(This post first ran on Gristmill, under the headline,
Can the Promise of a New Political Landscape Include a U.S. Carbon Tax?,
with the subhead, Advocates launch the Price Carbon Campaign.)

What do the defeat of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill, the burst of the oil-price bubble, the Wall Street meltdown, the promise of a new political landscape in the wake of the fall elections, and the exigencies of the climate crisis have in common

To the Carbon Tax Center and our partners at the Climate Crisis Coalition, these events together augur for a resurgence of interest in, and potential political support for, the “gold standard” for carbon pricing: a national, revenue-neutral carbon tax.

Consider:

• The ignominious defeat of Lieberman-Warner, which collapsed in June under its 800-page weight, made crystal-clear that any carbon cap-and-trade system will be dysfunctionally complex, will take agonizingly long to put in place, and will fall prey to massive special-interest ripoff.
• Political prospects for creating trillions of dollars’ worth of tradeable carbon emission permits have been further damaged by the Wall Street debacle and the resulting backlash against insider speculation and profiteering.
• Retreating prices for oil and other fossil fuels strengthen not just the need, but also the political wherewithal for taxing fuels for their carbon content.
• The success of the movement to elect Barack Obama to the presidency signals an era of new possibilities in which, just possibly, shibboleths such as “no new taxes” may get tossed into history’s dustbin — particularly if carbon taxes are made revenue-neutral via tax-shifting or revenue distribution.

To pivot off this moment, CTC and CCC today, with other allies, have launched the Price Carbon Campaign.

The campaign begins with three elements:

• an online petition to the Obama administration and Congress calling for serious consideration of a national carbon tax during the first hundred days of the new Washington regime;
• a letter-writing campaign to members of Congress. Your letter will be directed not only to your Senators and member of Congress (keyed by your zip code), but also to House and Senate leaders who hold sway over climate and tax legislation; and
• a congressional briefing on carbon taxes focusing on the environmental, economic, economic-efficiency, logistical, and political benefits of a national carbon tax.

The briefing, featuring NASA lead climatologist (and carbon tax advocate) James Hansen, economists Gilbert Metcalf and Robert Shapiro, and Canadian public affairs expert James Hoggan, and hosted by Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn., 1st district), is set for a House Ways and Means Committee hearing room (Rayburn H.O.B., Room B-318) on Tuesday morning, Dec. 9.

For further details on the briefing, click here.

We hope to generate thousands of signatures and letters between now and Dec. 9, so please visit the Price Carbon Campaign now.

Photo: Flickr / patrix.

The presidential campaign that culminated in Barack Obama’s historic win wasn’t the only national election in North America this fall. James Handley reports.

After building his campaign around a “Green Shift,” a revenue-neutral carbon tax that he promised would return “every penny” to taxpayers, the leader of Canada’s centrist Liberal Party, Stephane Dion, took a pounding from both left and right in the Oct. 14 election. Conservatives spun the Green Shift as “a tax on everything,” while the leftist New Democrats branded it as body blow to the poor, ignoring that their own cap-and-trade plan would squeeze families with higher fuel prices without the Green Shift’s offsetting tax reductions.

Though Dion and the Liberals carried enough other baggage to lose most elections, the carbon tax is being tagged as a factor in the Liberals’ loss of 26% of their seats, almost entirely to the Conservatives. Yet when McAllister Opinion Research asked nearly 2,000 Canadians what they thought of a tax shift that involved "cutting income taxes and increasing taxes on pollution," two-thirds said they thought it was a good idea. And a ten-point open letter issued by 230 leading Canadian economists and 120 prominent scientists incorporated key elements of the Green Shift. Clearly, a different message, or messenger, or both, was needed to create a political victory for a Canadian carbon tax.

Veteran environmental advocate Alan Durning, founder of the Seattle-based Sightline Institute, attributes the Green Shift’s political difficulties to three cognitive factors:

Distrust of government: Taxpayers don’t believe that income tax reductions will compensate for their carbon tax increases. Indeed, their skepticism may have been well-founded in this case, with Dion’s tax shifts adding up to a good deal less than 100%, according to at least one post-mortem.

Disbelief in “price elasticity”: Many citizens don’t believe that higher energy prices lead to less usage. So the premise of pollution taxes, that they create across-the-board incentives to reduce emissions, doesn’t make sense to them.

The Asymmetry of Losses and Gains: People are more averse to possible losses than they are attracted by possible gains. The $10 you stand to lose count more to you than the $10 you stand to gain. As a consequence, the carbon tax looms much larger in voters’ minds than the offsetting tax reductions.

Durning concludes that Canada’s election represents a “shrug” — the “Green Shift” just wasn’t understood. It isn’t “likely to attract a swarm of enterprising leaders to carbon tax shifting as a way to kickstart political careers. But it won’t completely scare them off, either.”

South of the border, and three weeks later, after a campaign that offered little specific discussion of climate policy, Barack Obama won the White House with a majority of the popular vote and a 2-to-1 margin in the Electoral College. Obama’s election-night speech didn’t mince words on the climate crisis, calling out “a planet in peril,” along with two wars and the worst financial crisis in a century, as the challenges facing Americans. Evidently, Obama was wise to steer clear of climate policy specifics during his campaign. Maybe, as pollsters and advisors suggested to Dion, the best time to propose a carbon tax shift is after an election. Yale economist Robert Shiller observed recently, “Candidates cannot try interesting and controversial new ideas during a campaign whose main purpose is to establish that the candidate has the stature to be president."

