The U.S. Climate Task Force (CTF) has announced a new campaign to educate Americans on the financial benefits of a carbon tax for households across the country. ‘The Tax that Pays You Back’ initiative underscores the advantages of recycling the revenues from a tax on carbon emissions back to American families.
With this approach to climate change, a transparent tax is applied to energy based on its carbon content, so that businesses and households will prefer climate-friendly fuels, according to CTF. In addition, most of the revenues generated return to households in the form of cuts in payroll or other taxes, the group adds.
‘To fix climate change, we have to put a real price on carbon,’ says CTF Chair Robert J. Shapiro, former U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce and senior economic advisor to Bill Clinton. ‘That's the only way to get businesses and households to invest in developing and using less carbon-intensive fuels and technologies. And cap-and-trade can't do that, because it makes the price of carbon and the underlying energy even more volatile than today.’
CTF advocates that the U.S. government take the lead in the global effort to combat climate change by enacting legislation that encourages cost-effective technological advances, innovation and efficiency in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
SOURCE: The U.S. Climate Task Force
