Happy Festivus!!

I'm gradually making my way back home after another enjoyable Festivus holiday in Michigan with the family. I hope you too had a Happy Festivus.

I figured I would take a minute to comment on the requested topic of taxing CO2 emitters as posed by Fat Al in his Nobel Prize speech. His details of such a tax were little more than what you just read in the previous sentence. I'm sure he has more details on his website but I didn't bother to look because it is more enjoyable to throw around uneducated opinions! I mean, everyone else does so why can't I?

It sounds like a good idea to me but how is it applied. It seems that the concept is similar to other "sin" taxes on tobacco and alcohol. All of these things slowly kill people, the government ends up footing the bill on many of the resulting medical costs, so they tax the shit out of it to attempt to recover the funds paid for care and to dissuade people from the habit. It would seem to me that the pollution tax may be less arbitrary if it was based on pollutants like sulfur, mercury, lead, etc. instead of CO2 because they seem to have a more direct impact on the health of the general population. And perhaps these taxes should be more punitive than for cigarettes and alcohol since people have less control over the hazardous by-products from coal than from ciggies or liquor. I wouldn't be surprised if such taxes already exist but I'm sure they are weak and could use improvement. And if they don't exist, feel free to take my ideas and run with them.

As for the CO2 emissions, we could do that too. But I don't want to just target the obvious offenders such as coal burning power plants and steel mills or the car makers. We should go after the owners of the cars. Tiered tax rates based on fuel economy when purchasing vehicles. I know all the pro-business people will come back with "that will kill companies that drive trucks." I would say that it may kill a few poorly run companies but it will force good companies to innovate and adapt or they will perish too. All the technology is out there but the incentives to use them are not. And of course the new technology will cost more which will cause inflation as the cost is ultimitely passed down to the consumer but the country has never been in a better position to absorb such inflationary pressures as we have been the last few years with the cheap imports and increased productivity we've experienced. Also on the car issue, in the Chicago area all cars are required to go through emissions testing which, if failed, requires the car to be fixed and tested again. This seems to accomplish similar objectives to the tax. Maybe the emissions testing should gradually become stricter. What about a tax on airline tickets based on mileage? The point is that there are many ways to go about arbitrarily taxing pollution but everyone responsible for polluting should pay, not just the "big corporation" scapegoats so popular with many tree huggers.