states wanting quick bucks. Also, you can cut demand by inflating the price via tax. More cumbersome but more likely to succeed.
Zeke argues pursuasively that just cutting off fossil fuel supply has been demonstrated in Europe to result in energy price spikes, unhappy voters, and foster a public right-wing anti-climate (pro-fossil fuel) backlash.
But by not accepting the necessity (according to the IPCC) of a carbon price for any chance at a relatively safe climate future, those who promote merely making it cheaper to deploy clean energy are also helping promote the fossil fuel industry's profit over all objective. Subsidizing clean energy reduces energy prices but lower prices leads to increased consumption, somewhat negating the benefits of clean energy government spending (Jevons Paradox).
Please check out the En-ROADS poster at bit.ly/cfdresources to see the enormous climate impact a strong US carbon price (made viable and durable with a cash-back dividend and pushed worldwide with a CBAM) can make. Click on the links to load the En-ROADS scenarios (on a computer) and explore our policy options yourself.
CCL has a valid fee/dividend solution. But, government doesn't look for solutions to non-problems. Re-election and campaign money are problems ( to them). Just think how great America could really be if Congress and the king understood true problems. I wish we had what CCL proposes but can never picture congress enacting it ( until we are at 3C ).
CCL volunteers work to create the political will needed for Congress to pass effective and fair climate solutions. While it may seem a strong carbon price is not possible in the US, that is impossible to know. See the history of the Carbon Fee and Dividend bill (EICDA) at bit.ly/cfdresources - there were 96 cosponsors two sessions ago. In 2022 Senator Whitehouse said the Dems had 49 of the necessary 50 Senators needed to price carbon with cash-back for some in the IRA.
While it seems we have even bigger problems right now, I believe we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and we can connect the problems and demand solutions.
Did you ever notice we all post the same climate concerns year after year with little headway or blatant backward steps? I feel like a climate dog chasing its tail. I know.. keep the faith they say.. as Earth 🔥
Yes, keep the faith, keep learning, and keep trying. It will be too late for a relatively safe climate future, but the US will eventually be arm-twisted by the rising carbon prices and CBAMs of our major trading partners to price carbon here.
That being said, I counter Al Gore's moral hazard attribution to srm to the real moral hazard is delusional wishful thinking the government is duly combating climate change or will.
There's a lot to think about here. It's useful to reinforce the point that 1.5C global warming has no physical significance *in and of itself.* That is to say, the sole focus on the 1.5C warming threshold can be taken as "all's peachy-keen in the climate system at 1.49C of warming, and everything falls apart at 1.51C warming." (If we could measure the earth system with 0.01C precision). And the idea that every 0.1 degree "matters" can also be taken in a way that could be misleading in that same way: does model-based detection & attribution work to 0.1 degree precision (whether in the IPCC D&A frame or in the 'event attribution frame)? Rather what I think Zeke is trying to get across (correct me if I've got that wrong) is the idea of physical climate risk on a continuum. The risks and many impacts scale with warming. More warming, more risk. In that "continuum" framing any given warming level is more of a "milestone" than a physically-significant threshold.
Thx for the calculations of the effect of NG in relation to coal use, taking methane leakage into account.
The affordability argument has the poorer strata of society at its center, if I am not wrong. That's why effectively pricing emissions - be it by taxes or by emission cap - has to use social compensation measures, like giving a part of the money or all back to the consumers, while giving the poor more. If this is done, the affordability issue vanishes, more or less, when you omit the whining rich. (If you *can* do this, is another matter, o.c.)
The problem here being, as so often, to suppose that one word, like "affordability", does say it all, while it doesn't.
I advocate the ‘all of the above’ approach. I personally am all for the European cap&trade systems, as flawed as they still may be, perticularly with respect to social compensation. Use the part of the emission-pricing revenue you did not pay back to the poor to finance decarbonization R&D and intelligent subsidies.
Note that we also know more about the *health effects* of having natgas piped into our homes and schools to be combusted for cooking and heating. Old stoves, water heaters and furnaces produce incomplete combustion products like CO, SOx, NOx and aldehydes. Get this into the discussion of the "new mom" forums (or Marge Simpson's copy of *Fretful Mother Magazine*), and we can get their support for getting rid of combustion appliances.
