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A comment on World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper Than Wind. Parent comment

Re:World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper T... by DennisP on Friday December 16, 2016 @07:13PM (#13198108)
You can get away with a higher carbon tax if you return the money to the population.

In fact, there's a fair amount of popular support for basic income. Meanwhile a leading idea for carbon pricing is a flat fee per ton with the money returned to the population, equal amount per capita, which essentially is a small basic income funded by the carbon tax.

British Columbia has a revenue-neutral carbon tax (in their case by reducing payroll taxes accordingly) and reportedly it's popular. The opposition party ran against it and lost.

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Re:World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper T... by SamPhillips on Friday December 16, 2016 @08:02PM (#13198365)
Washington State rejected one, unfortunately, one significant downside of the state solution is that some demand can just easily shift to another location. I wonder if there's a scheme where on state will pass it but only have it come into affect if neighboring states do as well.
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Re:World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper T... by DennisP on Friday December 16, 2016 @10:51PM (#13199076)
A few states' actions wouldn't help much anyway. The real benefit of state carbon pricing was that the fossil industry was starting to come around on a national carbon price, because they'd rather deal with that than a bunch of different state systems.

Between the WA defeat and Trump win, that's probably pushed back a few years.

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