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Cole Remack

College Writing

Professor Stoltman

Op-Ed Essay

One Solution to Quantifying the Impact of Carbon

When you buy gas for your car or get a plane ticket, you are not paying the full cost.

Forms of transportation like these often have high outputs of carbon dioxide which contributes to

climate change. Carbon and other gases are absorbed into the atmosphere and accelerate heating

effectiveness of the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is an essential component to why

the Earth isn’t too cold for life to exist, it moderates temperature in a sense. Initially, the

greenhouse effect is a good thing, but too many greenhouse gases offset the balance that it

creates. Now, due to the increasing amounts of greenhouse gases, humanity will face climate

change and potential ecosystem collapse.

Not only will this affect our current generation, but also the rest to follow. To negate

carbon produced while burning gas or plane fuel, a tax could be put in place to calculate how

much of an environmental impact someone’s purchase made. This potential solution comes with

benefits as well as negatives that will be discussed further on.

A method that could be adopted to determine pricing of the tax are British Thermal Units

(BTUs). “To fairly reflect carbon content, the tax has to be based on Btu heat units -- something

standardized and quantifiable”. (Dowdey). BTUs are a standard form of measuring heat content

in gases. Using BTUs to tax would determine the amount of carbon being emitted based off how
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it is being burned (Coal burning plant, natural gas burning, etc.). This would make the tax pricing

fair and comparable across all forms of pollution.

Another, more easily quantifiable, measurement of CO2 in the environment is associating

a price with volume. While this may not be as precise as BTUs, it is much easier to find a general

amount of how much money the tax should be. As of 2016, “that carbon dioxide emissions

impose social costs of about $40 per metric ton” According to the Interagency Working Group

on Social Costs of Greenhouse Gases. This group works in proximity to the EPA, the help gather

statistics and other information that the EPA needs. If this method of tax were put into place, “A

tax of $40 per ton would add about 36 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline, for example, or

about 2 cents to the average price of a kilowatt-hour of electricity”. (Marron, Toder, and Austin

2015). The price of gas or electricity wouldn’t shoot up drastically, just small amounts. At a

large scale, there would still be a large amount of money going into federal subsidizing programs

for renewable energy.

Transportation as well as the environmental impact of using certain resources is rarely

included in a product’s pricing, mandating a carbon tax would change this. A possible advantage

of implementing this type of system “can help subsidize environmental programs or be issued as

a rebate”. (Dowdey). This would disincentivize the use of dirty forms of energy such as coal or

petroleum. Making the price of combustible energy more in line with other renewable energy,

therefore making renewables more appealing. The money taxed would then be used to help

subsidize and lower the price of renewable options making the barrier of entry more tempting.

One of the main reasons renewable energy is not initially adopted is because of the high upfront

cost.
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Concern about a carbon tax is generally expressed when looking at how this would affect

people in different economic situations. Taking more money from people that are living

paycheck to paycheck would not be very beneficial to them and wouldn’t make much sense.

People with higher incomes generally consume more and therefore contribute more to climate

change than lower income anyway. According to the Tax Policy Center, “Revenues could also be

used to reduce personal income and payroll taxes, to reduce future deficits, or to invest in clean

energy and climate adaptation”. To economists, the carbon tax is often thought of as regressive.

This may be true if it was implemented without much planning, but policy can be put in place to

ensure that lower income citizens are not taxed any more than what the current amount is. This

could potentially mean reducing gas subsidies and transferring that money to renewable energy

subsidies. Redistribution of money flow is the key to keeping the carbon tax from being

regressive.

While researching, credible opposing sources were difficult to find. An article taking an

opposing stance on carbon tax is written by Veronique Rugy, an American Institute for

Economic Research senior fellow. Rugy goes over various reasons why she believes that it is a

bad idea with little to no evidence backing her arguments up. A counterpoint made by Rugy

states, “More importantly, there is a real knowledge problem in government that makes it

practically difficult for legislators to determine the optimal GHG price”. This is not true, there

have been many studies on finding pricing methods that policy makers could select from. One of

the methods was stated early in this paper, BTUs are a standard form of heat measurement which

would make for an easy policy decision.

For the time being, I resort to minimizing my use of disposable products such as plastic

utensils, cups, etc. While littering is an issue, that is not the main incentive for me to do this. I
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want to minimize my carbon footprint. Each of those products is produced using petroleum and

is then transported using fossil fuels. By using long-term solutions such as water bottles and

reusable utensils, it reduces my overall carbon footprint.

While a carbon tax may not be the most straightforward approach to reducing emissions,

it may be an easy way to incentivize the switch to renewable energy sources and make fossil

fuels less common. Taking money used for fossil fuel subsidies and redistributing to other

programs or cutting taxes in certain areas could help keep this from being a regressive tax and

make it function correctly. Reflecting the true cost of a product or service is an important step in

reducing humanity’s impact on the environment.

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Works Cited

Veronique de Rugy “A Carbon Tax is Still a Bad Idea” American Institute for Economic Research

https://www.aier.org/article/a-carbon-tax-is-still-a-bad-idea/ Accessed 14 November 2019.

CTC. “What to do with the carbon tax revenue” Carbon Tax Center

https://www.carbontax.org/what-to-do-with-the-carbon-tax-revenue/. Accessed 10 November 2019.

Tax Policy Center. “What is a carbon tax” Tax Policy Center

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-carbon-tax. Accessed 10 November 2019.

Dowdey, Sarah. “How Carbon Tax Works” howstuffworks

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/carbon-tax2.htm. Accessed 14

November 2019.