What We Could Do - Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change - page 29

system that would supply each citizen with a tradeable set of credits to be
used in purchasing fuel in a given year (as proposed by Monbiot). 60
These ideas are a tough sell to a public that hates taxes. We need an
alternative. And luckily, there is one. Several observers have proposed
what Steven Stoft calls the carbon “untax”—a tax whose proceeds would
be refunded in full and equally to every citizen of the United States. This
idea has the support of people across the political spectrum, from James
Hansen, the leading climate scientist, to N. Gregory Mankiw, who served
as George W. Bush's chief economist. It resembles the system in Alaska,
whose government returns the state's portion of the proceeds from the
sale of oil to every citizen. 61 Other advocates tweak this proposal a bit by
suggesting that a portion (perhaps a fourth) of the money raised through
the tax be spent funding research and development of renewable tech-
nologies. Bill McKibben, a leading environmental writer, likes this pro-
posal; it also served as the basis for the bill sponsored by Senators Maria
Cantwell (D-Washington) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) in the 2009-
2010 session.
Each of these proposals has strengths and weaknesses. But it is not
necessary to consider them at length here. Even with the large majority
of Democrats in the first two years of Obama's presidency, the Senate
could not act on climate change. Republicans were virtually unanimous
in opposition to the cap-and-trade bill, and enough Democrats resisted
it in the name of protecting the interests of constituents (such as those
in West Virginia, a true coal state) that the bill may never even have had
majority support, much less the sixty votes required for passage. That
bill was already so riddled with exceptions and special favors, so obvi-
ously a series of compromises with the demands of resistant industries,
that it may not have been worth passing. But all that is ancient history
by now. The “tea party” revolt, the shift in power toward “skeptical” or
hesitant Republicans in the 2010 elections, and the enduring resistance
of many Democrats make it clear that the necessary political action will
not emerge from the U.S. Congress any time soon. In fact, the political
realities are and will remain dire. Because the substantial bloc of the pub-
lic that still repudiates the science of climate change constitutes the base
of the Republican party, that party will for many years be held captive by
a dogmatic “skepticism,” as the 2012 Republican presidential primaries