I’m Canadian-Irish, mostly Irish and living in Ireland. I’ve followed US climate politics closely for many years and have lobbied in Ireland for carbon dividends as a member (and Irish coordinator) of Citizens Climate Lobby.
To expand on the quote above, there are essentially 3 ways to price carbon. The first, trading systems, has been tried and found not to work very well. That leaves straight carbon tax (even if imposed as a ‘price floor’ on trading systems), and there are 2 models of carbon tax, differing by who gets the money. The first, tax-and-subsidise, involves government taxing carbon and then spending the money on carbon saving programs. Everybody’s costs and prices go up, and the government decides who gets the money. The second way to tax carbon is by returning the proceeds of the tax equally to all. That way everybody’s costs and prices go up, but everybody also gets a cheque in the post. Most people come out ahead (making it politically possible), the poor benefit the most (satisfying the socialists), and the government is largely kept out of it (satisfying the capitalists). And the core human values of freedom, equality and fairness are reinforced.
Old-style, market freedom-loving American (and other) conservatives who recognise scientific reality support carbon dividends because, while they are even more aware of the importance of a price on carbon than the Left are, they don’t like government, don’t trust government, and don’t think government is efficient or effective at micro-managing the market that we depend on for our modern, globalised, high-tech lives. As somebody whose outstanding electricity bill includes a carbon tax used to give rich people €5,000 grants to buy €100,000 EVs, I tend to agree with them. Government often does not pick-and-choose either fairly or effectively (after all, there’s €5,000 grants for €100,000 EVs, but not a penny for someone who has never owned a car).
There’s no ‘American consensus’ around anything, but polls show people ahead of politicians on climate (especially among the young) and some of the world’s best climate scientists, activists, organisations, businesses, thinkers, etc. come from the United States. Of course there’s stupid, irrational, self-defeating and very powerful US resistance to climate/carbon action, and there’s no guarantee of anything. Maybe America’s future is a decent into a hell hole under Trumpian rule? Who knows? But it’s undeniable that there is a serious policy movement towards carbon dividends coming largely (but not entirely) from the American political center-right (or what’s left of it). I can also tell you from both national and EU-wide experience that there is very little awareness of carbon dividends as a policy option in Europe (although CCL’s 22 European chapters are doing what they can).
I think we need a new term: Political Denial. By this I mean the denial of the reality of politics by academics, NGOs, think tanks, grantees and all the other apparatus of the multi-billion euro climate, sustainability and social transformation industry. The reality of politics is that the Afd are now the second largest party in Germany, that Macron is less popular in France than Trump in in the US, and that the UK has tied itself into a self-absorbed Brexit knot. I don’t know what country you live in but I do know that, whatever country it is, your country too has rising ‘populists’ and a rising anger at the dysfunction and unfairness of the business-as-usual status quo - all overhung by a background of environmental despair. I know that your country’s politics are changing too. That’s because the core causes and the ‘system’s’ inability to address these core problems are similar everywhere.
Maybe it would only take a deep conversation at a critical cocktail party, and everything would change. After all, at a time when the thinking world is screaming out for a “new economic paradigm” one is already emerging in front of our eyes, with existing cross-political and expert support, based on evidence, politically and institutionally realistic and possible, just waiting to be connected into a coherant and widely communicable whole. One consultation and discussion process, one week of focused and facilitated discussion, and one social platform incentivising focused action might have a chance. I mean, if Hayek managed to do it, it can be done again.
But right now there’s more chance of getting funding for “raising awareness of climate through the medium of interpretative dance”, or for walking to the North Pole to draw attention to the fate of polar bears, or for writing an obscure paper about how climate change threatens farmer’s mental health - than there is of getting funding to develop and influence the core political-economics ideas and politics behind climate change itself (and the same goes for inequality, etc.). If there is ever a deep conversation at a critical cocktail party that changes everything, I’ll bet that conversation will essentially be about one person convincing another person that an idea is important enough to let go of a little money. And that idea will be a real, defined political idea encompassing practical, specific, implementable policies.
Because anything else would just be more empty, vacuous, safe, vague, risk-averse, business-as-usual, normal, respectable, mediocre and ultimately suicidal horse manure. And that’s well-funded already.
