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Letters

Pluses and Minuses of a Carbon Tax

Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “The Case for a Carbon Tax” (editorial, June 7):

A national fee on carbon assessed at the point of extraction is the most powerful, nonregulatory way to demonstrate that fossil fuel energy is no longer a good investment, not for oil companies or for human beings. Returning all of the revenues to American households will create jobs, reduce deaths from emissions and put money back into the pockets of two-thirds of American households, through a carbon fees trust fund.

Recent polls by Yale and Stanford show that almost twice as many Americans support a carbon fee and dividend as oppose it. Once again, the American public is showing that it is more forward-thinking than its elected leaders.

Over the next few months President Obama and Congress are in a position to transform the global energy economy and stabilize our planet by promoting a revenue-neutral carbon tax, at home and at the United Nations climate talks in Paris in December.

MARY SELKIRK

Berkeley, Calif.

The writer is a volunteer with the Citizens Climate Lobby.

To the Editor:

A price on carbon is an essential tool in reducing climate pollution, but don’t give short shrift to a proven approach: emissions trading.

Well-designed pollution markets helped cut acid rain in the United States at a fraction of the predicted cost. Similar markets are working today to cut carbon pollution in California, seven Chinese cities and provinces, and other countries and regions home to nearly a billion people in all.

Even the European Union system you criticize has successfully cut emissions, and given the E.U. confidence to adopt a more stringent target.

The goal of climate policy is not simply to price pollution; it is to reduce it. Either a tax or a cap, if well designed, can achieve it. So let’s move beyond this debate and focus on the real issue: the need for ambitious action, at home and abroad, to put the world on a path to a secure and stable climate.

NATHANIEL O. KEOHANE

GERNOT WAGNER

New York

The writers are, respectively, vice president for international climate and lead senior economist at the Environmental Defense Fund.

To the Editor:

Your editorial correctly assesses the Big Six European oil and gas chief executives’ call for a carbon tax as anything but a bold environmental stand. Self-interest motivates their plea for taxes to displace their chief competitor, coal, especially in developing countries using coal to power their economies and lift hundreds of millions from poverty.

Equating federal and state gasoline taxes in the United States to a carbon tax is strained. A better example would be the carbon adder embedded in the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant proposal.

The agency’s plan relies upon a $33-per-ton carbon penalty to force the use of more expensive electricity over cheaper sources. According to the Southwest Power Pool, the grid operator for eight states, the proposal will require it to effectively impose a $45-per-ton carbon tax on its customers.

The emission reductions under the E.P.A.’s costly power plan over 10 years will be largely wiped out by global emissions in a single year.

HAL QUINN

President and Chief Executive

National Mining Association

Washington

To the Editor:

Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress should consider a border-corrected, 100 percent revenue-neutral carbon fee. A border correction allows us to correct for the difference in energy costs for manufactured products between countries that have a carbon fee and those that do not.

If it costs an additional $1 in carbon fee because doll X was made in the United States, any doll X made in a country that did not have a carbon fee that was going to enter the United States market would pay the fee at the border.

The fee should start low, but be set to increase each year for at least a decade. That would provide a market signal for American entrepreneurs to find innovative ways to provide goods and services using less and less fossil fuel each year.

The border-corrected portion would protect American businesses from countries that do not have a carbon tax of their own, like China. With a border-corrected, 100 percent revenue-neutral carbon fee, we can grow the economy, add local middle-class jobs, increase our competitiveness with China, and make our air and water cleaner.

Isn’t that what every member of Congress wants for America? Isn’t that what we all want for America?

SABRINA S. FU

Ellicott City, Md.

The writer teaches environmental management and science at the University of Maryland University College.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: Pluses and Minuses of a Carbon Tax. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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