Support
Former US Vice President Al Gore strongly backed a carbon tax in his book, Earth in the Balance, but this became a political liability after the Republicans attacked him as a "dangerous fanatic". In 2000, when Gore ran for president, one commentator labeled Gore's carbon tax proposal a "central planning solution" harking back to "the New Deal politics of his father."
Former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker suggested (February 6, 2007) that "it would be wiser to impose a tax on oil, for example, than to wait for the market to drive up oil prices."
Climatologist James E. Hansen has argued in support of a carbon tax. A number of businesses and business leaders also support a carbon tax. These include:
- FedEx CEO Fred Smith;
- James Owens, CEO of Caterpillar;
- and Paul Anderson, CEO and Chairman of Duke Energy.
Monica Prasad, a Northwestern University sociologist, wrote about Denmark's carbon tax in the New York Times in 2008. In her view, the Danish carbon tax served as an example of how to reduce emissions in the US. Prasad argued, however, that a critical component for Denmark's success in reducing carbon emissions from 1990–2005 was that the tax revenues from the carbon tax were dedicated to subsidies for firms to use for alternative, environmentally cleaner sources of energy.
Read more about this topic: Carbon Tax
Famous quotes containing the word support:
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They [parents] can help the children work out schedules for homework, play, and television that minimize the conflicts involved in what to do first. They can offer moral support and encouragement to persist, to try again, to struggle for understanding and mastery. And they can share a child’s pleasure in mastery and accomplishment. But they must not do the job for the children.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)