By Bruce Mulliken, Green Energy News.
Tax day, the anti-holiday, the day every taxpayer in the US dreads, has come and gone. The paperwork that states our income, or lack there of, has been sent by the April 15 deadline to the Feds so that they can tax us according to the law.

We live in a system that encourages us to make as much money as possible, yet we’re punished through higher and higher taxes as we do so. Increasing our monetary intake and building wealth is supposed to be a good thing but our system of taxation discourages it.

The waste, the emissions, the trash, or the garbage of our society and economy, are inherently a bad thing, yet there is little in our system that stops us from being more wasteful. Taxing the leftovers of consumption, instead of one’s income, would encourage taxpayers to waste less. Want to cut your tax burden? Emit less and cut your waste.

In terms of carbon emissions, a waste product of burning carbon fuels, all of us should be worried, but aren’t. So far the mandates and incentives to cut carbon are rather meek. Governments, local, state and federal, have put some laws or programs in place to reduce our emissions: Recycling, building energy efficiency codes, fuel economy standards for cars and trucks and appliance efficiency standards are examples. A wide array of tax incentives, too, is available to encourage us to buy more energy-efficient products or use low-waste, low-carbon renewable energies.

If these timid efforts to get us to reduce our emissions don’t take hold, there may be more stringent methods in the future to force everyone, beginning with industry, to make the cuts.

At the top of the list of forced carbon belt-tightening is the cap-and-trade system. Most Americans probably can understand the cap part – putting a loose lid on the levels of greenhouse gas emissions – but the it’s the trade part that’s a little weird. Trading emissions allows those in industry that can’t figure out a way, or are too cheap, to cut their own emissions, to buy the right to pollute from those who have cleaned up their act. In theory, over time, even the heaviest polluters will spend the money to cut emissions internally rather than buying the rights to do so, because tightening screws on emissions will increase the cost of them as well as the right to pollute.

Still confused? That’s OK. You’re not alone.

What scares and angers many Americans about cap-and-trade is the fear that they’ll have to pay for it in higher energy bills, including at the gas pump. They have a point. Even Obama said as much during his campaign. He should have held his tongue.

Next down on the list (but really way down on the list in the US) is the possibility of a feed-in-tariff (FiT) program to help develop more clean energies. While not directly an emissions reduction program, in general a FiT is a government mandated guarantee that providers of renewable energy will get paid a high price for clean or renewable energy that they can feed into the grid. The tariff is set sufficiently high to make building renewable generating capacity, such as wind and solar, profitable, thus encourage more people and industry to build the capacity. In building more clean energy capacity emissions will be cut.

With FiT the high per kilowatt tariff can be paid for with a small tax on all consumers of electricity. There would always be many more consumers of electricity than providers, so the tax would be small, the burden spread around.

Germany built its world-leading renewable energy industry on its FiT program. Ontario, Canada is doing a bang-up job so far in its new FiT program as well. Here in the US, Gainesville, Florida has a FiT. Los Angeles would like to have one. But don’t expect a national Feed-in-tariff. Tea Partyers, along with rant-for-big-bucks media personalities, would claim a national FiT would amount to new taxes and a government takeover of industry since it would be setting a price. (They’d say this, even though a national FiT would create jobs and new business opportunities.) Right now the loudest and best paid and least knowledgeable voices are winning arguments over the underpaid who actually know what they’re talking about.

However, in municipalities where there are people-owned utilities FiT programs are more likely. Voters, or their hired representatives, can decide whether or not it’s to their benefit to pay a little more each month to allow their neighbors to build a local job-creating renewable energy industry while cutting emissions. What’s good for some in the community should eventually help all.

A national carbon tax is still my favorite, especially if it’s a voluntary alternative to the awful income tax. The tax could begin with a levy based on the carbon content of the type of energy purchased: a high carbon content for electricity from coal, a low carbon content for electricity generated by the wind, for instance. People could cut their taxes by buying the energy with the lower carbon content. Eventually the carbon content for all consumer goods could be determined and consumers could cut their carbon tax liability by buying products with the least embedded carbon content or smallest carbon footprint.

We already have one carbon tax in place in the form of a fuel tax. But it’s not set high enough to slow the burning of conventional fuels. Much of the world keeps its fuel tax high to discourage consumption and encourage the development of more fuel efficient vehicles or for travelers use more efficient transportation.

Whatever method we end up with to cut carbon emissions there should be a way for taxpayers to benefit. Those benefits need to be proven to voters. If everyone pays and no one gains, then a battle can be expected. That battle could be nastier than the one over health care.

Article originally posted ~HERE~

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