FAREED ON THE CARBON TAX

The Case for a Global carbon Tax; The only way to slow global climate change is to make coal more expensive and alternatives cheaper.
Fareed Zakaria, April 16, 2007 (FareedZakia.com)

WHO
Fareed Zakaria, “Newsweek” columnist, editor of “Newsweek International,” host of PBS’s “Foreign Exchange” and regular guest on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

WHAT
Fareed proposes subsidizing emerging economies’ transition to clean energy technologies with revenues from a carbon dioxide emissions tax.

WHEN
Fareed points out that projections indicate China and India will build 800 new coal plants by 2012.

WHERE
Fareed’s concern is with the inevitability of economic expansion in emerging economies and he especially identifies rising aspirations for more affluent, more energy-consuming lifestyles in China and India.

WHY
Fareed contends that cap-and-trade systems unnecessarily complicate the disincentivization of creating carbon dioxide emissions while a carbon tax is straightforward and creates a revenue stream by which clean energy technologies can be subsidized.

QUOTES
- “Nandan Nilekani, CEO of the Indian technology giant Infosys and one of the few Asian executives genuinely concerned about environmental issues, says that ultimately the industrialized world will have to provide subsidies to developing countries to build ‘clean coal’ plants. ‘Right now in India, and I assume in China, plants are built through competitive bidding. The lowest bid usually wins. You will have to create a subsidy for clean coal to make it the lowest bid. Otherwise, the dirtiest will win.’”
- “Daniel Esty, a Yale environmental expert whose new book, ‘Green to Gold,’ is a blueprint for new thinking about the environment, argues that the only way forward is a ‘transformational approach that creates incentives for innovation and alternative energy. The way we think about these issues is old-fashioned. We're still trying to limit, regulate, control and inspect. We need to become much more market-friendly. Put in place a few simple rules, and let the market come up with hundreds of solutions. We're not even 10 percent of the way down such a path.’”
- “In the end, everyone realizes that innovation is the only real solution to the global-warming problem.”