Scott Sumner, the smartest libertarian on the planet, takes up Matt Yglesias' challenge and offers his own multi-pronged market-based solution to reverse global warming. He proposes a temperature tax that prices all the negative externalities which contribute greatly to the Earth's warming.
Sumner's idea stipulates that if an activity like driving to work is the biggest factor in rising global temperatures, then that activity would be taxed accordingly. The flipside to this tax are subsidies given toward cutting-edge technologies which contribute to the cooling of the Earth. Companies that create technologies that reverse the warming trend would recieve subsidies in proportion to their contribution.
In a word, geoengineering.
A sample:
Sumner's idea stipulates that if an activity like driving to work is the biggest factor in rising global temperatures, then that activity would be taxed accordingly. The flipside to this tax are subsidies given toward cutting-edge technologies which contribute to the cooling of the Earth. Companies that create technologies that reverse the warming trend would recieve subsidies in proportion to their contribution.
In a word, geoengineering.
A sample:
[A]s a good utilitarian I am going to use this blog platform to push two issues over the next few years. ... [M]y second obsession will be a global tax/subsidy scheme based on the impact of various activities on global temperatures. Not all activities, the gain isn’t worth the effort, but those activities that have a significant impact on the climate.
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