With the benefit of hindsight, if I could have changed one aspect of Canada's carbon tax, it would have been this: if there was a year where inflation exceeded 3%, then the carbon tax wouldn't have gone up in the following year. The carbon tax always had its opponents, but they gained traction when inflation totaled 13% over a three year period. The carbon tax did not have a significant impact on inflation, but raising it during periods of high inflation made it a convenient scapegoat.
Here in British Columbia, we are without a carbon tax for the first time in eighteen years, so the public is willing to tolerate one under the right circumstances. I agree that carbon taxes are not the ideal policy to focus on right now, but I suspect that they will become increasingly palatable once clean technologies become more widespread.
In a roundabout way, this brings up "rationing carbon". Just plain ole degrowth which king Don is enforcing on his 51st ( in his mindless mind ) state by tariffing it harshly.
Agree except raising price of petro on supply side does nothing to increase supply of renewable energy. Just raises price to consumers, enriching oil companies.
One of the most salient points that has been brought up by a brilliant Substack contributor is:
Why should we even be thinking about oil as a fuel, as a resource, as something to be rich in when over there in China, the Chinese have their eye on semiconductors in Taiwan?
The DJT is living in the world of the 50s not the 21st century.
“The physical science is absolutely clear that to stop the world from warming we need to get global emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases to (net) zero”
According to Google AI:- “Counterarguments: Critics argue that Happer's models focus too much on the lower atmosphere's saturation, ignoring how increased CO2 affects upper atmospheric layers and water vapor feedback”
But this is incorrect if you actually read “Dependence of Earth's Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases” by
W. A. van Wijngaarden, W. Happer they very clearly do calculations for the whole height to the atmosphere.
So, the link you give states: “As CO2 concentrations increase, the absorption at the centre of the strong band is already so intense that it plays little role in causing additional warming.”
Which supports the claims in the links I give. Your link continues:-
“However, more energy is absorbed in the weaker bands and away from the centre of the strong band, causing the surface and lower atmosphere to warm further.”
Which is also true, however the additional energy such bands can absorb is ~ 3% when CO2 is doubled from 400ppm to 800ppm according to the gas physics heat database records used by the scientists I give links to here.
Fine you obviously have failed to read the data and research I offer by reducing it to an insult!!! Further, you dispute basic physics!! Instead, I challenge you to participate in scientific debate methods by showing us where the published papers I refer to are wrong?!
Why would I read what you offer? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you've got it, present it here. None of your links are to formally peer-reviewed papers. Even if you're not a professional obstructionist or a bespoke GPT, you're obviously not an expert, or you'd publish your data and research in a peer-reviewed specialist venue of record, and link us to it directly.
Too late: any insult you felt was intentional, because you insulted us just by resurrecting your iteratively refuted yet relentlessly revenant claim here. It's got more lives than Rasputin! Worse: citing co2coalition.org in support is a reliable indicator of your intent to disinform, as that well was poisoned when it was dug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_Coalition)! Do you think we're all ignorant of the history of public climate-science denial, aimed at thwarting collective intervention in carbon producer profits? We're way ahead of you. Want science? See "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon" (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2).
That's enough troll whacking for now. I've anticipated some other standard denialist rhetorical tactics, especially the misapplication of logical fallacies, but decided not to bother explaining them, because it's all common knowledge.
But this article opens with a foregone conclusion that the CO2 Coalition "climate change denialist claims[2] conflict with the scientific consensus on climate change. " !!!!
Get a grip mate, if that Wiki article is to be taken seriously it wouldn't have employed such cult like propaganda language. For example the claim there is a "scientific consensus on climate change" is utterly bogus bovine excrement:-
Your insults simply demean any lingering respect any readers may still have in your comments here. Had you any intelligence or analytical ability you'd be addressing the issues raised here by me i.e. that CO2's ability at ~430ppm in the atmosphere to absorb further heat is close saturated.
Because the work I’ve linked to was done by two physics professors employed by universities ! Frankly I don’t give a shit if you want to ignore those who dispute the mainstream account with childish propaganda terms such as “denier“ to deflect from their message.
[BTW, a popular pseudo-skeptical rhetorical tactic, falsely accusing consensus supporters of fallacies like "poisoning the well", *argumentum ad hominem*, or *argumentum ad vericundiam*, has no force here. We already know too much about the people involved! MA]
Sure seems like you give a shit, Prisss. Too bad you're way over your head here, another wide-eyed victim of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. That's what make it fun to taunt you. You're not the only one (or two) reading this thread, you know.
