Former Secretary of State James Baker led a group of senior Republican statesmen today in rolling out a plan for using a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The four-pillar proposal calls for a revenue-neutral carbon tax starting at $40 per ton. Ahead of a White House meeting with Gary Cohn, the former Wall Street executive who is President Trump’s...
A group of prominent Republicans released a “conservative” plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions today, arguing that replacing Obama-era policies with a carbon-tax-and-dividend system would be a politically feasible way to fight off the worst effects of climate change. The plan, released by the Climate Leadership Council in a report titled “The Conservative Case...
A REPUBLICAN GROUP THAT includes elder statesmen James Baker, George Shultz and Henry Paulson lobbied White House aides this week for a carbon tax to fight global warming. There’s a snowball’s chance in a forest fire that the White House or GOP Congress will run with it, but kudos to the group for making the effort. The best things about the proposal are that it...
The other day, a high-powered group of former senior Republican policy advisers and business executives proposed replacing regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gases with a gradually increasing carbon tax starting at $40-a-ton. The tax itself is a fairly standard carbon levy that many others have endorsed. The two most interesting things about this initiative are...
Mounting evidence of climate change is growing too strong to ignore. While the extent to which climate change is due to man-made causes can be questioned, the risks associated with future warming are too big and should be hedged. At least we need an insurance policy. For too long, many Republicans have looked the other way, forfeiting the policy initiative to those...
On Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2017, a group of prominent Republicans and business leaders from the Climate Leadership Council released a carbon tax proposal entitled “The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends.” Acknowledging “mounting evidence” of climate change and the need to “hedge against the risks associated with future warming,” the four-pronged proposal would impose...
Will it have an effect on national policy? Or is it just the opinion of the new chief executive of Exxon Mobil, Darren Woods? Since he replaced Rex Tillerson — now the Secretary of State — Woods said he would favor a revenue-neutral carbon tax. That “would promote greater energy efficiency and the use of today’s lower-carbon options, avoid further burdening the...
Reports about the debate inside the White House over a carbon tax — apparently inspired by the meeting that James A. Baker III, Martin Feldstein, Gregory Mankiw and I held with Gary Cohn last month — get the terms wrong. Our plan, “The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends,” isn’t a stand-alone carbon tax, but rather a revenue-neutral, carbon dividends program. To...
When President Donald Trump assumes that any policy to curb greenhouse-gas emissions must be bad for economic growth, job creation and U.S. competitiveness, he has things backwards. This miscalculation extends to U.S. trade policy, the central focus of Trump’s meeting this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump says he wants to shrink America’s trade deficit...
Some of the world’s largest oil companies and the country’s biggest auto maker are joining a group pushing the U.S. government to tax carbon in an effort to slow climate change. General Motors Co. , Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC are among almost a dozen companies joining the Climate Leadership Council, a new organization that advocates replacing many environmental...