Economists are virtually unanimous that pricing carbon emissions is an essential first step toward a low-carbon economy; and their consensus that price-based policies like a carbon tax are much more effective than quantity-based proposals like cap-and trade is almost as strong. For some time now, leading scientists such as Canadian geneticist David Suzuki and NASA climatologist Dr.James Hansen in the U.S. have been warning of tipping points that will trigger global climate catastrophe, and urging nations to adopt carbon taxes as the most immediate and effective policy tool available to change direction. Hansen urges, simply, “tax polluters, pay people.”

The Carbon Tax Center is organizing a Capitol Hill briefing on the morning of Dec. 9 that will feature Dr. Hansen and economists Gilbert Metcalf and Robert Shapiro. (Details will be posted here shortly.) The briefing will also offer insights to U.S. policymakers on using the experience in Canada to frame and sell a carbon tax here.

The economy will be the Obama administration’s first priority. Not only is a gradually-increasing carbon tax on coal, oil and gas producers and importers the most effective medicine for a fevered “planet in peril.” In addition, direct distribution of all the revenue to individuals would provide “stimulus checks” where they’re needed most. Alternatively, a carbon tax “shift” offers “a double dividend” by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving the overall efficiency of the economy by reducing taxes that discourage employment.

Either way, the time for effective and economically-stimulative climate measures is now.

Photo: Flickr / Antony Pranata.

Canada’s Liberal Party Leader To Step Down (NY Times)

On Global Warming, McCain and Obama Agree: Urgent Action Is Needed (NY Times)

Dion’s Green Shift deserves a better end (Montreal Gazette)

Canada’s Liberal party takes hit in elections (IHT)

Environment not a winning issue in Canadian election (Toronto Globe & Mail)

Virtue or Vice: Canada’s Fumbled Carbon-Tax Election (The New Republic)

How to Fix the Green Shift, in today’s Toronto Star, is a sobering analysis of the impact of the Liberal Party’s proposed carbon tax on the Canadian national election. The bad news is that the carbon tax, called Green Shift by the Liberal Party, appears to be hurting the party’s chances in the Oct. 14 election. The better news is that the problem may be more message delivery than substance. Whatever the results of the Canadian election, carbon tax advocates in the United States and elsewhere will be able to build upon the Liberal Party’s experience.

Following are excerpts from the article, by the Star’s Sarah Barmak. We recommend that you read the full article.

“After the Liberal rank and file comes to grips with the results of the Oct. 14 election – which seems poised to turn out poorly for the troubled party – one question may loom large: was the Green Shift really that bad of an idea, or did Stéphane Dion fail to sell it to Canadians?

“In many ways, a carbon tax should make sense to Canada’s electorate. Canadians place the environment near the top of the list of things they consider most when going to the polls, according to a Sept. 13 Angus Reid poll. …

“Yet another recent poll shows that whatever enthusiasm the Liberals had succeeded in inspiring about their environmental platform over the summer has evaporated. …This even though almost half of respondents believe pricing greenhouse gas emissions is a good idea. In fact, a majority of respondents – 66 per cent – believe the proposed plan will hurt low-income families, singles and seniors, even though cuts to income, personal and business taxes are part of the plan. …

“Are the Liberals mis-marketing the Green Shift, and shooting themselves in the foot in the process?

“On the surface, political campaigning might not seem to have much in common with the marketing of a product. In some ways, however, it makes sense to approach the Green Shift as a complex product that needs to be explained, packaged and sold to an electorate that doesn’t have the time or inclination to muddle through detailed documents on the plan. …

"’An emotional campaign . . . . would be one way of getting past objections around the tax,’ says David Dunne, a professor of marketing at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. ‘Make people feel warm and fuzzy about it. (The Liberals) seem to have slipped up on the emotional component. Their advertising is pretty boring, to be honest.’

“Also central in assuaging voter concern about the plan’s cost: Making sure they know what’s in it. According to one expert on climate change, the Liberal plan will be effective in reducing emissions. But you wouldn’t know that by reading the newspaper. …

“In some ways, Dion’s difficulty pinpointing a central slogan for his environmental policy mirrors the struggles of Obama to present his proposals on the economy, health care, and energy in a way that is easy for voters to digest.

"’I see some parallels between Dion and Obama in that they both avoid overly simplistic discourse,’ says Professor Ron Smyth, a linguistics expert who researchers marketing at the University of Toronto. ‘They try to be clear without insulting the public, while [Canadian Premier, the Conservative Stephen] Harper and [John] McCain are masters at reducing complex issues to simplistic slogans and hot-button issues.’

“In another sense, Dion is grappling with selling a complex solution to a problem – climate change – that is itself notoriously difficult to explain. …

“When a party markets a complex idea during an unexpected election, the rules of the game would seem to inherently favour the other side.

"’The most important thing when trying to sell a big idea like that is it’s a lot easier to poke holes in it than to sell it,’ explains David Soberman, an expert in marketing strategy from Rotman. ’The opposition is in a better position because they can cherry-pick ideas that might not be attractive to the general public while ignoring other aspects.’

“… No one expects (or wants) Dion to grow a beard and wave signs outside the gates of coal-burning power plants. Some marketing experts say changes to the Liberal campaign’s choice of words might be a less painful way to win the hearts of voters.

“For one thing, Dion could think twice about repeating that ugly word, ‘tax’ – replayed ad nauseam by Conservative attack ads. …

“Ultimately, whether voters ‘get’ a politician’s message reflects directly on the politician doing the explaining – not just the speechwriters or the media – in the eyes of the electorate.”

Photo: Flickr / archer10 (Dennis)

Prime Minister Chances Early Election in Canada (NY Times)