So, you apparently don't realize that arXiv article wasn't peer-reviewed. It's long, and full of showy math. How come the authors didn't submit it for the formal record? Do you really think two guys with nominal scientific credentials can overturn the consensus of thousands of their putative peers around the world that easily? Meh. William Happer only matters now because he has the favor of the POTUS and the Republican Party: see next paragraph. Why do you keep citing a notorious obstructionist "think tank" mercenary to support your claim of CO2 saturation? If it's "mainstream science", you should be able to link us directly to published work in peer-reviewed venues of professional climate-science record. But you can't. Like it or not, the US National Academy of Sciences represents mainstream science as much as any other American professional scientific body, and it concludes that Wijngaarden, Happer, and you, are wrong (https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/national-academies-publish-new-report-reviewing-evidence-for-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-u-s-climate-health-and-welfare). Doesn't that put a whisper of doubt in your mind?
IOW, the claim is extraordinary, but the evidence isn't persuasive. And if you think Wikipedia is childish propaganda, how about *Science* magazine, the flagship journal of American *science*? It reports that Happer is motivated to obstruct decarbonization on behalf of fossil-fuel billionaires (https://www.science.org/content/article/physicist-leading-trump-s-adversarial-climate-review-also-led-group-touting-carbon). He denies that the global will warm as long as CO2 emissions continue. That makes him a denier, no? "Mercenary disinformer" and "professional obstructionist" are unnecessarily long. "Denier" is optimally succinct! Even though this comment isn't.
WRT the CO2Coalition, which Happer co-founded, the *Science* article states: "The group's assertions are disputed by a vast majority of climate researchers." The article confirms the CO2Coalition has received funding from foundations with ties to the fossil fuel industry including the Koch and Mercer family foundations, and from current or former energy executives. IOW, it's a bald-faced fink tank, dude!
In the words of historical authority Monty Python: "Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time."
How does increasing electricity demand from data centers play into this discussion? Here in Georgia, we have large data center projects popping up everywhere, and we are seeing more and more that want to use fossil gas-powered engines and turbines for firm power, due to the backlog on grid connections. This seems like a huge step backwards, but in terms of CO2, but also has serious air quality impacts. What is the reasonable way to respond to this threatened increase in local fossil gas emissions?
How dare you find a middle ground...
For my money, Zeke's one of the straightest shooting climate scientists around!
great contribution, Zeke!
I find myself like Jesse with MY - "98% agreeing!"
I tend to disagree on your categorization that a price on carbon is (primarily) supply side rather than demand side. other than changing the input costs to fossil fuel supply (steel, cement, on and on) most of the effect - and, as far as I understand, assumed so by economics - is on the demand side and switching at the margin there (which does have knock-on effects on investment decisions for supply).
that still leaves the political economy of carbon pricing as an open question - as you do a good job of highlighting!
positioning it as a backstop may be a best-possible approach at some point... the case remains that it is still likely the most "efficient" mitigation tool in the theoretical toolkit. whether we ever reach for it, who knows? need to press on the levers that are working now, unless and until that day comes.🤷
I agree that carbon taxes are a bit ambiguous here in terms of classification. I was broadly going by where costs land: directly on the consumers or on the government via spending. The latter is more politically palatable even if it might be less efficient.
We place inverse taxes on the supply side. Called "subsiDIEs".
How about adding a military cost surcharge to every gallon of gas (e.g., the US spending $80B/year to guard the shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, the trillions for the Iraq war debacle, etc.)? We've been subsidizing fossil fuels for way too long, putting the cost on our federal credit card for future generations to pay.
Great piece ZH. I especially like that you address the potential harms of unachievable targetism in the 1.5C trap section.
Just a note that Canada still has carbon pricing and perhaps our re-emphasis on the industrial side will be a model for others (analyses have shown that it resulted in much more decarbonization than the consumer-facing fuel charge).
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/31/analysis/new-era-industrial-carbon-pricing-works
https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/building-a-climate-coalition-gcpp-flagship-report/
"most of the general public in the US does not prioritize climate change above economic issues"
And of course this is always the case. Priorities depend on time scales, and it is the long time scales, beyond that of those living, but pertinent to the future generations, that matter wrt climate change. Until or unless politicians recognize this and build for a longer term future, it seems likely that the kinds of things in this article will always be secondary.
