Both the Carbon Tax and the ETS are built on underlying assumptions that are directly contrary to the ethical premise of action on climate change. The ETS (Set quantity, market price) is the idea that nature should be divided up and owned by people today (specifically large polluting corporations). That their utility is the only utility that matters in which case we have already told future generations they dont matter so who exactly are we trying to save? The Carbon tax (set price, market quantity) is built on the underlying assumption that people are utility maximizing self serving individuals. Often shortened to greed is good. Well if greed is so good, and people are only greedy then who is arguing for a carbon tax? They are called market based instruments but they are not built on a correct understanding of markets. They are built on an ideological premise that has been translated into market terminology built on a vision of political economy that is fundamentally rejected by both sides. It is truly absurd to call this a compromise when it is neither legal nor effective. It has been charged by ecological economists environmental economists trying to save neoclassical theory regardless of ecological sustainability and by free market economists as fascism using the language of capitalism
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 15:03:55 +0000
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