'“If we don’t capture these clean energy jobs, they’ll just move overseas. To keep these jobs here at home, and to put the brakes on greenhouse gas pollution, I think we need a strategy that embraces four basic principles, and I’d like to briefly outline them today.
“First, we need to increase investment in energy R&D. Right now, we’re spending just one-third of what we were in the 1970s. If we really want to be able to manufacture competitively priced bio-fuel and solar power; if we really want to sequester the carbon dioxide released from coal; we have to be willing to make the commitments that will drive private capital to these projects – and right now, we’re just not doing that.
“Second, we have to stop setting tariffs and subsidies based on pork barrel politics. For instance, Congress is currently subsidizing corn-based ethanol at 50 cents a gallon – and you can argue that’s good agricultural policy, but you can’t argue that it’s good for consumers or the environment. Because it isn’t.
“Consumers pay more for food, and producing corn-based ethanol results in much more carbon dioxide than producing sugar-based ethanol. But are we subsidizing sugar-based ethanol? No. We’re putting a 50-cent tariff on it. Ending that tariff makes all the sense in the world, but for the politics....'
Message 24046830
Smart man ... Ron Paul would agree on the subsidies part, don't know about the tariff walls, but probably there too
A fossil fuel tax is a big part of the answer imho - one flat hefty chunk of change for every barrel of oil equivalent produced in or imported into a country ... easier to collect than a VAT/IVA/GST type tax, but effectively an even broader and therefore better consumption tax ... keep it revenue neutral, knock back other more regressive taxes, then stand back and watch the tech boom blossom |