The role of politicians, even if many do not recognize it, is to weigh all factors and time scales. Most are focussed on the next 2 or 6 years: the election cycle. So there is good reason to be skeptical of progress unless the climate issues can be framed in economic or health reasons. A carbon tax that is appropriately framed, not solely based on climate change, seems more likely to survive long enough to make a difference. [Although the current administration makes even that unlikely]. Certainly removing subsidies for fossil fuel, including opening up new areas, and using the defence budget to appropriate new lands in places like Venezuela, so that the real cost of fossil fuels is never even seen by the public, seems essential.
Kevin Trenberth
Only a carbon tax fully meets the economics of addressing climate change. I would like to see how it could be made more palatable to the public by creative offsets in other trade, income and excise taxes. Not enough creativity has gone into making a carbon tax attractive....
We've been trying to make it palatable for three decades now. To date we've successfully passed a lot of subsidy policies for clean energy at the federal level but no taxes (and not much in the way of cap and trade systems outside SO2).
Couldn't a revenue-neutral tax and dividend scheme be politically palatable? If done right, it can be a net positive for the finances of working people (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092180091831084X). "Polluters pay, you get an energy cashback" seems like it could actually be really good politics.
I started a local chapter of CCL and lobbied congress for a few years on CF and D with BAT. Like trying to teach French to a baboon. Wonderful idea. Fallow ground. Greatly increased my admiration for Bill McKibben et al who are still pushing that damn rock after so many years. Will be even harder now that we live in dictatorship. We’ll have to pray for one with an IQ that exceeds his shoe size.
I, for one, support national revenue-neutral, non-regressive carbon pricing per kWh on domestic producers, that leave them free to raise their prices as much as they dare with carbon-neutral alternatives now competitive in many sectors. If it was only on domestic carbon producers, however, there'd be a "giant sucking sound" as capital and jobs moved offshore. That's the rationale for a border-adjustment tariff per kWh of embodied carbon in imported goods, as part of the federal legislation.
Simply collecting a fee per kWh from domestic carbon production, requiring producers to account for their increased cost in their pricing to consumers, is the most basic form of collective intervention in the otherwise-"free" market. The tragedy of the climate commons can only be mitigated by mutual coercion, mutually agreed on in some way. In the US, that's by winning elections. Nobody likes paying more for everything, and the intrinsically income-regressive impacts of letting the market pass some of the currently-socialized cost of carbon on to consumers makes a compensatory, income-progressive benefit to a majority of US voters politically necessary.
By periodically dividending (i.e. everyone gets the same amount) the producer fees collected to every IRS filer, slightly more than half of dividend recipients would gain more than they lost in higher prices, and lower-income consumers recover more than their energy costs as a non-discretionary proportion of their incomes. And the less they spend on fossil carbon, the bigger their gain from the dividend: built-in incentive to consume as little fossil carbon, both directly and in goods and services made with them, as you can pencil out.
Pairing the producer fee + import tariff with a 100% consumer dividend is both revenue-neutral and moderately progressive. The market would then drive consumers and capital away from fossil carbon. No direct public investment would be needed, because the dividend leaves the revenue in private banks, available to for-profit reinvestment as normal under good ol' capitalism.
I'd vote for it CF&D with BAT, but would enough of my fellow Americans? And there are unresolved issues: what to do about increased corporate consumer costs, when only individual income-tax payers receive dividends? Reduce corporate income taxes? And, how should the BAT revenue be handled? Simply add it to the domestic producer carbon fee revenue and dividend the total? Should importers get only personal dividends? Should the tariff be revenue-neutral also, or should some be allocated to, say, subsidies for renewable energy development? I'm damned if I know.
While the basic argument for carbon fee and dividend with border adjustment tariff is common sense, it's guaranteed to face an onslaught of obstructionist disinformation, funded by the very producer profits it proposes to take away. Yet per Zeke, any US collective decarbonization policy faces political obstacles, the power of carbon capital foremost. I, for one, would prefer something similar to CF&D with BAT, and let the politicians figure out the details as long as the key features are covered. OTOH, the modest incentives for renewable electricity generation and consumer adoption in the IRA of 2022 were better than the previous 34 years of nothing. And climate realism lost that round in 2024 by a slim margin: only 1.5% more voters chose denial over collective intervention. As Zeke points out:
"Ultimately the costs of fossil fuel use need to be reflected in the costs of energy for decarbonization to succeed, and this can occur either through artificially reducing the cost of clean energy or increasing the cost of dirty energy. At the current political moment, the former seems far more likely to work."
Yep, that's reality in the USA today!
I'd argue that the rapid encheapening* of renewable energy globally has more economic influence because it bypasses political hurdles. Who except the fossil fuel companies doesn't like cheap?
(Sadly, though, in the US the labor cost for installing heat pumps has gone way up.)
_____________
*It's a perfectly cromulent word.
I, for one, am appalled by the enshittification (https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/) of our common language ;^)!
While a carbon price is not likely from the current administration, it would be wise to accept the IPCC's warning that without a strong, economy-wide, global carbon price we will fail to achieve our science-based climate goals (carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back).
The question is how to do it. The policy that benefits families and businesses, supports the highest price, holds other countries accountable for their pollution, and costs the least to administer is a good place to start. We should have that discussion now, so that the next time Congress has an opportunity to pass climate legislation, it has strong public support to pass the most effective policy possible.
A steadily rising cash-back carbon fee on fossil fuel production and a CBAM is the experts' gold standard: carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back
There are also immediate economic benefits of this approach that should be considered: carboncashback.org/carbon-price-gap
Lets be a bit careful what statements we attribute to the IPCC here! There is a lot to like conceptually about a carbon price (particularly a revenue neutral one), though a technologically neutral clean energy subsidy is conceptually similar (albeit less economically efficient). But at least to-date the politics of a federal carbon price have been a non-starter in the US.
Hi Zeke, these quotes from the IPCC are on my carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back page referenced above:
"Explicit carbon prices remain a necessary condition of ambitious climate policies” - IPCC SR15 chapter 4.4.5.2 - https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-4/#:~:text=Explicit%20carbon%20prices%20remain%20a%20necessary%20condition%20of%20ambitious%20climate%20policies
"Carbon pricing is most effective [and popular] if revenues are... returned to taxpayers corresponding to widely accepted notions of fairness" - IPCC AR6 WG3 TS PDF page 81 - https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_TechnicalSummary.pdf
"estimates for a Below-1.5°C pathway range from 135–6050 USD2010 tCO2-eq −1 in 2030, 245–14300 USD2010 tCO2-eq−1 in 2050, 420–19300 USD2010 tCO2-eq −1 in 2070 and 690–30100 USD2010 tCO2-eq −1 in 2100." - SR15 2.5.2.1 Price of carbon emissions - https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-2/#:~:text=estimates%20for%20a%20Below%2D1.5%C2%B0C%20pathway%20range%20from%20135%E2%80%936050%20USD2010%20tCO2%2Deq%20%E2%88%921%20in%202030
And there's also the largest public statement by US economists about anything ever: clcouncil.org/economists-statement
Clean energy subsidies do not disincentivize the use of fossil fuels and do lower fossil fuel prices due to reduced demand, but lower prices support increased use. Also, clean energy subsidies do nothing to motivate energy efficiency. Efficiency can be subsidized too (and in many cases should be - e.g., home energy audits and efficiency work for low- and middle-income households), but how much money does the US want to spend on these things if the market can drive them through a price signal and not cost taxpayers anything? A price on pollution provides direct motivation to seek energy efficiency, as well as driving the transition to clean energy production. The cash-back rebate to people puts most people financially ahead, net, compared with where they are now: carboncashback.org/benefits. The CBAM makes US businesses more competitive in the US market against dirtier-polluting countries, and holds other countries accountable for their pollution: carboncashback.org/carbon-price-gap
Check out MIT's En-ROADS global climate policy simulator to compare the climate-solution power of subsidies with carbon pricing. I've created a three-scenario poster to show that a strong US carbon price, made possible (and popular, so more viable and durable) with a cash-back dividend to all households, and pushed around the world by enabling the US to join the EU and others in a CBAM-protected carbon club, makes CF&D "half the 1.5˚C solution" at bit.ly/cfdresources.
It's supply vs demand. Ideally, cut the supply and the prices go up and renewables take over. But, look at all those petro states wanting quick bucks. Also, you can cut demand by inflating the price via tax. More cumbersome but more likely to succeed.
If only they turned off the fossil spicket..
Zeke argues pursuasively that just cutting off fossil fuel supply has been demonstrated in Europe to result in energy price spikes, unhappy voters, and foster a public right-wing anti-climate (pro-fossil fuel) backlash.
But by not accepting the necessity (according to the IPCC) of a carbon price for any chance at a relatively safe climate future, those who promote merely making it cheaper to deploy clean energy are also helping promote the fossil fuel industry's profit over all objective. Subsidizing clean energy reduces energy prices but lower prices leads to increased consumption, somewhat negating the benefits of clean energy government spending (Jevons Paradox).
Please check out the En-ROADS poster at bit.ly/cfdresources to see the enormous climate impact a strong US carbon price (made viable and durable with a cash-back dividend and pushed worldwide with a CBAM) can make. Click on the links to load the En-ROADS scenarios (on a computer) and explore our policy options yourself.
CCL has a valid fee/dividend solution. But, government doesn't look for solutions to non-problems. Re-election and campaign money are problems ( to them). Just think how great America could really be if Congress and the king understood true problems. I wish we had what CCL proposes but can never picture congress enacting it ( until we are at 3C ).
CCL volunteers work to create the political will needed for Congress to pass effective and fair climate solutions. While it may seem a strong carbon price is not possible in the US, that is impossible to know. See the history of the Carbon Fee and Dividend bill (EICDA) at bit.ly/cfdresources - there were 96 cosponsors two sessions ago. In 2022 Senator Whitehouse said the Dems had 49 of the necessary 50 Senators needed to price carbon with cash-back for some in the IRA.
While it seems we have even bigger problems right now, I believe we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and we can connect the problems and demand solutions.
See slides 47-51 and the notes under slide #51 here for one way to do that: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QdJjAgXTo95R5hb0K8sqs92tY_N1jNoBDnCWRJa-bBk/edit?usp=drivesdk&slide=id.g38ccdf67cb4_0_947#slide=id.g38ccdf67cb4_0_947
Did you ever notice we all post the same climate concerns year after year with little headway or blatant backward steps? I feel like a climate dog chasing its tail. I know.. keep the faith they say.. as Earth 🔥
Yes, keep the faith, keep learning, and keep trying. It will be too late for a relatively safe climate future, but the US will eventually be arm-twisted by the rising carbon prices and CBAMs of our major trading partners to price carbon here.
carboncashback.org/carbon-price-gap
That being said, I counter Al Gore's moral hazard attribution to srm to the real moral hazard is delusional wishful thinking the government is duly combating climate change or will.
There's a lot to think about here. It's useful to reinforce the point that 1.5C global warming has no physical significance *in and of itself.* That is to say, the sole focus on the 1.5C warming threshold can be taken as "all's peachy-keen in the climate system at 1.49C of warming, and everything falls apart at 1.51C warming." (If we could measure the earth system with 0.01C precision). And the idea that every 0.1 degree "matters" can also be taken in a way that could be misleading in that same way: does model-based detection & attribution work to 0.1 degree precision (whether in the IPCC D&A frame or in the 'event attribution frame)? Rather what I think Zeke is trying to get across (correct me if I've got that wrong) is the idea of physical climate risk on a continuum. The risks and many impacts scale with warming. More warming, more risk. In that "continuum" framing any given warming level is more of a "milestone" than a physically-significant threshold.
Thx for the calculations of the effect of NG in relation to coal use, taking methane leakage into account.
The affordability argument has the poorer strata of society at its center, if I am not wrong. That's why effectively pricing emissions - be it by taxes or by emission cap - has to use social compensation measures, like giving a part of the money or all back to the consumers, while giving the poor more. If this is done, the affordability issue vanishes, more or less, when you omit the whining rich. (If you *can* do this, is another matter, o.c.)
The problem here being, as so often, to suppose that one word, like "affordability", does say it all, while it doesn't.
I advocate the ‘all of the above’ approach. I personally am all for the European cap&trade systems, as flawed as they still may be, perticularly with respect to social compensation. Use the part of the emission-pricing revenue you did not pay back to the poor to finance decarbonization R&D and intelligent subsidies.
cheers and a successful 2026 - - -
"[Casten] also notes that leakage from US gas 'makes natural gas worse than coal from a global warming perspective.'"
----
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Congressman Casten, for introducing that talking point.
The point where atmospheric CH4 starts to climb again after leveling off corresponds to the fracking boom: https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/ch4_trend_all_gl.png
Note that we also know more about the *health effects* of having natgas piped into our homes and schools to be combusted for cooking and heating. Old stoves, water heaters and furnaces produce incomplete combustion products like CO, SOx, NOx and aldehydes. Get this into the discussion of the "new mom" forums (or Marge Simpson's copy of *Fretful Mother Magazine*), and we can get their support for getting rid of combustion appliances.
With the benefit of hindsight, if I could have changed one aspect of Canada's carbon tax, it would have been this: if there was a year where inflation exceeded 3%, then the carbon tax wouldn't have gone up in the following year. The carbon tax always had its opponents, but they gained traction when inflation totaled 13% over a three year period. The carbon tax did not have a significant impact on inflation, but raising it during periods of high inflation made it a convenient scapegoat.
Here in British Columbia, we are without a carbon tax for the first time in eighteen years, so the public is willing to tolerate one under the right circumstances. I agree that carbon taxes are not the ideal policy to focus on right now, but I suspect that they will become increasingly palatable once clean technologies become more widespread.
In a roundabout way, this brings up "rationing carbon". Just plain ole degrowth which king Don is enforcing on his 51st ( in his mindless mind ) state by tariffing it harshly.
Never leave a bottle of booze at an alcoholic's house. If they are attempting to recover it could hurt them and others
If they are not attempting to recover it will hurt them and others.
Leave the "alcohol" in the ground.
Agree except raising price of petro on supply side does nothing to increase supply of renewable energy. Just raises price to consumers, enriching oil companies.
Man THIS is the conversations about climate change It's like to have.
One of the most salient points that has been brought up by a brilliant Substack contributor is:
Why should we even be thinking about oil as a fuel, as a resource, as something to be rich in when over there in China, the Chinese have their eye on semiconductors in Taiwan?
The DJT is living in the world of the 50s not the 21st century.
“The physical science is absolutely clear that to stop the world from warming we need to get global emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases to (net) zero”
Incorrect. CO2 is saturated at ~429pm
https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/minimal-future-warming-from-co2-ch4-n2o/
"CO2 is saturated at ~429pm"
That's false. The US National Academies of Science explains why additional CO2 emissions will continue to cause more warming (https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/25733/interactive/). See Question 8.
While the NAS isn't the final scientific authority (nobody is), it beats clickbaiting denialist randos every time.
According to Google AI:- “Counterarguments: Critics argue that Happer's models focus too much on the lower atmosphere's saturation, ignoring how increased CO2 affects upper atmospheric layers and water vapor feedback”
But this is incorrect if you actually read “Dependence of Earth's Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases” by
W. A. van Wijngaarden, W. Happer they very clearly do calculations for the whole height to the atmosphere.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.03098
So, the link you give states: “As CO2 concentrations increase, the absorption at the centre of the strong band is already so intense that it plays little role in causing additional warming.”
Which supports the claims in the links I give. Your link continues:-
“However, more energy is absorbed in the weaker bands and away from the centre of the strong band, causing the surface and lower atmosphere to warm further.”
Which is also true, however the additional energy such bands can absorb is ~ 3% when CO2 is doubled from 400ppm to 800ppm according to the gas physics heat database records used by the scientists I give links to here.
Fine you obviously have failed to read the data and research I offer by reducing it to an insult!!! Further, you dispute basic physics!! Instead, I challenge you to participate in scientific debate methods by showing us where the published papers I refer to are wrong?!
https://hend1n1.substack.com/p/is-the-co2-greenhouse-effect-saturated
https://climateataglance.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/CAAG-CO2-saturation.pdf
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Happer-Comment-Reconsideration-of-the-Greenhouse-Gas-Reporting-Program-GHGRP-2025-11-3.pdf
Why would I read what you offer? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you've got it, present it here. None of your links are to formally peer-reviewed papers. Even if you're not a professional obstructionist or a bespoke GPT, you're obviously not an expert, or you'd publish your data and research in a peer-reviewed specialist venue of record, and link us to it directly.
Too late: any insult you felt was intentional, because you insulted us just by resurrecting your iteratively refuted yet relentlessly revenant claim here. It's got more lives than Rasputin! Worse: citing co2coalition.org in support is a reliable indicator of your intent to disinform, as that well was poisoned when it was dug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_Coalition)! Do you think we're all ignorant of the history of public climate-science denial, aimed at thwarting collective intervention in carbon producer profits? We're way ahead of you. Want science? See "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon" (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2).
That's enough troll whacking for now. I've anticipated some other standard denialist rhetorical tactics, especially the misapplication of logical fallacies, but decided not to bother explaining them, because it's all common knowledge.
You ask us to pay attention to this link:-
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_Coalition>
But this article opens with a foregone conclusion that the CO2 Coalition "climate change denialist claims[2] conflict with the scientific consensus on climate change. " !!!!
Get a grip mate, if that Wiki article is to be taken seriously it wouldn't have employed such cult like propaganda language. For example the claim there is a "scientific consensus on climate change" is utterly bogus bovine excrement:-
https://hend1n1.substack.com/p/putting-the-con-in-consensus
Meanwhile you have failed to engage with the substantive claims - based on MAINSTREAM SCIENCE - that CO2 is saturated at ~430ppm.
Meet the new troll, same as the old troll.
Your insults simply demean any lingering respect any readers may still have in your comments here. Had you any intelligence or analytical ability you'd be addressing the issues raised here by me i.e. that CO2's ability at ~430ppm in the atmosphere to absorb further heat is close saturated.
Good day!
You ask me: “Why would I read what you offer?“
Because the work I’ve linked to was done by two physics professors employed by universities ! Frankly I don’t give a shit if you want to ignore those who dispute the mainstream account with childish propaganda terms such as “denier“ to deflect from their message.
[BTW, a popular pseudo-skeptical rhetorical tactic, falsely accusing consensus supporters of fallacies like "poisoning the well", *argumentum ad hominem*, or *argumentum ad vericundiam*, has no force here. We already know too much about the people involved! MA]
Sure seems like you give a shit, Prisss. Too bad you're way over your head here, another wide-eyed victim of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. That's what make it fun to taunt you. You're not the only one (or two) reading this thread, you know.
So, you apparently don't realize that arXiv article wasn't peer-reviewed. It's long, and full of showy math. How come the authors didn't submit it for the formal record? Do you really think two guys with nominal scientific credentials can overturn the consensus of thousands of their putative peers around the world that easily? Meh. William Happer only matters now because he has the favor of the POTUS and the Republican Party: see next paragraph. Why do you keep citing a notorious obstructionist "think tank" mercenary to support your claim of CO2 saturation? If it's "mainstream science", you should be able to link us directly to published work in peer-reviewed venues of professional climate-science record. But you can't. Like it or not, the US National Academy of Sciences represents mainstream science as much as any other American professional scientific body, and it concludes that Wijngaarden, Happer, and you, are wrong (https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/national-academies-publish-new-report-reviewing-evidence-for-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-u-s-climate-health-and-welfare). Doesn't that put a whisper of doubt in your mind?
IOW, the claim is extraordinary, but the evidence isn't persuasive. And if you think Wikipedia is childish propaganda, how about *Science* magazine, the flagship journal of American *science*? It reports that Happer is motivated to obstruct decarbonization on behalf of fossil-fuel billionaires (https://www.science.org/content/article/physicist-leading-trump-s-adversarial-climate-review-also-led-group-touting-carbon). He denies that the global will warm as long as CO2 emissions continue. That makes him a denier, no? "Mercenary disinformer" and "professional obstructionist" are unnecessarily long. "Denier" is optimally succinct! Even though this comment isn't.
WRT the CO2Coalition, which Happer co-founded, the *Science* article states: "The group's assertions are disputed by a vast majority of climate researchers." The article confirms the CO2Coalition has received funding from foundations with ties to the fossil fuel industry including the Koch and Mercer family foundations, and from current or former energy executives. IOW, it's a bald-faced fink tank, dude!
In the words of historical authority Monty Python: "Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time."
But still you don't answer the calculations and methodology of the claim itself, instead you shoot the messengers!
How does increasing electricity demand from data centers play into this discussion? Here in Georgia, we have large data center projects popping up everywhere, and we are seeing more and more that want to use fossil gas-powered engines and turbines for firm power, due to the backlog on grid connections. This seems like a huge step backwards, but in terms of CO2, but also has serious air quality impacts. What is the reasonable way to respond to this threatened increase in local fossil gas emissions?